JEWISH-TEMPLE DENIAL WATCH: Someone named Linda S. Heard, who is billed as "a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs," writes the following in an article entitled "Digging up religious hatreds" in Online Journal.com:

Why all the fuss about a bridge you might wonder. In truth, there is much more at issue. At the heart of the matter is Israel's belief that Solomon's Temple, destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, once stood in the same place as the Al Haram Al Sharif, known to the Jews as "The Temple Mount." The Romans were later to destroy the second Jewish Temple, built on the same spot.

Religious Jews dream of the day the temple will be rebuilt and the Sanhedrin, an assembly of Jewish judges, reconstituted.

Messianic Evangelical Christians also want the temple to be rebuilt as they believe this is a prerequisite to the �second coming� of Jesus.

In the absence of proof in the form of artifacts, Muslims refute any assertion that the Al Haram Al Sharif was built on the place where the Jewish temples once stood. In the late '80s, Jewish claims were bolstered by a tiny ivory carved pomegranate alleged to have originated from Solomon's Temple, but the museum where it was on display eventually admitted it was a fake.

Muslim suspicions that the Israeli government is using the new walkway as a pretext to dig for artifacts to support its contention are, therefore, understandable, as are their fears that Israel�s long-term goal is to demolish Muslim holy sites to make way for a new temple.

Ms. Heard has been listening to too much Palestinian propaganda. There is artifactual evidence for the Herodian Temple (notably, the Temple Mount platform itself, along epigraphic evidence) and the Second Temple is mentioned in contemporary texts. (See here for a review of the evidence for the Second and Herodian Temples.) The case for the First Temple is inferential and it is correct that no artifacts from it survive and that the inscription on the Ivory Pomegranate is a forgery, but nonetheless the evidence for the Temple's existence is compelling. (See comments here and here.) Regular readers will doubtless be sick of hearing about this, but I think it is important to answer these baseless statements whenever they turn up. Ms. Heard's piece confirms that this false propaganda, which unfortunately is widespread in the Islamic world, is spreading to the West.

UPDATE: More of the same from the same publication. An article by Nicola Nasser (" veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied territories") has the following:

Al-buraq is the Arab-Islamic name of Al Aqsa compound's western wall, which the Jews called the "Wailing Wall" before changing it to the "Western Wall (of the Temple Mount, a widely-spread claim that has yet to be vindicated by historical fact or archeological findings) after the creation of Israel in 1948.

The same piece appears in Aljazeerah.info, although the wording of this passage is slightly different.