Blog : Ragazou

By (CJN)

 

It probably ranked as one of the most stunningly ignorant, deplorably disingenuous or pointedly provocative statements of modern time. Or, perhaps even all of them.

 

At the Camp David summit in the year 2000, Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat is reported to have said to U.S. President Bill Clinton, ?I am a religious man, and I will not allow it to be written of me [in history] that I have'

 

confirmed the existence of the so-called temple underneath the mountain.? The statement was reported in the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 12, 2000. Some two years later, in an interview published in the same paper on Oct. 5, 2002, Arafat expanded upon his views of the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem.?

 

?For 34 years, they [the Jews] have dug tunnels, the most dangerous of which is the great tunnel. They found not a single stone proving that the Temple of Solomon was there, because historically the Temple was not in Palestine [at all]. They found only remnants of a shrine of the Roman Herod.? (The translations from Arabic are by the Middle East media research institute, MEMRI.)

 

Arafat's declaration, however, was not simply the result of a momentary intellectual infirmity or the temporary wiping clean of his historical chalkboard. It was, rather, one of a series of statements by Palestinian political, religious and academic leaders reflecting deeply held historical and theological beliefs.?

 

For example, on Aug. 25, 2000, Arafat's eventual successor, Mahmoud Abbas, was quoted saying much the same thing.

 

Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, the former mufti of Jerusalem was even more strident in the expression of his views. On Jan. 17, 2001, he told the German publication Die Welt, ?There is not [even] the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish Temple on this place in the past. In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history'

 

The Jews cannot legitimately claim [the Western] Wall, neither religiously nor historically. The Committee of the League of Nations recommended in 1930, to allow the Jews to pray there, in order to keep them quiet. But by no means did it acknowledge that the wall belongs to them.?

 

Tayseer Tamimi, chief religious justice of the PA, told a television audience on June 9, 2009, ?I know of Muslim and Christian holy sites in [Jerusalem]. I don't know of any Jewish holy sites in it' Israel has been excavating since 1967 in search of remains of their Temple or their fictitious Jewish history.?

 

And so on.

 

An excellent account of this Palestinian revisionism has been written by Ricki Hollander for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). Dated July 6, 2009, it is titled The Battle Over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

 

The Arabs in Mandatory Palestine did not always deny a Jewish connection to Jerusalem. They recognized and understood the interconnection between Jewish, Christian and Muslim history. And they made no attempt to erase the Jewish part or indeed Judaism from the sequence of the establishment of the three monotheisms.

 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has recently released a facsimile of the original 1924 English-language publication, A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, prepared for and published by the Supreme Moslem Council in Jerusalem. It must be pointed out, too, that the head of the council at that time was the notorious Haj Amin al-Husseini, who later became Adolf Hitler's active and zealous ally in the campaign to annihilate Jews.

 

Al-Haram Al-Sharif translates from the Arabic as the August (or Noble) Sanctuary. It is the Arabic name for the Temple Mount. The document was intended as a guide for visitors unfamiliar with the religious and other sensibilities of the place.?

 

The author(s) of the booklet very honestly states on page one, ?[F]or the purposes of this guide, which confines itself to Muslim period, the starting point is the year 637 AD. In that year, the Caliph Omar occupied Jerusalem, and one of his first acts was to repair to this site, which had already become sacred in the eyes of Muslims.?

 

But the immediately preceding sentence is quite instructive and definitive of the then-widely held view even by the Arabs there of the history of the August Sanctuary.?

 

?The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. [My emphasis] This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which ?David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. (2 Samuel XXIV, 25)??

 

Since the reunion ? on the 28th day of Iyar during the Six Day War in 1967 ? of east and west Jerusalem, of the Old City and the New City, the identity of the site has been in dispute. Since then, there has been a concerted and calculated campaign by Palestinian leaders to deny any Jewish link to the city of Jerusalem. Since then, too, we celebrate the 28th day of Iyar as Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day. It falls this year on May 12.?

 

Palestinian leaders and even the British Advertising Standards Authority, we have learned in recent days, are striving to disconnect Jews from Jerusalem. We must oppose them. In some way, either with children, friends, colleagues or even in sole company, we must remember Jerusalem next week.

 

To do so is not an act of politics. It is a personal and national affirmation. It is even an affirmation of the history and the values of western civilization. There are very few higher causes right now.