Why jerusalem belongs to jews

Jerusalem has been the scene of violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs for years and remains one of the most bitterly contested cities on earth. The latest clashes began a month ago with an Israeli move to block some Palestinian gatherings at the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, already a time of heightened religious sensitivities. After those restrictions eased, tensions over a plan to evict dozens of Palestinians from an east Jerusalem neighborhood continued to fuel confrontations.

On Monday, stun grenades echoed across a holy hilltop compound, and hundreds of Palestinians were hurt in clashes between stone-throwing protesters and police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Police were also injured. Palestinians want those territories for their future state, with east Jerusalem serving as their eventual capital. But Israel annexed the eastern part of the city in a move not recognized internationally.

The fate of east Jerusalem has been one of the thorniest issues in the peace process, which ground to a halt more than a decade ago. Israelis on Monday were set to mark Jerusalem Day, a national holiday celebrating the annexation. In past years, thousands of Israelis — mainly religious nationalists — have marched through the Old City, including the densely populated Muslim Quarter, in a display considered provocative by many Palestinians.

In recent days, hard-line Israelis have staged other events in east Jerusalem, leading to scattered, violent altercations with Palestinians.

The mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and sits on a sprawling plateau that is also home to the iconic golden Dome of the Rock. Muslims refer to the compound as the Noble Sanctuary. The walled plateau is also the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount, because it was the location of biblical temples. During the night journey, Muhammad was purified in preparation for his meeting with God.

Once in heaven, God told Muhammad that he should recite the salat, or ritual prayer, 50 times each day. However, Muhammad begged God to reduce the number to five times a day, which is the current standard for Muslim prayer.

Muhammad saw his mission as an extension of the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, the first Qibla, or direction in which Muslims should pray, was Jerusalem today, Muslims bow towards Mecca. In addition, Islamic tradition predicts that Jerusalem will play an important role in the future, naming it as one of the cities where the end of the world will play out.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. Now it is very easy to cherry-pick quotes from scripture permitting or enjoining violence. Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.

But if they repent, and establish prayer and pay the alms, then leave their way free. God is Forgiving, Merciful. Al-Tawbah, I did not come to bring peace but a sword.

Nevertheless, it remains true that, in the Old Testament, God commands the Jewish state in the land of Israel to come into being through warfare and violent dispossession of the original inhabitants. We need hardly say that this comes against a background where every day the Israeli settler movement is grabbing more land in the West Bank and Jerusalem there are now , Israeli settlers in the West Bank alone — aided, abetted, funded and empowered by the current Israeli government — and throwing or forcing more and more Palestinians out, in so many different ways that it would take volumes to describe.

It entails, in the Old Testament itself, a Covenant between God and a Chosen People regarding a Promised Land that should be taken by force at the expense of the other inhabitants of the land and of non-Jews. This idea is not present as such in other religions that we know of.