This is from a Chinese news service, and I’ve been unable to find the story anywhere else, but I thought I should share it. Here’s the item in its entirety:

JERUSALEM, Aug. 15 (Xinhuanet) — Some 100 Jewish far-rightists gathered in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City Monday evening in an attempt to break into the Temple Mount, local newspaper Ha’aretz reported on its online edition.

Police forces dispersed the extremists who did not have the permission to march on the compound. One of the organizers was detained by the police.

Earlier on Monday afternoon, police arrested three far-right extremists who attempted to force their way into the Temple Mount. The latest attempt is seen as a further step by far-rightists to spark a conflict between Jews and Arabs in a bid to stop the government’s disengagement plan.

Police in Jerusalem’s Old City have been on their highest state of alert in recent days.

Israeli army began formal implementation of the disengagement plan Monday morning. According to the plan, which put forward by Sharon at the end of 2003, Israel will remove all 21 Gaza settlements and four of about 120 in the West Bank. Enditem

About the author

Esther Kustanowitz

For more posts by Esther, see EstherK.com, MyUrbanKvetch.com and JDatersAnonymous.com.

14 Comments

  • To tell you the truth I am tuning out of most of this. I can’t bear to see the embarrassment. I am glad that i didn’t send my oldest child to Israel this summer. Next year God willing when things calm down. Yes some of you think they will never calm down now, i think this right wing extremists are trying to bring an apocalypse now. IN a way Sharon is to blame w/ his dufus like attitude. That is perhaps why the President made his remarks, to try and calm down the lunatics.

  • The Chinese press once reported some fake financial news that sent bond prices all over the place. They make the blogosphere, lulei demistafina, look like Scripture.

  • Actually, this sounds familiar. When I was in Jerusalem on Tisha B’av in 1996, a group of activists were trying to storm the Temple Mount. To my understanding, they were actually trying to get up there and rebuild the Beit Hamikdash (!) I also remember hearing that they do it every year on Tisha b’av. It’s comforting to know that pullout or no, some things in Israel never change.

  • Look how far we’ve fallen from the source. We simply take it for granted that you’re not supposed to be up there, and it sickens me.

    Come on, people. It’s OUR freakin’ Temple, it’s OUR freakin’ Mount, and we should be able to be up there any freakin’ time we want to!

    You may point and laugh, and shake your heads, and call them Don Quixote, but I am convinced that the Messiach will come in THEIR merit, not the merit of those of us who sat on the sidelines while our government hands over our birthright to Amelek.

    Yeah, color me a bit emotional right now. These are dark days for Eretz Israel, and those who love her.

  • Just to clarify, I’m not against going to the Mount. I went with my whole family, and if not for the Temple Mount, this blog might not even exist. What makes me nervouse is extremists going to the Mount…because they can be all, um, extreme and stuff…

  • What Esther said. For example, to this day I am in complete agreement with Sharon’s visit to the Mount in 2000. It was his right to visit, as it is the right of any Jew and Israeli.

  • It is true. I have a friend who was there, and I was plannign on being there, but could not make it. maybe today. BTW, maybe some of the people there were extremists, but I would nto say 100 extremists. Most of them are just regular people. Just because someone believes in going up to Har Habayit does not make him an extremist. I go up nearly once a month and I am far from an extremist. I am a liberal right-wing individual (whatever the heck that means).
    It is our right to go to Har Habayit, and they did nothing illegal by walkign to the gate (they could not get up anyway as it is locked to jews except for a few hours a day, which is a shonda on its own!) so the whole thing is part of the overall battle to repress religion in israel.

  • The use of the word “extremeist” in this case is similar to the slanted use of words like terrorist (the disturbed Israeli who shot Arabs), militant (the legions of Arab bus-bombers), ultranationalist (always used to refer to Israelis) etc.

    What is so “extreme” about these people?

    Anyone who has visited the Old City of Jerusalem knows that you must pass several checkpoints – complete with metal detectors and x-rays – to get anywhere near the Temple mount.

    These people are “extremists” because – wait for it – they actually want to pray on the empty plaza surrounding the mosques.

    Those obnoxious Jews!

    Sorry – I don’t think that is so “extreme” – the Temple mount is hardly run like the Emperor’s Forbidden City in Beijing, and most summer days it sees a steady traffic of scantily-clad infidel tourists coming to see – and photograph – the mosques.

    The policy of preventing any Jewish presence on the Temple mount is a pointed challenge to Israel’s sovereignty, and harks back to the dhimmitude that forbade Jews from progressing beyond the seventh step of the staircase outside the Tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

    No extremism here by any normal standard…

  • I wonder where the media dreamed up the idea that ‘extremists’ were trying to ‘storm the temple mount’.

    People, don’t believe the lies. No one tried to ‘storm’ the temple mount. But haaretz will call a few dozen people waiting in line to go up and perhaps some shouting too on police who make ‘selection’ to who can and who will not be allowed up – ‘storming’.

    Did anyone read the article? Too bad the humanist Haaretz doesn’t see anything wrong with people being arrested for stating intentions that they want to go up on the temple mount.

    In other media outlets, it was reported that these ‘extremists’ were arrested at the entrance to the old city at the Jaffa gate(!)

  • From a religious perspective, most opinions are that you are not allowed to go there anyway, it being the Beis Hamikdash grounds. There is no major Rav or Posek who agrees w/ going there anyways.

  • yes it’s true i saw this on french public tv
    but for fucking french tv all the opposite of gaza’s pullot are extremist…

  • My Land, My Love

    by: frieda shor

    Blood, sweat, prayers and tears
    Went into constructing you–My Land, My Love.
    Children dressed in army fatigues
    Ran on scorching sand to find you an oasis.

    So many claim you as theirs,
    So tiny, you are but a speck on the map
    Of the world, and my heart.
    So minute, you stand, staunch and proud
    As the Wailing Wall weeps along with
    My fellow brethren.

    A gargantuan urn of salty tears
    Sits near God’s Throne, so heavy, so laden
    With hope and love; beseeching and fear.

    Dressed in orange, black, white,
    All must unite as one as
    Skin in hues from the darkest to the fairest
    Put one hesitant hand out
    To his brother
    An intake of breath as he prays
    It wont be grabbed and tossed away from its home
    But held in a loving embrace.

    A lone man turns back one more time
    His eyes blinded with tears
    Leaving behind all he cast
    Wills himself not to look over his shoulder
    To see the tombstones left behind
    Or ones that God Forbid await
    To those that will cling for dear life
    Onto My Land, My Love.

    How dare one dissasemble
    The fruits of his back-breaking toil
    Every pain he endured with pride.
    A shack to another, an edifice to him.
    He falls to the ground, kissing barren soil
    Alas! Soaked with blood, tears and perspiration
    And history of generations
    That adored
    My Land, My Love.

    God! My Father, My Creator, All-knowing,
    You–King of Kindness; Master of Sympathy
    Save us–Your children.
    Overturn harsh decrees, Overcome leaders so cowardly
    Remove the animosity between brothers.

    You promised us this inheritance,
    How can it be removed from our hands?

    I may be six thousand miles away,

    Dear God

    Please save

    My Love

    My Land.