Two tourists from the USA who ascended the Temple mount in late 2015 recently posted a video they took while on the Mount. When they overheard a Muslim mob screaming at a group of Jewish worshipers, they asked a Waqf guard why they were shouting.
The convictions expressed by the Waqf guard are as revealing as they are shockingly misinformed.
Among other things, he asserts that:
Jews ascend the Temple Mount to make trouble. They should be forbidden from entering the Mount because they “want to destroy the Dome of the Rock.” When pressed, however, he concedes that the real fear of the Muslims is that “today ten Jew ascend the Temple Mount. In one year it will be a thousand Jews.”
He displays ignorance of the history of the Dome of the Rock yet insists that no Holy Temple ever stood on the Mount and that the Muslims structures are from time immemorial. The Temple Mount, in his words, “Is all Muslim.”
Note that at 4:23 into the video, after the tourists confirms that she is Jewish the Muslim Waqf guard changes his body language and repositions himself so that he is now standing between her and the Dome of the Rock.
Interestingly, he states emphatically that Jews and Muslims all pray to the same G-d, yet insists that Jews have no right to pray on the Mount.
On their own Youtube posting, the tourists add the following comments:
“On our 2015 trip to Israel, we decided to visit the Temple Mount. While the religious Jews were made to wait in a long line, the tourist were granted immediate access – at the designed time and gate, of course. Only Muslims are unrestricted to going to the holy site. At the end of our walk, I’ve asked the Waqf guard about the shouting women. Watch to see his explanation.”