The Frontiersman, the Bear, and the Temple Mount

Abraham Lincoln before winning the presidency sometimes told a political tale cast as folklore.

He said that there was an old woman who heard a commotion from her frontier cabin. Not knowing what was going on, she rushed outside to see. Unsure who was going to win a brawl between her husband and a bear, she prudently decided to cheer for both of them: “Go it husband, go it bear!”

This reminds me of the religious-political violence that has been rocking the Temple Mount. To be candid, Hamas in violently disrupting highly regulated Jewish visits to holiest of Jewish sites (Jews have been allowed to visit but not pray by Israeli authorities since the 1967 War) has been cheered on by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who said on Palestinian television: “The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours… and [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem.”

Then there is the world’s reaction. To apply Lincoln’s anecdote, almost nobody sides with accommodating Israelis, many side with the bigoted Palestinian authorities, while the rest, including some Jews, take the position of the frontiersman’s wife: “Go it husband, go it bear!”