12 | AUGUST 5 • 2021 PURELY COMMENTARY CAMPUS from page 10 SUPPORT from page 8 attack everything you write and, ultimately, prevent me from attaining the editor’s position? I was alone in 1985, but today, Jewish students can find solace in online communities. Julia Jassey, a student at the University of Chicago, is emerging as a leader among young people on campus fighting back against antisemitism that masquerades as antizionism. She runs a group called Jewish on Campus, and you can find them on Twitter, Instagram or you can write to them at connect@ jewishoncampus.org. Of course, none of those things were available to me in 1985, so I did the next best thing: I interned for the Detroit Jewish News, which also ran a version of my story about the Protocols. This unexpectedly led to my career as a “Jewish journalist” and, eventually, years later, as managing editor at JTA. Today, my college experience is wrapped into a lifetime of experiences in recognizing the various shades of antisemitism. It is difficult, I know, for college students. But I am also optimistic that, even though it looks worse than it was “in my day,” young Jewish communities are being formed to help define and fight the problem of campus antisemitism. Howard Lovy is an editor and writer based in Traverse City. He is the former managing editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. You can find him at howardlovy.com or on twitter @howard_lovy. unreasonably believed that the alternative was a bloody religious conflict that would undermine Israel’s efforts to normalize relations with the rest of the Arab world and provide fodder for the Jewish state’s critics in the West. POSSIBLE RAMIFICATIONS That decision was easy to stand by as long as the Israeli public was largely indiffer- ent to Jewish rights on the Mount. That was backed up by the opinion of some in the Orthodox world that held that Jews should stay off the Mount since the exact location of the Temple’s Holy of Holies was unknown and thereby avoid profaning a place that only the High Priest was allowed to enter while it still existed. But in recent years, more support for the rights of Jews to pray on the Mount has been building, especially among the right- wing and religious parties. It appears that some Jewish prayer has been going on in the last two years. In 2019, there was a report that some Jews were praying aloud there regularly in a minyan con- ducted openly without police interference. But the abridged informal services being held did not involve partici- pants wearing prayer shawls or tefillin, so it somehow escaped much notice. But once Israel’s Channel 12 news reported the policy shift, it was enough to prompt vio- lence from Arabs. At this point, it remains to be seen what the implications of that shift and Bennett’s public expression of support for “freedom of worship for Jews” on the Mount — words that never passed the lips of Netanyahu during his 12 years in power, despite his being labeled as a hardline right-winger in the interna- tional press — will be. It’s possible that Abbas and his Hamas rivals, whose firing of 4,000-plus rockets and missiles into Israel in May was rationalized as an expression of opposition to Israeli policies in Jerusalem, will use it to escalate the conflict again. Arab states, including those with relations with Israel, such as Jordan, will also feel obliged to make an issue of it as well, possibly endangering the normaliza- tion of relations with the Gulf States. Nor is anyone expecting the United States — let alone, Europe — to express support for the right of Jewish wor- ship on the Temple Mount. That will create problems for Bennett and the incongru- ous coalition he leads. He will likely be pressured to walk back his statement from both Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and the Ra’am Arab party that provides the government with its slim majority. Whatever the cost he must pay for having said those words, Bennett cannot take them back without doing incalculable damage to him- self and Israel. This dispute is dismissed by some as an unnecessary conflict that is harming Israel’s security merely to sat- isfy the wishes of extremists. But the Palestinian claim that Jews have no rights on the Temple Mount is inextricably linked to their unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish presence and sovereignty anywhere in the country. That Abbas and his “mod- erates” claim there were no Temples on the Mount or the historical nature of the Jewish claims to this land isn’t merely rhetoric that enables them to compete with Hamas. It goes to the heart of their long war against Zionism that they still refuse to renounce. A Jewish state that would officially renounce Jewish rights on the Mount would be sending a message to the Palestinian street that the extremist belief that Israel will disappear isn’t a pipe dream that they must aban- don if they want a peaceful future. Those who are still trying to pressure Israel to accept a two-state solution that the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly made clear it has no interest in pursuing need to understand that peace can’t be built on the denial of Jewish rights, especially in Jerusalem. Israel has no desire to interfere with the mosques on the Temple Mount or stop Muslim (or any) worship there. Those who circulate this lie, whether among the Palestinians or their American cheerlead- ers, like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), are opponents of peace, not people working for coexistence. That even some of those who claim to be Israel’s friends think it is reasonable to deny “freedom of worship” for Jews at their most sacred site are giving unwitting aid and comfort to the very extremist forces that make peace impossible. Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate.