WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Some surprising Tweets in Saudi Arabia, of all places, last week may have made a small initial visible crack in the world’s icy denial of Jewish claim to the Temple Mount and historic Jerusalem. Can this really be? Come see.
This Week: A Visible, Irreversible Crack in the Ice?
Saudis aren’t known as folks who take blasphemy lightly, so if there were a “campaign” in Saudi Arabia to downplay Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, regarded not alone by Palestinian Arabs as “the third holiest site in Islam,” as being “simply a mosque like all mosques,” and to downplay “the importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount for Muslims,” you’d expect an, e.g., Israeli news source to headline such a campaign of some Saudis using words something like this:
“Saudi Shocker: Temple Mount is Jewish, Muslims Should Pray Toward Mecca”
Such indeed was a United With Israel headline this week (3/8/21). Questions for us include
*** Is this for real?
*** If so, what’s driving it?
*** And what’s its significance?
Is This For Real?
It seems to be real, though how big and how official may be less clear. An Arutz Sheva article, “Saudis Come Out Against Temple Mount,” 3/7/21, led: “Last week, Saudi Twitter pages began to promote the message that ‘the direction of Jewish prayers do not matter to me.’” Maybe Twitter is more tolerant of heresy in Arabia than here in America, because there’s a Moroccan tweet cited later on in the article that “seeks to bolster the Saudi campaign as it emphasizes that the Temple Mount is of no particular importance to Muslims, and hopes for the building of the Third Temple and the arrival of peace with it for all peoples.” (On a par with Twitter tolerating Trump tweeting every Democrat-won U.S. presidential election was stolen.)
So What’s Driving It?
Not “Zionism.” Likely not even common Saudi-Israeli concern re Iran and its proxies on both countries’ doorsteps (though Biden does cause to come into being strange bedfellows). The drivers here are both almost-ancient and modern. The Ommayad dynasty that ruled following the Muslims’ seventh century CE conquest of the Mideast did erect the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa in an unsuccessful attempt to rival Mecca. That rivalry still rankles, lately stirred up not a little bit by “the Palestinians.” According to a report cited in that March 8 United With Israel article quoted above
“… the Saudi campaign is in response to the Palestinian insults online and chants against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia heard at demonstrations at the Temple Mount after prayers on Fridays. The Saudis have quietly supported the recent Abraham Accords that established peace between four Arab countries and Israel, and that has infuriated the Palestinians.
“…. One tweet from the account Saudi Arabia in Numbers said Muslims were not religiously obligated to help the Palestinians by fighting for Jerusalem, where the Palestinians constantly emphasize that the Al Aqsa mosque is the ‘third holiest site in Islam.’
“’Our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, did not leave us with a commandment, even one word, that Jerusalem must be liberated,’ the tweet read, adding, ‘The only two holy mosques are in [the Saudi cities of] Mecca and Medina.’”
The upshot of “the controversial campaign,” per that March 8 United With Israel article, is to emphasize Mecca and Medina’s importance as “the holy places of Islam,” and “to eliminate the importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount for Muslims, thereby decreasing any Islamic authority the Palestinians have over the site.”
So What’s All This’s Significance?
Coming back down to earth, Israel Hayom had an article Friday, 3/12/21, “Israel Straddles the Divide as Saudis Vie for Influence Over Temple Mount,” stating quite differently that “Saudi Arabia has shown increasing interest in gaining a significant foothold at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site,” as a rival to Jordan (“furious at the very notion Saudi Arabia could be given a role at the site”) and to Turkey’s Erdogan (“who has been unrelenting in his attempts to ‘liberate’ the mount from Israel”).
Nevertheless, it seems to me that all this twittering does have some significance. This Israel Hayom article says “Saudi Arabia wants a senior role, alongside Israel, in running the mount ….” Compare the world’s icy regard for Jewish claim to historic Jerusalem, with its three times in the past three thousand years capital of three native states, all Jewish, and renewed Jewish majority since 1800’s Turkish rule. E.g.:
*** UNSC 2334, 14-zip in the United Nations Security Council, with the United States abstaining, declares the Temple Mount, along with the rest of “East” [i.e., historic] Jerusalem to be “the Palestinian Territory [note capital “T”] occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.”
*** The official itinerary of Prince William’s 2018 visit to the Mount of Olives put that holy site in “the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
*** Hysterical European opposition to President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and movement of the U.S. Embassy there.
*** Western media succumbing to Muslim Temple Mount nomenclature, as shown by CAMERA in a 2016 analysis, “Mapping Changes in Terminology Used by BBC To Describe the Temple Mount.” Compare BBC 9/29/04: “… known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, and to Jews as Temple Mount,” versus BBC a decade later, 5/11/14: “Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount.” And see Philadelphia Inquirer photo caption 7/15/17, “Al-Aqsa mosque compound,” not even bothering to tag on “known to Jews as Temple Mount.”
Last week’s #1050 reviewed the ZOA’s fifteen charges of errors and omissions in references to Israel in former President Obama’s new book. I tried to generalize from the specific misstatements to the distorted impressions of Israel imprinted in American’s perceptions of our Jewish homeland. But they’re all subsets of an overriding misperception of Israel (never mind that Israel’s biggest population segment is the stream of Jews who never left the Mideast) as an artificial alien European implant in 1948 in an Arab Middle East.
Dispelling this overriding misperception entails instilling in people’s minds the Jewish people’s indigenousness of the region and land, and in that land most centrally historic Jerusalem, and the core of the core of that, using Bibi’s words to the UN, is the Temple Mount. So when the people and states of the Arabian Peninsula, of all people and states, sign documents with Israel named “Abraham Accords,” and elevate the Arabian holy places and recognize Jewish holy claims to the Temple Mount and historic Jerusalem, that creates, I believe, a visible, irreversible crack in the ice.