I was in Israel for a long stay over the summer and I took a chance to excitedly do something I’d never done before. I took the tunnel tour that walks along the sub-terranian excavations at the base of what was the western wall of the temple mount. That little bit you see in pictures is just a fraction of the complete structure.
So the following story caught my eye: Quarry for Temple Mount’s Giant Rocks – Found.
One of the first things you see of the hidden wall is a massive (you just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is) stone. As ever it is beautifully finished and more amazingly it is not even at the base of the wall. Well they’ve found the quarry where that rock and its friends came from.
The following is the piece I recorded for Shire Network News at the time (episode 96):
Walking through the tunnels that have been exposed since 1967 is an amazing experience. All the more so because these tunnels give one a sense of the amazing scale of construction in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. This is fundamental as a solid, beautifully carved visual reminder of why Jerusalem is the city in which Jewishness is centred. Jews may have scattered, but our collective memories point to Jerusalem.
It is also essential to understanding the essence of the stories of Jesus. And I’m not talking about the Muslim Jesus, Isa, oh no.
That tunnel tour is one of the world’s greatest tourist experiences without any doubt. And the thought that it would be blocked off or closed by handing control of Jerusalem to the arch despoilers of history should be utterly unthinkable.
Already it is known that on the summit of the temple mount, Arab muslims are digging tunnels and destroying what they can. This is a hidden crime of the highest magnitude. Tearful archeologists know this is happening when they sift through the spoil the Arabs are dumping and find only shattered fragments of the treasures destroyed.
On the tour I took, the exit via the Muslim Quarter and the Via Delarosa, that was opened by Netanyahu, is too dangerous to use at night. And that is a part of soverign Israel today. Imagine if Jerusalem were under full Arab control.
*No infinitives were unintentionally split in the writing of this post.
