Islamic Waqf Revises History: ‘Temple Mount, Kotel are Muslim’
Muslim group supervising Temple Mount makes new claims: King Solomon was Muslim, and the Western Wall is holy to Islam.
A former Canadian minister who visited the Temple Mount on Sunday was shocked to learn of the discrimination shown by Israeli police officers towards Jews.
Stockwell Day, who served as Canada’s Minister of Public Safetybetween 2006 and 2008, visited the Temple Mount following a coincidental meeting with a resident of Jerusalem, Yosef Rabin, who regularly visits the Temple Mount compound.
Rabin, who spoke to Arutz Sheva on Monday, said that his meeting with Day took place over Shabbat, when he visited friends for a Shabbat meal also attended by Day.
During the meal, Rabin said, he told the former Canadian minister about the situation on the Temple Mount where police, in an attempt to appease the Muslim Waqf which was left in charge of the compound after the 1967 Six Day War, ban Jews from praying or performing any other form of worship. Police sometimes close the Mount to Jews altogether in response to Muslim riots – for days or weeks at a time – despite evidence that such violence is usually planned in advance for the specific purpose of forcing Jews out.
“When I told Day about the situation on the Temple Mount, it pegged his interest and he asked me to arrange a visit for him,” said Rabin.
After the Sabbath, Rabin got in touch with LIBA project coordinator Yehuda Glick, who accompanied Rabin and Day to the Temple Mount the next day.
“[The former Canadian minister] was shocked over how Jewish police can do these things to Jews. He did not understand how one can talk about the reunification of Jerusalem while at the same time Jews are not allowed to open their mouths on the Temple Mount,” said Rabin, who added that during this particular visit, he encountered a new phenomenon whereby Jews were forbidden to speak with tourists who asked questions about the Temple Mount. Police forbade Israelis to speak with tourists about the compound, claiming it bothers the Waqf, he added.
Former minister Day, said Rabin, could not believe his eyes when he saw the long lines of Jews waiting to get in, the Arab disturbances on the compound, theconduct of the Waqf and the endless shouting. “He could not understand how the Israeli government could do this to Jews.”
Rabin told Arutz Sheva that Day is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his visit to Israel and would bring up the issue of the Temple Mount during the meeting.
Day, a former leader of the Canadian Alliance party which later merged with the Progressive Conservative Party to become the Conservative Party of Canada, lost the party’s leadership to Canada’s current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, in 2002. Nevertheless, he remained on good terms with Harper, who is also currently visiting Israel, and served as a minister in his cabinet before retiring from political life.
The Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site and the location of the two Holy Temples of Jerusalem, the latter of which was destroyed by the Romans in 70CE. Despite that fact, Jewish visitors face severe restrictions upon ascending the Mount, while the Waqf works to remove any Jewish presence on the Mount and consistently destroys Jewish antiquities on the compound in a direct violation of a ruling by the Supreme Court.
@ sabashimon: I feel that part of the problem is the moral rot among the American Jewish leadership which refuses to take notice or to pressure the U.S. government to end payments to the Palestinians who are promoting violence and who teach their children to hate and attack Jews.
That successive Israeli governments have stood by the decision on heels of the 6 day war to allow the Muslim Waqf Trust to maintain authority over the Temple Mount and more recently to prohibit Jews from praying there lest it upset Muslims, is beyond disgusting.
It is easy to blame the Israeli government and indeed that they have stood by this decision for the past 4 plus decades. Indeed they deserve criticism for this capitulation to Muslim sensibilities by sacrificing Israel’s own rights and sensibilities.
Israeli governments however, are not solely to blame. So too are the Israeli people.
Every so often over these past 40 years, some incident arises that sparks that disgust to rise to the surface and that outrage will be registered in an article, some news report or contributors to Israpundit and other pro-Israel blogs venting their rage.
Then that outrage dissipates, only to surface again when some other incident spurs an outraged reaction.
Israel however, is not only her government of the day. Israel is the people of Israel.
What boggles my mind is that:
1. when Dayan’s generous unilateral gift of authority over the Temple Mount to the Muslim Waqf Trust in the hope it would move the Arabs to also want peace, was rebuffed with the Khartoum 3 No’s, why the Israeli government did not immediately then kick the Waqf off the temple mount.
2. With each egregious act by the Trust in the exercise of authority since, it boggles my mind that Israeli governments have not booted the Waqf Trust off the Temple Mount.
3. The Israeli people have not massed in the streets since the 3 Khartoum nos and stayed there demanding that the Waqf Trust be thrown off the Temple Mount and not stopped until the government did so.
The Muslim Waqf Trust has time and again exercised its authority in ways that are more than just offensive to Israelis and Jews all over.
Jews and the Israeli people, bear criticism along with Israeli governments for their failure to take action to stop this outrage.
What then will it take for Israelis to rise up, demand the Muslim Waqf Trust is thrown off the Temple Mount and not stop until the Israeli government does so?
@ bernard ross:
Dont blame the Muslims, blame the Israeli leadership.
It is unbelievable and despicable. The Israeli government shows the world how Jews must be treated at their holy sites in their own lands. There is no reason to expect Jews to be treated any better by non Jews. Every Israeli, and Jew, who supports this situation deserves to be despised. Perhaps the Naturei Karta and Satmars are right, perhaps Israel is governed and peopled by evil, sinners and the godless. I do not understand how Jews can accept and support this filthy behavior towards their own, shameful.
As an Israeli, a still-serving vet, and with a grandchild in uniform, I believe I have the right to say (and it pains me) that Moshe Dayan’s decision to allow the Waqf control of the Temple Mount(!), and every governments’ acquiesence since then proves (to me) that we are not ready yet to be sovereigns in our own land again, and that we, even here in our home, continue to have a Galut mentality.
This situation is simply unbelievable, and unacceptable, but I expect no changes.
It is a crime that Jews are denied their rights on the holiest site in Judaism, in the Jewish people’s supposedly own sovereign nation.
The entire world genuflects before muslim supremacist barbarians at every turn. When will it end? I’m beyond sick of it.
He is not the only one…
We’re all just dhimmis in our own land!