Whether last week or 3,000 years ago, Israel’s claim to its land supersedes others. (Links to full columns embedded in each headline.)
Israeli officials should be able to pray at the Temple Mount. Period. (Jan. 5):
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is right to blast Biden administration officials for siding with Palestinians against Israeli visits to the Temple Mount. He also is right to blast the administration for repeatedly siding against Israel, which essentially means siding with Islamic terrorists.
The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. Any restrictions on Jewish use of the site should be anathema. Muslims or any others who insist otherwise have no moral standing.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s newly installed national security minister, is a Jewish hard-liner. On Jan. 3, he visited the Temple Mount, which Muslims claim as only its third holiest site but where Muslims nonetheless have asserted priority status. For decades, Israelis have been allowed to visit the site, but not to worship there. Ben-Gvir was there for less than 15 minutes, and he did not pray….
Modern technology illumines ancient Moabite reference to King David (Jan. 13):
As they might have said in the 1960s, here’s a kind of story I can “really dig.”
For years, I have loved news accounts showing more and more evidence that the Old Testament was almost as much an account of real history as of faith. In just the past two decades or so, we’ve seen archaeological evidence of real Philistine burial grounds. We have seen evidence of not just the existence but the details of the Bible’s stories about King Hezekiah and the prophet Jeremiah and, famously, of the fortress of and City of David.
But now, modern technology has further confirmed what for 150 years was believed to be written records not just from Hebrews but from their foreign rivals that explicitly mention King David….
