As Kate noted here the other day, Ma’an reported that two Republican congressmen toured the Temple Mount in February along with rightwing Israel Jews who covet the site.

Two members of the US Congress joined right-wing Jews who toured the al-Aqsa Mosque compound escorted by Israeli police officers in February, a Jerusalem-based Fatah official said. Dimitri Daliani told Ma’an on Thursday that Republicans Bill Johnson of Ohio and David McKinley of Virginia entered the compound with the “extremist” Chaim Richman, director of the rightist Temple Institute. Daliani said the “congressmen’s participation in such criminal incursions into the al-Aqsa Mosque without being questioned by their own government indicates collusion with settler gangs whose aim is to hurt the al-Aqsa Mosque.”

The Temple Institute promotes Jewish prophecies of “the reestablishment of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.”

Johnson later commented in the Jewish Tribune, on “how little real religious freedom and liberty the people of Israel have over the very land that they are supposed to be the owners of.”

“The Jewish people own the property, but they don’t control the property.”… “I personally think they’ve given up enough,” he said. “They’ve been squeezed out of their land; the holy sites are being controlled by outsiders.

Both men are from business backgrounds and swing districts. Johnson, a Protestant and former computer scientist, captured his Ohio district from a Democrat in 2010 and beat him again in 2012– 53-47 percent. McKinley, a former engineer and an Episcopalian once divorced, also won his seat in 2010, after Democrats held it for 40 years. He won re-election handily in 2012.

Colin Wright, a former commenter on this site, saw the story and adds: