Who knew that metal detectors were so offensive to Muslim sensibilities? These security devices are used extensively in Muslim countries throughout the world — at Mecca even — without complaint. But when Israel installs them on the Temple Mount to stop jihadists from murdering innocent civilians — it becomes a problem.

Many people have protested more about the installation of cameras and metal detectors at the Temple Mount than they ever have about the murder of Christians in Egypt, Iraq and Syria. Christian peacemakers are apparently more offended by Jews trying to defend themselves in their homeland, than by Christians and Yazidis being murdered in theirs. It’s not just sad. It’s disgusting.

Of course, it’s not the metal detectors themselves that are haram, but that they are used to protect Jewish lives. Apparently, interfering with the jihadist impulse to kill Jews, or people who protect them — like two Druze police officers who were murdered on July 14 — has become an Islamophobic act of discrimination. In fact, it’s so outrageous that the Palestinians have launched days of “rage” in protest. That people have attacked synagogues in Turkey and elsewhere. And that a Palestinian murdered three people in the West Bank town of Halamish, while they were celebrating a birth in their family.

Acts like this are a horrific echo of the massacres of Jews in Hebron that took place in 1929 and 1936 — but that hasn’t stopped Christians from protesting against the Jewish right to self-defense, which is really another way of protesting in favor of the rights of jihadists to kill Jews.

This was a right invoked by the English-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, whose legacy of promoting Jew-hatred and murdering his political rivals still plagues Palestinian society. During the Holocaust, al-Husseini gave radio broadcasts from Germany telling his fellow Muslims to “kill the Jews wherever you can find them.” He also instigated numerous pogroms against Jews in the British Mandate — and many Palestinian people are still following his advice seven decades later.

Instead of confronting the grand mufti’s legacy, Palestinian Christian leaders are aiding and abetting those who enshrine it. One egregious example of this behavior came from the Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches in Jerusalem — or, more appropriately, the Dhimmi Directorship in Jerusalem (DDJ). In a statement issued soon after the metal detectors were installed on the Temple Mount, the Dhimmiarchs expressed their “serious concern regarding recent escalation in violent developments around Haram ash-Sharif and our grief for their loss of human life, and strongly condemn any act of violence.”

This sounds well and good — until you come to the next paragraph in which the DDJ expresses its fear “about any change to the historical (Status Quo) situation in al-Aqsa Mosque (Haram ash-Sharif) and its courtyard, in the holy city of Jerusalem. Any threat to its continuity and integrity could easily lead to serious and unpredictable consequences which would be most unwelcome in the present tense religious climate.”

The Dhimmiarchs said almost exactly the same thing at the height of the stabbing intifada, during which innocent Jews were being stoned, firebombed, stabbed and run over by Palestinian Muslims who were told that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was under attack. Instead of condemning Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for inciting the violence, the DDJ warned the Israelis not to disrupt the “status quo” at the Temple Mount. In 2015, the DDJ declared that “any threat to its continuity and integrity could easily lead to unpredictable consequences which would be most unwelcome in the present delicate political climate.”

The only difference between the two statements is that in 2017, the DDJ used the phrase “tense religious climate” — and in 2015, it used the phrase “delicate political climate.”

The message repeatedly offered by the DDJ is a simple one: When Muslims attack Jews and their state, we are sad. But when Jews try to protect themselves from jihadist attacks, we are scared. Israeli citizens will have to absorb a few stabbing attacks now and again, and allow the Temple Mount to be used as an ammo dump, in order to keep the peace.

After all, the beast of jihadism must be fed a few innocent lives now and again.

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