The Palestinian Authority is circumventing “peace talks” and intensifying incitement over the Temple Mount, warning of a “religious war” while Fatah terrorists announce they plan Erev Yom Kippur attacks on Jews throughout Israel.

A Knesset minster fueled Muslim outrage by performing the Priestly Blessing there on Wednesday.

Jewish activists promoting visits to the Temple Mount have escalated their campaign, and Israel’s senior police official announced a dramatic turnaround in his attitude, categorically stating that Jews  have a right to pray at Judaism’s most holy site.

Israeli police chief Yohanan Danino said visiting the holy compound was “an undisputed right for Jews,” reflecting recent notations by the High Court that the prohibition against Jews to enter is discriminatory. It also has more than hinted that Jews have a right to pray there.

The Chief Rabbinate has ruled that Jews are not allowed to ascend the Temple Mount because of issues of impurity where the Holy Temples once stood, but many national religious rabbis and some Haredim have concluded that visits are permitted in particular areas.

The most prominent visitor this week was Housing Minister Ariel, who arrived at the site on Wednesday under heavy guard less than three days before the Yom Kippur holiday begins Friday night. Approximately 100 yeshiva students accompanied him, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency.

Ariel, a Kohen,  not only visited but he also committed the ultimate in in the eyes of Muslims by performing the Priestly Blessing for Jerusalem City Council candidate Dov Kalmanovitz.

A Music cleric went bananas and called for police to stop this terrible crime, an offense to Muslims all over the world.

Ariel’s visit revealed some real crimes on the Temple Mount, such as Muslim construction there without a  building permit.

The Jewish delegation left the site after approximately 45 minutes.

Ma’an reported that Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, Head of the Islamic Higher Commission warned of “Israeli ambitions” to allow Jews as well as Arabs to pray at the site. Ariel makes no bone about his desire that Israel take sovereignty over the Temple Mouton and allows Jews to pray there.

“This is an invitation to a religious war in the region, and official encouragement urging the extremist Jewish groups to storm al-Aqsa Mosque and ruin it,” the PA ministry warned.

Following PA  Mahmoud Abbas  policy of preaching peace while inciting violence, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades threatened that it has given the “green light” for attacks on Friday, the day before Yom Kippur.

Referring to the Temple Mount, the Brigades denounced  what it said has been “an invasion of herds of settlers to the compound and (they) harm the worshippers without any intervention from the international community.”

Muslim official also stepped up this week the rejection that Jews have any connection with the Temple Mount and rejected the announced discovery of Jewish gold coins near the Temple Mount as a hoax.

The Al Aqsa Foundation of Waqf and Heritage has categorically rejected Israeli claims that rare golden “Jewish treasures” labeled the discovery “as an attempt to support Israeli claims about Jewish rights in the holy city and to impose Israeli sovereignty on the occupied holy compound through the use of fake evidence,” Gulf News reported.

Israeli archaeologists discovered a treasure chest of 36 gold coins from the Byzantine era and a gold medallion with a menorah.

“An immediate Arab and Muslim campaign is needed to stop the Israeli attempts to Judaize the holy city of Jerusalem,” said the statement. “Excavations and findings of Israeli institutions in the holy city are not objective,” said the statement, because the archaeologists are “enthusiastic servants of Zionist ideology.”

It added, “Many of those who conduct excavations on the boundaries of Al Aqsa Holy Compound have been involved in major operations to fake history, and those excavators have been taking advantage of the excavations and findings to prove their Torah theories and claims.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry can rest assured that Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat is not talking with his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni about the Temple Mount in their American-orchestrated “secret talks.”

They are talking about borders and security, but Kerry does not understand that the Palestinian Authority, always being careful to abide by the strictest religious opinions, will depend on the Chief Rabbinate’s ruling that Jews cannot pray on the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount was opened to visitors on Wednesday morning, on the eve of Rosh Hashana, and masked Arabs took advantage of that and began stoning visitors and policemen in the Temple Mount plaza.

Following the stoning, police entered the Temple Mount in force and scattered the stone throwers, many of whom ran into the mosque to avoid arrest.

It is now quiet on the Temple Mount, and the visits are continuing uninterrupted.

This morning, police also turned around dozen of buses transporting Arabs heading to the Temple Mount.

Raed Salach, the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, called on his Arab followers to prevent Jews from going up to the Temple Mount today.

Raed Salach was previously convicted of funding Hamas, meeting an Iranian intelligence officer, and attacking a policeman for which he went to jail a few times.

The courts just released Salach again today, following an incitement speech last week, with a restraining order of not to get within 30 kilometers of Jerusalem for the next 180 days.

Ra’ad Salah, head of the radical Islamic Moveent’s northern branch, incited Arabs with Israeli citizenship on Friday, telling them in no uncertain terms that Israel was behind the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi last month.

In a speech marking the 44th anniversary of a crazed, Christian Australian’s attempt to burn down the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in 1969, Salah blamed Israel for the attack and for the coup in Egypt.

“The Israeli occupation stood behind the burning of the Al Aqsa mosque and it stands behind the destruction in Egypt,” he said in Kfar Kara, located less than 10 miles from the Mediterranean Coast, between Haifa and Tel Aviv.

The attack on the Temple Mount was carried out by Denis Michael Rohan, who set fire to the Al Aqsa mosque. He was arrested immediately, and the court sent him to a mental institution after declaring him insane. Israel deported him to Australia in 1974, and he died in 1995 while under psychiatric care. He had claimed he tried to destroy he mosque because he was the “Lord’s emissary” to destroy the mosque in order to  allow Jews to rebuild the Temple Mount and speed the Second Coming of Jesus.

No sane person believe Israel was involved or behind the attack, but Israel insists on giving Salah the freedom of speech to incite hate and violence in Israel, ignoring the principle once established by the U.S. Supreme Court that freedom of speech stops at “yelling fire in a crowded theatre.”

The theatre is Israel and Salah, much more than Mahmoud Abbas, is leading the incitement as a Fifth Column within Israel.

Salah is from Um el-Fahm, an Arab Israeli city where he was elected mayor three times and where he has established his Islamic Northern Branch headquarters in the north. Jews don’t dare venture into the city unless they have pre-arranged business. It is one of the country’s fiercest anti-Israel hotbeds of incitement, hatred and terror.

Salah has a long record of crime and anti-Israel activity that could have kept him behind bars for years. He was arrested in 2003 and was convicted of funding Hamas and having been in contact with an Iranian intelligence agent, for which he was sentenced to prison for a grand total of two and a half years.

He has frequently whipped up violent riots in Jerusalem, where he has been banned several times from entering.

In 2009, he stated in Um el-Fahm, “In spirit and blood we will earn Al-Aqsa. We will be martyrs for Allah and Jerusalem. We will bless holy death in the name of Allah in the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa.”

His open incitement against Israel is enough to put him in jail time and time again, but Salah keeps coming back and Israel insists on ignoring him, as if he will fade away.

Instead, Salah wins more followers every day. He has reached incitement against Israel to Bedouin in the Negev, where Jews already are a tiny minority outside of Be’er Sheva.

The London Guardian’s Mick Dumper noted as far back as 2009 that Salah’s “initial convention in Um el-Fahm has now evolved into an annual rally, drawing around 50,000 supporters and inspiring similar solidarity events across the Arab and Islamic world, from Lebanon to South Africa.

“This is extended by subsidized trips to al-Aqsa for Palestinians in Israel, with more than 2 million visits to the site since 2001….

“By its use of different media, the Islamic Movement has positioned itself as a key agent in both the struggle on the ground and the regional and international debates over al-Aqsa and the status of Jerusalem. Some senior PA officials now recognize that Salah’s public speeches and activities within Jerusalem have an impact upon their scope for negotiation and will undoubtedly influence future policy.

“In the words of one such official, ‘This self-appointed sheikh of al-Aqsa has built his own kingdom within Jerusalem. He is seeking to capture the hearts and minds of Jerusalemites as victory in Jerusalem offers him the greatest platform to Islamic victory in the Arab world.’”

Salah was on the Mavi Mamara, the lead ship in the  May 2019 flotilla to Gaza that was organized by the Turkish-based IHH “charity” foundation, whose Turkey branch been defined by Germany as in illegal terrorist organization.

On Tisha B’Av Prime Minister Netanyahu dramatically declared that Israel would not allow foreigners to interfere with our borders. This may have sounded like good news to local ears, but on the very same day the prime minister contradicted his own policy.

On the morning of Tisha B’Av, hundreds of Jews, among them three Knesset members, attempted to enter the Temple Mount – but were denied access. The next day Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin made a second attempt to enter the Mount but was turned away. When MK Yariv Levin asked about this fiasco in the Knesset plenum, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich answered, as usual, that there is no policy change regarding the Mount and that anyone who wishes to enter can do so. He said that Jewish visitors enter the Mount every day with no problem and that the closure of the Mount to visitors (including Knesset members) was the security decision of the local commander.

Aharonovich knowingly lied to the Knesset. Everyone involved with the Temple Mount issue knows that since Netanyahu acquiesced to the demands of the Muslim wakf and denied me access to the Temple Mount, police control of the holy site has rapidly deteriorated. The Temple Mount has become a staging ground for a vicious struggle, with cries of “kill the Jews!” becoming routine there. Jews are consistently distanced from the Mount and Israel’s police project unprecedented spinelessness, fear and defeatism in the face of the burgeoning brazenness of the Muslim wakf.

Israeli police have all the means at their disposal – if they choose to use it – to disperse the Arab rioters within minutes and to make it possible for the Jews to visit their holiest site. But, as it is wont to do, Israel’s police adopted the role of security fig leaf for the prime minister, who is giving the holy Mount’s sovereignty to Jordan and the Muslim wakf – while talking mightily about not allowing foreigners to interfere in Israel’s sovereignty.

Aharonovich claimed that the Mount was closed, due to security considerations, as per the decision of the local commander. But there is a truly reliable side to this story contrary to his version of events. Here is the relevant part of the Jordan News Agency’s July 16 report from Ramallah:

Israeli Police Prevent Jewish Extremists From Entering Al-Aqsa Compound Due To Demand By Jordan

Following the pressure exerted by [the] Jordanian government on the Israeli authorities, the Israeli police on Tuesday closed the Mughrabi Gate, one of Al-Aqsa Mosque’s doors, and prevented Jewish extremists from entering it.

Director of the Islamic Waqf in occupied Jerusalem, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, told Petra [News] that the Israeli police closed the gate and prevented extremists and foreign tourists from entering Al-Aqsa compound today, “the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple,” after Jordanian pressure and intervention by the Department of Islamic Waqf and [the] Jordanian ambassador in Tel Aviv, Walid Obeidat.

He confirmed that the ban came as a result of the intensive communications undertaken by Jordan to prevent the desecration of Al-Aqsa during the holy month of Ramadan. Al-Khatib praised the vital Jordanian role in protecting Jerusalem and the holy sites.

This report, verified by additional sources, is nothing new. The prime minister has used the police, the attorney general’s office and the courts before in his quest to implement a political decision when wanting to cede sovereignty on the Temple Mount to the Muslims. And he’s done this without the Knesset’s authorization. This is how issues surrounding the Temple Mount have been disposed of since it was liberated. Netanyahu has simply expanded the practice.

The capitulation on the Temple Mount leads to the construction halt in Jerusalem. In other words, the organs close to the heart become infected with the same illness: the loss of sovereignty syndrome. In this manner, our existential legitimacy in the entire land is crumbling before our eyes.

What do we expect of the European Union? After all, for 46 years we have been saying that the land of Israel is theirs – not ours. We hurried to give the heart of Jerusalem and the nation, the Temple Mount, to the Muslim wakf. We refused to declare Israel’s sovereignty in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. We recognized another, conveniently invented “nation” as indigenous to the land, recognized its terrorist liberation movement, and armed it with Israeli weapons. We vowed to retreat so as to enable the establishment of a state for this make-believe “nation” in the heart of biblical Israel. We expelled and destroyed entire Jewish communities. We committed ourselves to the two-state principle.

But over the past 20 years not one of our leaders, at any level, has said that this is our land – no ifs, ands, or buts. This straightforward phrase simply does not exist in the lexicon of Israel’s political and military leadership.

So why are we surprised that the Europeans are tired of this entire subject? It took them 46 years to be convinced that we are serious that this really is not our land, that we are nothing more than foreign conquerors in Palestine. Perhaps the Arabs are not nice, they think, but they are very, very right on this issue. After all, Israel’s political Left and Right have both bowed to their claims and recognized the justice of their cause. Yitzhak Rabin shook the hand of their murderous leader, while Netanyahu hugged him with both his hands. So what can we expect: that after we have admitted that we are the problem, the Europeans will allow us to continue to threaten world peace?

We no longer have anywhere to run from the scales of justice. When you do not put your weight on one side of the scale, the other side is heavier. You can be prettier, nicer, more European – and even a peace seeker. But if you have abandoned your side of the scale, the other side will always win.

We lost the justice of our cause when we gave the Temple Mount to the Muslims. The only way to restore our justice is to remove the Muslim wakf from the Mount and to empower our holiest site as the center of holiness and exclusive sovereignty of Israel.

Haredi men and women and the Women of the Wall movement made their monthly commotion at the Western Wall Wednesday morning,  ignoring pleas from the Western Wall rabbi to show “sensitivity” to Muslims and not to pray at the holy site.

The Women of the Wall also rejected a police request not to come with Tefillin, which are not used by women in traditional Judaism. However, police have successfully barred Jews from ascending the Temple Mount the entire week.

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz published a letter Tuesday, emphasizing “sensitivity and security at the conclusion of the month of Ramadan”, the Muslim holy month that concludes this week. Tens of thousands of Muslims crowd the Temple Mount for Muslim prayers in Ramadan, especially at the beginning and the end of the month.

Rabbi Rabinowitz has failed in the past to keep the Women of the Wall (WoW) away from the Kotel,  but his using “sensitivity to Muslims” as an excuse is exactly the kind of Ghetto mentality that has allowed Arabs to squeeze out political and religious concessions from Jews for decades.

The unprecedented closure of the Temple Mount to Jews for an entire week was a victory for the Waqf, the Muslim authority that runs the holy site to which Israel has surrendered de facto sovereignty. Harassment, insults and riots by Palestinian Authority Muslims have occasionally forced Jews to leave the Temple Mount, but they have become routine in recent weeks.

Police have allowed the violence to win the day, and Rabbi Rabinowitz’s “sensitivity” to Muslims broadcasts a strong signal that Jews are willing to give up their rights if it means causing a commotion.

Ironically, it is the Women of the Wall and Haredim who are not surrendering. Approximately 250 women showed up at the Western Wall Wednesday morning, which is the first fay of the Hebrew month of Elul and the first day of daily shofar blowing until the day before Rosh HaShanah, except for Shabbat.

An unusually large number of Haredim also showed up and filled up the women’s section, preventing the Women of the Wall from praying there.

Police also stopped a woman from breaking the rules of the Western Wall by bringing a Sefer Torah into the prayer area. The only Torah scrolls that are allowed to be used are those that already are in place, and, of course, Rabbi Rabinowitz does not allow women to use one of the Western Wall scrolls.

However, he had no problem breaking the rules and allowing Haredim to use a megaphone so they could pray louder and blow their whistles louder in order to aggravate the women.

Between the women’s singing and the whistles and shouts of the Haredim, the shofar sounded, heralding the People of Israel to repent for their sins towards the High Holy Days.

The Muslims, instead of scratching their heads at the absurdity of politics disguised by a costume of prayer  at the Western Wall, are probably celebrating the end of Ramadan as the first blow against true Jewish prayer at the Western Wall.

Jerusalem police have accelerated the shutdown of the Temple Mount to Jews and have barred them entry until next Sunday, sparking a planned protest rally for 7:30 Wednesday morning at the Mugrahbim Bridge entrance to the holy site form the Western Wall plaza.

The police are keeping the Temple Mount open only for Muslims because of their celebrations at the end of Ramadan.

The Temple mount was closed to non-Muslims for a large period of the current Hebrew month of Av and beginning of Elul.

One the days that Jews were allowed to ascend, they were subject to abuse and harassment by Muslims and their visits often were shortened by police.

The Joint Committee of Temple Mount Organizations has announced a protest vigil this Wednesday, August 7, at 7:30 AM, by the Mugrabi Bridge connecting the Western Wall plaza with the Mughrabi Gate of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

According to the organizers, which include journalist Arnon Segal and Women in Green founders Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katsover, the vigil will be held in response to an announcement last Tuesday by the Police official in charge of the holy sites, Commander Avi Bitton, that the Temple Mount would remain open only to Muslims and closed to Jews and to tourists at least until after the Muslim holiday of Idl-Fitter, next Sunday, the fifth of Elul or August 11.

This is breaking the rules, cry out the organizers, members of organizations promoting Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, warning that Jerusalem Police has already violated the long held status quo by shutting off the Temple Site to non-Muslims throughout the month of Ramadan.

This past month, the vigil organizers complain that on those few days when Jews were allowed to go up to the Mount, they suffered constant abuse by the Muslims and by the police.

Two weeks ago, Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin was chased away from the Temple Mount by a crowd of Muslims. According to the vigil organizers, police did not intervene to prevent the “screaming and harassment and threats by the Muslims against Elkin and his family.”

But the biggest complaint of the organizers has to do with the fact that the Arabs have, apparently, discovered the surefire method of keeping the Jews off the Mount – all they have to do is threaten violence, and the police immediately folds, and rather than responding to the bullies by imposing law and order—a fairly basic expectation of our law enforcement agencies—they join forces with them to block Jewish access.

It’s been ten years, the protesters say, since the Temple mount was re-opened to Jewish visitors—not for prayer, mind you, God forbid—and now they fear the permanent sealing off of the holiest Jewish site bar none appears closer than ever.

“It seems the police is throwing a trial balloon,” reads the organizers’ email. “They try to see if the Temple Mount is important to a large Jewish population, or only to some ‘crazies.’ It is obvious that if this passes quietly, it will get worse for the Jews.”

And so the Joint Committee of the Temple Mount Organizations have decided to hold a mass protest vigil to remind the police, the politicians, and—most important—ourselves, that the holiest place for the Jewish People is not the Kotel, with all due respect, but the Temple Mount.

As one organizer put it, according to Matar, celebrating Rosh Chodesh at the Kotel and not on the Temple Mount is tantamount to celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, in the Knesset parking lot, while the building itself would be chock full of Arabs.

They invite “all to whom a Jewish presence at the Jews’ most holy site in the world is important, to wake up early Wednesday morning and come.”

Wouldn’t it be interesting if, this coming Rosh Chodesh Elus, Wednesday morning, all the Jews will find their way up to the Temple Mount, leaving down below only the Women of the Kotel?

Don’t forget to dip in the Mikvah first, in case they actually let everybody up.

In July, JewishPress.com reported on archaeologists finding a 3000 year old, jar fragment written in a seemingly unknown script, it has been called the Ophel Inscription. The Ophel is the archaeology park next to the Temple Mount where the jar segment was uncovered.

Near Eastern history and Biblical studies expert Douglas Petrovich told Fox News that he believes that the writing is in an ancient Hebrew script.

If Petrovich’s analysis is right, then this is the earliest example of written Hebrew found to date, and scientific proof that the Israelites were able to compose the Tanach in real-time.

For more information, read about the background of the find.