Of all the Palestinian lies about the Temple Mount, the most dangerous is the false thinking being created. In recent years, the Palestinians have been kneading the timeline of history as if it were dough. They are writing a new historical story for Jerusalem: the Muslims were here first, while the Jews – who have no ties whatsoever to the city and its holy sites – arrived after them, then proceeded to steal, block off, and invent a story about the Mount and the Temple that sits there.
For the past few years, Israel has opted to stay in its PR comfort zone. In the face of these mega-lies, it chose to focus on the Palestinian ritual that goes along with the invented history and assigns Israel an intention of destroying "Al-Aqsa" by means of an artificial earthquake and "throwing chemicals on the foundations of the mosque," as well as horrific cartoons that show Jews as "Dr. Streimer" or as snakes and octopuses wrapping themselves around the Dome of the Rock, stealing ice cream bars shaped like Al-Aqsa with evil looks, or cutting off the top of the Dome of the Rock with a guillotine and rushing Al-Aqsa on D9 bulldozers to raze it.
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But none of these imaginings or works of art comes close to the seriousness of what Palestinian leaders have been doing to their people's thinking for several years now: the "historical" statement that Jewish ties to Jerusalem are based on falsehoods; that Jews have no true ties to Jerusalem; that the Temple never stood on the Temple Mount; or that the Temple itself was only imaginary – "Al-Mazoom," as they call it.
The immediate reaction to this false version of history is to turn to archaeology and well-established history – hundreds of Jewish and Christian historical sources – to disprove the plié. But it seems that isn't enough. Even the long list of prominent Muslim religious figures who for 1,300 years wrote unhesitatingly about the Temple Mount as the location of the Jewish Temple makes no impression of missions of Muslims.
So we need something else – to delve into the history of the Mount. In the past few years the research "tool belt" at our disposal has expanded, and we should use it. More and more academic studies are showing that the Muslims, from the first time they visited the Mount, used Jews to find their way around and that the Jews were the ones who taught Muslims about the Mount and where its borders lie, as well as the boundaries of the Foundation Stone, and that the first Muslim ceremonies at the Dome of the Rock bore a striking resemblance to Jewish ceremonies at the very Temple whose existence the Muslims now deny.
These studies demonstrate that the original reason why the Temple Mount was sacred to Islam and why the mosques were built there in the first place was the return to the place where the Temple had stood with the goal of replacing Judaism and Christianity with Islam, the "supreme religion." Muhammad, it turns out, was influenced by his Jewish neighbors in Medina more than we thought. The similarity between Islamic customs and the customs of Judaism, which directly inspired Islam in its early days, is not coincidental at all.
The most convincing sources that argue for the existence of the Temple and the Mount having belonged to the Jews first are Islamic texts from the period in which the Dome of the Rock was constructed. These indicate that the Jews sort of mentored the Muslims, helping them get to know the holy compound, shortly after their joint enemy – the Byzantines – were defeated.
Archaeologist Professor Dan Bahat, for example, notes that the Muslims, who knew about the Jewish ties to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, respected the Jews in the first centuries following the construction of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. He found plenty of evidence of that, including writings by Mujir al-Din of the 15th century, considered a preeminent source for the Muslim history of Jerusalem.
Other research by prominent current-day students of Islam show that in the early days of the Dome of the Rock, Muslim religious rites on the Mount were very similar to those held in the Temple. Historian Dr. Milka Levy-Rubin describes how the Muslims would anoint the Foundation Stone with "incense," based on ancient Jewish literature. She says that in the compound itself, Jews and Christians served religious role, dressed very like the priests as they were described in the Bible: a cloth robe, a miter, and sashes of expensive and embellished fabric. "Even though this all existed for a very short time, it clearly shows the reason the place was originally chosen… apparently, the Muslims in the beginning saw themselves as carrying out the rites of the Jewish Temple," she writes.
Levy-Rubin has tracked the earlier findings of Herbert Busa and professors Amikan Elad and Moshe Sharon. Her discoveries shouldn't surprise us. From its inception, Islam adopted Jewish traditions, such as the prohibition against eating pork, ordered daily prayers, circumcision, and fast days. Along with all this, we now learn, Islam copied part of the rites of the Temple from Judaism, even though it now vigorously denies Judaism's primacy – and even its existence – on the Mount.
Even Umayyad coins bearing the symbol of the famous Temple menorah along with a text from the "Shahada" (the Muslim declaration of faith) discovered over the years indicate the extent to which the Muslims were first influenced on the Mount by its original owners, the Jews. Two researchers have addressed this point, the late Professor Dan Barag and Dr. Yoav Farhi. These Muslim coins that feature such an iconic Jewish symbol, were minted by the Muslim rulers in the time of the Umayyad dynasty.
Moreover, only a few years ago archaeologists Asaf Abraham and Peretz Reuven discovered a 1,000-year-old inscription in a mosque in the village of Nuba in the southern Hebron Hills. The inscription proves that at the beginning of the Muslim period, the structure of the Dome of the Rock was called "Beit al-Maqdis," a reference to the Temple that had once stood there. The inscription calls into question the narrative recited by many Muslims about a total lack of Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, and sheds more light on the frequent Muslim use of the words "Beit al-Maqdis" as a name for Jerusalem or the Temple Mount.
Now, on the 53rd Jerusalem Day, this is the topmost public diplomacy mission for Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Rafi Peretz. Historical research from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources that can blast apart the pack of Palestinian lies stands at their disposal. They only need to disseminate it. It could be a game-changer in the war for how people see Jerusalem, especially anti-Israel entities in the West, which blindly accept the lies, and even the Muslim world.
