The Associated Press Sucks Stinks

Check out this caption, and tell me if I'm being "too sensitive" --

The golden shrine of the Dome of the Rock mosque, located in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, also known to Jews as Temple Mount is seen inside the walled Old City in Jerusalem, Wednesday April 6, 2005.... (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Also known as? Excuse me, but King Solomon built the First Temple three thousand years ago. That mosque was built "only" 1300 years ago -- on top of the Temple[s].

The Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70, then deliberately left the [Second] Temple in ruins -as did the Byzantines later- as evidence of their successful conquest. The Muslims didn't come on the scene until their conquest in the 600s, when Caliph Somebody ordered the site cleared and a mosque built on top of it.

So shouldn't the Associated Press say, "... the Temple Mount, also known to Muslims as Al-Aqsa" ???

"As the navel is set in the centre of the human body,
so is the land of Israel the navel of the world...
situated in the centre of the world,
and Jerusalem in the centre of the land of Israel,
and the sanctuary in the centre of Jerusalem,
and the holy place in the centre of the sanctuary,
and the ark in the centre of the holy place,
and the foundation stone before the holy place,
because from it the world was founded."
Midrash Tanchuma, Qedoshim.

It's no accident that the Covenant of HAMAS calls Palestine "the navel of the globe" (Article 34). But there was a time before HAMAS, a time before "Palestine." There was even a time before Islam. And in that very long ago time, the Jews lived in Jerusalem.

Why do I even bother to explain these things? As if the world operates on rationality. It's ours as long as we can defend it (see post just below) .... or until -Gd forbid- Sharon gives it away.

The Associated Press be damned.

Comments

[Smooth]

I am in total agreement with you. The Associated Press is parroting a canard. Where, at all, is the Muslim connection to Jerusalem and Temple Mount? The Koran says nothing about Jerusalem. It mentions Mecca hundreds of times. It mentions Medina countless times. It never mentions Jerusalem. With good reason. There is no historical evidence to suggest Mohammed ever visited Jerusalem. So how did Jerusalem become the third holiest site of Islam? Muslims today cite a vague passage in the Koran, the seventeenth Sura, entitled "The Night Journey." It relates that in a dream or a vision Mohammed was carried by night "from the sacred temple to the temple that is most remote, whose precinct we have blessed, that we might show him our signs." In the seventh century, some Muslims identified the two temples mentioned in this verse as being in Mecca and Jerusalem. And that's as close as Islam's connection with Jerusalem gets -- myth, fantasy, wishful thinking.