The Temple Mount has become a central flash-point in the violence that is currently afflicting Jerusalem. And some of the media, fueled by outrageous claims from both Palestinians and Jordanians, are giving the impression that Israel has assaulted or desecrated an Islamic holy place.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Hayel Dawood, Jordan’s minister of Islamic affairs, accused Israel of attacking Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, Islam’s third holiest site. The Waqf, a Muslim religious authority linked to Jordan that administers the site, said sparks from Israeli stun grenades ignited a fire inside and Mr. Dawood said carpets and two chandeliers were burned.
This is certainly believable if you were a reader of the Daily Telegraph, which includes the following video, dramatically titled “Violence as police storm Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
The story also includes this photo and caption:
It’s easy to see how one could believe that Israeli police are responsible for damage to the mosque, particularly as the only reference in the body of the Daily Telegraph’s story to the incident in the photo and video is the following:
Earlier, heavy rioting near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam which occupies what Jews call the Temple Mount, saw a Palestinian man seriously injured by a rubber bullet and tear gas fired into the mosque by Israeli border police.
While the Wall Street Journal quoted the accusations of the Jordanians and the Waqf, its article, unlike the Daily Telegraph’s, included a fuller examination of the incident in question:
Israel denied it was responsible for the fire and blamed Arab protesters, saying they were launching firecrackers at police from within the mosque during clashes. Police said they went a few feet inside the mosque and shut the door on them.
The police said masked Palestinians started throwing a hail of rocks and firing hundreds of firecrackers after the beginning of visiting hours for non-Muslims. In the ensuing melee, the police said they sought to shut the doors to the mosque, where protesters had taken cover.
But the entry was wedged open. Police said they went a few feet into the mosque so they could shut demonstrators inside.
The New York Times‘ report also included the following information:
Video filmed by the Israeli police showed masked Palestinians hurling rocks and firecrackers at the police from inside Al Aksa Mosque, in an apparent effort to prevent Jewish visitors from entering the compound after some Israelis had called for prayers there on Wednesday.
The police could be seen just inside the mosque, removing furniture that the protesters had used as barricades in order to close the door. A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said that the police had used stun grenades but denied that they had gone deeply into the mosque.
Furthermore, what does not appear in any of the reports are the assessments of Israeli security services estimating that the riot on the Temple Mount was planned in advance and involved the storing and hiding of rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails within the al-Aqsa mosque with the intention of attacking Israeli police and visitors to the site. The “storming” of the mosque by police was no such thing. Instead, the aim was to shut the doors of the mosque to contain the rioters inside and stop the firing of these rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails, therefore restoring calm to the Temple Mount area.
The scenes of debris and furniture in the video and accompanying photos are a direct result of Palestinian rioters’ requisitioning anything they could lay their hands on to create a barricade to prevent a police intervention. While Israel stands accused of desecrating the mosque, the real issue should be how Palestinian rioters evidently have so little regard or respect for their own holy site that they could abuse it for the purposes of violence.
A further video filmed by the Israel Police graphically illustrates how Palestinian rioters desecrated the mosque.
Indeed, watching the Daily Telegraph’s video knowing the context gives much credence to the Israeli version of events. Seeing fireworks being discharged from within the mosque, it is not difficult to imagine how a fire could have started.
The Daily Telegraph, however, has singularly failed to give any context to the video or the photo in its article. Instead, the newspaper has succeeded in pouring gasoline on the fire that rages in Jerusalem today.
Image: CC BY-SA Andrew Shiva via Wikimedia Commons
