Back to the Future: Building mosques on lies

Ben Shapiro

What is the most common factually incorrect statement used by the mainstream media? It crosses ideological lines. Both CBS and Fox News state it. So do Reuters and the Washington Times. It has so pervaded popular culture that the vast majority of people have no idea that this "fact" is a canard. It is a falsehood with global implications.

What is this lie? That the Western Wall in Jerusalem is the holiest site in Judaism. The holiest site in Judaism is not the Western Wall but the area behind it: the Temple Mount, the site of the now-destroyed Holy Temple.

There were two Holy Temples that stood on that ground. The first, built by King Solomon in 826 BCE, was destroyed in 423 BCE by the Babylonians; most of the Jews were exiled. Seventy years later, the Jews returned and rebuilt the Holy Temple. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 69 CE; the Jews are still in exile. This exile will not end until the Third Holy Temple is erected on the Temple Mount. The Temple had two sets of walls: the outer, surrounding wall constructed to guard the Temple and the inner wall, an actual part of the Temple. The Western Wall, a remnant of the Second Holy Temple's outer wall, is the only segment of the Second Temple left standing. It is holy only because of what it used to protect; the Temple Mount is holy because of what it is and will be -- the site of the Third Temple.

Muslims claim the Temple Mount as their own. Almost 1,500 years after the building of the First Temple, they pronounced that the site was holy to them. Then, they plopped the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque on the site and started trashing Jewish artifacts in the hopes of removing any remnant of Jewish presence. The Muslims erected the Dome of the Rock on the ground once occupied by the Holy of Holies, a curtained room in the Temple where the High Priest came face to face with the Divine, a place so holy that even he could enter it only once a year on Yom Kippur.

This is typical. Any site of any value to anyone who is not Muslim will eventually become a "holy site," targeted for mosque construction. Muslims claim as holy sites the Church of the Nativity, Hindu shrines in India, the sites of statues in Afghanistan, the Tomb of Joseph, and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, among others. In all of these places, Muslims either have razed or seek to raze existing structures and build a mosque.

Why is this distinction between the Western Wall and the Temple Mount important? The Islamic Waqf now control the activities on the Temple Mount, and the Jews control the Western Wall. Jews are completely barred from visiting the Temple Mount. The Muslims are in the process of destroying Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount and insist on the Temple Mount as part of any peace settlement.

When the media portray the Temple Mount as the "third holiest site in Islam" and do not mention that it is the holiest site in Judaism, it makes it seem as though a political settlement handing over the Temple Mount to the Muslims could be a real possibility -- and that a failure to reach such a settlement stems from Jewish intransigence.

It doesn't. It stems from deep religious conviction and the knowledge that one day the Third Temple will stand on the Temple Mount. Jews have spilled their blood to defend the Temple Mount for millennia and continue to do so today. In 1967, Moshe Dayan misguidedly handed day-to-day control over the Mount to the Muslims. If any government gave away actual sovereignty over the Temple Mount, there would be civil war in Israel.

Israel's far-left Labor Party furthers the confusion by pretending that handing over the holiest site in Judaism is open to negotiation. Likud does not. That is why Ariel Sharon's 2000 visit to the Temple Mount was not "provocation" -- it was a statement that the Temple Mount will always remain in Jewish hands.

Whether through error or purposeful misrepresentation, the media skew the Middle East situation by calling the Western Wall, and not the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. This lie must end. When the Third Temple is built on the Temple Mount, the world must know that it is not Jewish usurpation of a Muslim holy site, but reclamation and redemption of the holiest site in Judaism.

Ben Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada and author of Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House.