Top 10 Topics from 5777

I can’t believe that another year has passed. As Rosh Hashanah approaches, I want to take a minute to look back at the crazy year we have had. To be honest, we have had a lot of ups and downs, but through it all, our biggest strength has been our supporters. Your generosity and messages of encouragement have helped us to continue our important work and have helped us climb those mountains of bad news that have faced us this past year. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

So let’s take a look at the past year! I went through our English Facebook Page (follow us if you haven’t already!) and tallied up the posts that made the most impact: most likes, shares, views, and comments. From finds, to videos, to urgent appeals for support, you have stood by us and shared this with us.

10. Early Islamic Artifacts

This post talked about some Early Islamic Period artifacts and linked to our blog post about the possible destruction layer we uncovered.

Golden Mosaics from the Dome of the Rock

9. Evidence of the Greeks on the Temple Mount

This post celebrated the holiday of Channukkah and talked about Greek finds on the Temple Mount including a coin with the face of Antiochus Epiphanes IV who is the villain of the Channukkah story. Check out the whole story HERE.

Greek coin with the face of King Antiochus Epiphanes IV

8. Archaeologists Restore Temple Mount Flooring from Waqf’s Trash

This was an article about our reconstructed Second Temple floor patterns published by Haaretz. Our floors have always been a popular topic. 🙂 Here is a link to the whole article: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.740548

7. Lost and Found: A modern day bracelet

We found a modern day 10K gold bracelet and are (still) trying to find the owner. It has an Israeli girl’s name written in English letters. It is very small and may have belonged to a child. It was lost on the Temple Mount before 1999. Share the story and help us find the owner!

6. Our video asking you to “Join Us” in our Annual Appeal.

Thank you to everyone who liked, shared, and donated in our Annual Appeal. Knowing that we have consistent supporters really makes us feel like you are part of our Sifting Project Family. Don’t forget, it’s an annual appeal so you will be hearing from me again ;).

5. Six-Day War Artifacts in the Temple Mount Soil.

Machine gun magazines, bullets, Jordanian coins, and uniform badges were found in sifting the soil from the Temple Mount. The artifacts tell the story of the unification of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. Check out the whole article in the Times of Israel and watch the video we put together in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Jerusalem.

4. Evidence of the Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount

Last October, UNESCO adopted a biased and political resolution that disregarded Judaism’s historic connection to the Temple Mount, cast doubts regarding the Jewish connection to the Western Wall, and protested against the Israel Antiquities Authority’s attempts to supervise construction work on and around the Temple Mount in order to preserve the antiquities and other archaeological data. In response to this resolution, we wrote a blog post that outlined a lot of the archaeological evidence that we have of the Jewish temples on the Temple Mount. This was widely shared and is one of the most important posts we have written. Please read and share because the Temple Denial Movement is real and we have to know how to respond to it with educated answers. Click here for the full text of the post.

Artifacts from the First and Second Temples

3. The Most Powerful Video about UNESCO and the Temple Denial Movement

This video was put out by Channel 2 News here in Israel. Seen in Hebrew by more than 1 MILLION people on Facebook alone, we added English subtitles so that it could be shared with people around the world. It is important to respect the narratives of people today, but this needs to be in addition to, and not at the expense of, real history. It is also easier to find common ground when relating to each other through facts and history than solely through hard-won respect for beliefs and narratives. Please watch and share.

2. Our Temple Mount Tour videos

Over the past few weeks, we have posted 11 (so far) videos touring the Temple Mount with Dr. Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira and talking about different features on the Temple Mount. All of these videos have been very popular and we promise to keep making them. Here is a link to the whole playlist on YouTube.

1. Closing the Sifting Project

When we were forced to stop sifting the Temple Mount material this past April, we were all in shock. How were we going to move forward? How were we going to continue our research? We turned to you and let you know about the situation. You shared the video hundreds of times and it reached more than 34,000 people. We were able to raise over 200,000 shekels and because of that we were able to continue our research this year while we try to come up with the funding to resume the sifting. We cannot thank you enough for your support. At our darkest hour, you made such a difference to us and to our project. Government help takes a long time to initiate and we aren’t in the clear yet, but knowing that we can count on you makes all the difference.

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Reaching Our Goal!

Shalom to all of our supporters,   

We did it! Despite the difficulties and obstacles, we managed to exceed our first target and raise over NIS 250,000! Our deep and heartfelt thanks go out to the 889 backers who immediately came forward to support our campaign and show the world that they care about the heritage of the Temple Mount.

We are thrilled by the broad support we have received from the general public and from the media that covered the issue and a special thanks goes out to Avri Gilad (an Israeli TV and radio top celebrity) whose viral video in support of our project brought us an additional 200 backers in this campaign. Your support enables us to continue the research on the artifacts from the Temple Mount until the end of this year!

We reached our goal so quickly, we are now able to go on to phase two! We are continuing to strive and reach funding sources for the continuation of our research in the years to come, the types of artifacts that do not yet have funding, and the publication of this research. The full study will yield many more discoveries about the artifacts we have recovered. This will be included in a series of volumes of scientific publications (the first 4 are planned for 2019), as well as a number of articles for the general public. Once we’ve funded the full research, we will also be able to resume the sifting work that has stopped.

GOAL 2: Fully Fund Our Research and Resume Sifting

We need about NIS 6.8 million ($1.8M). Since this is a significant amount, we are working to obtain the balance of the funding from several channels. Here is our plan on how to get it (with your help):

1) Several government offices are working on findings solutions for our funding needs though nothing is concrete yet and we still don’t have promises with specifics (We received pledges for full funding of the project and meetings were scheduled, but no decision has yet been made). We will update you once something has been officially announced.

2) Public support – so far we have raised NIS 250,000 with your help! We will continue to run the Headstart Campaign for our Israeli supporters, but we will also reopen our half-shekel.org platform. This will enable donors to give in dollars as well as have an option to give a tax-deductible donation in the US and UK. Please share our campaign on half-shekel.org with your friends who could not give in NIS.

3) Philanthropic donors – We have been promised $70,000 in donations so far and are working on applications for grants and matching campaigns.

We will update the text of the campaign pages to keep you apprised of the situation and we will post any important updates on the blog as well. This way, you can monitor our progress and keep track of the government’s promises.

Showing your support for our campaign has far-reaching effects.

So far, our campaign has been the catalyst for momentum in various processes within government institutions and also with donors from abroad. Many influential people (including the Prime Mininster’s Office) are following the public’s support for the campaign. The state’s obligation to protect its heritage can no longer be ignored because YOUR support has created a new discourse and standards that have never before existed.

Even more, your contribution and your caring has encouraged philanthropists to reach out to our project. This means that your donation is being matched many times over.

Israel Antiquities Authority director, Israel Hasson, said last week on the radio that he sees “great value in the current campaign which is bringing the public closer to this important cause.” Your support of our project and of this campaign is an act that indicates that the public is at the front of the struggle for the future of the protection of heritage and cultural values.

Giving to our campaign is almost like signing a petition for the protection of Temple Mount Heritage, and every name on the list, no matter the size of the donation, has a huge impact.

This is even more important in the wake of resolutions like that of UNESCO last October and as recently as this week on Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. When the world tries to tell us that there is no Jewish or Christian connection to Jerusalem, or that there was never a Jewish Temple upon the Temple Mount, your voice in support of our archaeological research that provides evidence to contradict these outrageous resolutions is even more important. Your support shows the world that we will not stand for the rewriting of history, the ignorance of evidence and research, and the erasure of our heritage.

We cherish, appreciate, and thank each and every one of you. With great appreciation,

Gabriel Barkay, Zachi Dvira, and the TMSP Team

Temple Denial: The Reality

Getting serious for a minute. The following has many links to more information. Please read and share these sources so that this whole Temple Denial thing can become less of a fuzzy/taboo topic that goes unmentioned but is important.

All of the media that has been coming out about Israel and the Temple Mount that supports the Temple Denial movement just hurts my heart. As a researcher and an archaeologist, I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that this “debate” is real and that the Temple Mount’s relationship to the people of the world is up for discussion.

The Temple Mount is a holy place to over half of the world’s population. It is a holy place to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and any attempt to deny the right of any one religion to feel a connection to a place as central to religious belief as the Temple Mount is wrong. Do Muslims have a right to pray on the Temple Mount? Yes. Do Jews and Christians have the right to have the Temples and the Temple Mount as a central piece of their religious beliefs? Yes.

Temple Denial takes away that right. Temple Denial says that those beliefs are worthless. There was never anything on the Temple Mount that relates to you. Even without any evidence from the past, this is a statement that is antithetical to the intellectuals crying out against propaganda and “fake news.” It is antithetical to those world leaders and UNESCO itself that signed the charter on Intangible Heritage, stating that those things we cannot prove or see are worth protecting. The rights of people to believe in a historical aspect of their religion is worth protecting.

Artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods

That being said, there IS evidence of the long history of the Temple Mount. After the UNESCO resolution that named holy places like the Temple Mount as wholly Muslim, and disregarded non-arabic names for those places, we posted an article about the archaeological evidence of the Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount. That resolution not only denied the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, but the Christian one as well.

A booklet published in 2014 and handed out to tourists on the Temple Mount

The Temple Denial Movement was begun in recent decades as Palestinian political and religious leaders began claiming that no Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem. This claim, despite being counter to Islamic tradition, became canonized within Palestinian religious and political circles. Since the 2000 Camp David Summit, during which Yasir Arafat asserted that the Jewish Temple never existed in Jerusalem, “Temple Denial” has spread with increased virulence within the Middle East and the West, now also seemingly supported by the UN and UNESCO.

Arutz 2 interviewed our director, Zachi Dvira, to discuss this, and then followed up that interview with an amazing and viral segment (below) about the Temple Denial Movement and the Muslim claim to the site. As they said, “a narrative is a good thing, and it is possible to respect the values of each side. But there is also that small matter that is named: history, truth, and facts.”

It is unsettling, but many people are using the Palestinian narrative and that of the Temple Mount to promote anti-semitism and lies. As we saw in the Arutz 2 video (2:55) and the extended version in our video about the project (0:59), the regular person on the street in the Arab Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem wholeheartedly believes that there was nothing on the Temple Mount before the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock.

Gaby teaches UCLA students on the Temple Mount on Jan 1, 2017 (photo credit: Ilan Ben Zion/Times of Israel)

This is due to the systematic spread of false information. Dr. Barkay just this past week was brought before the Israeli police on the Temple Mount in an attempt to evict him from the place for simply using the term “Temple Mount” while teaching the history of the Mount to a student tour-group. This followed the physical abuse of our laboratory staff on the Temple Mount by Waqf guards just a few months earlier for discussing the archaeological history of the site. Our own Frankie Snyder has also had issues guiding groups on the Temple Mount for showing images of reconstructions of the First or Second Temple.

This isn’t funny and this isn’t going to go away. The only possible recourse we have is to energetically share the truth about the Temple Mount. We commit to doing so. In light of all the recent media attempts to discredit the real history of the Temple Mount, we are more dedicated than ever to publishing our research on the archaeological history of the Temple Mount and sharing those truths with the scientific community and the public. It pains me that this is necessary, but we will strive to do our part in discrediting the Temple Denial Movement.

Thank you to all of you who have supported us over the years and who have given to support our research in our crowdfunding campaign. The messages and emails that we get from you, like this one, help strengthen our resolve and let us know that we are doing the right thing:

“Your work becomes more important everyday! With the UN decision and the US abstaining, and Kerry’s speech, your work is vital to bringing the truth to light!!!! Please know that the government’s attitude and treatment of Israel does not represent all Americans!!! I love Israel! I volunteered at TMSP 6 years ago on tour with Gordon Franz. It is a life changing experience! Keep up the amazing work bringing the truth to light!!!” –Lindsay from the US

May 2017 bring the true history of the Temple Mount to light.