(JNS) The Israeli Supreme Court, in the 2004 case of Gershon Salomon v. Minister of Police, held that Jews have the legal right to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, though it could be limited if the public order is threatened. The decision was written by left-wing Chief Justice Aharon Barak.

Israel’s minister of internal security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, with the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been able to enforce the Supreme Court decision and protect Jewish prayer on the Mount.

Outrageously, Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has joined a petition to the court to remove Ben-Gvir from his job, partly because of his actions to allow such prayer as a violation of what is claimed to be the “status quo,” even though her position runs contrary to a prior Israeli Supreme Court ruling on the matter. Plus, no basis under Israeli law allows the removal of a minister who is not under indictment.

It’s hard to think of a more obvious case of antisemitism than to oppose Jewish prayer in a public area on the holiest site in Judaism. The Temple Mount is the location of the first two holy temples, and until recently, Muslims acknowledged the Jewish connection to this holy site. In 1925, the Supreme Muslim Council published a guide to the Temple Mount for tourists that said the site’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”

This, too, is the spot, according to the Bible, on which “David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”

The guide further states that Muslim rule over the Temple Mount began in 637 CE, the “year the Caliph Omar occupied Jerusalem.” In 1925, it seems, Muslim leaders understood that the Jews were the indigenous people of the Land of Israel, and that the Temple Mount was Jewish and any Muslim sovereignty over the area was an “occupation.”

The antisemitic canard that the Temple Mount is not holy to Jews was notoriously enunciated by PLO chief Yasser Arafat on July 17, 2000, at the Camp David Summit.

Arafat shocked then-President Bill Clinton when he denied that the Jewish Temples were ever built on the Mount. Danny Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the United States, recounted at the time that Clinton was furious. He yelled at Arafat: “Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Chairman: When my messiah Jesus Christ walked on the Temple Mount, he didn’t see any mosques. He didn’t see Al-Aqsa. He didn’t see the Dome of the Rock. He saw only the Jewish Temple.”

The Muslim waqf has taken action to destroy the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of religious affairs (the PA is the successor of the PLO), has also asserted that Al-Aqsa “will not be shared with anyone, and no one besides Muslims will pray in it.” In December 2021, he stated that the Western Wall is “an authentic part of Al-Aqsa Mosque only.”

And at a parliamentary session, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh said: “I congratulate all Palestinians and all Jordanian Islamic waqf workers who stand as tall as a turret, and those who throw stones at pro-Zionists [worshippers at the Western Wall] who defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Moses Maimonides, the great codifier of Jewish law whose picture is displayed in the US House of Representatives, apparently did not believe that it was forbidden to go up to the Temple Mount and pray there, since he did so on the sixth day of the Jewish month of Cheshvan.

The most famous ascension to the Mount since 1967 was that of then-Likud leader Ariel Sharon. He visited the site on Sept. 28, 2000. Within six months of that visit, in March 2001, Sharon became prime minister. His friend, journalist Uri Dan, wrote that it was that stop at the site that catapulted him to the head of government.

It is important to note that US President Donald Trump and members of his administration have not criticized the protection of the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, as prior Democratic presidents have done. It represents a stand against antisemitism to protect Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and works to increase Jewish visitors there.

Unfortunately, Israel has an attorney general siding with antisemites and against the opinion of Israel’s Supreme Court. It’s not Ben-Gvir who needs to be replaced, but Baharav-Miara, who holds a personal political agenda against Israeli law.

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