An Unpublished Letter to the IHT

That's the International Herald Tribune:-

Regarding the discovery of an altar dedicated to Zeus which is now thought to predate the Greek worship there (Feb. 6), the demonstration of such a custom whereby a location considered holy by one religion is later adopted by another which continues to view the site as a sacred can also be seen in Jerusalem.

The Temple Mount on Moriah purchased by David and which, according to traditional Jewish sources, was sanctified long before the Solomon's First Temple and the Second Herodian Temple were constructed there when Abraham bound up Isaac related in Genesis 22:2, was later appropriated by Islam some six centuries following the final Roman destruction in 135 CE. What is unique, though, and also troubling, is the current political Muslim claim profferred by, among others, Yassir Arafat, that the Jewish Temples never really existed. But as Arafat was once told, when Jesus overturned the money changers' tables in the Temple, according to Matthew 21:12, there was no mosque in sight.