The New York Times has openly addressed the disparity between Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount this week – a possible first for a newspaper now often associated with anti-Israel views.
The paper published a piece entitled “Palestinian Women Join Effort to Keep Jews from Contested Holy Site,” which presents testimony from Palestinian Arab women who campaign to keep the Temple Mount Muslim “so that the Jews don’t get it,” as one interviewee stated.
Despite the pro-Palestinian-leaning angle, the article states explicitly that the Mount “is the holiest site in Judaism” and only “the third holiest place in Islam” and that the site is really maintained not by Israel, but by the Jordanian Waqf Muslim Authority – the Islamic organization which prevents Jewish prayer with an iron fist.
The article also describes in detail how women gather at the entrance to the Mount and wait to harass religious Jews who dare to visit the site, crying “settlers!” and shouting Islamic slogans.
The accounts corroborate with eyewitness reports and video from Temple Mount prayer rights organizations and are a rare admission of how Palestinian Arab women “play the victim” for cameras despite being the perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence.
One snippet of dialogue recorded documents the indifference of the Israel Police on-site as well, after an officer told a tourist that “it’s what they believe.”
Overall, the article focuses more on the feminist side of the story, exploring the opposition the Arab women reportedly face from Palestinian men for their involvement and how women are viewing radical anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity on the Mount as a source of feminine empowerment.
The New York Times has become infamous among its Jewish audience for being blatantly pro-Palestinian, including its inflammatory coverage of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and biased reporting on the car rampage in Jerusalem in October in which a terrorist killed a 3-month-old baby.
