An article in Ma’an by Dr. Ali Awar says that the Jewish connection to the Western Wall is a relatively recent phenomenon. He claims that in fact the Kotel is meaningless to Jews and Judaism, and uses (as proof!) that Yassir Arafat denied that there was any Temple in Jerusalem during Camp David talks, saying that maybe it was in Nablus.
He admits that the Ottomans allowed Jews to worship there (because they were so kind!) but that Muslims always knew that it was a Muslim shrine, the Buraq Wall. (The site of the Kotel was never identified with the story of Mohammed’s magic steed until the 20th century.)
Awar says “The Wailing Wall is exploited by Israeli politicians to extinguish the status of religious legitimacy on this holy place for Muslims.”
He also claims that the deadly 1929 pogroms against Jews broke out because the Jews wanted to put up a partition at the Kotel to separate Jews from Muslims! (The temporary partition was meant to create separate men’s and women’s sections for Yom Kippur prayers.)
This is the quality of Arab scholarship as seen in media that is funded by foreign governments and NGOs.
For “quality” journalism.
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