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Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Saudi-American academic couldn't visit the Al Aqsa Mosque because of Palestinian hate

Najat Al-Saeed is a Saudi-American independent academic researcher who teaches in Dubai and writes for Israel Hayom.

Earlier this month she tweeted details about her trip to Israel, causing much discussion in Arab media.


Now she has written about her experiences during her short trip to Israel for Al-Hurra. It was virtually all positive.

The one slight discomfort that she felt came not from Israelis - but from Palestinians.

Ever since the Abraham Accords, Palestinian Muslims on the Temple Mount have been harassing and intimidating any Muslim with a Gulf accent who wants to visit Al Aqsa Mosque.

Here is how Najat describes her visit to Jerusalem and the third holiest site in Islam:

My impression before my visit to Jerusalem was that it is a small and religious city, but I was surprised that it is larger than I expected, and it is not only a religious city, but also a contemporary city.  I saw the religious side of the city I saw when I visited the Old City of Jerusalem with the wonderful tour guide, Shaked Berry, who coordinated with Sharaka (an NGO that supports peace between Israel and Gulf stets)  and I saw a true incarnation of the three major Abrahamic religions: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall for Judaism, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Christianity, the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque for Muslims. The Old City is divided into the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter and the Jewish Quarter.   

The confusion I found on my trip like many Muslims is that we always imagine the Dome of the Rock, a holy Islamic shrine, to be the Al-Aqsa Mosque....

Therefore, the moment I stood in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque was solemn, because I saw myself in front of a long history, and the truly touching moment was when I heard the call to prayer for the Maghrib prayer while I saw people of different faiths walking in the square. But what struck me was that I could not go inside the mosque because of security warnings, especially after there were several incidents against Gulf Arabic-speaking visitors, especially when the visitor knows that they are from the Gulf countries, so I preferred not to speak in Arabic and go immediately to the Christian neighborhood and then the Jewish one. 
Palestinian antisemitism is so entrenched that they not only try to discriminate against Jews, but also against Muslims who have the audacity be be friends with Jews. 

 


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