Few nations relate to a place which has been linked to them for three millennia. The Jewish people relates that way to the Temple Mount.
On that same spot, King David raised a sanctuary for the Ark of the Covenant; King Solomon built his Temple; Nehemiah built the Second Temple 400 years later; Herod refurbished that one 500 years further on.
The Roman emperor Hadrian covered those ruins with a pagan temple to Jupiter; the Christians used it as a garbage dump to defile its Jewish significance and turned the area into a stable for their horses; the Arabs later built their own holy sites on top of those of their defeated enemy.
Time and again throughout Jewish history foreign powers have taken over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, desecrating the Jewish people’s holiest site.
Last week Al Hayat Al Jadida, the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, reported on the “so-called destruction” of the “alleged” Jewish Temple. In the same period, the Guardian, the most famous leftist publication in Europe, emphasized the Islamic connection to Haram al Sharif, as the Muslims call the Temple Mount, without noting that the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site (Mount Moriah).
This is not the first time that the Guardian has given prominence to the religious importance of the site as “the third holiest place in Islam”, while downplaying Jewish attachment to it. In January, an editorial admonished some Arab negotiators for suggesting that sovereignty of the area could be shared.
The Guardian’s downplaying of the historical importance of the Temple Mount for Jews echoes the dominant Arab tendency to denigrate Jewish connections to the area.
The United Nations, the European burocrats, the global media, the Islamic forums are all trying to downplay and deny the Jewish connection to the Mount. Last July the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted a resolution against the renovation of the Mughrabi Bridge that links the Western Wall plaza and Temple Mount.
In 2009, UNESCO designated Jerusalem as “capital of Arab culture”, working with Palestinian Authority officials and key Arab figures to protest against what they described as “the Israeli occupation of Holy Jerusalem”.
In recent years, UNESCO increased its collaboration with ISESCO, the cultural body of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. According to their shocking propaganda, the Jewish temples are only “fiction”, Jewish monuments are Islamic treasures stolen by the Zionists, and Israeli archeological works are criminal acts against Muslims.
Since Israel magnanimously turned over religious control of the Temple Mount to the Muslim Wakf in June 1967, successive generations have been taught that Israelis are “Nazi-like invaders”, illegitimate neighbors and enemies. Textbooks and Arab media all repeat the self-delusionary canard denying any historic Jewish continuity or legitimacy in the Temple Mount.
The World Council of Churches, the largest umbrella group of Protestants, in its “Promised Land” conference in Switzerland called “to distinguish between the Israel of the Bible and the modern State of Israel” and denied any Jewish connection with the Mount.
Chief Palestinian Justice Sheik Taysir Tamimi declared the Jewish temples “never existed” and Jews have no historic connection to Jerusalem.
Thirty years or so after the Holocaust, “revisionist historians” began trying to “prove” that it had never taken place. The Temple Mount is now subjected to the same horrible operation.
In 2001 a religious ruling of the mufti of Jerusalem denied that the Temple Mount has any connection to Judaism. We all remember Yasser Arafat’s denial of the existence of the Temple on that site. A few days later the Second Intifada began and decimated hundreds and hundreds of innocent Jewish lives.
In the coming weeks, at the UN’s Durban III conference, the Jewish connections with the Temple Mount will be denied again in the name of “apartheid”. When the Temple Mount is in danger, Jewish lives, and their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, Netanya, Acre, and the rest of the country, are also threatened.
Whether you will it or not, everything will stand or fall on the Temple Mount.