WEST BANK (Al Jazeera) – A Zionist journalist has breached a total ban on non-Muslim access to Islam’s holiest site in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, triggering an online backlash and potentially straining growing ties between the occupying regime and Persian Gulf nations.
Israel’s Channel 13 News aired a 10-minute report in which journalist Gil Tamary drove past the Grand Mosque that houses the Kaaba, the holiest shrine in Islam, and climbed the Mount of Mercy.
Tamary, who was accompanied by a local guide whose face was blurred to prevent identification, lowered his voice while speaking to the camera in Hebrew and at times switched to English to avoid revealing himself as a Zionist.
The report was billed as a scoop and the journalist the first Zionist reporter to document the annual Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj.
The footage received a strong online backlash, with the Twitter hashtag “A Jew in Mecca’s Grand Mosque” trending after the report was aired.
Among the critics was Mohammed Saud, a pro-Zionist Saudi activist. “My dear friends in Israel, a journalist of yours entered the city of Mecca, holy to Islam, and filmed there shamelessly,” he said.
“Shame on you Channel 13, for hurting the religion of Islam like that. You are rude.”
The Zionist regime’s regional cooperation minister Esawi Freij denounced Tamary’s report as “stupid and harmful” to the Zionist regime’s ties with Arab states.
“It was irresponsible and damaging to air this report just for the sake of ratings,” he added.
Tamary, who was in Jeddah covering United States President Joe Biden’s visit on Friday, apologized after the online backlash saying he had not intended to offend Muslims.
“If anyone takes offence to this video, I deeply apologize,” he wrote in English on Twitter.