Two months ago, I went up to Har Habayit with Feiglin. The police, as usual, gave us a spiritual strip search and told us that any act of prayer would start a thermonuclear war within seconds led by Muhammad himself  and his army of 72 virgins. These virgins, we were told in our debriefing, were all armed with sharp talons dipped in snake venom for which there is no antivenin. Shiites and Sunnis, they continued, would unite globally in stopping the horror of Jewish prayer. Syrians would cease killing each other just to stop us from singing. Oil fields throughout the gulf would be set ablaze and the Caliphate would suddenly materialize and we would all drown in a deafening cacophony of Allahu Akbars.

So after the police saved the world yet again by making sure the Jews didn’t pray up there, we went up. There is one point along the eastern side where Feiglin looks over an edge into a walkway for yet another mosque and we usually see a pile of old wood. This wood is petrified and has been radioactively dated to the time of the First Temple. On that day two months ago we all looked down and saw this:

In the front you can see the ancient wood. In the back you can see it burning in a trash can. That day two months ago, we all looked over that rail and Feiglin said to us, “This may be your last chance to see the surviving wood from the First Temple.” Apparently, they saw that we were interested in the wood, so they started burning it. Among the very last things we were thinking about doing was thanking the police for doing nothing about this and thereby preventing a world war.

Feiglin was then suddenly escorted by one of the policemen. Allegedly, he had prayed. I was with him the whole time and hadn’t noticed any prayers. Maybe the police have a psychic on the Temple Mount security staff. You need extra security when you’re saving the world. He was arrested, his fingerprints forcibly taken, but a judge ordered him released without preconditions.

That was two months ago. This time, when we went to the same spot, the same policeman who had escorted Feiglin out two months before insisted on showing us this:

This shows the surviving pile of the same wood covered with a plastic sheet to protect it from the rain. We didn’t know there was any left. We thought they had burned it all. But apparently they hadn’t. And the police wanted to show us that they were protecting artifacts. And in turn risking the rise of the Caliphate. Sarcasm aside, our hearts jumped, and we were happy. We don’t know how long it will last there before they burn the rest of it.

A few minutes later, the police were out of site, and one from our group informed Feiglin that while they weren’t looking, he had the opportunity for a quick prostration to his Creator if he wished. The Temple Mount is the only place on the planet where a Jew is allowed halachically to prostrate himself with no barrier between him and the floor. The particular area was secluded, walled on three sides, out of view of everyone. So he took the opportunity and did a quick bow, got up, and kept walking. That was it.

It was not a political statement or a planned exercise in disobedience. It was a spontaneous act of religious devotion meant to provoke no one. Feiglin is not very good at making calculated political statements about anything. He’s not much of a politician. He just does and says what he thinks is right.

A few minutes later Feiglin was escorted by the same policeman from the Temple Mount. Apparently, there was an undercover cop with us who saw his little stunt. The undercover cop, not wishing to pass up the chance to save the planet, reported it.

A few hours later, Feiglin was again released from police custody with no preconditions.

Now the police are recommending that he be put on trial for trying to bring about Armageddon by prostrating himself off the cuff in a secluded area on the Temple Mount.

Extremist indeed. Why do I even hang out with these people?

Visit Settlers of Samaria.

A group of 30 Jews who regularly ascend to the Temple Mount after conducting ritual preparations in order to pray and assert a Jewish presence at Judaism’s holiest site were attacked in the morning on Thursday by a group of Arabs shouting out to “Kill the Jews!”

According to a report in Israel’s Rotter, the group arrived at the site at 8:55, and began making its regular way around the outer circumference of the area when a horde of approximately 200 Muslim men and youth began to form, yelling “Allah HuAkbar!” and “Death to the Jews!”

Only one policeman was present as the throng approached the Jews, two of them kicking Jews in the group.  In a few moments, 10 policemen ran from the other side of the Mount, arresting 5 men and dispersing the crowd.

The Temple Mount was closed to Jews and non-Muslims on Sunday, after posters attributed to Likud candidate and activist Moshe Feiglin called for the destruction of the mosques on the site.

Feiglin and his spokespeople denied any involvement in the creation of posters placed throughout Jerusalem calling for a “cleansing” of the “enemies of Israel” from the Temple Mount.  Feiglin was among those prevented from going up on the Temple Mount during his monthly ascension to the holy spot.

Also on Sunday, Israel Army Radio reported that the  ’Ir Amim’ organization, which promotes Arab rights in Jerusalem, wrote to Prime Minister Netanyahu asking him to prevent Moshe Feiglin and other Likud party members from ascending the Temple Mount.

“There was some provocation going on,” Feiglin told The Jewish Press.  “Someone published a flyer in my name calling for the destruction of the mosques (on the Temple Mount) and before I managed to do anything about it, the entire world media was there basically, including al-Jazeera and many European and Israeli media, and the police got scared so they closed the mountain.”

“I think the situation where Israel is walking on egg shells in everything that has any connection to the Temple Mount just shows that the Temple Mount is not really in our hands, and because of that, we are losing the rest of the country,” Feiglin said.  “The Temple Mount is the core, the key, it is the heart of the body of the land of Israel.  That’s why it’s so important to keep our connection to the place and full Israeli sovereignty over the place.”

Feiglin, who earned 25 percent of votes in the Likud party primaries on January 31 against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, goes up onto the Temple Mount every month on the 19^th of the Jewish month.  He urged police to investigate the making of the posters.