Iconic American monthly magazine National Geographic recently turned its attention toward what it dubbed one of Jerusalem’s “most controversial” landmarks, the Dome of the Rock, in a 4,000-word feature piece that takes readers on a tour of the Muslim shrine that was built atop the Temple Mount.
Describing in great detail the Dome’s ornate architecture and splendid decoration, Andrew Lawler’s piece gives a history of the structure’s 13 centuries as the “jewel in the crown of Jerusalem’s sacred acropolis” and explains how it has “miraculously survived looters, earthquakes, religious strife, bloody invasions and more prosaic threats like pigeon droppings clogging its drainpipes” over the years.
The Muslim shrine is constructed over the ruins of the two ancient Jewish temples — something Lawler acknowledges to his credit.
Where the piece does fall short, however, is in Lawler’s apparent effort to minimize the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, while simultaneously treating the Islamic claim to the site as indisputable.
For example, in one paragraph he refers to the Well of Souls, the cave directly below the Dome of the Rock:
A narrow set of worn marble steps leads beneath the rock to a rough-hewn grotto called the Well of Souls. A Muslim tradition asserts the waters of paradise flow under the cave, while some Christians and Jews have long imagined that the space conceals a secret passage filled with valuable artifacts.”
The problem — subtle but significant — is in the linguistic framing of the two religions’ competing beliefs about what lies below the cave. The Muslim assertion that there are magical paradise waters flowing beneath is a longstanding “tradition,” compared to “some” Jews and Christians who have merely “imagined” there might be artifacts underneath the ancient structure.
1️⃣ This framing creates an uncomfortable narrative. Playing the religions against each other using the words “assert” versus “imagine,” implies to the audience that one religious claim to the site is more weighty than others’. pic.twitter.com/ULAzJQTKfE
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 17, 2023
In another passage, Lawler notes that the dome has become a “symbol of the Palestinian cause for independence,” which he claims is “on par with Jewish attachment to the nearby Western Wall.”
First, comparing the Palestinian political struggle to Judaism’s most ancient and venerated of places is, frankly, insulting.
Second, the Jewish connection is not, as Lawler contends, to the Western Wall. Jews merely pray at the Western Wall because it is part of a retaining wall of the Second Temple.
Meanwhile, a photo caption beneath an image of two ultra-Orthodox Jews looking out over the Western Wall plaza casts further doubt on the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount by stating that Jews and Christians “believe” the dome was built on the site of the ancient temple.
But as our readers will know, Jews and Christians need not simply “believe” in the existence of the temple ruins beneath the dome considering numerous archeological examinations have produced definitive proof of their existence.
Unfortunately, these are not the only issues with the piece.
Another passage refers to the unrest that frequently roils the Temple Mount complex, which Lawler calls the setting for “violent confrontations between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli police,” including in April when Israeli police “stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque twice during Ramadan, smashing doors and windows, firing rubber bullets, and injuring 12 people.”
While Lawler notes that Israeli police say they were compelled to enter the mosque to quell rioters who had stockpiled fireworks inside, he fails to make any reference to the consistent threat of mob violence at the site thanks to incitement by the Palestinian leadership.
Indeed, consider how differently this passage might have read if Lawler had noted that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas once told Palestinians to protect holy sites in Jerusalem on the grounds that Jews were “defiling them with their filthy feet.” His remarks came just days before intense rioting by Palestinians who hurled rocks and firebombs at Israeli police on the Temple Mount.
Later in the piece, Lawler interviews Hanady Halawani, who is part of a movement to make the Dome of the Rock a hub for teaching the Quran to Palestinian women. These campaigning efforts, Lawler contends, prompted suspicion on the part of Israeli officials who have “repeatedly banned her from entering the sacred site.”
Lawler observes that as they speak, Halawani, who claims to have been arrested 67 times, “glances nervously at the armed Israeli police officers who pass by.”
Perhaps Lawler should have probed Halawani’s risible presentation of herself as a Quran-teaching activist given that a quick search of her name reveals she previously campaigned against allowing Jews to step foot on the Temple Mount and has active ties with the proscribed terrorist organization Hamas.
The sad fact of the matter is that Lawler’s feature is informative and engaging. It is just a shame he allowed such obvious, partisan errors to creep into his work.
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