The 36-acres which comprise the Temple Mount — a hill in Jerusalem, now occupied by the Islamic Dome of the Rock — is probably the most contested smidgen of land on earth.
Archaeologists have established that it was a place of pagan sacrifice and –worship long before Abraham hauled Isaac up there to murder him because the voices in his head told him to. It has been a place of worship for, variously, pre-Abrahamic pagans, Jews, Roman pagans, Christians, Muslims, and probably sundry others too civilized to attract much notice.
Why is that? So far as I can tell, tradition and tribal vanity — as in, “We are the Big Dogs now, and this utterly worthless hill is now dedicated to Our Invisible Friend.”
Holy Men, and the resolute ignorance they demand, are the Dark Side. To hell with all of them.
Ignoring the pagans, who are long gone and don’t count because the Jews killed them, the Jews consider the Temple Mount their pile of dirt, and they want it back. After all, is it not the place where Abraham surrendered his manhood and cravenly agreed to kill his son? It is. And — I swear, I am not kidding you — it is a sacred place rather than the venue of an intolerable, incandescent shame. That is how perverse the Abrahamic faiths actually are: The Temple Mount is a place of worship, rather than a place of shame, because that is where Abraham was broken and agreed to kill his son for no reason but to demonstrate his submission.
You can remind that he was let off the hook after he agreed to kill his son, and you can pettifog about the offhand remark to his servants that he and Isaac would be right back — Maybe he had confidence that Isaac would be restored to life following the sacrifice? But, what else could he have said? I’ll be back just as soon as I’ve gutted Isaac? — but you cannot escape or gloss over the bottom line: Abraham ceased to be a man at the Temple Mount and digressed into madness, and all he deserves from any thinking adult of sound character is contempt. I say the same of those who admire Abraham and hope that someday they, too, will be as craven and submissive as a whipped dog.
No matter: Fundamentalist Jews exhibit no more intelligence or character than fundamentalist Christians — and they want their hill back. Yesterday, with the Buffoon-in-Chief’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he lent what is left of America’s moral authority to that ambition and guaranteed more pointless bloodshed. Bah.