On the heels of the announcement that Israeli Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad had introduced a bill to exclude Muslims from the al-Aqsa Mosque on certain days, I caught up with him as he was testing the latrines of the new Jewish Museum of Tolerance, being built on top of the historic and ancient Muslim cemetery of Mamilla in Jerusalem.
GlossyNews.com: How are ya, Aryeh? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Aryeh Eldad: You’re looking sharp today, Barb. Sorry, I couldn’t resist, either.
RIGHT: Illustration courtesy of Jonathan Blakeley. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
GlossyNews.com: I’m glad I found you. I want to ask you about the bill that you’ve submitted in the Knesset to give Jews exclusive access to the al-Aqsa Mosque on certain days of the week. What is the motivation behind that?
“We believe in sharing, Barb”
Aryeh Eldad: We believe in sharing, Barb, so this is a bill to promote sharing of the al-Aqsa Synagogue. Muslims will be allowed to use it on certain days.
GlossyNews.com: What days do you have in mind?
Aryeh Eldad: The third Monday of each month. We were hoping to make it a Friday, but as you know, Shabbat begins at sundown on Friday for us, and we need several days to prepare after the Muslims leave.
GlossyNews.com: Why do you need so much preparation time?
Aryeh Eldad: We have to burn everything inside and then wash the place down, of course. We can’t have any traces of Muslims when we enter.
GlossyNews.com: How can you call this sharing, Aryeh? This is the holiest Islamic site in Palestine. How is your proposal equitable?
Aryeh Eldad: Of course it’s equitable, Barb – separate but equitable. We Israelis take this kind of sharing seriously. We share the land with so-called Palestinians, who live separately in almost 10% of the land where they used to live. Isn’t that sharing? We also share the work: they get to work for us, building the wall and settlements, and in factories that pollute too much and pay too little to be built in Jewish areas. Building a Museum of Tolerance on top of a revered Muslim cemetery is yet another example of sharing. It seems only fair that we should share al-Aqsa Synagogue in equal measure.
GlossyNews.com: You keep saying equal. How equal is the sharing if they are almost half the population and you are taking almost everything?
“we’re trying very hard to be an American-style democracy”
Aryeh Eldad: We recognize this problem, and we’re trying very hard to be an American-style democracy – i.e. to reduce the indigenous population to almost nothing. We’ve already confined most of them to reservations and we’ve prematurely given some of them citizenship even though we still have a long way to go before they are an insignificant proportion of the population.
GlossyNews.com: If you have taken away their homes, land, income, freedom and human rights how do you think they will react when you take away the most sacred place in Palestine for Muslims? Even the Christians are likely to object.
Aryeh Eldad: We expect them to object. No matter how much we share their homes, lands and places of worship, they react like terrorists. It’s totally unreasonable, but we nevertheless feel obligated to share.
GlossyNews.com: How do you explain that?
Aryeh Eldad: It’s the cultural difference, obviously.
I think you’re probably very smart, Gary. Perhaps the difficult part is that a lot of this is actually true. This Knesset member really did introduce legislation to exclude Muslims from the holiest place for Muslims in Palestine on certain days of the week and to make it exclusively available for Jews on those days. And yes, there really is a Museum of Tolerance being built on top of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. And yes, the facts about Palestinian land confiscation are accurate, too.
Some of it is exaggeration, like the allowing only one day per month. Also I have no idea where the latrines are being built in the Museum of Tolerance. However, you get the idea.
I don’t know if that clarifies matters, but if not, perhaps you can describe the confusing part, and I can address it.
I read a lot of news, and I don’t get it. I think you might be too smart for me, and that bugs me a little bit, because I like to think I’m pretty smart… so tell me, why am I so dumb?