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MYTHS
OF THE
MIDDLE EAST
by: Joseph
Farah
I've
been quiet since Israel
erupted in fighting spurred by
disputes over the Temple
Mount. Until now, I
haven't even bothered to say,
"I told you so."
But I can't resist an longer.
I feel compelled to remind you
of the column I wrote just a
couple of weeks before the
latest uprising. Yeah,
folks, I predicted it.
That's O.K. hold your
applause. After all, I
wish I had been wrong. Many
people have been killed since
the current fighting in and
around Jerusalem began.
And what for? Israel
disputes Temple mount, middle
east myths, Muslims holy city,
Arab, Arabs America,
Palestinians, Palestine, war
middle east crisis
If you believe what you
read in most news
sources, Palestinians want a
homeland and Muslims want
control over sites they
consider holy.
Simple, right?
Well,
as an Arab American journalist
who has spent some time in the
Middle East dodging more than
my share of rocks and mortar
shells, I've got to tell you
that these are just phony
excuses for the rioting,
trouble-making and
land-grabbing.
Isn't
it interesting that prior to
the 1967 Arab-Israeli war,
there was no serious movement
for a Palestinian homeland?
"Well, Farah," you
might say, "that was
before the Israelis seized the
West Bank and Old Jerusalem.
That's
true, In the Six-Day War,
Israel captured Judea, Samaria
and East Jerusalem. But
they didn't capture these
territories from Yasser
Arafat. They captured
them from Jordan's King
Hussein. I can't help
but wonder why all these
Palestinians suddenly
discovered their national
identity after Israel won the
war.
The
truth is that Palestine is no
more real than Never- Never
Land. The first time the
name was used was in 70 A.D.
when the Romans committed
genocide against the Jews,
smashed the Temple and
declared the land of Israel
would be no more. From
then on, the Romans promised
it would be known as
Palestine. The name was
derived from the Philistines,
a Goliathian people conquered
by the Jews centuries earlier.
It was a way for the Romans to
add insult to injury.
They also tried to change the
name of Jerusalem to Aelia
Capitolina, but that had even
less staying power.
Palestine
has never existed ~ before or
since ~ as an autonomous
entity. It was ruled
alternately by Rome, by
Islamic and Christian
crusaders, by the Ottoman
Empire and, briefly, by the
British after World War I.
The British agreed to restore
at least part of the land to
the Jewish people as their
homeland.
There
is no language known as
Palestinian. There is no
distinct Palestinian culture.
There has never been a land
known as Palestine governed by
Palestinians.
Palestinians are Arabs,
indistinguishable from
Jordanians (another recent
invention), Syrians, Lebanese,
Iraqis, etc. Keep in
mind that the Arabs control
99.9% of the Middle East
lands. Israel represents
one-tenth of one percent of
the landmass.
But
that's too much for the Arabs.
They want it all. And
that is ultimately what the
fighting in Israel is about
today. Greed. Pride.
Envy. Covetousness. No
matter how many land
concessions the Israelis make,
it will never be enough.
What
about Islam's holy sites?
There are none in Jerusalem.
Shocked? You should be.
I don't expect you will ever
hear the brutal truth from
anyone else in the
international media.
It's just not politically
correct.
I
know what you're going to say:
"Farah, the Al Aqsa
Mosque and the Dume of the
Rock in Jerusalem represent
Islam's third most holy sites.
Not true. In fact, The
Koran says nothing about
Jerusalem. It mentions
Mecca hundreds of times.
It mentions Medina countless
times. It never mentions
Jerusalem. With good
reason. There is no
historical evidence to suggest
Mohammed ever visited
Jerusalem.
So
how did Jerusalem become the
third holiest site of Islam?
Muslims today cite a vague
passage in the Koran, the 17th
Sura, entitled "The Night
Journey." It relates that
in a dream or a vision,
Mohammed was carried by night,
"from the sacred temple
to the temple that is most
remote, whose procinct we have
blessed, that we might show
him our signs. _"
In the seventh century, some
Muslims identified the
two temples mentioned in this
verse as being in Mecca
and Jerusalem. And
that's as close as Islam's
connection with Jerusalem gets
~ myth , fantasy, wishful
thinking. Meanwhile,
Jews can trace their roots in
Jerusalem back to the
days of Abraham.
One
round of violence in Israel
erupted when Likud Party
leader Ariel Sharon tried to
visit the Temple built
by Solomon. It is the
holiest site for Jews.
Sharon and his entourage were
met with stones and threats.
I know what it's like.
I've been there. Can you
imagine what it is like for
Jews to be threatened, stoned
and physically kept out of the
holiest site in Judaism?
So
what's the solution to the
Middle East mayhem?
Well, frankly, I don't think
there is one, it needs to
begin with truth.
Pretending will only lead to
more chaos. Treating a
5,000 year old birthright
backed by overwhelming
historical and archaeological
evidence equally with
illegitimate claims, wishes
and wants give diplomacy and
peacekeeping a bad name.
My
recent commentaries on the
Middle East have touched off a
virtual international
firestorm on the Internet.
Since
writing "Myths
of the Middle East"
... I have been inundated with
email from all over the world
~ at least 5,000 letters from
Israel alone. The
article has been translated
into a dozen languages.
It has been the subject of
network television debates.
It has been read on Israeli
national radio. And,
while most of the reaction has
been passionately favorable,
there have been threats on my
life and the lives of my
family members. There
have been vicious, obscene,
vulgar and profane
denunciations.
The
reaction illustrates just how
far apart the Arabs and
Israelis are in the so-called
"peace-process."
There has clearly been no
progress since 1947.
In
fact, there is simple evidence
that some Arab leaders are
right now attempting to revise
history in new ways that
strongly suggest there is
nothing Israel can ever do to
appease the violence in their
hearts.
In
an interview, which Italian
newspaper La Republica, March
24, 2001, Skeik Ikrama Sabri,
the Palestine Authority's top
Muslim figure in Jerusalem,
decreed that the Western Wall,
the last remnant of the Jewish
Temple, has no religious
significance to the Jews.
"Let
it be clear: the Wailing
Wall is not a holy place of
the Jews, it is an integral
part of the mosque (grounds).
We call it al-Buraq, the name
of the horse with which
Mohammed ascended to heaven
from Jerusalem," he
said. In fact, the
Temple Mount area and the
Western Wall are, according to
Jewish scholars, the only true
holy sites of Judaism.
Yasser
Arafat himself has made
similar statements recently,
claiming the city of Jerusalem
has no real significance to
Jews. On Al-Jezira
television, June 28, 1998, he
said, "Let me tell you
something. The issue of
Jerusalem is not just a
Palestianian issue. It
is a Palestinian, Arab,
Islamic and Christian
issue." Asked by
the interviewer if one could
also say it is a Jewish issue,
he replied, "No.
Allow me to be precise ~ they
consider Hebron to be holier
than Jerusalem."
Afarat is among those Arab
leaders making the incredible
suggestion that there was
never a Jewish Temple on the
site. "Until now,
all the excavations that have
been carried out have failed
to prove the location of the
Temple, " he claims.
"It is 30 years since
they captured the city and
they have not succeeded in
giving even one proof as the
location of the Temple."
Do you really think there can
be compromise with people this
delusional?
This
was no casual remark by
Arafat. In an earlier
speech broadcast on Voice of
the Palestine, Oct 10, 1996,
he said, "Let us begin
from the holy Buraq wall.
It is called the holy Buraq
wall, not the Wailing Wall.
We do not say this.
After the holy Buraq
revolution in 1929 ... the
Shaw International Committee
said this is a holy wall for
Muslims. This wall ends
at the Via Dolorosa.
These are our Christian and
Muslim holy places."
Now,
perhaps you understand why
even today the Muslim police
known as the Waqf attempt to
deny Jews and other
non-Muslims access to these
sites. Now, perhaps you
understand why, during times
when Jerusalem has been
occupied by Muslims, Christian
churches and Jewish synagogues
were destroyed or desecrated.
This
alone should demonstrate
conclusively to any non-biased
observer that the troubles in
the Middle East today will not
be solved by the creation of a
"Palestinian state."
It's time to point out to
those who do not yet know that
the leader of this movement ~
Afafat ~ is not a
"Palestinian" at
all. Indeed, he was born
in Egypt.
But
his family does have some
history in the area ~ though
he's not likely to acknowledge
it on ABC's Nightline or CNN.
You see, it was Arafat's uncle
who served as the grand mufri
of Jerusalem in the 1910's and
1930's. It was his uncle
who concluded, for the first
time, that Mohammed had
ascended into heaven from the
site known as Dome of the Rock
on the Temple Mount. And
it was his uncle who, in an
unholy alliance with Adolf
Hitler, condemned the Jews and
their designs on their eternal
capital city.
The
truth is that Jerusalem has a
unique importance to Jews.
It has always been a place
described and revered in
Jewish law. For
centuries since the Diaspora,
Jews around the world have
prayed toward Jerusalem,
mourned the destruction of
their Temple and hopefully
repeated the phrase,
"Next year in
Jerusalem."
Again,
I say, until all the parties
to war and peace in the Middle
East acknowledge basic
history, and archaeology,
there is little point in
pretending that peripheral
land concessions can bring
peace. ~
Reprinted with permission
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