The battle for Jerusalem is not just being fought with rockets and rhetoric: it also involves the revision of history.
This is specifically linked to Islamism in the repeated Palestinian denials of the location of the First and Second Jewish Temples. These denials have become a central tenet of Palestinian nationalism and frequently appear in their media. For example, in 2010 the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad al-Husseini, proclaimed that “There never was a Temple in any period, nor was there at any time any place of worship for the Jews, or others, at the Aqsa mosque site.”1
Such opinions fly in the face not only of all historical and archaeological evidence, but even of historic Islamic literature. For example, I remember reading in the library of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem a Muslim guidebook from the 1920s about the Dome of the Rock complex, which stated, “The identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This too is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt and peace offerings” (my emphasis).2
Much earlier, Abu Jafar Muhammad al-Tabari (839-923 AD), who chronicled the 7th-Century Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, wrote that one day when caliph Umar finished praying, he went to the place where "the Romans buried the Temple at the time of the sons of Israel.”3
Uncontested Lies
During recent months there has been a veritable spate of widely-differing revisionist statements from prominent Palestinians, disseminated via their public media. The details have become available thanks to organisations such as Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitor transmissions and provide translations from Arabic. Without translation such statements remain inscrutable in the West to all but Arabic specialists.
The output of PMW and MEMRI is directly available from their websites, and indirectly when it features in English-language articles from such as the Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz and the Jewish Chronicle, or via online updates from World Israel News and United with Israel, although very rarely does the mainstream UK media pick up on this.
However, by and large (especially in the Arab world), these kinds of statements go uncontested. Their direct impact on individual and communal beliefs and attitudes is enormous and indirectly they affect global perceptions of the Palestinian cause. At all levels, they contribute substantially to anti-Semitism. Only a few recent examples must suffice here.
The battle for Jerusalem is not just being fought with rockets and rhetoric: it also involves the revision of history.
Recent Examples
On 26 August 2019, Dr Atef Abu Saif, Minister of Culture for the Palestinian Authority, was interviewed on the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation’s Palestine This Morning TV programme. This man graduated from Birzeit University, Ramallah, has a Master’s degree from Bradford University and a PhD from the European University Institute of Florence (Italy). He teaches political science at the University of Al-Azhar in Gaza. Referring to Israel, he said,
Our struggle is with this state that came out of nowhere, without a history and without geography, stole our land, and wants to put an end to our existence. There is a lying author who wrote a story about his false presence on this land…There is nothing in history that proves this presence. They have not found one stone...they have no connection with this city [Jerusalem]…they have no connection to this history, and they have no connection to the geography, just as they have no connection to the future.4
As an international scholar, at the very least this man should (and probably does) know better!
On 6 October 2019, also on Palestine This Morning, the writer Haidar Massad said, “I wrote a novel called ‘The Palace’…about the falsification of historical geography in the Zionist and Talmudic narrative…The reader can establish that in this land, Palestine, which has always been Arab, the children of Israel were never there.”5 That is providing that they only read fairy tales rather than genuine history!
On 6 November 2019, Riyad al-Aileh, a Palestinian political science lecturer from Al-Azhar University, Gaza, stated on The Supreme Authority programme, “The Jews claim they were in Palestine 2000 years ago…If we look at the history we will see that they were not in Palestine in the past, but rather only as invaders here less than 70 years ago…The Canaanite Palestinian people have since succeeded in defeating those invaders and continue in this land.”6
Similarly, the very next day, archaeologist Abir Zayyad said in a programme called The Scent of History, “We have no archaeological evidence of the children of Israel in Palestine in this historical period 3000 years ago, neither in Jerusalem, nor in all of Palestine.”7
Top: Part of Dead Sea Scroll 1Q28a. Middle: Document seals, City of David, Jerusalem. Bottom: Seals of Hezekiah (left) and Isaiah (right). See Photo Credits/ReferencesSuch scent stinks! At the very least, so far as the ‘2,000 years’ claim is concerned, the Dead Sea Scrolls, produced by the Jewish community at Qumran, mostly written in Hebrew and Aramaic, date from about 400 BC to AD 70 and contain much earlier biblical material. What’s more, they were first discovered by Bedouin Arabs, handled by Arab traders and the Jordanian Antiquities Authority.
As for the 3000-year history, artefacts such as Jewish coins, ritual items and the personal seals of Old Testament characters (such as that of Nathan-Melek, servant of the King [2 Kings 23:11], and those of Hezekiah and Isaiah) abound.
The allegedly ‘moderate’ Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said boldly in Berlin in 2017, “My Palestinian homeland has a long history as a lighthouse to all the peoples; our people is an offshoot of the Canaanite people who lived 3,500 years ago. Our country, which has already existed for thousands of years, included the first agricultural community in human history in Jericho, as well as the most ancient city, Jerusalem, the city of peace.”8
Yet even the Palestinians acknowledge the truth, between themselves. On 23 March 2012, Hamas’ Minister of the Interior and National Security, Fathi Hammad, linked the Palestinians’ origins to Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula: “Al-Aqsa and the land of Palestine represent the spearhead for Islam and for the Muslims. Therefore, when we seek the help of our Arab brothers…it is in order to continue to wage jihad…Allah be praised, we all have Arab roots, and every Palestinian, in Gaza and throughout Palestine, can prove his Arab roots - whether from Saudi Arabia, from Yemen, or anywhere.”9
Palestinian scholar Zakkariyeh Muhammad states that the ‘Canaanite ideology’ espoused by Abbas and others is a mere "intellectual fad, divorced from the concerns of ordinary people”.10 A 2010 DNA study shows that Palestinians are genetically closest to Bedouins, Jordanians and Saudi Arabians, "consistent with a common origin in the Arabian Peninsula".11
It seems that most Palestinian spokesmen either have no clear idea of their own history, or are quite happy to tell whatever story suits them at the time!
Truth Matters
It seems that most Palestinian spokesmen either have no clear idea of their own history, or are quite happy to tell whatever story suits them at the time! The greatest scandal is that they are allowed by many international leaders to get away with it – they are even believed in the West, despite the overwhelming evidence that is freely available! Accountability is glaringly lacking. It is clear that the jihad raging against Israel includes masses of deliberate disinformation.
Surely we should be taking opportunities to raise these matters with our politicians, our media and our church leaders? It is heartening that during Prince Charles’ recent visit to Israel, speaking of the Holocaust, he said, “Knowing, as we do, the darkness to which such behaviour leads, we must be vigilant in discerning these ever-changing threats; we must be fearless in confronting falsehoods and resolute in resisting words and acts of violence” (my emphasis).12
The combination of Islamist incitement and revisionist history is deadly. For ordinary Palestinians the tragedy is that so few have the means to discern and counter the lies that they are being fed. They need our prayers. The battle is as much spiritual as it is political.
Apart from anything else, truth matters - especially to God. Inspired by him, Isaiah cried “Justice is turned back…because truth is fallen in the street…The Lord saw it and it displeased him” (Isa 59:14-15). Roughly one hundred years later, God directed Jeremiah to proclaim in the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem, “Truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouths…take up a lamentation on the desolate heights” (Jer 7:28-29).
In the mid-1st-Century, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy about the last days being characterised by slanderers (false accusers) and deceivers (2 Tim 3:3, 13). In contrast, Zechariah’s view of the last days sees beyond those conditions: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts, I am zealous for Jerusalem with great zeal…I will return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem [and] Jerusalem shall be called ‘The City of Truth’” (Zech 8:2-3).
What a prospect that is! Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!
References
1 Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. GlobalSecurity.org.
2 The Supreme Moslem Council, 1924. A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, Jerusalem. Facsimile copies are still available, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
3 Friedmann, Y, 1992. The History of al-Tabari: Volume XII, The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah and the Conquest of Syria and Palestine. State University of New York Press, p195.
4 The Jews came as "invaders 70 years ago", no evidence of Jews before then. PMW, 30 November 2019.
5 Palestinian academics deny archaeological evidence of Jews in Israel. Jerusalem Post, 1 December 2019. Revisionist statements not only come from ‘academics’, but from the Palestinian Islamic judiciary, as this example shows.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid, note 5.
8 Who Are the Palestinians? Institute for Contemporary Affairs, Vol 17, No 21 (footnote 1). Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
9 Special Dispatch No 4641, MEMRI, 9 April 2012.
10 Tabarani, GG, 2008. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: from Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration. AuthorHouse, p29.
11 Behar, DM, et al. The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people. Nature 466(7303), pp238-242.
12 Prince Charles quotes Isaiah in Jerusalem speech commemorating Auschwitz anniversary. CUFI, 24 January 2020.