Likud Knesset Member Miri Regev cancelled on Wednesday a planned Knesset Interior Committee visit to the Temple Mount, explaining that although she really wants to examine first-hand why Jews are not allowed to pray at the Temple Mount, she is not about to do so if it will cause “tensions.”

Tensions? Perhaps she meant “war.”

Only a nit-wit would not know that nothing infuriates the Arab world more than an Israeli government official visiting the Temple Mount, the holiest Jewish site in the world.

Regev has to be incredibly naïve, or something less flattering, to think that she really could lead a an efficacies Knesset visit to the Temple Mount as if it were a tourist trip.

Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon paid a visit to the Temple Mount during the 2000 election campaign, and his little jaunt was the “shot heard around the world,” credited with touching off the long-brewing second phase of the Intifada, also known as the Oslo War.

Arab media, at least once every week or so, describes how Jews “storm” the Temple Mount.

Just to make sure the Jewish visits do not cause “tension,” police are on hand at the Temple Mount to make sure that Jews don not bring any prayer books with them and do not committee ultimate offense of praying, or even looking like they are praying.

She said she wanted to examine the possibility of allowing Jews to resume praying, although visiting the site is embroiled in a deep controversy among rabbis. The Chief Rabbinate forbids ascending the Temple Mount because of a host of issues concerning Jewish law, while some national religious rabbis permit it.

MK Regev knows full well that after the Six-Day War in 1967, Moshe Dayan granted the Muslim Waqf authority over the Temple Mount.

Jews continued to ascend for many years and even prayed there until the Muslim fanatics began flexing their muscle.

The Palestinian Authority, led by its nose under the de facto leadership of Arab World heavyweights, has conducted a campaign for years to show that Jews really have no business being on the Temple Mount.

Muslim clerics constantly deliver sermons and incite the local Arabs with claims that Israel is trying to dig tunnels under the Temple Mount to cause the collapse of the Al Aqsa mosque.

It is old news that the Arab world claims the First and Second Temples are another Jewish lie, like the Holocaust, and that the Western Wall actually was a hitching post for the Prophet Mohammed’s horse.

So why did Regev insist on leading a visit there and then look foolish by backing down? Because she does not want to become Feiglin Number 2 and be a black sheep in the Likud.

Moshe Feiglin, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s favorite thorn in the side, has made it a habit of ascending the Temple Mount every month, but his previous visit sparked a protest by Arabs and ended up with the police hauling him away.

Why?

Because Feiglin now is an MK, and Netanyahu, wanting a bit of peace and quiet, ordered him to stay away.

It might cause tension.

Feiglin, not one to step down from principles, announced on Wednesday that he no longer will automatically vote with the coalition, even though he won his long-sought objective of being a Likud Knesset Member in the recent elections.

“I have nothing against the Likud or the coalition but we cannot accept dictates from the Waqf,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

He said he will be more than happy to vote with the government once he is allowed to visit the Temple Mount again.

He is not holding his breath.

Jewish Press editor Yori Yanover reported several days ago that a source close to the Prime Minister told Feiglin that if he visits again, he would touch off “World War Three.”

Feiglin had planned to visit the Temple Mount on Monday, the 19th of the Hebrew month of Iyar, as he does on the 19th of every Hebrew month.

The Arabs won Round One by keeping Feiglin off the Temple Mount.

Now they have won Round Two, leaving MK Regev out of the ring.

Who’s next?

The special relationship between Israel and the U.S. is not a cliché. Polls and in-depth surveys repeatedly show that America relates to Israel positively in the most fundamental way – despite, to the contrary, the tireless efforts of the Jews influencing the New York Times and Haaretz.

We share common values, based on the Bible. America’s Founding Fathers saw their new country as a rebirth of the nation of liberty and its universal message. These common goals should have been the basis for the relationship between Israel and the U.S. “And I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you shall be cursed,” God says to Abraham. That is the motto of some 80 million American Evangelicals who are convinced that American prosperity is contingent on its significant alliance with Israel. Hardship, they believe, happens when the U.S. takes a stand against Israel.

But instead of reinforcing our status as the eternal People of the Book and the source of American values, we Israelis have chosen to market ourselves as a young nation searching for its place among the established nations and under their patronage. Our relationship with the U.S. has become – through our own volition – a father-son relationship.

American aid, merely 1.5 percent of Israel’s income, is not something Israel really needs. In the long run, it harms us economically, politically and militarily. But our insistence on receiving it stems from a psychological need. When our pocket money continues to roll in from across the ocean, it shows that “Father” is still there and that we are not alone among the nations. When we try to escape from our Father in Heaven, we must look for a weak replica in foreign lands.

This flawed mentality was the source of the “Obamania” that we experienced during President Obama’s recent visit to Israel. Thus, relations that could have been based on shared values were instead based on dependence.

Israel, fleeing its identity and constantly evading open adoption of those common goals, has consistently based its connection with the U.S. on a completely different foundation. The main goal that we touted was our right to self-defense. Instead of the Shrine of the Book and sites that attest to our biblical foundations here in Israel, our honored guests are always taken to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem. After viewing those horrific images, nobody was supposed to be able to ask any questions. That was good for us; no need to deal with the questions of our identity and the justice of our national existence in this land.

But the Holocaust “lemon” has been completely squeezed out. A new generation has risen in Europe, a generation that is no longer willing to pay for the sins of its predecessors with silence. This generation sees the Palestinians demanding justice as the new Jews, bereft of a homeland, while they view the Israelis who demand security as the new Nazis.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insistence on restoring the focal point of Obama’s visit from the Holocaust Museum to our deep historical foundations in Israel; his assertive speech in the U.S. in which he explained that Yad Vashem is not the foundation of our existence; rounding out this approach by bringing President Obama to the Shrine of the Book; the explanation that Obama received there that every Israeli child can read what his forefathers wrote here over 2,000 years ago – were, in my opinion, the most important accomplishments of Obama’s visit.

I was in the Channel 2 studio when Professor Shalom Rosenberg of the Shrine of the Book explained to the viewers what the American president was looking at, at that very moment.

“You don’t have a Palestinian scroll to show him?” I asked, unable to withhold my thought. “Not from 1,000 years ago, not from 100 years ago, or less than that. Nothing?”

The professor shifted his weight uncomfortably.

“This is the most important outcome of Obama’s visit and Netanyahu’s major accomplishment,” I said. “It is not about Obama, but first and foremost about Israeli society that has been trained to see Auschwitz as the justification for our existence.”

Who knows? Maybe next time we will take our visiting VIPs to the altar built by Yehoshua bin Nun on Mount Eval just 40 years after the Exodus from Egypt. The Dead Sea Scrolls are certainly important. But our history in this land does not begin 2,000 years ago. It begins more than 3,300 years ago.

For the past ten years, MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud-Beitenu) has been visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on the 19th of the Hebrew month, every month. But on Sunday, April 28, 2013, Feiglin received a phone call from Deputy Commander Moshe Barkat, Chief of the Israeli Police David Precinct, which includes the Old City of Jerusalem.

“He informed me that, on direct order from the prime minister, I would not be permitted to enter the Mount tomorrow,” MK Feiglin wrote in his Facebook page.

A source close to Feiglin told The Jewish Press that the deputy commander told the MK that the Waqf, the Jordanian charity organization which runs the Temple Mount, warned the Prime Minister’s office that should Feiglin go up on the Mount on Monday, it would “start World War Three.”

No one wants that. Except that the same Waqf has been cautioning about new world wars frequently, and is often involved in organizing, rather than trying to prevent them.

According to Feiglin, the prime minister has no legal authority to give such an order, because it violates three basic laws:

1. Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, which gives each person freedom of movement, and requires the state to protect this right.

2. Basic Law: The Knesset, which grants every MK complete immunity in carrying out his duties.

3. Basic Law: Jerusalem, which says: “The sacred sites shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the religionists to the sites they hold sacred, or their feelings concerning those sites.”

Also: “Any and all authority applying to the area of Jerusalem that is granted by law to the State of Israel or the Jerusalem Municipality, shall not be transferred to a foreign entity, political or governmental, whether permanently or temporarily.”

“The only legal way to prevent me from going up to the Temple Mount tomorrow (without changing existing law),” says MK Feiglin, “is if, in the opinion of the officer in charge of the place there exists an immediate, clear and present danger.”

But, having given him the warning a full day in advance, Feiglin argues, security forces should have ample time—had the prime minister only told them so—to organize and prevent dangerous gathering and violence.

According to MK Feiglin, the Prime Minister’s decision “confirms what I was told by the police command when I asked to tour the Dome of the Rock, that the Temple Mount is under Muslim sovereignty.”

This unfortunate decision, writes Feiglin, can be added to reports this week about transferring broad supervisory authority to UNESCO in Jerusalem, as well as the reality of a de facto construction freeze in Jerusalem, as Housing Minister Uri Ariel warned last week.

The source close to Feiglin says the MK will obey Netanyahu’s directive, but that as of tomorrow Feiglin would no longer be voting the Likud-Beitenu party line.

“When, just before Jerusalem Liberation Day, the Prime Minister orders an Israeli Knesset member that—contrary to Israeli law— he not to go up to the Temple Mount, it means that the Prime Minister has officially and openly revoked Israeli sovereignty on the Mount and given it to the Muslim Waqf,” MK Feiglin wrote.

“This is an entirely new situation, more severe than before, and I must consider now how to force the Prime Minister to respect the sovereignty of the State of Israel in its capital Jerusalem,” he concluded.

The following is my response to a woman who criticized me for visiting the Temple Mount. In a letter to me, she claimed that I broke the law and irresponsibly provoked Arab anger. She suggested that my actions should conform to the will of the “majority.”

Dear S.:

1) In your letter, you claim that I broke the law. I am sorry to say that from your letter it is obvious that you are not familiar with this issue. The legal situation on the Temple Mount is the complete opposite of what you describe. There is not and there cannot be a law that prohibits the entrance of Jews to the Temple Mount. There is not and cannot be a law that prohibits Jews from praying on the Temple Mount. There are laws that emphasize the rights of all religious groups to enter their holy places (similar to their rights to enter any other public place) and to pray there.

I would like to remind you that the nation of Israel also has a faith. It also has a holy place and – wonder of wonders – the Jewish people also have feelings, such that these laws relate to me as much as it does to any other citizen.

The courts have time and again upheld our legal right to enter and pray on the Mount. On Sukkot of this year, I was arrested for praying on the Temple Mount. Despite all of the police’s best efforts, the judge released me without bail due to “absence of guilt.”

Thus, I suggest that you may want to consider whether the situation is not completely the opposite of what you claim. Perhaps I am the one abiding by the law, while those trusted with upholding the law are actually breaking it. As you are a responsible citizen, I am certain that this disturbing possibility will cause you to lose some sleep.

2) Regarding your claim that I acted irresponsibly, I say this: Although you try to be objective, this claim is up to its neck in a typically one-sided worldview. You conclude that we must give in to the Arab threat of violence. You place the responsibility for the outcome on whoever does not surrender.

I wonder if you would respond in the same way if a bully would take over your house and prevent you from entering. How would you relate to someone who would point the accusing finger at you, reprimand you for demanding that the police arrest that ruffian and blame you – not the intruder – for the outcome? You are correct that in light of the de facto surrender (in secret, against the public’s will, without any Knesset decision and against the law) of Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount, there is a certain probability that my entrance to the Mount would initially arouse attempts to react violently. But does capitulation to the Arab threat of violence bring quiet?

Our experience on every front that we have tested the capitulation innovation is completely clear. Both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have become legitimate targets for rocket attacks as a result of our recent withdrawals. As a Jerusalemite, you certainly must remember the exploding buses. Try to remember a similar attack before the Oslo Accords.

Simple logic shows that it is not the one who refuses to capitulate to violence and demand his legal and ethical right to enter the Mount who is irresponsible – but vice versa. Those who evade their responsibility to maintain Israeli sovereignty on the Mount are irresponsible. Ultimately, they will find themselves in a never-ending bloody conflict over our sovereignty over the entire land of Israel. The thousands of Oslo victims – soldiers and civilians – who paid with their lives, and the constant danger that there will be more victims are the direct result of this irresponsibility.

3) Democracy: This claim is a bit awkward, both from a factual standpoint and even more so in its essence.

I do not know how you justify your statement that I do not represent the views of the majority of citizens. I have read numerous studies that reinforce the fact that our nation feels a strong connection to the Temple Mount.

It is difficult to understand the ultra-Orthodox reaction to its exclusion from the government coalition. After all, that’s how it goes in politics – sometimes you are in, sometimes you are out. For many long years, the ultra-Orthodox were in the coalition and the religious Zionists were out. Now they have changed places.

So what? Why all the lamenting, cries of despair and threats of destruction of the settlements, God forbid? Everybody with some common sense knows that nobody is going to send the yeshiva boys to prison camps and that no serious Torah learner is going to have to stop learning. What is causing such an exaggerated ultra-Orthodox reaction? It doesn’t make them look very good, so why throw years of friendly cooperation into the trashcan? Why incite baseless hatred of their constituency? What is going on here?

To understand the ultra-Orthodox, religious Zionists must remember how they felt and reacted after the Expulsion from Gush Katif. “How can you possibly compare the two?” you may ask. “Entire communities were razed in Gush Katif and with the ultra-Orthodox, it is simply a questions of politics.”

That is true. The destruction experienced by the religious Zionists was entirely real, and the pain of the expelled unbearable. But the intensity of the grief and the religious Zionist reaction to the Expulsion were much more than simple sharing of the pain of those driven from their homes. Settlements were destroyed before Gush Katif – and subsequently, as well.

In Gush Katif something much bigger than houses was destroyed. It seemed that what was destroyed there was ideology. That was the source of the deep pain and grief. That was what motivated the lamentation and the heartbreaking images, images like the picture of the Netzarim expellees carrying the menorah from their synagogue, creating an immediate association with the image of the menorah from the Beit HaMikdash being carried by the Jews exiled from Jerusalem.

That same destruction of ideology is what is being experienced now by the ultra-Orthodox. Interestingly, the reaction of the religious Zionists then and the ultra-Orthodox now are amazingly similar.

Until the expulsion from Gush Katif, the religious Zionists still believed that the redemption process was on “automatic pilot.” True, there were some malfunctions (some of them major) here and there but they could be explained away or ignored.

In Yamit Israel succumbed to the enticement of “peace,” and Oslo could be blamed on the Left. But when the Expulsion took place, Yair Lapid offered this explanation: “We had to teach you a lesson.” In other words, we drove you from your homes and destroyed your communities because we – the mainstream of the return to Zion – are simply unwilling to accept your interpretation, your ideology and your Rabbi Kook. So please get out of our sights and let us live our daily lives without your unbearable Messianism.

That is why we cried so bitterly. Not only about Gush Katif. We cried because they threw us out, threw out our belongings after us, and slammed the door shut – while life in Israel continued as if nothing had happened. It was much more than Gush Katif. It was the ideological breaking point and ultimate humiliation. The tears were meant to make our mainstream “father and mother” open the door for us once again.

Now that we understand what happened to the religious Zionists, we can understand what the ultra-Orthodox are experiencing. Certainly not with the same intensity, for to them Zionism is much less a father and mother than it is to the religious Zionists. But it is the same insult, based on the ultra-Orthodox feeling of belonging to the state. The Neturei Karta sect, for example, vociferously opposed to the state, was not insulted at all.

In other words, the more insulted the ultra-Orthodox are, the more they show how much they belong to the collective. And that is good news.

…To be continued

Newly-appointed Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin has warned one of former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin’s grandchildren that her remarks about him are grounds for libel.

Noa Rotman, after hearing that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Feiglin as of one several deputy speakers, wrote on Facebook, “Feiglin is the man who established Zu Artzeinu, the movement that was responsible or the incitement that brought democracy in Israel to a new low and brought about the murder of the Prime Minister of Israel.”

She added that the appointment left her with the feeling of a being outside her own country.

Feiglin wrote on Facebook Tuesday that Rotman’s logic also could be used to conclude that the “architects of the Oslo Accords are responsible for the murder of 2,000 Israelis been killed in post-Oslo terrorist attacks.”

He added, “I feel sorry for Rotman, but if she continues with this kind of approach, I will be forced to sue for libel.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu surprised many Likud followers Monday by naming his long-time nemesis Moshe Feiglin as of one several Deputy Knesset Speakers. The Knesset elected Knesset Member Yuri Edelstein as Speaker, replacing Reuven Rivlin.

Feiglin heads the Jewish Leadership faction that for years has been trying to become the dominant influence in the Likud party, and he has brought a large number of residents of Judea and Samaria into the Likud party even though they often voted for other partiers in the genera elections.

The presence of pro-Feiglin supporters within the Likud has enabled him in the past to win sufficient support to be placed high enough on the list of Knesset candidates likely to be elected.

Prime Minister Netanyahu moved him out of the high rankings in the elections four years ago by a political maneuver, but this time around, Feiglin cut a deal with Likud veteran MK Yisrael Katz that catapulted Feiglin on the roster and assured him a seat.

Newly-elected Moshe Feiglin threw in a line about being a future Prime Minister at a gala Queens dinner honoring him Monday night for being elected as an Israeli Knesset Member of the Likud party..

Feiglin spoke at the banquet in the Fresh Meadows Chateau Steakhouse, which was packed with supporters, including  several Reform Jews, according to the International Business Times.

The new Knesset Member finally has achieved his aim after successful attempts by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to keep him out of the legislature, but now he will have to stomach some Likud policies that he abhors

A prime example  is Netanyahu’s recent appointment of center-left Tzipi Livni as Justice Minister and responsible for the “peace process.”

Looking beyond the horizon, Feiglin said, “When I am Prime Minister, God willing, Tzipi Livni will not be in my government.”

The Israeli consensus would give Feiglin a zero chance of becoming Prime Minister, but it also dismissed him years as a possible Knesset Member.

The Hill website’s Bernie Quigley wrote in January that Feiglin would “find kinship” with Republican Senator Rand Paul.

“Ron Paul, who opposed the Israeli lobby’s efforts and the neocon adventures in wonderland, was unfairly caricatured as an anti-Semite in his opposition to the invasion of Iraq,” Quigley wrote. “And Rand Paul would find kinship with Moshe Feiglin, the liberty candidate for the Knesset who opposed American influence in Israel since 2001. Feiglin’s rise to the Knesset this month has already changed the culture and historical trajectory of Israel….These two, Rand Paul and Moshe Feiglin, rise in the world together and possibly fate intends for them to do so.”

Feiglin made it clear to his supporters at Monday night’s banquet, sponsored by his Jewish leadership faction, that his being in the Likud government  – assuming it will be formed – does not mean he is adopting its policies.

Asked for a response to the Palestinian Authority’s gaining recognition in the UN as a non-member observer, he  said, “There are no Palestinians; it’s all a ruse — there is no Palestinian history or Palestinian anything in Israel.”

He added, “It is meaningless, what they decided. I’ve heard this same decision made in the last 20 years at least three, four times.

The Jewish Voice for Peace, not surprisingly, condemned Feiglin’s appearance. The left-wing group labeled Feiglin and his associate David Sackett as racists who praise Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn-born rabbi who once served in the Knesset and was murdered in New York.

The Palestine News Network reported that the Jewish Voice for Peace deputy director Cecilie Surasky said, “It’s unfortunate that a dangerous extremist like Feiglin, who has been banned from entering the UK, is being welcomed to speak in New York by members of the Jewish community.