Praying on the Temple Mount

By Jim Fletcher

It’s happened again. An Israeli cabinet minister is being criticized for merely visiting Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

The site of the two Jewish temples, destroyed by Babylonian and Roman forces, is home to two Muslim shrines: the Dome of the Rock, and the Al-Aksa Mosque (from whence we get the diabolical “Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade,” a terrorist group supported by Fatah, the political wing of the PLO headed by none other than Mahmoud Abbas).

(By the way, if you haven’t already, you simply must get a terrific new book by WorldNetDaily correspondent Aaron Klein, The Late Great State of Israel. Don’t let the title fool you or offend you; he is merely alerting us to the dangers facing Israel and providing eyewitness reporting that is utterly fascinating.)

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch just days ago visited the Temple Mount and predictably, the Palestinian Wakf — religious authority — denounced it as a “provocation.”

The denunciation is the provocation; do you get it? This is the Age of Disinformation, and the Wakf statement is more of the barrage of anti-Jew hatred being spewed everywhere, it seems.

Imagine this: today on the Temple Mount, Arabs can come and go freely. Non-Arabs can rarely visit the place. Israeli police guard the entrances and inquiring as to visit times always has a clandestine-feel to it. Usually, a visitor/tourist is told to come back early the next morning. Sometimes that works out.

But to simply walk up there is not allowed. Unless of course you are Palestinian.

Aharonovitch’s visit calls to mind the famous visit by Ariel Sharon in 2000. Surrounded by a huge security detail, Sharon simply walked around. The ensuing chaos generated by the Palestinian Authority left people dead. Who was blamed?

Israel.

How long will this lying go on? How long will it be tolerated? A while longer, apparently.

MK Taleb A-Sanaa (United Arab List) said of the recent visit:

"Aharonovitch is unwelcome at the Al-Aksa Mosque, and his purpose was to incense the Muslims and try to show them who's in charge."

The statement is absurd. But it passes for reasonableness in not only the Arab world, but in diplomatic circles. No one ever calls the Arabs on their silliness/hate-mongering. They just let it go.

If you ever visit the site, you will have limited access time, and you will notice Wakf rules posted in strategic places, urging you to respect the sensibilities of the Haram Al-Sharif, which is what the Arabs call the site. Prayer rugs are everywhere and you can see for yourself how the Palestinians have actually vandalized the world’s most famous archaeological site.

No one even sniffs at this outrage. But let a Jew visit and it’s an international incident.

More than a decade ago, I read an article on a United Methodist news site. The report quoted Yasser Arafat, visiting Washington D.C., as saying the Israelis do not allow freedom of worship.

This was a bald-faced lie, and the reporter counted on no one challenging it. When I contacted her and told her that I had just returned from Israel, and had been refused admittance to the Temple Mount because of Arab sensibilities, she was surprised that she had been challenged. Of course, a correction was never run, because that would have torpedoed her propaganda.

The point is, a lot of people spread lies about the Israelis because a whole lot of people don’t like Jews.

The only controlling entity that has ever guaranteed freedom of worship for all faiths in the Holy Land is the State of Israel. That is a documented, historical fact.

About the same time as the UMC propaganda hit-piece, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the green-light for a passageway to be opened along the base of the Temple Mount, leading into the Arab section, the area where Arab shops are. The opening was asked for because tourists entering a tunnel had to then back-track to exit. The new exit allowed not only a continuous, orderly flow of tourists at the site, but it opened into Arab shops.

The tunnel has been there for over 2,000 years. The Israelis merely cut a door at the end of it.

You’d have thought they’d started World War III. Arafat began circulating the lie that the Israelis were “tunneling” under the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque. Even Western journalists reported such insanity!

You see what we’re dealing with.

When I visit the Temple Mount, if I want to pray, I’d better be wearing sunglasses. The Wakf does not allow non-Muslim prayer there!

Is this not outrageous in the extreme? The truth is trampled and lies replace it. Truth is literally turned on its head…because doing so maligns the already hated Jews.

A funny irony at the site, though: years ago, a Muslim ruler, hearing a Jewish legend that the Messiah would one day enter through the Eastern Gate, had the gate bricked-up. He decided that would keep the Jewish King out!

But come He will, and just in time.

Thank God.

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