President of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal, and founder of the website Campus Watch, Daniel Pipes, on Tuesday morning, ascended the Temple Mount, accompanied by Beyadenu CEO Tom Nisani.
Campus Watch, which Pipes established in 2002, identified five problems in teaching Middle Eastern studies at American universities: “Analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students.”
Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History Zachary Lockman called Pipes an “Islamophobe” and “Muslim basher.” James Zogby said Pipes possessed an “obsessive hatred of all things Muslim,” and that “Pipes is to Muslims what David Duke is to African-Americans.” Christopher Hitchens said Pipes “confuses scholarship with propaganda,” and “pursues petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity.”
With enemies like these, he can’t be all bad…
Pipes told his host that he had ascended the Mount after the Six-Day War and has gone up several times since. He participated in the excavations at the southern foot of the Mount in the 1960s.
Middle East Forum member and Alex Slesky also came along, ascending the Temple Mount for the first time in his life.
The visitors stressed the need for the State of Israel to implement full sovereignty over the sacred site, as a step toward Israeli victory.
Nisani said he was “excited and delighted to ascend the Temple Mount with such important people of the Jewish nation, headed by Daniel Pipes, one of the great warriors for Israel, who coined the phrase ‘Victory is done with defeated enemies.’”
“There is no better place for this statement than on the Temple Mount, where our enemies currently feel superior to us and to the State of Israel,” Nisani said.
