After making aliyah (immigrating to Israel) in 1968—about a year after the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six Day War—one of my first tours was to Jerusalem’s Old City and the Dome of the Rock and Mosque of Al Aksa on the Temple Mount.
There, I bought a tourist guide book written in 1962 by Abed Er-Rahman Rissas and entitled: “El Haram Esh Sharif" (The Noble Sanctuary), the Arabic name for the Temple Mount.
On page 1, the book says: “On Mount Moriah, Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac [Genesis 22:2], and here, Ornan the Jebusite had his threshing floor, which David bought and upon which he erected an altar, later to be superseded by Solomon’s Temple.
The full story appears in the December 2012 issue of Israel Today Magazine
Click Here to subscribe and read it now