Islamic Guards try to Boot Gabriel Barkay for Saying ‘Temple Mount’ on the Temple Mount

Islamic Guards try to Boot Gabriel Barkay for Saying ‘Temple Mount’ While Leading a Tour on the Temple Mount

“The man just coming up and saying that we couldn’t use the words ‘Temple Mount’ was, in a way, saying that the Jewish people don’t have a connection to the land, which I think borders on problematic,”

When will the harassment end? 

Gabriel Barkay was explaining some of the history of the contested holy site, inevitably using the words 'Temple Mount' now and again, when he was abruptly interrupted:  Islamic guards tried to boot him for saying ‘Temple Mount’ on the Temple Mount.

Archaeologist Gabriel Barkay (right) talks with American university students from UCLA on the Temple Mount on January 1, 2017. (Ilan Ben Zion/Times of Israel)

[TimesofIsrael:] Islamic authorities managing the Temple Mount attempted to have a veteran Israeli archaeologist ejected from the Jerusalem flashpoint holy site on Sunday for using the term “Temple Mount” in a lecture to American students. Waqf guards brought him to Israeli police at the site to complain, and the police, while saying there were no legal grounds to eject him, advised him to refrain from using the phrase “Temple Mount” for the rest of the group’s visit.

[…] The incident, which was witnessed by this reporter and which other tour guides said was not without precedent, highlighted ever-present tensions over the nomenclature used at the site, months after Israel furiously protested a UNESCO resolution that refers to The Temple Mount and Western Wall as solely Muslim sites.

[…] In passing, he once again referred to the site as the Temple Mount; its Arabic name is Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. Incensed, the guards interrupted once more, ordered 72-year-old Barkay to stand, and marched him over to a cluster of Israel Police officers who were standing beneath a clutch of pines.

[…] While the Jordanian-run and Palestinian-staffed Waqf manages the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, it has no authority over who enters the Temple Mount compound, which is guarded by Israeli police.

Source for this article: TimesofIsrael.

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Official website of Gabriel Barkay

This is Our Temple Mount. Here King Solomon built the First Temple almost 3,000 years ago. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, but 70 years later Jews returning from exile built the Second Temple on the same site. King Herod refashioned it into an edifice of great splendor.

[Wikipedia] The Third Temple, or Ezekiel's Temple (Hebrew: בית המקדש השלישי‎‎: Beit haMikdash haShlishi lit. (The) House, the Holy, the Third), is a Holy Temple architecturally described and prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel, a house of prayer for all people with a sacrificial service. It is noted by Ezekiel as an eternal edifice and permanent dwelling place of the God of Israel on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The Third Temple. "And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the house of Hashem shall be established at the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all of the nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we shall walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:2-3)."

Tour of Har HaKodesh