On November 8, in a direct attack at the heart of Judaism and the Jewish People, the United Nations General Assembly passed two resolutions that mentioned the “Haram al Sharif” but not its Jewish synonym “the Temple Mount” as one of the “holy places of Jerusalem.” This followed an October 26 resolution by the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which called Israel an “occupying power” of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall Plaza, and demanded that Israel stop building and excavating in the Old City of Jerusalem. These statements deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and implicitly deny that the Jewish Temples ever stood on the Temple Mount, a canard known as “Temple Denial.”
According to a mix of Biblical history, recorded history and tradition, the Temple Mount was the location of the First Jewish Temple, built by King Solomon around 950 BCE and destroyed in the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 567 BCE, and the Second Jewish Temple, which stood from 516 BCE through the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Though Temple Denial reigns at the UN and within the Muslim world, statements by other Muslims and substantial archeological evidence show that the Jewish Temples did in fact exist.
