Palestinian Lecturer: Jews Have No Ties to the Temple Mount

TEL AVIV — Rejecting archeological evidence, the historic record and accepted fact, Maher al-Sousi, a lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza, claimed that the Jewish temples were never located on the Temple Mount and that Jews have no right to the holiest site in Judaism.

According to al-Sousi, “The Jews have no right to the place. The claims that the temples were located there have been religiously and historically proven as false claims. The prophet Moses also never entered the historical land of Palestine. He arrived in the area of the border between today’s Jordan and Palestine, but didn’t enter. So, the legend of the temple has no connection to reality and all the claims of the Jews are forfeit.”

Al-Susi was speaking after Friday’s deadly Palestinian terrorist attack at the Temple Mount.

Two Israeli Border Police Officers were murdered and a third was wounded on Friday when three Palestinian terrorists opened fire at security forces near an entrance to the Temple Mount at the Lions Gate and then fled into the Mount complex.  The Palestinian assailants, reportedly carrying two rifles and a pistol, were pursued by Israeli forces and were shot and killed as they tried to escape toward the mosques on the Mount.

Addressing the terrorist attack, al-Sousi claimed, “The entry of Jews into the mosques and the attempt to change the status quo is what pushed these young people to carry out the attack. These young men were committed to protecting the holiness of the place because of its central place in Islam and in the hearts of all Muslims.”

Jews do not enter the mosques on the Temple Mount, as they are banned from doing so by the site’s Waqf Islamic custodians.

Friday’s attack occurred less than two weeks after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed an anti-Israel resolution declaring Jerusalem’s Old City and its ancient walls “occupied” and listed the areas as Palestinian heritage sites in “danger.”

The terrorist attack also took place one week after UNESCO passed another anti-Israel resolution regarding the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron – considered the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount – claiming the tomb is a “Palestinian” world heritage site in danger.

Al-Sousi stated, “UNESCO’s decisions regarding the absence of the Jews’ rights to Hebron and Jerusalem prove what we are saying about the legend of the temples being false and that Jews have no historic roots in Palestine. This is known.”

Al-Sousi is not alone in making the false claim that there are no Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. Such views are mainstream in Palestinian society.

In a Breitbart Jerusalem interview last year, Khaled Elkhaldi, a professor at Gaza’s Islamic University, completely denied Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.

In 2007, Breitbart’s Aaron Klein conducted an exclusive video interview with Waqf official and chief Palestinian cleric Taysir Tamimi, who used the occasion to claim the Jewish Temples “never existed” and the Western Wall was really a hitching post for Muhammad’s horse.

Excavations near the Mount routinely uncover archaeological evidence further tying Jews to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. For example, discoveries at the City of David, an archeological site just outside the Mount, have unearthed the core of ancient Jerusalem, including Hezekiah’s Tunnel, evidence of the Gihon Spring, Jewish Temple artifacts, Temple purifying pools and more.

Not only are these Muslim scholars’ claims about the lack of evidence tying Jews to the Temple Mount false, the Islamic scholar glossed over the Palestinians’ own complicity in disposing of Jewish temple artifacts.

As Klein previously reported:

In 1997, the Waqf conducted a large dig on the Temple Mount during construction of a massive mosque at an area referred to as Solomon’s Stables. The Wafq at the time disposed of truckloads of dirt containing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.

After the media reported the disposals, Israeli authorities froze the construction permit given to the Waqf and the dirt was transferred to Israeli archaeologists for analysis. The Israeli authorities found scores of Jewish Temple relics in the nearly disposed dirt, including coins with Hebrew writing referencing the Temple, part of a Hasmonean lamp, several other Second Temple lamps, Temple-period pottery with Jewish markings, a marble pillar shaft, and other Temple-period artifacts.

The Waqf was widely accused of attempting to hide evidence of the existence of the Jewish Temples.

And in 2007, Klein personally reported from the site of an unusual dig on the Temple Mount in which the Waqf utilized heavy machinery to dig in one of the most sensitive archaeological compounds in the world and were once again caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities.