Temple? What Temple?
Ignoring the historical record and mainstream archeological evidence, an Islamic scholar tied to Hamas completely recently denied Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, considered the holiest site in Judaism.
“The issue of Solomon’s Temple, or what the Jews call the Temple Mount, is nothing but a bundle of historically unfounded claims,” Khaled Elkhaldi, a professor at Gaza’s Islamic University, told this reporter in an interview.
“It’s a dream, a legend that the Jews made up to claim exclusive ownership of the land, which religion and history refute time after time,” added Elkhaldi, who serves on Hamas’s Shura Council (Majlis al-Shura), the terrorist group’s central consultative body.
“The historical and religious truth is that the Jews conquered Palestine as part of their religious perspective and so-called prophecy in the Torah around which the theory of the ‘Promised Land’ was built,” Elkhaldi claimed.
“The fabricated temple was invented to serve this narrative,” he stated, without a trace of irony.
Elkhaldi claimed, wrongly, that mainstream Jewish opinion is divided on the historic whereabouts of the Temple.
“What’s more, until now, not a single piece of archaeological evidence to its existence has been found,” he claimed.
Not only is Elkhaldi’s claim about lack of archeological evidence false, the Islamic scholar glossed over the Palestinians’ own complacency in disposing Jewish temple artifacts.
As I previously reported, in 1997, the Waqf conducted a large dig on the Temple Mount while constructing a massive mosque at an area referred to as Solomon’s Stables. The Wafq at the time disposed truckloads of dirt containing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.
After 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.
In 2007, I personally reported from the site of an unusual dig on the Temple Mount in which the Waqf utilized heavy machinery to dig on one of the most sensitive archaeological compounds in the world. At that time, they were caught red-handed once again destroying Temple-era antiquities.
Palestinian leaders routinely deny Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. In 2007, I conducted an exclusive video interview with Waqf official and chief Palestinian Justice Taysir Tamimi, who used the occasion to claim the Jewish Temples “never existed” and that the Western Wall really was a tying post for Muhammad’s horse.
Is Israel Just Jealous?
Former U.S. official Lawrence Wilkerson, who has reportedly advised Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, once claimed Israel “bombs” Lebanon to keep the country from competing with the Jewish state economically.
Wilkerson made the point in an interview with The Real News Network, after the site’s senior editor, Paul Jay, stated that “Israel keeps invading Lebanon.”
That claim led to the following exchange:
WILKERSON: You know why I think that is? My community thinks I’m crazy. I think that’s economic. I think every time Israel sees that the only country with the real capability in the Eastern Mediterranean to compete with them and surpass them is Lebanon. And so every time it looks like Lebanon is building the infrastructure, hotels for tourists, and industry and so forth, and is going to arrive at that point within a decade or two, Israel bombs them. Look it, why else would you bomb the things that Israel bombs?
JAY: Yeah, ’cause they’re not just bombing Hizbullah rockets.
WILKERSON: Yeah. They’re bombing the infrastructure of Lebanon.
In the December 2014 interview, Wilkerson was largely referring to the Second Lebanon War of 2006, which started after Hizbullah committed an unprovoked attack on Israel’s northern border. On July 12, 2006, Hizbullah fired rockets into Israel as a diversion while the group’s fighters stormed the Israeli side of the border and ambushed two Israel Defense Force vehicles, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two more.
The war broke out amid the wider context of Hizbullah building a massive military and terror rocket infrastructure along Israel’s border with southern Lebanon, creating a de facto terror state there in the years following Israel’s withdrawal from the Israel-Lebanon border buffer zone in May 2000. Hizbullah used its southern Lebanon fiefdom to commit numerous attacks against Israel, including rocket attacks that killed Israeli civilians.
Group Working For Saudi Arabia Is Tied To Clinton
The Saudi government has contracted the communications and strategy firm of Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta, paying the group $140,000 per month to work for Saudi interests in the U.S.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported:
“The Saudi government and its affiliates have spent millions of dollars on U.S. law, lobby and public relations firms to raise the country’s visibility in the United States and before the United Nations at a crucial time.
“And some of Washington’s premier law and lobby firms – including Podesta Group, BGR Government Affairs, DLA Piper and Pillsbury Winthrop – have been tasked with the job, according to a review of Justice Department filings.”
The Post added some specifics about the Saudi contract with the Podesta Group but failed to report the significant detail that the firm’s owner, who is personally working on the Saudi account, is John Podesta’s brother. The Post only identified Tony Podesta as “a top Democratic lobbyist and major contributor to Hillary Clinton.”
Tony Podesta is a financial bundler for the Democratic Party, including Clinton’s campaigns.
The newspaper reported:
“The lobby firm Podesta Group has an ongoing contract with the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, a government entity, for $140,000 monthly. Barring any changes to the fee schedule, the year-long work would earn the firm $1.68 million by the end of 2016. The firm’s founder Tony Podesta, a top Democratic lobbyist and major contributor to Hillary Clinton, is working personally on the matter, according to a March filing. Podesta president Kim Fritts, a longtime Republican consultant and adviser to Jeb Bush, is listed on the contract, which the firm would not elaborate on.”