Control, don't 'contain' (from Israel HaYom)

Dror Eydar

We know the rules of the Middle East. The fear of "setting off riots" led to "restraint" on our side, which led to escalation by the Arab rabble rousers who turned the holiest place to the Jewish people into a den of iniquity -- a description by the prophet Jeremiah that perfectly characterizes what a group of familiar Muslims are doing on the Temple Mount, with almost no objection. The ones who control the Temple Mount control the country. Local Arabs understand that better than we do. They aren't gathering on the Temple Mount because they were seized with an attack of piety. Even there, when they pray, they turn their backsides to the Dome of the Rock, the place of the Holy of Holies of our Temple. Well-known Islamist groups goad Arab rioters, who regularly humiliate Jewish visitors and threaten a "firestorm" and other old jihadist favorites from the Gaza school of propaganda. If Jews cannot visit the Temple Mount in peace, Muslims shouldn't be able to, either. The police can absolutely enforce total quiet on the mount. A few dozen rioters aren't a reason to close the site. It's possible to break into the mosque and get control of the bunch of bullies who have barricaded themselves inside. If the Muslims don't respect their own house of prayer and turn it into a bastion for attacks, why should we respect them? And not only on the Temple Mount: Groups of Jerusalem Arabs are seeking to attack the vision of a united city, and are using the "policy of acceptance" to damage the light rail train and the city's public buildings and government edifices. If the police hesitate or choose to "accept" the situation, it is the job of Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch to bang on the table of Insp. Gen. Yohanan Danino and demand decisive action. And if the minister is busy arguing with the inspector general, then the prime minister should give them a dressing down, as he did. We cannot demonstrate weakness. In our region, we've already learned that anyone who shows "understanding" of violence and "accepts" small-scale disturbances will get a war. Anyone who chooses not to fight the Islamic State group while it is relatively small, and preferring to bomb them from the air instead of confronting them, will be drawn in to a broad holy war. Anyone who doesn't dismantle arrogant Islamist organization on the Temple Mount and in east Jerusalem will be forced to deal with much bigger riots. Today is Sukkot. Our ancestors used to take to the streets of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount on the holiday to pray for world peace and a rainy winter. We must eradicate the disgrace to our people and do away with the absurdity of a Jew not being able to murmur prayers in the place about which it is said: "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations" (Isaiah 56:7).