While building roads on Mount Ebal, near Nablus, the Palestinian Authority destroyed part of a 3,200-year-old wall on the biblical site of Joshua's altar. Joshua was the successor of Moses, the leader of the Jewish nation who brought them into the Land of Israel after their exile in Egypt.
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The authority acted with deliberate intent when crushing the ancient stone from the site's exterior wall into gravel to pave the road. It even made use of stones from within the site itself.
The PA has been doing things like this since it received our lands under the Oslo Accords, even though it made a pledge to preserve Jewish heritage sites. It also promised to refrain from carrying out terrorist attacks, while still receiving weapons from us. Using those same weapons, it opened fire on a group of hikers on Mount Ebal in 2000 and murdered Rabbi Binyamin Herling, the son of a Holocaust survivor.
Taking an Israeli life was not enough. They now have their eyes set on our sacred heritage sites.
While IDF Civil Administration dares not make a peep due to pressure from foreign countries, the PA is slowly destroying ancient sites all over Judea and Samaria. This way, history will be erased from our territory as well as our memory.
Construction waste from the Temple Mount is being dumped into landfills along with Jewish artifacts, leaving Jews who want to preserve these sacred antiquities no choice but to look for them among all the trash.
The trucks that were destroying the very first altar that the people of Israel erected upon entering the land should have been stopped by the soldiers at the nearby military post. I know that the role of the outpost is to guard sensitive communication facilities on the mountain, whose physical placement is strategic due to their height, but an army must surely also know how to protect the history of its people.
Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to lose their homeland. History constitutes a lens for our future, but in the absence of such lenses, the nation will pay a heavy price. After returning to our land following a 2,000-year-long exile, it is our duty to re-sanctify that very first altar that the Palestinian construction equipment has defiled.
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