Ta-Nehisi Coates book betrays his utter ignorance of what he is writing about on the Temple Mount ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Ta-Nehisi Coates book betrays his utter ignorance of what he is writing about on the Temple Mount

Plenty of people have already reviewed and savaged Ta-Nehisi Coates' book "The Message" section on Israel. I have not read the whole thing but I was looking at Benny Morris' scathing review and saw him mention something that prompted me to check out its context.

Coates describes his visit to the Temple Mount. Actually, he doesn't: he only describes waiting in line.

On my first full day in Jerusalem, I walked with a group of fellow writers, editors, and artists into the Old City of Jerusalem. ...There were about a dozen of us total, pulled from all over the world—South Africa, Kashmir, the U.K., and America—at the invitation of the Palestine Festival of Literature. ....Our group of companions walked to the brink of the Lion’s Gate, where we met the custodian of one of Islam’s holiest sites: the Haram al-Sharif complex, which includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. This was the object of our visit, but it was made difficult by the phalanx of soldiers who examined our passports and then, for no discernible reason, made us wait.

The land of the Haram al-Sharif complex is holy to both Muslims and Jews.....The Old City is in East Jerusalem, and, for the moment, a Jordanian-funded Waqf exercises nominal control of Al-Aqsa. But the real control belongs to the occupying power, with predictable results: Israelis regularly tour Al-Aqsa, while Palestinians are barred from the Western Wall.

We stood at the Lion’s Gate for the next forty-five minutes or so, talking amongst ourselves, unsure of what was happening or why we had been stopped. Was it that we had cameras? Was it that our guide was Jordanian? No justifications were given, no questions asked, no instructions offered. The soldiers just stood there with their enormous guns, blocking the way. I leaned against a nearby wall and watched as groups of tourists streamed in and out of the Gate, unmolested and unquestioned. But no one visibly Muslim passed through the Lion’s Gate in all the time we were made to wait. I could not quite put words to what I was seeing, but watching those soldiers stand there and steal our time, the sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs, I could feel the lens of my mind curving to refract the blur of new and strange events.

None of this makes any sense - until you realize that Coates is not describing Lion's Gate but the Mughrabi (Moroccan) Gate. The Mughrabi Gate is the only gate to the Temple Mount that the Waqf allows non-Muslims to use for visiting the Temple Mount complex. (They hold the keys to all other gates.)

There are about half a dozen accessible gates to the Temple Mount. For all of them but this one, Muslims enter and exit pretty freely. There are no lines to enter using those gates except during major holidays and perhaps Fridays when tens of thousands go there to pray.

That's the reason Coates saw no Muslims entering. Those heavily armed guards were not there to prevent Muslim worshippers, who can stroll in through the other gates. Here's a Google Street View image of the entrance from the Cotton Merchants' Gate - no barriers, no turnstiles, no obvious metal detectors.

The guards at Mughrabi Gate are there to protect the tourists who have very limited hours that they can visit. They are there to block Jews and Christians from bringing in religious or political objects like prayerbooks or flags. They protect the Mount itself from fanatics like Denis Michael Rohan, the Christian who set part of the mosque on fire in 1969.

Those scary guards are there to make it difficult for non-Muslims, not Muslims.

Going to the Mount as a group of a dozen people, including professional photographers with equipment, including a Jordanian who would normally enter through another gate, would definitely require more scrutiny than the average tourist during visiting hours.

In 2013, they stopped me - a quite identifiable Jew - from bringing in various pieces of video and sound equipment for the video tour I made. I had to leave most of it with the guards and retrieve it afterwards, recording my visit with a single camera.

Muslims don't have to jump through the hoops that Jews and Christians have to in order to visit. Coates' observation that there were no Muslims is not evidence of anti-Muslim apartheid - it is evidence of anti-Jewish and anti-Christian apartheid!

Also, Israeli Arabs and Palestinian residents of Jerusalem can visit the Western Wall any time with no issues. West Bank Palestinians need a permit, just as they do to go to the rest of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Coates makes an assumption based on his hate of Israel and doesn't bother to do the least amount of checking.

Just this one section of the book shows that Ta-Nehisi Coates is an unreliable and sloppy reporter, looking for evidence that fits his biases and showing no interest in finding out the truth.