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Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
Yesterday, the Biden Administration State Department issued another appalling and despicable and antisemitic statement that attacked Jews (including a Jewish Israeli Minister) for visiting Judaism’s holiest site – the Temple Mount. Visits by Jews to the Temple Mount are a religious and spiritual right and observance – not a “political” “provocation,” as the State Department insultingly declared.
As ZOA pointed out in response to previous Biden administration attacks on Jewish presence on our holiest site, it is a fundamental American principle that religious and racial discrimination is impermissible, unacceptable and unjust. Yet, the Biden administration is again siding with those who demand that Judaism’s holiest site should be an apartheid “No Jews allowed - only Arabs allowed zone. (See “The Biden Administration Sides with Discrimination on the Temple Mount,” by Morton A. Klein, JNS, Jan. 4, 2023.)
It is particularly galling and offensive that the Biden State Department attacked Jewish visits to the Temple Mount in the same week as Shavuot, one of Judaism’s three pilgrimage festivals. In accordance with G-d’s commandment in the Torah, Jews throughout the land made pilgrimages to the Temple Mount on the Shavuot, Simchat Torah and Sukkot festivals. The First and Second Jewish Temples stood on the Temple Mount for almost 1,000 years, long before Islam began. All people were welcome to pray there. Throughout the millennia and still today, Jews pray three times a day in the direction of the Temple Mount; mourn the Temples’ destruction; and pray for the Temple to be rebuilt.
The Biden administration statement also cited Jordan’s “special role” regarding Muslim holy shrines - but ignored that the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, Article 9(1), first and foremost provides that “Each party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.” Jordan’s “special role” thus does not override the Jewish right to access Judaism’s holiest site.
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