Myth: Ariel Sharon’s 2000 walkabout caused the last intifada, as suggested by today's Times of London.
Fact: The trip was a pretext for a violent uprising planned in advance. The Palestinian Authority's Communications Minister, Imad Al-Faluji confirmed as much. Memri translated Faluji's comments, made while visting the Ain Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon:
Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is wrong, even if this visit was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton.
Myth: It’s not at all clear that the Temple was located on the site of Temple Mount. As the Daily Telegraph writes, the site is where “the two Jewish temples of antiquity are believed to have been built.”
Fact: The Temple Mount is where Solomon and Herod respectively built the first and second temples. Josephus recounts that the Romans left the Western Wall (a retaining wall at the bottom of the Temple Mount) intact so future generations would be able to see how formidably protected the second temple was.
Erasing Jewish ties to the Temple Mount is politically motivated historical revisionism. An outraged Daniel Levin recently pointed out:
The Supreme Court of Israel has declared that the Waqf Authority violated antiquities laws on 35 occasions by removing more than twenty thousands of tons of archaeologically rich soil, and dumping them in the adjacent Kidron Valley. Because of the touchy international jurisdiction of the Mount, neither UNESCO officials nor Israeli archaeologists can enforce archaeological supervision. The Waqf carefully regulates the entrance of non-Muslims like Manchu priests guarding the forbidden city. Christians and Jews may enter only four hours daily, and no non-Muslim prayer is permitted on the sacred site . . . .
Sadly, the media response to this pandemic of physical revisionism on the Temple Mount has been silence. The UN World Heritage Sites Committee has not pressured the Waqf to permit supervision of its construction of subterranean mosques beneath the Temple Mount.
It's not a matter of belief that two temples stood on the Temple Mount.
