Waqf: 34,000 Jews visited the Temple Mount in 2021; a Facebook post no one noticed was their big story of the year

The Waqf on the Temple Mount issued it annual report on "violations" by Jews of the area.

The  number of Israeli settlers who stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque during 2021 reached more than 34,000.

The Director-General of the Department of Islamic Endowments and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib said - today, Thursday - that "the number of Jewish extremists storming the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque during the year 2021 reached 34,112 extremists."

The settlers, according to a statement by the Director of Endowments, carried out their incursions "under the protection of the Israeli police and its heavily armed special forces, which turned Al-Aqsa Mosque into a military barracks."

Sheikh Al-Khatib warned against the dangerous escalation of Jewish extremists' incursions into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and desecrating its sanctity by performing Talmudic prayers and rituals inside its courtyards.

They then go into details of the horrible things the Jews did:

Throughout the year, incursions were carried out inside the mosque led by rabbis, soldiers, officers, intelligence agents, and former Knesset members. They deliberately organized guided tours of the “alleged temple”, delivered biblical lessons in Al-Aqsa Square, organized “rabbinic blessings” and puberty ceremonies for males and females, and announcing marriage, in addition to reading the Psalms of the Torah.

A Jewish group calling itself "Return to the Temple Mount" announced last September that the shofar (one of the biblical rituals) was blown inside Al-Aqsa for the first time since the occupation of Jerusalem. Extremists brought the fruits of the "Feast of Sukkot" and palm fronds to the mosque on the first day of their feast, and they raised the Israeli flag in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque at that time.

I cannot find any news articles about blowing the shofar or bringing a lulav and etrog to the Temple Mount. These objects would be confiscated at the entrance. It may be that someone snuck in a shofar and blew it quietly, but I cannot find it reported. 

Among the most serious violations that were also recorded, the extremist Rabbi Yaakov Hayman published a picture of the Dome of the Rock, and announced the need for an engineer specialized in demolishing facilities, to present a proposal for how to remove the building and establish the “Third Temple” in its place.

Indeed, Yaakov Hayman did post that on Facebook.  He used to be a leader in the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation but that organization no longer exists (the domain name was lost, its Facebook page has not been updated since 2015.)  He posted it as a private person, it received no coverage in Israeli media - and the Muslim world freaked out.

Facebook banned him for a day because of how offended Muslims were. 

So in the end, the most serious "violations" were: 34,000 Jews visiting (which is fewer than the number of Muslims on any given Friday,) rumors about shofars, lulavs and etrogs being brought there; people giving talks about the Temples, silent prayer, someone unfurling an Israeli flag for a second before being expelled, and a Facebook post that offended them.

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