Rethinking Dayan’s well-intentioned surrender of the Temple Mount after June ’67 liberation
It was 10 am on June 7, 1967. Colonel Motta Gur made the now famous announcement via a scratchy broadcast through army radio: “Har Habayit Be’yadenu! Har Habayit Be’yadenu!” In English: “The Temple Mount is in our hands. I repeat: The Temple Mount is in our hands!”
For the first time in over 1,900 years, the holiest place in Judaism, home of the two Temples to G-d, was back in the hands of the indigenous people of the Holy Land, the Jews.
Immediately after the Motta Gur’s announcement, soldiers gathered near the Kotel; some cried as they emotionally recited the Shehechianu prayer. Rabbi Shlomo Goren, lead Ashkenazi rabbi for the IDF, recited a prayer and soldiers broke out into Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem.
According to the book “The Lions Gate,” by Steven Pressfield, Colonel Gur’s number two, Moshe Stempel, was on the Temple Mount, looking for the top of the Kotel. A local resident led Stempel and a few soldiers through his home to the top of the Kotel:
Yorum Zamosh, company commander, said Stempel produced a flag.
“You must write on it.”
“What should I write?”
“This flag of Israel was placed here by paratroopers of the 55th brigade.”
“What’s the date?”
“Nobody knows. The days have run together.”
“Seven June.”
Zamosh continues that he prepared to write, “7 June1967 who have captured the Old City,” but that Stempel interrupted.
“Wait Zamosh,” Stempel Stops me. “It’s not captured. Write liberated.”
D
uring the 19 years after the armistice agreement that followed the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, up until that day in 1967, Jews were not allowed in Jerusalem. The occupying country of Jordan treated the holy city like a garbage dump.
At the ancient Mount of Olives, resting place of biblical and and post-biblical heroes, ancient tombstones were smashed and used for roads, a hotel, a gas station; roads were built on top of graves. An estimated 38,000 Mount of Olives graves were destroyed or desecrated.
The Kotel was used as a garbage dump and a urinal.
Thirty-four out of thirty-five synagogues in the old city were destroyed — some demolished, others converted into stables or chicken coops.
• • •
I used to detest Moshe Dayan because I was told he gave up the Temple Mount out of fear that people would try to build a third Temple. I thought, who the heck did Dayan think he was?
While I still disagree with his actions, later research shed more light on his motivations. Dyan did not view himself as a high priest; he believed his actions would help keep the peace.
On June 7, 1967, when he got the message that the paratroopers had reached the Kotel, he took the chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, and the leader of the central command, Uzi Narkiss, to see the victory.
As “Lion’s Gate” reports, Dayan believed that Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 had erased the inconclusiveness of the 1956 Suez war and created the “warrior Jew,” with Israel’s army taking “its place among the world’s elite corps-at-arms.” He spoke of the newfound pride of Diaspora Jews.
But it didn’t last.
The warrior Jew’s victory angered 1.25 million Arabs who hate them more than before and will never accept Israel’s authority.
Dayan says the only time he lost his temper was when he saw that flag put up by Moshe Stempel and Yorum Zamosh.
“My every instinct cries for grace, generosity, greatness at heart.”
“We must be strong enough to yield when yielding serves the long-term interests of all.”
The end of that quote — “serves the long-term interests of all” — sounds like one of those cheesy comments made by an American running for a political office. But unlike the politician, Dayan really meant it.
The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) wrote that Dayan’s most significant act on the Temple Mount, which sparked controversy over the years and was widely criticized, was to forbid Jewish prayer and worship there, unlike the arrangements that emerged at the Machpelah Cave in Hebron where a functioning mosque also exists.
Dayan decided to leave the Mount and its management in the hands of the Muslim Wakf while at the same time insisting that Jews would be able to visit it (but not pray at it!) without restriction.
• • •
Dayan thought, and years later even committed the thought to writing, that since for Muslims the Mount is a “Muslim prayer mosque” while for Jews it is no more than “a historical site of commemoration of the past … one should not hinder the Arabs from behaving there as they now do.”
The Israeli defense minister believed that Islam should be allowed to express its religious sovereignty (as opposed to national sovereignty) over the Mount, that the Arab-Israeli conflict must be kept on the territorial / national level, and that the potential for a conflict between the Jewish religion and the Muslim religion must be removed.
In granting Jews the right to visit the Mount, Dayan sought to placate the Jewish demands for worship and sovereignty there. In giving religious sovereignty over the Mount to the Muslims, he believed he was defusing the site as a center of Palestinian nationalism.
Too often, Palestinians have falsely accused Israel of disturbing the Temple Mount status quo. Those false changes have usually resulted in violence against Israelis, violence that would not have happened had the Temple Mount not left Israel’s hands.
Moshe Dayan gave away the holiest spot in Judaism because he believed it would bring peace. Instead, it became an opportunity for the Palestinians to bring violence against Israel.
If Dayan truly wanted peace, his orders would have been that all religions, including Jews, should be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount.
As the indigenous people of the land, the Jewish nation should claim the Temple Mount for Jewish prayer. And as the Torah teaches us to respect other faiths, Jews should also allow others to pray on the Temple Mount.
His mistakes may have been made with good intentions, but they still resulted in poor outcomes for which we’re continuing to pay a heavy price.
Moshe Dayan’s Temple Mount actions proved that Ze’ev Jabotinsky was correct when he said, “It is incredible what political simpletons Jews are. They shut their eyes to one of the most elementary rules of life that you must not ‘meet halfway’ those who do not want to meet you.”
Jeff Dunetz [LidBlog.com], was a regular Jewish Star columnist for many years, is the Director of Special Projects of Herut NA. Herut is an international movement dedicated to Zionist pride and education, founded on the ideals of pre-World War II Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
