Tom Nisani, the Executive Director of “Beyadenu – Returning to the Temple Mount”, tells Israel National News that they are presenting their list of issues to the new government.
“We have some 10 demands for the new coalition government. We want to make some big improvements related to the Temple Mount,” he explains. “Some of them involve extending the hours that we can visit as Jews and tourists also, and fixing the law considering holy places in Israel that until today does not include the Temple Mount unfortunately.”
Another area they are focusing on is that the Minister of Education should make the Temple Mount issue something that is taught in schools,” he says.
Besides coming from a place of faith and Jewish history, Beyadenu is also demonstrating that the issue is about freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and the right to visit any place in the Land of Israel.
“The big issue is of the holiest place to Judaism – the most important place – and the right to go to the Temple Mount and pray. When they build the Third Temple one day, we have also the issue of our rights,” Nisani says. “Right now, we have almost no rights on the Temple Mount only because we're Jews. This is our Jewish State, we cannot accept the situation where a Muslim can go and pray and a Jew who prays will get arrested.”
He confirms that the Israeli police are still arresting Jews on the Temple Mount for simply whispering or nodding their head a bit.
“The police do it of course when the government asks them to do it. The policemen don't do it of their own will,” he says. "But we still see it. We saw it in the last two months and it should be stopped because we're a Western country, we're a Jewish country and a democratic country. We cannot accept any of it anymore.”
Does Beyadenu have expectations from Knesset members who have been accompanying their activity for years and who now will be part of the government?
“We are working very closely with Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Simcha Rothma and other MKs from the Likud that we worked with for a lot of years now they have a right-wing government,” he says.
He adds: “I think that the last government which was mostly from the left showed everyone that they can implement their agendas as much as they want and now the right-wing, the Likud, Otzma Yehudit and the religious parties, should do the same, take their agendas and implement it. Also on the Temple Mount, which is the most important place, we expect them to do so.”