We clearly see that the Rambam ascended to the Har Habayit with his father, brother and the Chief Rabbi of Akko. In fact The Rambam made a Yom Tov every year on the anniversary of that ascent! He referred to this aliya in many other letters to the community.
Rabbi Hoffman is being deceptive and disingenuous for not mentioning this historical fact.
R" Hoffman also brings the psak of Harav Avraham Yitzchok Hakohein Kook Z"L that prohibits going up to the Har Habayit. What is interesting is that these "poiskim" tend to bring up Harav Kook z"l only when it suits their agenda. Otherwise, they have no problem with tearing out his haskomos and ignoring him. They have no respect for him at all in Yeshivishe and Chassidishe circles; to bring him up to back their "opinion" is being disingenuous.
It is important to point out that Harav Kook z"l lived when the Ottoman Empire occupied Palestine and then through the British Occupation. It was under those circumstances that he gave that psak. The British even arrested Jews who blew a Shofar at the Kotel.... yes, you heard that right. If you blew a shofar at the Kotel, you were under arrest and thrown into a dungeon. In fact anti+Zionists bizarrely blame the 1929 Chevron Massacre because someone blew Shofar at the Kotel and they say that, that was a provocation! Mamash Insane!
The fact that Arabs massacred Jews all over the world for centuries without anyone blowing any shofors anywhere in the entire world is not part of their equation. And what is really bizarre and insane is that these same anti+Zionists blame Rav Kook z"l ..yes you heard that right, they blame him for encouraging the blowing of the shofar at the kotel. It turns out that we now know that it was the anti-Zionists that made that up and it is a work of fiction.
But even if that was true, a blood thirsty Arab needs any provocation to murder Jews? Are you telling me that an Arab who chopped off the limbs alive of a Yeshiva Bochor in Chevron and raped Yiddishe girls before he murdered them, did it because some guy blew a shofar at the Kotel? How Insane?
R' Hoffman also purposely omits a Meerie in Shevuois 16 that clearly states that there is "NO Kareis" going to the Har Habayit.
Sebeos, a 7th-century Armenian bishop and historian, wrote about the existence of a Jewish prayer hall on the Temple Mount as follows:
After the Jews enjoyed the aid and protection of the Arabs for a long time, they conceived the idea of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon.
They identified the location of what they called the “The Holy of Holies” and there they built a prayer hall, using the foundations and the remnants of the original building. Once they had started to build, the Arabs became jealous and banished them from there. Instead, they gave the Jews another area on the Temple Mount for a synagogue.
Solomon ben Jeroham, a Karaite exegete who lived in Jerusalem between 940 and 960, wrote in his commentary on the Book of Psalms that the Muslims had permitted the Jews to pray on the Temple Mount
for many years.
When, with the mercy of the God of Israel, the Romans were thrown out [of Jerusalem] and the Islamic kingdom appeared, permission was given to Israel to enter [the city] and live there. Furthermore, the courtyards of the Temple were turned over to them and they prayed there [on the Temple Mount] for many years. Afterwards [slanderers] told the Muslim king that they did bad things there, that they drank intoxicating wine and desecrated the place. He therefore ordered them expelled to one of the many gates and there they prayed for many years. But they continued to do bad things and there came a new king and he expelled them from the Temple Mount completely.
Feel free to read the whole account:
Sebeos, Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, trans. Robert Thomson, Liverpool University Press, 1999, ch. 31. 16
Comment on Psalms 30, cited by Goren, Shlomo, Sefer Har Habayit [Book of the
Temple Mount]. Rev. ed., Jerusalem, 2004, 314 [Igrot HaRambam, p. 79: “On Yom Shlishi, 4th of Cheshvan in the year 4926 since creation, we left Acco to go up to Y’rushalayim, under danger. And I entered the great and awesome Bayit (literally: the House, the place where the Beit HaMikdash stood) and I prayed there, on Yom Chamishi (Thurs.), the 6th of Cheshvan.
Read further for Rabbi Hoffman's polemic.
עבירה גוררת עבירה.
Thanks to the State of “Israel” antagonizing the entire Arab world, the Arabs the world over equate Zionism with Judaism and unfortunately but understandably vent their justified rage at holy items of Yiddishkeit.
They should be burning Zionists, not sifrei Torah.