Palestinian Authority Ex-mufti forbids Jerusalem’s ‘internationalization’

Palestinian Authority Ex-mufti forbids Jerusalem’s ‘internationalization’. (TOI).

A leading Palestinian cleric has issued a religious edict forbidding the “internationalization” and “Judaization” of Jerusalem.

In a fatwa — or Muslim religious ruling — Jerusalem’s former Palestinian Authority-appointed mufti, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, wrote that “the internationalization and Judaization of Jerusalem is forbidden and unlawful under Islamic law. It is a sin to assist in the internationalization or Judaization of this city.”

After explaining the importance of Jerusalem as the third-holiest city in Islam, and referencing a similar decree he issued in July 2009, Sabri condemned “those who [would] withdraw from Jerusalem” as people who “withdraw from the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the crown of Jerusalem.”

International agreements “to protect Al-Aqsa” are permissible, Sabri wrote, as long as they do not include the United Nations.

“If an agreement is signed between Arab and Islamic states only to protect Al-Aqsa, there’s nothing wrong with that. This is their duty, as long as the agreement does not internationalize or Judaize, and as long as the UN is not involved.”

Sabri currently holds no official position in the Palestinian Authority, but was a former appointee of the PA’s founding chairman, Yasser Arafat.

Israel recently rejected a Jordanian proposal that would have seen the Hashemite Kingdom begin to oversee visits to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem instead of Israel, Arab sources told The Times of Israel on Monday. Hmmm.........We don't accept man made laws only Sharia. Read the full story here.

“The Muslim Schism Over Jerusalem”

“The Muslim Schism Over Jerusalem” (JCPA).

Amid the systematic destruction of mosques and holy places in the Arab world, it is precisely Israel’s responsibility for security at the mosque compound on the Temple Mount that protects the mosques there from a similar fate.

The Sunni controversy between the Salafis – from whom Al-Qaeda emerged – and the Muslim Brotherhood is about what constitutes the center of Islam. Whereas the Salafis view the Arabian sites of Hijaz and Mecca as the center of the faith, the Muslim Brotherhood locates it at the ancient Cairo Al-Azhar University.

Because Cairo has no special religious holiness, the Brotherhood regards Jerusalem as their religious center. From the Salafis’ standpoint, the Muslim Brotherhood’s enhancement of the special status of Jerusalem poses a danger to the status of Mecca. Jerusalem was at the bottom of agenda for the Prophet and his successors, and Mecca was at the top.

The Palestinian Authority is the weakest force in the Al-Aqsa plaza. In visiting the site recently, the PA minister of religious affairs was almost lynched.

The notion of a “conflict over Jerusalem” immediately brings an association with the Arab-Israeli conflict over the Holy City.

Surprisingly, however, amid the systematic destruction of mosques and holy places in the Arab world, it is precisely Israel’s responsibility for security at the mosque compound on the Temple Mount that protects the mosques there from a similar fate.

To understand the nature of the danger to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one needs to understand the disputes within the world of Islam over the mosque and over the importance of Jerusalem in general.

Islam is divided into the Shia and the Sunna, but the Sunna is also divided into two main groups: the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood. There are other groups as well, such as the Sufis, but that does not concern us in this discussion. Read the full story here.

@ChrefSalah @mlmshussain So few Arabs Palestine 1919 Mufti had to beg others for money to refurbish neglected Al-Aksa pic.twitter.com/eiftF3ukMj

— DancingwithAngels (@DefenderMikhail) August 18, 2015

Video - Jerusalem - Planning for Third Temple With Help From Web.

Jerusalem - Planning for Third Temple With Help From Web.HT: Forward.

An organization based in Jerusalem is working on a detailed architectural blueprint for the Third Jewish Temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount — and has turned to the internet for help with the controversial project.

“It is not enough to wait and pray for the Third Temple,” the statement added. “It is a Biblical obligation to build it.”

According to Rabbi Chaim Richman, the institute’s international director, the temple would stand in the present location of the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine. Muslims revere the mount as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.

That makes the concept anathema to the Islamic world and would likely spark widespread worldwide controversy if it ever got off the ground.

Richman did not set a target date for breaking ground for the construction project. The temple will be built, he told JTA, when “the world will want us to build the temple.”

“The Jewish people have a responsibility to all of humanity, including Islam,” Richman said. “I don’t expect it to come about through any sort of confrontation or any sort of military maneuver. The Jews have to represent good in the world, light in the world.”

The Indiegogo campaign is tied to the upcoming fast of Tisha b’Av, which mourns the First and Second Temples’ destruction. Richman quoted the verse in Isaiah calling the temple “a house of prayer for all nations.”Read the full story here.


JOIN OUR INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN http://goo.gl/bLF7tY

Make the future. Build the Holy Temple!

WATCH our previous Children Are ready Videos:

The Children Are Ready I: http://youtu.be/LPmViwmJSJE

The Children Are Ready II: http://youtu.be/5bw-lJlyuqA

Prominent religious Zionist rabbi: “Our generation is charged with reclaiming the Temple Mount” and returning its sovereignty to the people.

Prominent religious Zionist rabbi: “Our generation is charged with reclaiming the Temple Mount” and returning its sovereignty to the people.(TOI).

“We are not far from seeing the day when our land is cleansed from terrorists,” said Rabbi Dov Lior, the prominent, controversial, nationalist chief rabbi of the Hebron-area settlement of Kiryat Arba. 

The rabbi was speaking Thursday following a tour with several Jewish visitors at the Temple Mount, the religious site holy to Jews and Muslims in the Old City of Jerusalem.Lior’s statements were broadcast Sunday evening by Channel 10 TV.

The rabbi was outlying his “vision” for access to the site, which is restricted for non-Muslims, according to Israeli law. The Temple Mount is controlled by the Muslim Wakf, but security is overseen by Israel. Non-Muslims are allowed to visit, according to instructions by security forces, but all non-Muslim religious ritual is banned.

“Our generation is charged with reclaiming the Temple Mount” and returning its sovereignty to the people, Lior said.

One of the most outspoken religious leaders supporting the Jewish claim to the entire Land of Israel, Lior added that he didn’t know “how to get rid of them [Arabs]. We’re not far from seeing the day where our lands are cleansed of terrorists and their supporters. They can go to Saudi Arabia.”

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t help them from a humanitarian point of view. If need be, we’ll build stables for their camels. In Saudi Arabia. Not here,” he added.

In 2011, Lior made very similar comments, calling Arabs “camel riders” and “wolves” who “hate peace,” adding that they should be given the “right of return” to places like Saudi Arabia.

Lior is affiliated with the hard-right Tekumah party, which merged with Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home before the elections earlier this year.

Tensions on the Temple Mount have been running high in recent months, especially during the period of the Jewish High Holidays, when non-Muslim worshipers and tourists planned to visit the site. On several occasions, clashes between Palestinian worshipers and Israel Police forces broke out in protest of such visits.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that he was considering an appeal to the United Nations Security Council over what he termed as Israel’s continuous violation of Palestinian property, especially the Temple Mount, as well as ongoing settler violence in the West Bank.

“Israel has no right to split up the Al-Aqsa Mosque, neither physically nor in terms of prayer times,” Abbas said, and stressed that “all East Jerusalem is Palestinian.”

Great sight.

PA: "The Western Wall... no person besides Muslims ever used it as a place of worship, throughout all of history"

PA: "The Western Wall... no person besides Muslims ever used it as a place of worship, throughout all of history"(PalWatch). By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik. PA: Jews have no connection to Western Wall.The Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, said recently that all of Jerusalem and the Western Wall are "the sole right of Palestinians." To back this up, he falsely claimed that "no person besides Muslims ever used it [the Western Wall] as a place of worship, throughout all of history, until the ominous Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917." This denial of the Jewish nation's history by the PA minister came in response to a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Israel's 3,000 year history in Jerusalem, as he lit the eighth candle of the Chanukah holiday last month at the Western Wall. The PA minister said Netanyahu's statements were "nothing but nonsense and an attempt to manipulate both history and geography, and are worthless from a religious, historical, or legal point of view." His statements were reported by WAFA, the official PA news agency.

Al-Habbash's statement that Jews did not pray at the Western Wall in the past is historically unfounded. Both Jewish and non-Jewish sources document that the Western Wall was used for Jewish worship and prayer. For example, US President Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State William H. Seward visited Jerusalem in 1871 and described his experience in his book Travels Around the World. He wrote in detail about the intense devotion of Jews in prayer at the Western Wall, which he called the "Jews' Wailing-Place." (See below a long quote from his book describing Jews' devotion at the Western Wall.) The above illustration of Jews in prayer at the Western Wall is from Seward's book.

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that this ongoing PA denial of Jewish history in Israel and especially Jerusalem is a fundamental component of the PA's political program to deny Israel's right to exist. (See below.)

The following is the PA minister's statement denying a Jewish connection to the Western Wall:

"Minister for Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash said that Jerusalem and all its features, its geography, and its Islamic and Christian holy sites, and this includes the Western Wall, are the sole right of Palestinians. (The Arabic throughout the text for the Western Wall is Al-Buraq Wall - Ed.) In a press release he stressed that [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu's recent statements concerning the occupation's (i.e., Israel's) ownership of the Western Wall are nothing but nonsense and an attempt to manipulate both history and geography, and are worthless from a religious, historical, or legal point of view. (See Netanyahu's exact quote below - Ed.) Al-Habbash made clear that Netanyahu's statements about Jerusalem and the Western Wall lack the elementary scientific basis for approaching history which has always proven Islamic ownership of the Western Wall... that no person besides Muslims ever used it as a place of worship, throughout all of history, until the ominous Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917."

[WAFA, official PA news agency, Dec. 17, 2012,

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 18, 2012]

The following is the statement by PM Netanyahu at the Western Wall, as he lit the eighth candle of Chanukah, which prompted the PA minister's statement:

"In recent days, I have heard that the Palestinians are saying that the Western Wall is occupied territory. I want to tell them from the closest possible place to the miracle of the jar of oil: The Western Wall has been ours for 3,000 years, and it and the State of Israel will be ours forever."

[Israeli Prime Minister's website, pmo.gov.il , accessed Dec. 27, 2012]

http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Events/Pages/eventwall151212.aspx

Below are excerpts from Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State William H. Seward's book Travels Around the World describing Jewish worship at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. (Cited at http://lennybendavid.com/2012/08/president-lincolns-secretary-of-state.html)

"June 13, 1871... Jerusalem is now divided according to its different classes of population. The Mohammedans are four thousand, and occupy the northeast quarter, including the whole area of the Mosque of Omar. The Jews are eight thousand, and have the southeast quarter... The Armenians number eighteen hundred, and have the southwest quarter; and the other Christians, amounting to twenty-two hundred, have the northwest quarter...
The Jewish Sabbath being on Saturday, and beginning at sunset on Friday, the weekly wail of the Jews under the wall takes place on Friday, and is a preparation for the rest and worship of the day which they are commanded to "keep holy." The small rectangular oblong area, without roof or canopy, (i.e., the Western Wall) serves for the gathering of the whole remnant of the Jewish nation in Jerusalem. Here, whether it rains or shines, they come together at an early hour, old and young, men, women, and little children--the poor and the rich, in their best costumes, discordant as the diverse nations from which they come. They are attended by their rabbis, each bringing the carefully-preserved and elaborately-bound text of the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, either in their respective languages, or in the original Hebrew. For many hours they pour forth their complaints, reading and reciting the poetic language of the prophet, beating their hands against the wall, and bathing the stones with their kisses and tears. It is no mere formal ceremony. During the several hours while we were spectators of it, there was not one act of irreverence or indifference. Only those who have seen the solemn prayer-meeting of a religious revival, held by some evangelical denomination at home, can have a true idea of the solemnity and depth of the profound grief and pious feeling exhibited by this strange assembly on so strange an occasion, although no ritual in the Catholic, Greek, or Episcopal Church is conducted with more solemnity and propriety."

[Travels Around the World, William H. Seward, quoted at
http://lennybendavid.com/2012/08/president-lincolns-secretary-of-state.html
Also read Seward's description of his visit to the Hurva Synagogue]

The PA's denial of Jewish history in Israel is an integral part of the PA's political program. This denial is used as the basis for the PA's denial of Israel's right to exist. This was expressed explicitly in a recent article by a PA daily columnist who argued that Zionists have no connection to the Biblical Hebrews and therefore Israel has "no historical or legal basis" to exist:

"The Zionist movement's leaders and their broad group of followers have no relation even to the [Biblical] twelve tribes of Israel, as the great Hungarian historian [Arthur] Koestler proved, and as Jewish and Israeli researchers clarified later. This means that the superfluous [nation] in this region, and the one harming its security and stability, is the occupation (i.e., Israel) in all its shapes and stages, whether in the past or in the present, and whether in the form of military occupation, settlement, or fabricating Judaization that have no historical or legal basis."

[Op-ed official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 15, 2012]

The Western Wall is a small section of the Temple Mount that has remained standing since Rome's destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. The PA teaches that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem nor was there a Jewish presence. This distortion of history is the basis for the PA stance that Jews/Israel have no right to Jerusalem and no right to pray at the Western Wall.

In keeping with this policy, PA TV broadcast a documentary in 2010 and 2011 that described Jews praying at the Western Wall as "sin and filth."

Click to see more examples of PA denial of Jewish history in Jerusalem.

Hmmm.....But the PA accepts the Christians their Bible story of Jesus chasing the merchants out of the Temple?

Arabs Burning ancient 'First Temple beams' made of Cedars of Lebanon.

Arabs Burning ancient 'First Temple beams' made of Cedars of Lebanon.(INN).HT: AstuteBlogger.

Arabs are burning ancient beams of wood that had apparently been used during the period of the Holy Temple. 

A group of Jews that ascended the Temple Mount Sunday were shocked to see that ancient beams of wood that had apparently been used during the period of the Holy Temple were being used as firewood by Arabs on the Mount, and off it.
Archaeologists have dated the wood as far back as the First Temple period, and appear to be among the celebrated “Cedars of Lebanon” mentioned in the Tanach. The wood, consisting of giant beams, first appeared at the end of the 1930s, when the Al-Aqsa mosque which currently occupies the Temple Mount was refurbished. The beams had been used in the roof structure of the mosque, and already at that time they were said to be thousands of years old by archaeologists – preserved only because they had been used in the building.
 Some of the beams were dated to the first Temple period, others to Roman times, and at least one beam was found to have Byzantine-era designs etched on it. After the beams were removed from the mosque, they were stored in a museum on the Mount.
However, in recent years the beams were moved to a corner of the Mount, open to the elements – and archaeologists fear that exposure to winter rain and summer sun will be their undoing. Some of the beams were taken out several years ago, and more have been spotted in recent months. Reports said that the Arabs, who have been trying for years to ger rid of the beams, have begun burning them. Now, many of the beams have been placed at what appears to be a dumping ground next to the Golden Gate of the Old City, apparently for the use of local Arabs as firewood.
Jewish groups that visited the Mount saw the beams being moved, but reported that the Arabs forbade them to take photos of the activity. Officials of the Archaeology Authority, who are responsible for the safety of these ancient beams, are nowhere to be seen. 
Organizations that are involved in attempting to secure Jewish rights on the Mount expressed shock at the story.
“It appears that this is part of the systematic attempts by Arabs to destroy all connections between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount,” said a spokesperson for one of the groups. Manhigut Yehudit leader Moshe Feiglin expressed shock at the destruction of the important artifacts under the noses of Israeli authorities, and expressed hope that Likud voters would choose the Manhigut Yehudit faction to help defend the holy places of the Jewish people.Read the full story here.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas Denies Jewish Temple and Christian Theology.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas Denies Jewish Temple and Christian Theology.(INN).Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas frequently refers to the “alleged” Jewish Temple, but if it was not Jewish, there is no basis for Christian belief, as written in the New Testament in Matthew (21:12), that Jewish “moneychangers" chased Jesus from the Holy Temple. However, Christians so far have not reacted to the implicit denial of their belief.

The PA campaign to eradicate Jewish history at the Temple Mount , as well as in the rest of Israel, has escalated sharply in the past two years.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) documented and translated statements from Palestinian Authority leaders, including Abbas, his advisor Ahmad Al-Ruweidi, clerics and ministers, all of whom used the term "alleged Temple" 97 times in 2011 and 2012.
PMW pointed out that the number 97 refers only to the term “alleged Temple” and does not include thousands of other denials of the existence of the First and Second Temples and Jewish history in the rest of Israel. Many Jewish sites, such as Rachel’s Tomb at the edge of Bethlehem and less than a mile from Jerusalem, has been given an Arab name by the PA, whose clerics claim it was a Muslim site - before Islam was founded.
Last week, Abbas said in the official PA WAFA news agency and in the PA official daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida,

”[Israel's] purpose is to achieve its black goals: Destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque, building the 'alleged Temple,' taking over the Muslim and Christian holy sites, and destroying its [Jerusalem's] institutions in order to empty it, uproot its residents, and continue its occupation and Judaization.”

PMW also uncovered Abbas' statement “that all of Israel's archeological digs and tunnels... will not change the reality of the city... and will not create a [Jewish] right based on fantasy and legends.”
The statement ended, “There will be no peace, security, or stability unless the occupation [Israel], its settlements and settlers will be evacuated from our holy city and the eternal capital of our state."
Abbas has previously declared that “Palestinian” history is 9,000 years old and said last year, on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day, "Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history,” PMW stated.Hmmmm.........Obama's 'PeacePartners'.Read the full story here.