T_TempleMount
Jerusalem Post editorial, 1/10/15, “Words Matter”:
“[A]ccuracy in reporting is about to face the test of a new propaganda offensive by the Palestinian Authority. In its ongoing attempt to rewrite history in asserting its claim on Israel’s capital, the PA attempted to persuade the BBC to stop using the term ‘Temple Mount’ to describe the plateau on which the Jewish people’s First and Second Temples were built. Instead, Haram al-Sharif (the Nobel Sanctuary) is preferred, which houses the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa Mosque.”
*** AP, 11/1/14:
… more and more Jews have been visiting the site [Temple Mount] in recent months, prompting strong opposition from Muslims who fear greater Israeli influence in Jerusalem, amid accelerated Jewish settlement in the Palestinian part of the city.
And:
Much of the unrest has centered on the holy site, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
*** AP, 11/2/14:
… the site – known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary
This AP article pointedly contrasted “Palestinian worshipers” on the Temple Mount with “a hard-line Jewish activist” who has “campaigned for more Jewish access to the site, a cherished cause for religious nationalists [emphasis added] who resent Israel’s longstanding prohibition on allowing Jews to pray there.” Both the AP’s 11/1 and 11/2/14 articles were about a Palestinian Arab’s attempted assassination of Rabbi Glick and its aftermath.
The AP’s 11/2 article withheld applying “hard-line” to Abbas, though it quoted him calling Israel’s one-day full closure of the Mount “a declaration of war against the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim world,” and as having “demanded Jews be barred from the site and urged Palestinians to guard the compound from visiting Jews, whom he called a ‘herd of cattle.’”
Now, let’s look at how the Jerusalem Post’s editorial on 11/1/14 characterized this murderously attacked Rabbi Glick, whom the AP, reporting from Jerusalem, the next day, did call “hard-line.” JP:
What makes this crime all the more tragic was the fact that Glick, who is a vocal activist for the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, is also a strong defender of Muslims’ right to freedom of religious expression on what they call Haram-a-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary.
To the AP that week, it was Rabbi Glick who is “hard-line,” but not Palestinian Authority President Abbas, whom that very article cited as having “demanded” that “visiting Jews” be “barred from the site,” not just not be allowed to pray there, and who called the site’s one day closure by Israel “a declaration of war against the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim world.” Balanced reporting?
AP Always Blamed Jews
AP, 1/17/01: “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak dismissed two main Palestinian demands yesterday – lessening the chances of achieving a peace deal.” Those two demands, not Arab making of which, but Jewish rejection of which, caused “lessening the chances of achieving a peace deal”? [1] “that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants, about four million people, be given the right of return to their former homes in Israel,” and [2] Palestinian sovereignty “over a disputed Jerusalem holy site — Haram al Sharif, known to Jews as Temple Mount.”
The Arab Myth of “Temple Denial”
For Jews, the Temple Mount (site of Solomon’s Temple, Second Temple and Western Wall) is the holiest place on earth. Temple Denial is the belief that no Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem. This pernicious myth is perhaps the prime one designed to steal the history and identity of the Jewish people in order to justify eradicating them from the Middle East. For many years, Palestinian leaders have provocatively denied Jewish history both in ancient Judea/Israel and particularly in Jerusalem, especially since Israel gained control over the Temple Mount in 1967. Palestinian Authority religious and political leaders, officials and even academics refer to the Temple as the “alleged Temple.” Yet this Big Lie that the Temple never existed and the Jews have no history in the Land of Israel contradicts not only Jewish sources (Bible, Talmud, Psalms, prayers), Christian sources (which in essence would be a denial of Jesus’s existence), and the archeological record, but also the Koran itself. In Sura 17:2-7, the Koran mentions the “Children of Israel’s” two periods of independence in the land and the destruction of both the First and Second Temple: “…to enter the Temple even as they entered it for the first time, and to lay waste…” Many prominent classical Islamic theological sources refer to the Jewish connection to the Temple. See also Sura 17:1, the “Farthest Mosque” which refers to the Temple. Interestingly, the Supreme Muslim Council, led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husayni, which controlled the Temple Mount in the Palestine Mandate period, published yearly guide books to the al-Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), in 1924, 1925, 1929, 1935 and 1950, all stating that its “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to the universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.” However, by 1954, the Muslim waqf, the religious authority that ruled the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, inexplicably removed these references.
The League of Nations in 1930 issued its, “Report of the Commission Appointed by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with the Approval of the Council of the League of Nations, to Determine the Rights and Claims of Moslems and Jews in Connection with the Western or Wailing Wall at Jerusalem, (Dec. 1930).” If found therein: “It was Solomon who built the first Temple of Jerusalem, the grandeur and beautyof which have become widely renowned, thanks to the holy books and the historians. The Temple was situated on Mount Moriah on the platform, now known as the Harem-esh-Sherif area.”
Since the 2000 Camp David Summit when PA President Yasir Arafat made the outrageous comment to President Bill Clinton that “Solomon’s Temple was not in Jerusalem, but Nablus”, this historical revisionism has become part of the bitter Arab/Muslim delegitimization campaign to deny the Jewish people’s human, civil and historical rights, access and authority over its holiest sites, homeland and the State of Israel. Among the false claims of the Palestinian Arabs and Muslims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon- the Western Wall- are in fact remnants of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet as was classical custom after Muslim conquest of infidels, the al-Asqa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem to humiliate the conquered, just as they did throughout the Muslim-conquered world..