IDF just destroyed the fake Lebanese Dome of the Rock
The IDF announced on Tuesday that it took operational control of a Hezbollah combat compound in Maroun El Ras, in southern Lebanon, a site noted for its “Iranian Gardens” containing a replica of the gold Dome of the Rock. Used as a Hezbollah outpost, the compound contained significant amounts of weapons. When the IDF moved on, the pseudo-Dome of the Rock, used as a mosque, was no longer standing.
The location, overlooking the border with Israel, was located 700 meters from the border and posed a direct threat to northern Israeli communities.
The location reportedly included a residential building and an olive grove. A rocket launcher, loaded and aimed at Israel, was discovered on the premises. Hezbollah terrorists had used the site as living quarters.
Inside the building, IDF forces uncovered a staging area and a significant stockpile of weapons, including guns, anti-tank missiles, camouflage nets, and military vests. Additional launchers were hidden in the kitchen.
Footage shows Israeli forces raising their flag just north of the “Iranian Gardens” in Maroun El Ras. The video seems to show the ruins of the dome at the ten-second mark.
The garden in the Shi’ite stronghold was inaugurated in 2010 by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The site is an Iranian-Hezbollah propaganda attraction site.
961 Lebanese, a Lebanese news site, published a photo they claimed was the mosque in ruins.
961 also posted a video to its Instagram account showing an IDF bulldozer advancing on the ruins of the dome.
Other tweets show side-by-side photos showing the Dome of the Rock replica before and after its destruction.
It should be remembered that the current war began with the Palestinian Hamas invasion of southern Israel, which they named ‘Al Aqsa Flood.” Many IDF soldiers reported seeing images of the Dome of the Rock prominently displayed in many homes in Gaza.
While Al Aqsa is the focus of Islamist violence against Israel, they universally misidentify it as the golden dome, which is referred to in Arabic as Qubbat aṣ-Ṣaḵra. Located at the Temple Mount’s center on the Jewish Temples’ Holy of Holies site, it is not a mosque but a shrine that Islamic law forbids facing while praying. Al Aqsa Mosque has a black dome located on the Temple Mount’s southern end.
The now-destroyed replica in Lebanon was not the only replica of the Dome of the Rock. One replica stands near the actual Dome of the Rock. The Muslim Brotherhood illegally built the golden-domed Al-Rahman Mosque in the Beit Safafa neighborhood in southern Jerusalem. Under court order, the dome was removed and replaced with a smaller silver dome.
Another gold-domed replica of the Dome of the Rock was built by the Taliban in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. A pro-ISIS media outlet, the Al-Adiyat Foundation, printed a poster arguing that Libya’s former leader Moammar Gaddafi had initially proposed the building of a Dome of the Rock model, which was widely mocked at the time.
Yet another three-story replica was built as a tourist attraction for Muslims in Kattankudy, a township near the city of Batticaloa in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province.
The Bani Hashim mosque in Abu Dhabi, UAE was built to resemble the Dome of the Rock.
In 2016, the Palestinian Authority (PA) inaugurated an embassy and diplomatic mission in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia, even though the PA is not an officially recognized country. The embassy building is octagonal, but its most prominent feature is the gold dome on its roof. Ironically, its construction was contested as violating building regulations. An anonymous military source told Brazil’s Veja magazine last year—before the official inauguration of the Palestinian embassy—that the embassy building’s location is too close to significant Brazilian government buildings, such as the Congress and Supreme Court, and that the Palestinian diplomats and their vehicles “cannot be checked.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards erected a temporary model of the Dome of the Rock in 2015 in Qom in central Iran to be used in war games simulating the “liberation” of Jerusalem. Iranian media misidentified the replica as Al Aqsa.
It should also be noted that the much-repeated belief that the Al Aqsa Mosque is holy to Islam is dubious, at best, and the focus of debate among Muslims. Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University, frequently refers to the myth that the Aqsa Mosque described in the Koran is located in Jerusalem as “fake news” and insulting to Saudi Arabian Muslims since it would raise the mosque on the Temple Mount to a level of importance that could contest the centrality of Mecca in Islam.
“Fifty years after the death of Muhammad in 682 CE, Abd Allah Ibn al-Zubayr, who was the bully of Mecca, revolted against the Umayyad Dynasty that ruled in Damascus. He closed the roads and prevented Damascus residents from making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Having no other choice, the Umayyads chose Jerusalem as an alternative Haj destination, which is one of the five fundamental commandments of Islam. To entrench their choice of Jerusalem, they invented the story that the Al-Aqsa Mosque mentioned in the Quran wasn’t in Ju’ranah but in Jerusalem. They linked the story to the Quran myth about Muhammad’s night flight to Al-Aqsa Mosque by inventing a number of hadiths that are essentially rewritten history.”
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