View of the site where a large chunk of stone dislodged from the Western Wall in Jerusalem at the mixed-gender prayer section on July 23, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Archaeologist Zachi Dvira, head of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, told The Times of Israel on Monday after inspecting the Western Wall following the fall of a Herodian-era stone that the whole area is a “danger zone.”

On Monday morning, a boulder fell from the Western Wall onto the Robinson’s Arch egalitarian platform, which is located in the Davidson Archaeological Park alongside the Wall. Captured on film, the rock landed very close to a female worshiper there.

The fallen boulder weighed about 220 pounds (100 kilograms), Israel Radio said. It damaged the platform on which Daniella Goldberg, 79, was praying.

The incident came a day after the platform was filled with worshipers marking the Tisha B’Av fast, which commemorates the destruction of the two Jewish temples in Jerusalem.

Tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis also flocked to the main prayer plaza of the Western Wall between Saturday night and Sunday evening to solemnly mark the day.

“I didn’t hear or feel anything until it landed right at my feet, ” said Goldberg.

Daniella Goldberg, who was praying a few meters from where a boulder from the Western Wall fell onto a prayer platform on July 23, 2018 (screenshot: Hadashot)

She said she was praying at the site, as she does regularly, when suddenly the boulder crashed down.

She told Hadashot TV news she “tried not to let the incident distract me from my prayers” and refused to be drawn on whether divine providence had spared her.

“May we all be blessed,” she said.

A boulder from the Western Wall falls onto a prayer platform on July 23, 2018 (Courtesy/The Western Wall Heritage Foundation via the Masorti Movement of Israel)

During archaeologist Dvira’s inspection on Monday afternoon, he said, he noted multiple cracks in other stones and he believes that another stone fall is just a matter of time.

Archaeologist Zachi Dvira (Amanda Borschel-Dan/Times of Israel)

Other stones “could immediately fall on the heads of people,” said Dvira, who is completing a PhD on the recorded archaeology of the Temple Mount.

There are already several noticeable gaps in the Western Wall, where large Herodian stones have crumbled in the past. In a notable case in 2004, large pieces of Western Wall stone fell in the mainstream prayer plaza — slightly injuring a Yom Kippur worshiper — due to erosion caused by foreign metal objects inserted into the wall’s cracks by birds.

The State of Israel, Dvira alleged, “doesn’t do proper preservation because of politics.” In the 2004 case, repairs were made in the main Western Wall Plaza by the Jordanians following many rounds of negotiations, he said. The contentious nature of the egalitarian prayer area has likewise closed the site from preservation, he said.

In 2009, the IAA completed a three-month preservation project in the Western Wall Plaza which concentrated on 16 of the upper stone courses that date from the Ottoman period. Unlike the lowest Herodian courses, these stones are held in place with mortar, which was eroding with water damage over time.

During the 2009 project, the mortar was replaced and many of the caper plants were removed from the wall. According to the IAA report, the team’s work was circumscribed at the guidance of the Western Wall rabbi, but it was satisfied that danger was averted.

A boulder from the Western Wall falls onto a prayer platform on July 23, 2018 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

A family celebrates a bar mitzva at the small egalitarian prayer platform at the Robinson’s Arch, July 2018. (Amanda Borschel-Dan/ToI)

While the egalitarian section is currently closed to the public since the stone’s fall, other areas are still accessible. It is Dvira’s opinion that the public should not be allowed to approach any of the walls, including the Western Wall, and should be kept back two or three meters.

“It’s a matter of life or death,” said Dvira.

Following the stone’s fall from one of the original Herodian rows of the Western Wall, a team of IAA experts, including archaeologists, engineers and conservationists, began careful examination of the affected area.

A team of professionals was deployed to the Robinson’s Arch egalitarian prayer platform next to the Western Wall on July 23, 2018 following the fall of a Herodian stone. (Courtesy the Masorti Movement/Rabbi Valerie Stessin)

In a statement, the IAA said there were a number of possibilities that may have led to the stone’s fall, such as vegetation growing in the wall’s cracks, or entrapped moisture that may have led to the stone’s wear. There is also the possibility of a still unknown engineering failure.

Daniella Goldberg (left), with Culture Minister Miri Regev, inspects the damage caused by a large stone that dislodged from the Western Wall in Jerusalem Old City on July 23, 2013, at the mixed-gender prayer section. The boulder fell close to where Goldberg was praying. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“With the help of advanced technological methods, IAA experts will begin careful monitoring in the area of ​​the fall, as part of a survey of the entire area and the formulations of recommendations for the elimination of such danger,” said the IAA. “The Israel Antiquities Authority is aware of the sensitivity required in handling this case and will work in cooperation with all the relevant bodies.”

Israel Antiquities Authority professionals assess damage at the Robinson’s Arch section of the Western Wall after a stone fell on July 23, 2018. (Hannah Estrin)

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/archaeologist-says-entire-western-wall-a-danger-zone/

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• >  An historic day at the Western Wall
• >  Vice President Mike Pence ‘inspired’ after praying at Western Wall

For world leaders, visiting the Kotel (Western Wall) is becoming the new normal.

That, at least, is the perception that will be further advanced on Friday when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a two-day visit, will be the latest leader to officially put the Western Wall on his itinerary.

When Orban – whom critics have accused of fanning antisemitic flames – puts a note in the crevices of the Kotel on Friday, he will be following US President Donald Trump, US Vice President Mike Pence and Prince William, who did the exact same thing before him. Trump was the first sitting US president to visit the Kotel when he did so in May 2017.

Those three very high-profile visits gave the impression that world leaders – who had in the past avoided the Western Wall – had all of sudden discovered it. But a representative for the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said that leaders have visited in the past as well – it’s just that the media started to pay much more attention to these visits once Trump went there.

One Israeli government official said, however, that there are more formal visits to the Western Wall as part of the leaders’ official visits to Israel now, as opposed to what was characterized in the past as “private visits.” He attributed this change to the Trump visit.

“This gave legitimization to these visits,” the official said.

He also added that the Foreign Ministry and the government now encourage more strongly than in the past putting the Western Wall on the itineraries of visiting dignitaries.
“We don’t say that they have to go, or that it is an obligatory stop such as Yad Vashem, but we certainly encourage it more now,” he said.

He added that this reflects an Israeli attempt to push back against decisions such as those taken at UNESCO in recent years denying a Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, saying that these visits are “important” because they demonstrate that those who go to the site “recognize the connection between the Jewish people and the Kotel, and the Old City.”

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation has a website that includes an events calendar, where pictures of high-profile visits are posted. A look at the nearly 14 months of visitors highlighted on that website since Trump’s visit in May 2017, compared to the 14 months before his visit, shows some interesting trends.

First of all, there were slightly more high-level visits – meaning, visits by heads of governments, heads of state, foreign ministers, other cabinet ministers and US governors – during the 14 months before Trump’s visit (35), compared with after it (32).

What has changed significantly, however, is where the visitors are coming from.

If, in the 14 months before the Trump visit, only three high-level US officials – the governors of New York, Michigan and Massachusetts – visited the Kotel, since Trump’s visit there have been visits by the US vice president, two cabinet ministers, and the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. In addition, seven US governors have visited, meaning that over the last 28 months, one-fifth of all of America’s governors have visited the Western Wall.

Regarding leaders from other countries, what is striking about the list is that it is dominated by leaders from Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America and Africa, with a smattering of leaders from Asian countries (China, Singapore and Mongolia).

And this is true both of the periods before and after Trump’s visit.

For instance, Orban will join the prime ministers of Romania, Moldova, Macedonia, Ukraine, Croatia, Russia, Jamaica and Ethiopia as prime ministers who went to the Wall. The presidents of Panama, Guatemala and Mexico have gone there, as have the presidents of Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and Bosnia, as well as the presidents and foreign ministers of the Central African Republic, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is greeted on arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport, July 18, 2018 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

What is striking about the list is the nearly complete absence of leaders from European countries that were not behind the Iron Curtain before it fell in 1991. The only exceptions are Austria, whose last two chancellors have visited the site; the Spanish interior minister, who visited last month; and the Portuguese foreign minister, who visited after going to the Temple Mount in December of 2016.

Orban, meanwhile, will not only be visiting the Western Wall, but will also be meeting Chief Rabbi David Lau, something that is rare for visiting prime ministers to do.

One diplomatic official said Orban is doing this to combat accusations that he is soft on antisemitism, and that he has even encouraged it through his campaign against Hungarian- born Jewish financier George Soros.

Though Orban’s visit to Israel might be met by some scattered protests – and even as some opposition MKs have denounced both the visit and Netanyahu’s close relationship with the controversial right-wing, anti-immigrant prime minister – the Foreign Ministry issued a statement Wednesday afternoon welcoming his arrival.

“The visit will advance the good bilateral relations which are manifest, in part, by [Hungarian] support for Israel’s positions in European and international forums, and an emphasis on the importance of the continued struggle against antisemitism.”

Orban – accompanied by his wife, Aniko Levai, and a number of ministers, including Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó – was greeted at the airport by Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis.

On Thursday he is scheduled to meet separately with Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, as well as meeting Lau and visiting Yad Vashem. In the evening, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, will host the Hungarian premier and his wife at their residence for dinner.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Analysis-Putting-the-Western-Wall-on-the-itinerary-for-world-leaders-562901

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