Yesterday, the foundation stone was placed for the reconstruction of the Tiferet Yisrael synagogue in Jerusalem.
I discussed previously how this grand synagogue once dominated Jerusalem's skyline and it was destroyed by the Arabs in 1948 along with dozens of other synagogues. Here is what the synagogue looked like from the Temple Mount in the 1930s, Tiferet Yisrael's dome on the left and the Hurva in the middle.
The ceremony on Tuesday night was not heavily highlighted in Hebrew media but it was mentioned in dozens of Arabic news sites.
The minister of endowments in Jordan told Assabeel that he is sending out a distress signal to save the Al Aqsa Mosque in light of this terrible event.
He claims that Tiferet Yisrael will be built on top of an ancient Muslim school. Which makes it surprising that the Ottomans allowed the Jews to build it the first time!
He said that this is part of a systematic plan to Judaize Jerusalem and to force the Muslims out of the city, and this is a stage towards the destruction of Al Aqsa Mosque by the Jews.
Al Watan Voice also warns against this synagogue being restored, pointing out how huge it would be and how it will be used to push the fiction that Jews were ever in Jerusalem in history.
But both articles made a point of mentioning that the dome of the restored Tiferet Yisrael will be higher than that of the Al Aqsa Mosque. (The Jewish Quarter is on a hill.)
The Jordanian minister claims that this height is what makes the synagogue so "dangerous."
The other article says this is "an attempt to Judaize the space in the city of Jerusalem, and to try to disrupt the skyline that highlights the unique al-Aqsa Mosque in general, and the Dome of the Rock in particular, as well as attracting millions of visitors, Jews and foreign tourists, to push the false Talmudic narrative."
Muslims made the exact same objections when the beautiful Hurva synagogue was rebuilt a few years ago. And Mahmoud Abbas has also talked about how awful it is for the Jerusalem skyline to have synagogues that are taller than mosques.