On the 4,000th anniversary of the establishment of Al-Aqsa

A new study reveals a systematic trend among Muslim clerics to de-Judaize Jerusalem. Among the methods: advancing the establishment of al-Aqsa by thousands of years and presenting the temple as a historical forgery. The conclusion: an Arab statesman who wishes for a settlement on Jerusalem will find himself desired by Islam

Nadav Shargai, Haaretz, voila!

Al-Aqsa Mosque. They prefer to call the entire Temple Mount complex, including the Western Wall (below) by the name "Al-Aqsa" They claim that Muhammad tied his mare there and that the Jews have no historical connection to the place

A few years ago, a group of archeology students from Bar Ilan University came to the slopes of the Kidron in Jerusalem. Its members sought to save archaeological remains from the piles of sewage excavated by the Waqf on the Temple Mount, which were evacuated by trucks to the riverbed. A waqf man who noticed the students started shouting loudly at them. One sentence was well received by them: "You have nothing to look for here, just as the Crusaders had nothing to look for here. Jerusalem is Muslim."

In the past, statements of this type could be regarded as anomalies. All of this changed at the Camp David conference, in June 2000: then it became clear to the Israeli senior ranks that the claim that Jews have no real connection to Jerusalem and the holy places, not only has gone through a process of distribution and assimilation in Arab and Islamic communities and is the property of the Arab public discourse, but the Palestinian leadership has also adopted it.

Indeed, a new study by Dr. Yitzhak Reiter, within the framework of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies,

He states: "In the last generation, an Arab Islamic history of Jerusalem is being rewritten. At the center of the writing is the historical right of the Arabs to Jerusalem and Palestine. The main argument is that the Arabs ruled Jerusalem thousands of years before the Israelites. Alongside the construction of the Arab-Islamic case, the Muslim creators develop the denial and negation of the Jewish-Zionist narrative, including the de-Judaization of the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and Jerusalem in general."

All Palestine al-Aqsa

Reiter, a member of the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University, has been specializing in the modern history of the Middle East for years. He examined a collection of halachic rulings of major muftis in the Muslim world and websites of Islamic movements; He delved into many of the popular reference books in Arabic dealing with Jerusalem and sorted news and articles dealing with the subject since 1967; And he states that "new myths, some imagined and some based on facts on the ground, turn the stories of al-Aqsa into a lively struggle"; Yasser Arafat and Sheikh Ra'ad Salah, like the "Great Mufti", Sheikh Amin al-Husseini at the beginning of the last century, along with many others, "harness the religious symbols in Jerusalem to mobilize the entire Muslim world for their struggle", and this is done in several ways.

The Muslims are gradually abandoning the name of the Temple Mount complex - al-Haram al-Sharif, the one that gave it its status as the third holiest site in Islam, and returning exclusively to the earlier name al-Aqsa, which appears in the Koran. "Al-Aqsa" now refers to the entire Temple Mount complex, including the Western Wall, and not just the mosque. The tradition linking the three mosques, in Mecca, Madinah and Al-Aqsa, is used by the Palestinians to put pressure on Muslim countries, claiming that "disrespecting Al-Aqsa will lead to disrespecting the holy places in Mecca and Al-Madinah, because they are inextricably linked" (Palestinian Waqf Minister , Sheikh Yosef Salama, November 2002).

At the same time, the use of the term al-Aqsa as a symbol and name for various institutions and organizations is increasing, whether it is a magazine of the Jordanian army or the Palestinian police unit established by the Palestinian Authority in Jericho, or whether it is the Fatah terror squads called the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, on the websites of the southern and northern factions of The Islamic movement, in the associations they founded, and of course in the current intifada and the Arab summit that convened in its aftermath.

Contrary to the well-known history according to which the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built in the seventh century, an ancient tradition from the beginning of Islam, which holds that Al-Aqsa was built 40 years after the Holy Mosque in Mecca was built by Adam the First, has been strengthened in recent years (that is, close to the days of creation). Other traditions, which appear on the website of the Waqf administration in Jerusalem, attribute the construction of Al-Aqsa to Abraham and Solomon, as Islamic figures, without connection to Judaism. Former Jordanian Waqf Minister Abd al-Salam al-Abadi, Sheikh Ra'ad Salah and Islamic websites mention Abraham as having built the Al-Aqsa Mosque 4,000 years ago.

For many hundreds of years, Jerusalem has been known in Islam as having been sanctified first and foremost by virtue of being the direction of prayer (Kabbalah), before Muhammad adopted the Kaaba as Kabbalah. According to the custom, Jerusalem served as the prayer direction for 16 months. But now an interpretation is being revived, according to which Jerusalem was used as a place of prayer for about four years and four months. The Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Akrama Zabri and Sheikh Dr. Yusuf al-Qardawi, the most popular mufti in the Muslim world who currently lives in Qatar, are just two of the subjects of this good news. Also the verse from the Koran that mentions Al-Aqsa Mosque and goes on to specify "whose surroundings we have blessed" receives an expansive interpretation. Al-Aqsa's surroundings are not narrowly defined, as it was in the past, and they are now used as an opening for an interpretation, according to which it refers to all of Jerusalem and recently also to all of Palestine.

Persons from the Saudi royal house, Palestinian archaeologists (such as Dr. Dimitri Baramchi), Sheikh Qaradawi, Syrian religious figures and others all identify the Hibusim as an ancient Arab tribe, which migrated from the Arabian Peninsula together with the Canaanites about 3,000 years before the Christian era and thus preceded the Israelites in the land .

The invention of the Western Wall

But the most jarring new history to Jewish ears is the reference to the Temple as a false god invented by the Jews. In the Arab public discourse, the speakers now routinely add the word "al ma'zaum" - that is, the pretender, or the false one - when they refer to the Jewish temple. Mufti Zabri says that there is no vestige that proves the claim of the Jews that there was a temple in the place. The current Jordanian Waqf Minister, Ahmed Halil, said last year that Israel is trying to interfere in Al-Aqsa affairs and conduct excavations under the mosque area in order to build the false temple. Arafat Hejazi, a member of the Southern Islamic Movement, asks in an article published in 2002 on the movement's website why the Jews did not build their temple for a period of more than 500 years from its second destruction by Titus until Abd al-Malak built the Al-Masjid I will assign; He also notes that hundreds of archaeological expeditions have conducted excavations in the Al-Aqsa area, and none have found a remnant of the temple.

In another article, which recently appeared on the website of the Northern Islamic Movement, the Egyptian archaeologist Abdel Rahim Rihan Barkhat, director of the antiquities site in the Dahab region of Sinai, writes that "the legend of the false temple is the greatest crime of historical falsification." A fatwa on the website of the Waqf in Jerusalem states that David, Solomon and Herod did not build the temple but only renovated something that had existed there since the time of Adam the First.

A similar enterprise of denial also exists regarding the Western Wall and it has two dimensions: one is the identification of the Wall as a holy place for Muslims in such a way that the Prophet Muhammad tied his winged mare Al-Burak there and that it forms part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque; And the second - the claim that the Jews invented the Western Wall as a holy place for them and they have no historical connection to it. Such fatwas were issued by Palestinian and Egyptian religious rulers.

In addition to these, the motif of "Al-Aqsa is in danger" is added to be the motto in the publications of Muslim parties around the world and to be at the center of mass rallies that the northern Islamic movement in Israel organizes every year. "In the most remote Muslim communities, you hear the stories of the Palestinian struggle for their sacred place, and through the political story, the renewed religious traditions are more easily internalized," says Reiter. The fact that Israel's official policy, as embodied in the decisions of the Chief Rabbinate Council, government decisions and High Court decisions, leaves the management of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Muslim Waqf is unknown in today's Muslim world. On the contrary: "The activity of extremist Jewish elements, some of them Kikuyan, to renew the work of the Temple, is propagated by Palestinian elements as if it reflects the official position."

Reiter's work, which was submitted as a position paper to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was discussed yesterday as part of a symposium held at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, and the main conclusions that emerge from it are two: one - Jerusalem today, more than in the past, is an all-Islamic Arab matter and because of this, a decision on its matter is not possible by the Palestinians alone ; The second - any Arab statesmen, who would like to reach an agreement regarding Jerusalem and the holy places, are currently desired by the Islamic religious world and their flexibility as subjects and donors is almost non-existent.

A gold hoard including a model of the seven reeds lamp was discovered in Jerusalem (2013)
"The Jerusalem gymnasium"
"Total chaos in Jerusalem" (about the circumstances for the destruction of the Second Temple)