Arab teens Temple Mount challenge: Hit the gold dome with a soccer ball [Watch]

Arab teens Temple Mount challenge: Hit the gold dome with a soccer ball [Watch]

A video surfaced on the internet of a group of Arab teens on the Temple Mount, challenging each other to kick a ball and hit the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock, a site which many believe the Muslims revere as being holy. 

Soccer on the Temple Mount

The video, originally posted to an Arabic personal account on the app Tik Tok showed the arab youths kicking a ball, challenging each other to hit “al Quds”, literally ‘the holy’, which is the name used by Arabs to refer to Jerusalem. The golden-domed Dome of the Rock is referred to in Arabic as Qubbat aṣ-Ṣakhra. Not to be confused with the silver-domed Al Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock is considered by some Muslims to be a shrine built on the ruins of the Jewish temple and not a mosque for prayers. 

In the video, the first youth kicks the ball quite high but in entirely the wrong direction. The second boy also kicks the ball quite high and it seems to land on the flat section of the roof of the Dome of the Rock. The third boy also misses but a bystander who is closer to the structure helps out by kicking the ball onto the roof. The fourth boy misses as does the fifth and final boy.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University, has personally witnessed these bizarre contests on the Temple Mount.

“They aren’t just playing ball. They really intend to hit the dome.”

“When I asked about this, the Arabs claimed they acted this way because they feel at home there, so they behave as if they are at home. Just like you would play ball in your backyard, they play ball on the Temple Mount.”

“I don’t believe that explanation,” Dr. Kedar said. “It is clearly an act of desecration. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are unaware that they are desecrating the site. But if they did this at a site that is really considered holy by other Muslims, if they did this, for example at the Kaaba in Mecca, the Saudis would hang them from the tallest trees. They don;’t relate to the Temple Mount really as they do to other holy places because they might be aware that the story of Al Aqsa is fake news.”

Dr. Kedar has written extensively about the false historical narrative that erroneously places al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. 

“If the media publicizes this or asks them, they will say that an Israeli paid them to do this so that it can be used in propaganda against the Palestinians,” Dr. Kedar said. “I have also witnessed this several times.”

“What people need to do is simply watch this video and ask themselves, ‘do these boys really think al Aqsa is a holy place or not?’ I am fairly sure that most people will realize that the Palestinians are telling a fake story about the Temple Mount that even they don’t believe.”