Jerusalem Dome of the Rock UFO Videos

The Dome of the Rock stands on the Temple Mount, the Haram al-Sharif, in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is one of the most closely watched places on Earth. Flying over it is prohibited.

Friday, January 28, 2011. About 1:00 AM. Two men stood at the Armon Hanatziv promenade, a panoramic lookout south of the Old City, filming north across the lights of Jerusalem. A bright white light appeared high over the city. In about 8 seconds it came down toward the Dome. There it hovered, just above the shrine, for about 15 seconds. A woman heard on one of the tapes said it was so bright that "you can almost hardly look at it." Then the light flickered. A bright flash. It shot straight up into the sky and was gone. On one clip, a man shouts "Whoa."

The first clip, 2:12 long, went up on YouTube under the name "eligael". A second, closer video of a little over 40 seconds followed from a different account, reportedly "Shshsh331". More clips were said to come from passengers in a car and from American tourists with mobile phones. History would later count four viewpoints in all. The first video passed 1 million views. The second reached about 2.8 million. Nick Pope kept an open mind. "If these are real, they are some of the most incredible videos ever shot," he said. The climb, he added, "suggests it is unmanned, because no living thing could survive those kinds of G-forces."

The doubts came fast. On January 31, UFOEyes declared the third video a fake. Its background matched a Wikimedia Commons night photograph of Jerusalem, detail for detail. On February 5, a YouTube user called HOAXKiller1 posted a frame-by-frame study showing "Motion Tile" edge mirroring in the first minute of the eligael video.

Two days later, Robert Sheaffer wrote on Bad UFOs: "We can now state with great confidence that the original video... is a hoax." The hoaxer, he said, "used Motion Tile effects with edge mirroring to introduce camera shake into the video." Benjamin Radford called the videos "highly dubious." A light that bright should have lit up the gold dome. It did not. Phil Plait called it "pretty cool, but an obvious hoax." Larry Robinson suggested a flashlight reflected in glass, and noted that the "Whoa" comes before the object jumps, not after. No independent witness, no police officer and no Waqf guard reported a thing.

In March 2011, Marc D'Antonio, MUFON's Chief Photo/Video Analyst, gave his verdict: "this video and the other Jerusalem UFO Videos are in my opinion hoaxes."

September 2011. Nitay Elboim of Israel's Channel 10 turned to the people behind the cameras. Eligael Gadliovich, maker of the first video, was a filmmaker and former actor with his own production company. Golan Ardiv, a film teacher, had acted in his films. Ardiv also taught at the school attended by the teenagers who made the second video. He first denied knowing them. Then he admitted they attended his school. Channel 10 concluded the footage was not "authentic" and suggested it might promote an upcoming film. Gadliovich never confessed. "There is no such thing as coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences," he said.

Not everyone accepted the verdict. Michael Salla of Exopolitics argued in April 2011 that the orb was genuine. Years later, Michael Heiser pointed out that nothing in the scene ever moves, flickers or reflects light. Nothing except the UFO. The case lives on in a Metabunk thread and in History's The Proof Is Out There, where the Dome of the Rock Incident shares an episode with the Solway Spaceman.