Ark of the Covenant - part 3

It was just one week after our 1995 Israel expedition that Prime] Minister Rabin was assassinated. And the authorities were blaming one of those disaffected extremists.
Today, the Israeli government walks a knife edge.
Many believe that peace is possible, although, after that assassination, upon assuming office, Prime Minister Netanyahu promised his government would not recognize an independent Palestinian state, would expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and would refuse to discuss sharing Jerusalem as a capital.

According to news reporter John Barala, writing from Tulsa, Oklahoma, a "death ray" laser weapon that had been denied to American forces because it was thought "too inhuman", was to be handed over to Israel by the United States government.
The weapon was identified as the Nautilus anti-missile laser. The laser can destroy missiles in flight with deadly accuracy. However, there are many other uses for this laser weapon. It can be used also to immobilize and blind thousands of combat troops in an instant.
Barala quoted Jeremy Sackett, a veteran wire service reporter on defense topics, as saying, "War planners foresaw a time when the mere terror of a swiftly, silently gliding ray that melts ? literally incinerates ? the human eye would panic hostile troops and rout them without firing a shot."
And Dr. Vanessa Hughessen, a physicist specializing in arms-control studies at MIT said, "The potential is there. The Nautilus represents the ultimate combat technology. Properly engineered, it will destroy anything in its path."
Israel, the "holy land" that so many of us love, is today on tenterhooks. The government is nervous. It does not want war. Neither do most of the people, whether Israeli or Arab.
But it is against this background that we must view the present official attitude toward the alleged Ark of the Covenant discovery. It is potentially the most explosive object on earth? politically and religiously.

I recall a conversation I had with a gentleman who asked, "What if I were to write to the Israeli Government and ask them about it?"
My reply was, "They?ll deny it, of course. Both the project and the man. That is how it has to be for the time being. And it would be naive of one to expect otherwise. In virtually every country, official denials of certain matters are standard procedure. And in such cases, almost all personnel in the department concerned are kept in the dark."
A classic example of the denials policy in action was seen in April,1995, after Channel 7 Radio in Israel broke the news that Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had met with the Pope with a proposal to place the Old City of Jerusalem under Vatican control.
Israel?s Ambassador in Rome, Shmuel Hadas, and Peres himself, denied such a plan.
However, a copy of a telegram sent by Miriam Ziv to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, outlining Peres? plans, surfaced and was printed in the Hatzofe newspaper.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told The Jewish Press that:
...this is similar to Peres? denial that there was ever a letter with promises to Arafat about Jerusalem and later the letter surfaced. Now this telegram was revealed. Who knows what else they are concealing from the public?
Indeed. So to the gentleman who asked would the Israeli authorities admit the Ark find if he wrote to them, my reply was, "You would probably receive a letter that went something like this:
?We have no record of any archaeological permit having been issued to a Ronald Wyatt, nor does anyone in this office know him.
If Mr. Wyatt conducted any excavation in Jerusalem, it would have been done illegally.??
And we smile.
Has human nature changed? On January 17, 1883, General Gordon observed in a letter to his sister:
The present-day governors, like those at the time of Christ, continue to be corrupt and are preoccupied with political expediency.

Occasionally one bumps into an official who admits that not all is being told.
Following a 2? hour presentation on the Ark of the Covenant to an audience in Auckland, New Zealand, a member of the audience introduced himself to me as an Israeli ex-Secret Service agent. He raised the subject of Rabin?s assassination and said, "I have information that Rockefeller initiated the act and that Israeli Secret Service men were implicated. It was called ?Operation Champagne?. But let me tell you this: your lecture on the Ark of the Covenant has just filled in missing gaps in what I already knew."
What did this man already know? With the pressure of a crowd around us, there was no opportunity to continue the conversation.

Many great rabbis of the past and present have rejected, on religious grounds, any search for the Ark.
The Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Unterman, was quoted as saying
What will happen, if, as a result of the archaeological excavation, you find the Ark of the Covenant, which Jewish tradition says is buried in the depths of the earth?
The rabbi said that it was precisely such a discovery that he feared. Since the children of Israel today are not "pure" from the viewpoint of Jewish religious law, they are forbidden to touch the Ark of the Covenant. Hence it is unthinkable to even consider excavating until the Messiah comes!
Such concern about the Ark does reflect orthodox thinking. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, all Jews have been considered to be in a state of ritual impurity. This condition is supposed to end only with the coming of the Messiah.
Strong opposition to archaeological work could, therefore, be expected from some Jewish religious authorities. This still represents a potential obstacle to bringing anything out from the cavern.
Lubavitcher rabbis have said, "What will you do with it if you find it? Will you bring tourists to look at it? You had better leave it closed until its time will come."



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