“When we have 100,000 Jews visiting the Temple Mount, we will be able to demand Jewish prayer”, Yehuda Glick told the AP.
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The al-Aqsa mosque was commissioned in the eighth century by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
The Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque have been central themes in the current so-called Palestinian wave of terror, specifically the repeated Palestinian claim of a Jewish threat to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The public movement for changing the status quo on the Temple Mount is not big. “Israel will continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; Non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount and as we have said many times, Israel has no intention to divide the Temple Mount and we completely reject any attempt to suggest otherwise”. Until now, her identity as a Christian foreigner lent her a small measure of immunity, however the recent incident indicates that many aspects of the status quo have indeed changed.
For Temple Mount activists, it is a numbers game.
Most Palestinian leaders routinely deny well-documented Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.
Secular Israelis who think all they have to do is prove they are Jewish to get married to another Jew often find that isn’t enough. They are also forbidden from praying, bowing, sitting down, quietly reciting prayers, bringing a prayer book, a photo of the compound or a Star of David.
They banned the Dalai Lama, who advocates peace, and they embraced Hamas, the vile terrorist organization that is condemned as such by most civilized nations. Standing next to the long line of tourists were five Jews wearing skullcaps.
I personally have seen just how angering this is to people who are deeply committed to Israel and to their Jewish religious denomination – but who wonder how committed Israel is to them.
As well as the increased number of visitors, and the heavy presence of Israeli police and army units to protect them, the Waqf is angry at what it sees as clear efforts to pray. “Muslims are here. And they have their own researchers and they have their own archaeologists”. There are clerics who present Islam as a ugly religion bent on murder and paganism, and who care more about the stones of Al-Aqsa mosque than about the lives of faithful Muslims.
At the farther perimeters of the entrance, a few 20 women in a religious study group were sitting down in a circle and reading the Quran. But Arab denial of Jewish religious rights is the same. I pulled out my cell phone and took their picture.
I have met people who are leaving shortly for this J-REC mission, and I am joining them.
As the group of Orthodox Jews came near the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City, one began to mumble while staring down at his mobile phone. “Khalas! [That’s enough!] Out”. Police officers check, and hold the ID, of anyone they wish.
Knesset Member Ghattas, who is Christian, countered by saying, “Visiting Al-Aqsa is my basic and elementary right”. “Nobody can dispute what we say”, he argued. “We determine who comes in and who goes out and what they can or can’t do”.
While the Jordanians argue that installing the cameras is about protecting the Al-Aqsa mosque by monitoring the site, PA officials have argued that Israel would use the cameras to arrest Palestinians “under the pretext of incitement”, reported the Jerusalem Post. They were infidels whose deaths were ordered by Allah. “The occupation regime does not give Netanyahu and his government authority over the Al-Aqsa Mosque or over the occupied territories in general”.
I can understand that members of the faith do not want strangers to pray inside their holy mosque.
I need an explanation regarding the assertion that only Muslims can pray on the Temple Mount. Israel says in over half those cases, police or soldiers shot Palestinians who had or who had attempted to attack Israelis.
The Waqf security guards are Palestinians, mostly residents of East Jerusalem.
Israel has an interest in stationing cameras in all parts of the Temple Mount. It also dissipates Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, which ensures Arab anti-Semitism. That is why the Jews for Religious Equality Coalition (J-REC) will be in Israel from November 10 to 16 seeking a change in Israeli marriage law.
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The Qur’an tells us that the Jews are the chosen people and the inheritors of the land, so why do our religious leaders deny it and refuse to admit that the Qur’an does not name or even hint at “Palestine” or “Palestinians?”
