Attack on Nazareth church by mentally ill man sparks riot

March 3, 2006 12:01 PM

Truth slightly more plausible than fiction
posted by hwestiii (14 comments total)

For those unfamiliar with the book, Damascus Gate involves a loose conspiracy between Millennial Christians and ultra-orthodox Jews to destroy the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in order to rebuild the Temple and bring on end times. Its a very good book and very un-schlocky despite my capsule synopsis.
posted by hwestiii at 12:06 PM on March 3, 2006

I'm getting tired of link-every-word posts that don't actually tell me what they are about before I click them. Amusing story, though.
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:07 PM on March 3, 2006

You're just not clever enough to decode the true meaning of the cryptic link-every-word posts, twelvetwo. Though I'm sure thirteenkiller will be here any second to point that out.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:14 PM on March 3, 2006

Not if my russian thugs have anything to say about it. And they do have something to say!
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:18 PM on March 3, 2006

Damascus Gate was a seriously good book. But as far as truth v/ fiction goes, isn't this kind of a chicken and egg thing? Destroying the Temple in order to bring about End Times is a pretty well-established "theory", amongst some of the kookier fanatics- Stone didn't make that up.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 12:32 PM on March 3, 2006

It's pretty wild.
posted by sonofsamiam at 12:34 PM on March 3, 2006

Stone didn't make up the idea, but to my knowledge, no one has seriously attempted it as in the book. Or have they?
posted by hwestiii at 12:54 PM on March 3, 2006

Yup, they have
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 1:25 PM on March 3, 2006

Woops, posted the wrong link there. But I'm pretty sure a guy named Yehuda-something did actually try to blow up the Temple. I'll see if I can find the right link.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 1:26 PM on March 3, 2006

Ok, this discusses it in a bit more detail- still not a great link, but it seems people have definitely planned to do it.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 1:29 PM on March 3, 2006

Dormant Gorilla, interesting links.

The thing that really resonated for me in that original article was the reported mental illness of the perpetrator. It reminded me of the sub-plot in Damascus Gate of the older American(?) Jew who was apparently suffering from an untreated bipolar disorder and suffered from prophetic or messianic delusions. The character in the book seems less of a provocateur and more of victim of the manipulation of others (the rock musician/heroin addict character primarily)
posted by hwestiii at 2:40 PM on March 3, 2006

What Twelvetwo said.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:56 PM on March 3, 2006

Why can't evil conspirators recruit someone sane to do their dirty work? Reichstag, pope assassination, JFK, 9/11, all the button men were raving loons.

The Illuminati seriously need to revise their human resources screening procedures... they really put the mental in governmental!
posted by Operation Afterglow at 6:19 PM on March 3, 2006

An Israeli airforce captain(?) in the 1980s was discovered to be plotting an airstrike on the Dome of the Rock / Al Aqsa Mosque complex. He was going to commandeer a plane armed with bombs or air-to-ground missles and let 'er rip.

The entire dome of the rock compound is built so that a very small number of charges could bring down the buildings. King Herod, when he built the second temple, created the rectangular building site by dumping a lot of trash there as fill (why do you think the Dung gate is so named?) but this was taking too long. So the builders created roman-style (keyed) arches and stacked them, to create the building site. Under the Mosque and Dome, it's mostly air.
posted by zpousman at 8:15 AM on March 4, 2006