A controversial article in The New York Times, which discusses the artistic pursuits of a terrorist freed from Israeli prison, appears to deny one of the ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem.
The article about convicted terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi notes “a provocative visit by an Israeli leader, accompanied by hundreds of police officers, to a major mosque complex in Jerusalem that is built on the site of an ancient Jewish temple.”
The Times doesn’t say why it was so provocative for Ariel Sharon to visit the most holy site for Jews in 2000. An article about that visit, to which the paper links in the new piece, states that “the complex, known to Muslims as Haram al Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, contains Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, sacred shrines of Islam. It is revered by Jews as the site of the First and Second Temples as well as the place where Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac.”
JNS sought comment from the Times about whether the new article reflects the paper’s editorial view that only the first Jewish Temple or only the second Jewish Temple stood on the site in Jerusalem.
Nicole Taylor, managing director of external communications at the Times, referred JNS to the “Temple Mount” entry in Encyclopedia Britannica.
“We mean each of the various temples built sequentially on the same site,” Taylor told JNS. “The reference to a single temple is often used to refer to the various versions of the temple that were built in sequence over several centuries.” (The Jewish Temples spanned some 11 centuries.)
The Britannica entry to which Taylor referred JNS mentions the “Temple of Jerusalem,” and the entry for the latter states “either of two temples that were the center of worship and national identity in ancient Israel.”
The Associated Press style guide, which many journalists see as the discipline’s “bible,” notes in its entry for the “Temple Mount” that the site is “the walled, elevated area in Jerusalem’s Old City that was the site of the ancient Jewish temples.”
A 2005 Times article stated that “Jews believe that the site, also known as the Temple Mount, housed the second temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.” The Washington Post reported in a 2023 article that “in Jewish tradition, the Temple Mount is the site where the First and Second Temples once stood,” appearing to equate that Jewish view with Muslim’s belief that the site is “the place where the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.”
“There is zero debate that two temples stood in that place in scholarly literature. Mohammed’s ascent ‘happens’ from there only because it is the Temple site,” Lawrence Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, told JNS in 2023.
“The story about Muhammad going on a miraculous horse all the way from Arabia to Jerusalem and ascending to heaven is a religious belief. It’s like saying that Jacob prayed there,” Schiffman told JNS. “They are trying to be neutral, but that confuses the facts.”
At the time, Steven Fine, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and director of its Center for Israel Studies, and a founding editor of the Jewish art and visual culture journal Images, told JNS that “it is an historical fact that the Jewish temples were built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.”
“Archaeological evidence for the Temple rebuilt after the return from the Babylonian captivity and continuing until 66 C.E. is not contested,” he said. There is scarce archaeological evidence of the First Temple, since the site was rebuilt in subsequent centuries, “and also because Muslim authorities do not allow scientific excavation of the site,” Fine told JNS in 2023.
“Literary sources, however, are ample,” he said at the time. “No historian doubts the presence of an Israelite Temple on Mount Zion in biblical times.”
HonestReporting, a nonprofit watchdog, stated of the new Times article that “there is a double standard in how much of the media treats terrorism—one set of rules for most perpetrators, another for those who are Palestinian and whose victims are Israeli Jews.”
“Time and again, some of the most brutal attacks on civilians are presented with a kind of reverence, as though sadistic violence were simply part of a noble struggle,” the nonprofit stated. “When Israeli Jews are murdered in their homes or on their way to work, the narrative bends toward portraying the killer as a ‘resister of occupation.’”
The Times profile of “convicted murderer Zakaria Zubeidi is a textbook example,” HonestReporting stated. “Zubeidi, a veteran commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades with decades of terrorist activity to his name, was freed in a hostage-for-prisoners swap with Hamas, having been jailed for his role in two West Bank shooting attacks in 2018 and 2019.”
