Temple denial is the claim that the successive Temples in Jerusalem either did not exist or they did exist but were not constructed on the site of the Temple Mount, a claim which has been advanced by Islamic political leaders, religious figures, intellectuals, and authors.[1]
Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, used the term "Temple denial" in his 2007 book, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City. Yitzhak Reiter describes the growing tendency of Islamic authorities to deny the existence of the Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount, characterizing it as part of a campaign to increase the status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in Islam as a part of the effort to turn Jerusalem into a Muslim city under Arab governance.[1] The New York Times writes that "Temple denial, increasingly common among Palestinian leaders, also has a long history: After Israel became a state in 1948, the Waqf removed all references to King Solomon's Temple from its guidebooks. Previously, it said that Solomon's Temple was located on the site, a fact which was 'beyond dispute'."[2][3] David Hazony has described the phenomenon as "a campaign of intellectual erasure [by Palestinian leaders, writers, and scholars] ... aimed at undermining the Jewish claim to any part of the land", and he compared the phenomenon to Holocaust denial.[4][5]
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