That's Not What It's About!

Reading the media coverage of current events in Israel gave me flashbacks to the notorious ban on my books. At the time, many followers of the Gedolim were deeply uncomfortable with the notion that the Gedolim deemed it heretical to believe that the universe is billions of years old and that Chazal's statements about the natural world were not always correct. So instead, they recast the Gedolim as being opposed to the "tone" of my books, even though the Gedolim did not read my books and were explicit about what they were really objecting to. A similar attempt to avoid reality was the claim that "it was the kanna'im, not the Gedolim" even though the Gedolim signed off on it and in some cases drove it.

The same thing is happening with the current situation. The Palestinians have been quite clear what this is about. It's about Israel "attacking" the Temple Mount by letting some Jews pray there, thus sullying it with their "filthy feet." As David French put it: "When there is a shared holy site, Palestinians demand exclusively Muslim faith practice. And if they don’t get it, they’ll kill innocent men, women, and children until you relent."

But this is deeply uncomfortable for the Western media. First of all, it's not even true that Israel is letting Jews pray there, but even if they were, what would be wrong with that? After all, the West prizes tolerance, so if Moslems can pray at their third-holiest site, why can't Jews pray at their holiest site? Therefore, you'll see that much of the Western media are trying to re-cast it as being about the occupation or the oppression or anything except what the Palestinians say it is actually about.

Fantasies are always easier than reality.