Open Letter to NYT: Manipulating Temple Mount History to Further Palestinian Authority Propaganda?
In my recent book about the whereabouts of the enigmatic Ark of the Covenant and other Temple treasures, there is an interview with premier archaeologist and Israel Prize winner, Dr. Gabriel Barkay, where we discuss this relatively new phenomenon, coined by a good friend, (the late Charlie Levine), as “Temple Denial Syndrome,” or TDS for short. Originally kicked off by Yasser Arafat during the Camp David negotiations in 2000 with President Bill Clinton, TDS was never really taken seriously by the western mainstream media. Arafat knew, like Hitler did, that if you propagate a lie enough times and successfully sell it to the general public, it will eventually stick. TDS wasn’t a newsworthy item because it had no any credibility. Until now that is.
The recent article in the New York Times: Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place has a downright biased agenda that most of your readers will (hopefully) see through. Your paper is subtly manipulating history towards the political dictates of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and their propaganda machine, lending legitimacy to their false claims of historical ownership of the Temple Mount complex. Is there any basis for such a claim in the Islamic religion – the Quran for instance? A journalist worth his/her weight will research the subject matter thoroughly, and look up all the relevant material.
How can your journalists simply ignore the age-old texts of the Talmud (Tractates Middot and Tamid) that describe in precise detail the Herodian Temple and its priestly service on that very spot? What about the archeological relics and antiquities from the First Temple that have been discovered by people like Dr. Barkay?
Sigh… – those burdensome facts just keep getting in the way, don’t they!
And what does the Christian religion dictate? Indeed, on this last point, please do us all a favor, and get a reporter to go and ask the Pope himself. I’m assuming he would confirm the historical truth, but who knows as to where he is holding politically vis-à-vis the Arabs and the Jews. We in Israel have come to realize that he, like your paper, has no love for Israel.
But could it be that TDS is actually an issue now at the New York Times newspaper? Rick Gladstone’s article claims to have interviewed “expert” archaeological scholars as if they really doubt that the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif) is the location of where the biblical Jewish Temples once stood. He deliberately mixes between not having enough evidence about the exact location of the Temple within the Temple Mount, and the question as to whether the Temple Mount itself was the location of the Temple. This is evident in the very title of the article! Apparently, according to Gladstone, this critical issue was “never definitively answered.” Has he been living on the same planet as all the rest of us? (Or perhaps he’s related to the infamous Richard Gladstone, and his “Gladstone Report” on the Gaza War.) That’s like asking: “Was the White House always in Washington, D.C.?”