The same old libel - Nadav Shragai

by Nadav Shragai

Israel has no intention of altering the status quo on the Temple Mount, but Palestinian extremists continue to spread lies about the holy site • This time, a "documentary" film alleges that archaeological work is intended to undermine Al-Aqsa mosque.

A demonstration at the Temple Mount in support of terrorists who were killed | Photo credit: AFP

In July 2014 and again in October 2015 stirred-up Palestinian youths spilled out of their homes to commit acts of terrorism in the streets of Israel. They stabbed, ran over, and shot Jews. Many were convinced that Al-Aqsa mosque was in real danger. Some believed that Israel was about to demolish the mosques on the Temple Mount. Many were killed committing those terrorist attacks. Others were arrested. Hundreds of pre-emptive arrests have also been carried out since then. 

A., an interrogator for Israel's security forces, said this week that "in the interrogation rooms, it became clear that at the start of the two waves of terrorism, most of the detainees had been made to believe that Israel was acting to change 'the status quo on the Temple Mount, that Israel 'intended to allow Jews to pray on the Mount,' to 'take Al-Aqsa away from them,' and mainly that the State of Israel was planning to demolish Al-Aqsa mosque to build the Third Temple. In their own eyes, the young people were 'the defenders of Al-Aqsa, which is in the hands of the Jews,' 'the ones who would free it.' They were very proud of what they'd done." 

It's no coincidence that now, two weeks before Passover, the story is returning to the Palestinian media, Internet and to the Arab street, and the Arab public is enthralled by it. The same thing happened on the eves of other major Jewish holidays, such as last Sukkot. 

To what extent? A. bases his assessment on precedent. Like some of this colleagues, A. heard about the "Al-Aqsa is in danger" narrative even before the "lone-wolf intifada," but the young terrorists' total and steadfast belief -- both a year and a half and six months ago -- that Israel is scheming to raze the Temple Mount mosques amazes him nevertheless. 

"Some of them repeated word for word the [incitement] of Sheikh Raed Salah [leader of the now-outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement], the man who conceived and expanded the libel. Others trusted reports in Arab newspapers, broadcasts, interviews, or sermons that were disseminated over Palestinian television, though Hamas channels, and on social media," A. says. 

One detainee repeated a fictitious story he had read in the Palestinian media about a secret plan of Israel's to use an artificial earthquake to knock down Al-Aqsa. He even quoted from memory reports about underground experiments that Israel had allegedly conducted in the Negev in which scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology were supposedly involved. 

Another one pulled out a cartoon he had downloaded from his home computer showing a bulldozer embellished with a Star of David demolishing Al-Aqsa. Yet another detainee perceived visits by figures such as MK Uri Ariel (Habayit Hayehudi) to the Mount as laying the groundwork for an Israeli takeover and a change to all the accepted arrangements at the compound. 

"At that time, it was driven home for us the influence a combination of lies, historical perversions, wild imagination, and incitement can have when the field is as volatile as Jerusalem. We realized that a lie repeated thousands of times is eventually accepted as truth," A. says. 

Since it started, the lone wolf intifada has changed its face. It launched with "Al-Aqsa is in peril" and turned into "shahidism" and a martyr's death. Later on, frustrated youngsters with personal problems found refuge in wielding a knife. Killing Jews was a way for them to escape, a twisted way of regaining legitimacy in the social circle that rejected them, or with their parents after a fight. In other instances, the stabbers set out in the knowledge that their arrest would lead to their entire family receiving financial benefits (from the Palestinian Authority) almost immediately. 

Shh, we're inciting 

But now, Israel's security apparatus fears, we are back where we started -- the lie that "Al-Aqsa is in danger." The fiction is once again being distributed in various and strange ways, the stated goal of which is to encourage the public to "defend Al-Aqsa." 

In the previous rounds of escalation, this cry led to waves of terrorism and bloodshed. Dozens of the attackers in the last wave of terrorism, before they set out to stab or run over Jews, left behind Facebook posts, notes, or conversations with friends in which they tied their upcoming actions to the "fact" that "Al-Aqsa is in danger." 

Mohand Halabi, who murdered Rabbis Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Bennett in the Old City of Jerusalem, had written on his Facebook page mere hours earlier: "We must rise up and oppose the humiliation of Al-Aqsa on behalf of the Prophet." 

Raed Khalil, who stabbed Rabbi Aharon Yesiab and Reuven Aviram to death at the Panorama Building in south Tel Aviv, declared he had carried out the attack for the sake of the Al-Aqsa mosque. Others, like the 14- and 16-year-olds from Shuefat who tried to stab Jews at Damascus Gate last January, stopped by Al-Aqsa mosque first to draw inspiration. 

They were all incited to act, and that incitement is making a comeback. This time, it features a 17-minute film that claims that Israel is conducting new archaeological excavations intended to topple Al-Aqsa. The film was apparently produced by associates of Hamas and the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, and anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with "underground Jerusalem" and the archaeological digs in the city can immediately identify the Herodian drainage tunnel featured in the film. The tunnel runs from the Shiloach Pool to the Davidson Archaeological Park at the foot of the southern end of the Western Wall on the way to the Mughrabi Gate. In that drainage channel, which is considered an archaeological discovery of the first rank, wonderful finds have been made in recent years: the foundations of the Western Wall; a gold bell that was ripped off the hem of the high priest; the sword of a Roman legionnaire; and a carving of the Temple menorah on a broken piece of gray-white stone that was apparently scratched out by a witness to the destruction of the Temple. 

Even though the Herodian tunnel has been visited by hundreds of thousands of people over the years and is subject to safety and archaeological oversight and is open to everyone, and Muslims visit it as well, the film turns it into a weapon to serve the story. The tunnel, which does not run beneath the Temple Mount, is portrayed as an excavation that endangers the mosques and could bring them down. The images in the film are accompanied by a threatening melody, biased analysis and incitement by Sheikh Salah. The film shows the head of right-wing activist Yehuda Glick, whom a Palestinian terrorist has already tried to kill, encircled by a red ring. 

The film is "transparent." It is designed to fan the flames around Al-Aqsa, which have slightly calmed down these past few months. Hamas also has a hand in it. A few days ago, the group put out an official announcement that made it clear that "Al-Aqsa would remain the most important source of inspiration for the young avengers in the Jerusalem Intifada." 

Just like it did ahead of Sukkot in October 2015, Hamas is calling on Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to join forces around Al-Aqsa to "protect it from a mass invasion." Spokesman for the Fatah movement in Jerusalem, Rafat Alian, has also joined the incitement and is talking about "an ongoing Israeli invasion of Al-Aqsa." The incitement continues even on the website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission, which shows a drawing of an Israeli bulldozer whose fanged blade is grabbing the Dome of the Rock. The incitement appears to have reached an apex in a cartoon that compares Israel to the Islamic State group and shows it beheading Al-Aqsa mosque (credit to Palestinian Media Watch).

The biggest problem the incitement presents for Israel is the huge Muslim public that is swept up in it and believes that these are Israel's true intentions. I saw that a few years ago, when I published my book "The 'Al-Aqsa is in Danger' Libel: The History of a Lie." I saw it again in passing conversations with east Jerusalem residents in the summer of 2014, and also in the current round of violence. 

'One day, you'll knock down the mosque' 

The awareness that "Al-Aqsa is in danger" doesn't only exist in the Palestinian media or in mosque preachers' incitement. Every self-respecting school and refugee camp adorns their walls, doors and homes with pictures of the mosque. Often, the mosque is marked with threatening arrows, and sometimes with snakes and fire-breathing dragons marked with Stars of David, that are threatening to annihilate it. 

The fact that Israel prohibits Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, has no effect on the narrative, nor does the fact that for years Israel has taken care not to excavate beneath the Temple Mount. 

Just this week, Muhammed, a worker at a home wares store in Tzur Bahar, told me how he had been present at an "Al-Aqsa is in danger" conference hosted by the Islamic Movement in Umm al-Fahm two years ago, and how it affected him. 

"In Umm al-Fahm they convinced me that the holy mosque was in danger. Later, in a tour underneath the mosque, I saw the archaeological excavations Israel is conducting there. It's to bring down the mosques. You Jews are building a city underneath Al-Aqsa, and one day you'll knock down the mosque. That's your intention. So people are going to die because of Al-Aqsa, and it's not over, not until you stop digging there," Muhammed says. 

His statements are absolutely groundless, yet he believes them absolutely. This is the exact audience the new film is targeting with its made-up "facts." 

This past year, Israel has taken two far-reaching steps to calm things down on the Mount. Both were intended to respond to the Al-Aqsa story, which has already become a direct cause of violence. The first move was a reaching a series of understandings with King Abdullah of Jordan and his people, which were put forth with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as a mediator. The understandings center around an Israeli clarification that it has no intent to change the status quo on the Mount and allow Jews to pray there. 

Israel also agreed to put up a network of security cameras in the streets of the Temple Mount compound that will provide real-time 24/7 coverage of everything that happens there to both Jordan and Israel. At the same time, Israel drastically reduced the number of religious Jews who were allowed to go up on the Temple Mount at one time, and added restrictions to Jewish visits to the Mount. 

The second step was to outlaw the Islamic Movement and its underlings: the Morbitun and Morbitat male and female guard groups. Members of these movements had been making Jewish visits to the Mount a nightmare, threatening the Jews verbally and physically. 

Clashes between them and the police were growing more frequent. At the same time, the police were arresting -- and frequently bringing to trial -- inciters who were consistently working to spark provocations and whip up a frenzy on the Temple Mount. A few of the members of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement were even put under administrative detention. A few times, although it went unreported, the police stopped buses carrying operatives from the Northern Branch who were on their way to Jerusalem from the Galilee and the Triangle region of major Palestinian population centers just east of the Sharon region. 

Only two weeks ago, the Jerusalem Magistrates' Court sentenced Sheikh Khaled Mughrabi, who taught religion at Al-Aqsa mosque, to 11 months in prison. In one of his lessons, Mughrabi said that Jews had brought the Holocaust upon themselves because of their corruption and because they would kidnap children and use their blood to bake matzahs for Passover. Mughrabi also blamed the Twin Tower attacks on the Jews, and decreed that they intended to occupy the mosque to build the Third Temple on its ruins, and then proceed to conquer the world. 

The Israeli steps have had a mitigating effect on the incitement. In the past few months, it seemed things were calming down on the Temple Mount. But now, with the incitement flaring up again and the expectation that things will get worse before Passover, everything could change, as it has before holidays in the past. 

Automatic responses 

This time, too, Israel is trying to coordinate with Jordan so the Jordanians won't be swept up in the incitement coming out of Jerusalem, as happened in the previous rounds of violence, but officials in Jerusalem know that doesn't always work. 

This time, the inflammatory material is less varied. The fact that Israel has greatly restricted Jewish visits to the Temple Mount, and prevented public figures and politicians (Arabs and Jews) from visiting there has already nullified some of the ammunition the storytellers have been using. What remains are the archaeological excavations. Every dig underway near the Temple Mount, archaeologists believe, will be exploited over the next few weeks to accuse Israel yet again of attempting to destabilize and topple the mosques. 

That's how the Muslim incitement machine operated in years past when Israel excavated at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount enclosing wall; at the foot of the southern part of the Western Wall; and also when the Hasmonean aqueduct was unearthed and an exit was opened from it to the Via Dolorosa. 

That is how the incitement machine worked when an ancient hammam was unearthed and aisles were made underneath the Ohel Yitzhak synagogue on Hagai Street; during the excavations at the Mughrabi slope; and even five years ago, at the dedication of the Hurva Synagogue, which sits in the middle of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and is about 400 meters (1,300 feet) southwest of the Temple Mount compound. At the time, Muslims screamed that "Al-Aqsa is in danger" even though the floor of the Hurva Synagogue is 50 meters (164 feet) above the top of the mosque's domes. The fiction and the facts are two different things. 

A forgotten story documented a few years ago by Dr. Hillel Cohen in his book "The Market Square is Empty -- The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem" may express this best: In 2006, a computerized loudspeaker system was installed in Al-Aqsa mosque and muezzin Naji al-Kazaz's call to prayer was recorded. The system was programmed so that if the muezzin was delayed in sounding the call to prayer for some reason, the system would start automatically and al-Kazaz's voice would be heard from afar. The Jewish engineer who programmed the system for the Waqf was unfamiliar with the Muslim hours of prayer, and the afternoon call to prayer was mistakenly slotted for a quarter to one in the morning. 

And indeed, the first night the muezzin's voice suddenly rang out at 12:45 a.m. Thousands of residents of the Old City who heard the call and knew it wasn't time for prayer assumed that it was a call to come and defend the Mount. They arrived, some armed with sticks, and only after several attempts did the Waqf convince them that it was a mistake and send them home. Not a single word of incitement had been voiced, but the masses still rushed to the Temple Mount. 

In times like these, when the public sphere is once again filling up with explicit cries of incitement, Israel's security officials are preparing for all the possibilities ahead of the approaching Passover holiday.

Nadav Shragai

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=32939

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.