More incitement, more lies about Israeli efforts underway to build a pedestrian ramp near the Temple Mount.
From Intimidation Tactics in the Jerusalem Post:
In Gaza, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and elsewhere, Muslims are up in arms about what even a moderate like Jordan's King Abdullah called "a threat to the foundations of the Al Aksa mosque.""What is happening is an aggression, we call on the Palestinian people to unite and protect Jerusalem," said Muhammad Hussein, the top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for the Islamic world to "retaliate" and make Israel "regret" what it had done.
What is Israel doing that has sparked such violent threats? Some years ago, the pedestrian ramp leading up to Jerusalem's Temple Mount fell apart. Now municipal authorities plan to build a permanent ramp to maintain access to this holy site, and are conducting, as required by law, an archeological salvage dig to make sure no artifacts are destroyed in the process.
All of this is completely outside the Temple Mount platform, and bears no relation or threat to that structure, let alone to the Aksa mosque. Why would Israel dream of undermining the Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest site? The claim that Israel is doing so is patently absurd, as anyone familiar with the area can immediately see.
So how can the Muslim world be awash in violent threats based on an entirely fabricated pretext? Must there not be something to it?
The answer is that Muslim indignation is taken as self-justifying, and the more violent it is, the more the Western victims of it tend to question themselves.
Seems there's a long history of Arab incitement when it comes to the Temple Mount.
From Sarah Honig's Rude Awakening (Jerusalem Post):
Today it's replacing a collapsed walkway. In 1919, wooden benches for the old and infirm were cited as the insufferable affront. The British promptly removed them, but Arabs then began to regularly drive cattle and laden donkeys through crowds of Jewish worshipers. From 1920 the muezzin was dispatched to bellow his loudest chants precisely during Jewish services.In 1921, the sound of the shofar blown on the High Holy Days in front of the Wall became the next pretext for unrest. The British obligingly forbade the annoying blasts.
The shrillest Arab outcry was raised in 1928 over a flimsy partition put up to segregate male and female worshipers at the Wall. The British lost no time in removing the insulting screen right at the climax of Yom Kippur services. From then on premeditated disruptions at the Wall grew increasingly violent, till trumped-up tales of Jewish attempts to take over the Temple Mount sent Arabs rioting on August 23, 1929. The bloodbath lasted a full week and left 133 Jews slaughtered.
The rampages began in Jerusalem, but the most notorious massacre was in Hebron, where 67 men, women and children were hacked to death in homicidal frenzy. The centuries-old Jewish community was uprooted, as were smaller Jewish enclaves in Gaza, Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus.
That's precisely what Sallah has in mind when he urges "a third intifada." The carnage of 1929, still reverentially dubbed by Arabs as "the Burak Battle," is Sallah's jihadist model for liberating the holy site from the presence of Jews (who sanctified it in the first place). When he barefacedly accuses Jews of "aiming to raze al-Aksa," he knows that such falsehoods have already instigated horrific vendettas for counterfeit causes.
Honest Reporting has more on the controversy: Temple Mount Truths.
