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Originally posted by DarthAwesome
reply to post by minor007
First Israel isn't the only country to fight over the "holy land" or have you forgotten the Crusades?
Second the problems in the middle east are far broader than a squabble over a stone temple.
On January 8, 2001, former Shin Bet secret service chief Carmi Gillon and former police commissioner Assaf Hefetz together with leading Israeli academics delivered a report to the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak detailing their concerns regarding plots by Jewish extremist groups to blow up the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.1 Keshev, the Centre for the Protection of Democracy based in Tel Aviv, founded by Gillon and Hefetz following the assassination of Rabin, published a 12 page report entitled, "Target Temple Mount" which examined current threats to the Temple Mount from extreme militant and Messianic groups. The report claimed, 'The Temple Mount is like a smouldering volcano that is bubbling and threatening to erupt - a threat that is liable to endanger Israel's existence.'2 In 1999, the US Anti-Defamation League (ADL) included Gershon Salomon, leader of the Temple Mount Faithful, on a list of "threats to (US) national security."3 On the 8th January 2001, 500,000 secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered near the Temple Mount at the Western Wall, 'and swore faithfulness to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.'4 In July 2001 the Rabbinical Council of Judea, Samaria and Gaza called on all rabbis to bring their communities to visit the Temple Mount. This was the first time a group of rabbis representing a significant proportion of the religious Jewish community had ruled it permissible for Jews to ascend the Temple Mount. Previously this had been forbidden. The rabbis also called upon the Yesha Council of Jewish settlements to organise mass visits to the Temple Mount from the settlements. Settlement residents tend to be the more politically right wing religious Jews.5 During the same month, the Israeli Supreme Court made a significant decision, once again, for the first time, allowing the Temple Mount Faithful to hold a symbolic cornerstone laying ceremony for the Third Temple near the Dung Gate adjacent to the Western Wall. Each year attempts are made by the Temple Mount Faithful to place a three ton stone on the Temple Mount on Tisha b'Av (29th July) when the Jews mourn the destruction of the first and second Temples and also during the Feast of Sukkoth (usually early October).6 Muslims see this as further indication that Zionists are attempting to take the Temple Mount area by force, destroy the Dome of the Rock and rebuild the Jewish Temple on the site.7