Victor Sharpe
Hoisted by their own petard
By Victor Sharpe
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda infamously said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." He told foul lies about the hapless Jews and millions of Germans and other Europeans believed them and willingly participated in the Holocaust.
Another such miscreant, the late and unlamented arch terrorist, Yasser Arafat, told an enormous whopper, which has been repeated relentlessly by his fellow Arabs, those who call themselves Palestinians; namely that there were no Jewish Temples on Jerusalem's Temple Mount; thus impudently denying both Jewish and Christian history.
But now the outrageous propaganda spewed by the PLO and the so-called Palestinian Authority, wherein they try to deny millennial Jewish history in the ancestral Jewish and biblical homeland and substitute it with a fraudulent and fictitious "ancient Palestinian history" – even to the ludicrous extent of claiming Jewish biblical characters were Palestinians – has come back to bite them.
They have been served a taste of their own noxious medicine. In other words; "hoisted by their own petard."
Meanwhile, Jewish archaeological remains dating back thousands of years continue to be discovered throughout Israel thus totally obliterating the ceaseless and baseless propaganda spewed by the so-called Palestinian Authority desperately denying Jewish biblical and post biblical history.
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the most sacred site of the Jewish people, the very place that the Jewish King David built the sanctuary for the Ark of the Covenant and made his capital some 3,000 years ago. It is where his son, King Solomon, built the first Temple destroyed by the Babylonians and Herod later built the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans.
The very name, Jerusalem, Yerushalayim in Hebrew, was always the source of Jewish yearning and prayers down the dark centuries of exile and persecution.
For those Jews not living in their ancestral homeland, (and there were always Jewish communities in the Land maintaining whatever numbers they could under successive alien occupations), the prayers expressed the longing to return and rebuild the eternal Jewish capital. It is not by accident that wherever in the world a synagogue stands, it faces Jerusalem.
At the conclusion of Israel's defensive war against genocidal Arab aggression in June, 1967 and the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem, which had been divided since the 1948 illegal Jordanian occupation of the eastern half of the city, the leftwing Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, committed a calamitous mistake.
Dayan believed that showing friendship to the Muslim aggressors by giving the Waqf the keys to the Temple Mount, the erstwhile Jordanian Muslim religious authorities would reciprocate and Jews and Muslims would worship in peaceful harmony on the Mount. It was a monumental error. For the Islamic Waqf predictably chose to immediately discriminate against any signs of Jewish and Christian prayer on the Temple Mount.
As Giulio Meotti, a journalist with the Italian newspaper, Il Foglio, wrote in 2012:
"The Waqf is now attempting to deliberately destroy all archaeological evidence of Jewish claims to this site, while using terror and intimidation to impose its exclusive claim to the Temple Mount.
"The Waqf has removed every sign of ancient Jewish presence at the site. At the entrance, a deplorable Waqf sign says 'The Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard and everything in it is Islamic property.'
"Today Jews are barred from praying on the Mount and are not even allowed to carry any holy articles with them. With Muslim observers supervising visits, Israeli police, to their shame, frequently arrest Jews for various 'violations,' such as singing or reciting a prayer even in a whisper. Even moving one's lips in silent prayer is a cause for Muslim violence and stoning."
An Indian Hindu friend expressed to me his astonishment that Jews are not allowed to build their Temple again on their holiest site. He pointed out that growing up in India, people always knew that Jerusalem is to the Jews what Mecca is to the Muslims and Varanasi is to the Hindus.
What may well be one of the worst crimes against civilization was the ruthless and relentless destruction of Jewish artifacts and antiquities by the Moslem authorities, the Waqf, who were foolishly given permission to control the Temple Mount in 1967. Remember the Muslim Taliban destruction of the 2,500 year old statues of Buddha in Afghanistan?
It is the same Muslim arrogance and hatred for all other religions which the world has witnessed as the Islamic State (ISIS) obliterates Christian history and Christian lives throughout the Middle East.
The Muslims soon began using heavy bulldozers on the Temple Mount despite Israeli protests. They began digging under the mount, and in the process desecrated tons of precious archaeologically rich soil. One archaeologist described the disturbed sites as "an archaeological crime and an assault upon history and civilization."
One can only shudder at what discoveries of profound spiritual and historical importance have already been destroyed and lost.
Christian Arabs – that endangered and dwindling population who live under the onerous and discriminatory control of the overwhelminglyMuslim Palestinian Authority – were in the main totally silent about the destruction of Jewish antiquities by the Muslim Waqf.
Khaled Abu Toameh wrote about the destruction of the remains of an ancient Christian church discovered in Gaza in his April 12, 2016 article in the Gatestone Institute website. He wrote as follows:
"For Palestinian Christians, the destruction of the ancient Byzantine church ruins is yet a further attempt by Palestinian Muslim leaders to efface both Christian history and signs of any Christian presence in the 'West Bank' and Gaza, under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. A growing number of Christians feel they are being systematically targeted by both the PA and Hamas for being Christians.
"Bulldozers were used to destroy some of the church artifacts; some Palestinian Christians accused both Hamas and the PA of copying ISIS tactics to demolish historic sites.
"The plight of Palestinian Christians does not interest the international community. That is because Israel cannot be blamed. If the current policy against Christians persists, the day will come when no Christians will be left in Bethlehem."
Tragically, Israeli leaders are terrified of upsetting the Muslim world and this very timidity and fear allows for triumphalist and tyrannical Islam to commit unspeakable crimes against civilization and history.
Under Islam, Christians and Jews are considered dhimmis, a tolerated but second class who are afforded "protection" by Islam. Dhimmitude is integral to Islam; it is a protection racket that suspends the Muslim conqueror's desire to kill or enslave Jews and Christians, provided they submit themselves to paying a discriminatory tax and tribute.
Writing in the April 12, 2016 Op-Ed section of the Israel National News website, Stephen M. Flatow opined on the sensational discovery of the world's oldest glass kilns found in Judea-Israel.
And, as Mr. Flatow also pointed out:
"Just a few weeks ago, Israeli archaeologists discovered two seals that were used for sealing documents in the 7th or 8th centuries BC, that is, some 2,700 years ago.
"The writing on them was Hebrew, not Arabic. One bore the name of a man, "Sa'adyahu ben Shebnayahu"; the other had the name of a woman: "Elihanah bat Goel" (or Gael). The archaeologists noted that the construction of the names were "in typical Judean fashion for this time period.
"Palestinian Muslim propagandists have tried to bury the name "Judea." They prefer the de-Judaized term "West Bank." But until a few decades ago, nobody ever heard of, let alone used, the phrase "West Bank." Do you know why? Because it has no historical basis and no legal basis."
It was from that ancient Jewish heartland that the Jordanians in 1948 expelled its Jewish inhabitants, destroyed their villages, desecrated 57 synagogues and used ancient Jewish gravestones on the Mount of Olives as latrines for the Arab Legion.
It is high time that the world stopped using the term, 'West Bank' – which refers to the mere 19 year old illegal occupation by the Jordanian Arab Legion of the eastern half of Jerusalem and the ancestral Jewish heartland – and begin to again refer to the territory by its more than 3,500 year's old biblical names: Judea and Samaria.
© Victor Sharpe
April 15, 2016
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda infamously said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." He told foul lies about the hapless Jews and millions of Germans and other Europeans believed them and willingly participated in the Holocaust.
Another such miscreant, the late and unlamented arch terrorist, Yasser Arafat, told an enormous whopper, which has been repeated relentlessly by his fellow Arabs, those who call themselves Palestinians; namely that there were no Jewish Temples on Jerusalem's Temple Mount; thus impudently denying both Jewish and Christian history.
But now the outrageous propaganda spewed by the PLO and the so-called Palestinian Authority, wherein they try to deny millennial Jewish history in the ancestral Jewish and biblical homeland and substitute it with a fraudulent and fictitious "ancient Palestinian history" – even to the ludicrous extent of claiming Jewish biblical characters were Palestinians – has come back to bite them.
They have been served a taste of their own noxious medicine. In other words; "hoisted by their own petard."
Meanwhile, Jewish archaeological remains dating back thousands of years continue to be discovered throughout Israel thus totally obliterating the ceaseless and baseless propaganda spewed by the so-called Palestinian Authority desperately denying Jewish biblical and post biblical history.
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the most sacred site of the Jewish people, the very place that the Jewish King David built the sanctuary for the Ark of the Covenant and made his capital some 3,000 years ago. It is where his son, King Solomon, built the first Temple destroyed by the Babylonians and Herod later built the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans.
The very name, Jerusalem, Yerushalayim in Hebrew, was always the source of Jewish yearning and prayers down the dark centuries of exile and persecution.
For those Jews not living in their ancestral homeland, (and there were always Jewish communities in the Land maintaining whatever numbers they could under successive alien occupations), the prayers expressed the longing to return and rebuild the eternal Jewish capital. It is not by accident that wherever in the world a synagogue stands, it faces Jerusalem.
At the conclusion of Israel's defensive war against genocidal Arab aggression in June, 1967 and the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem, which had been divided since the 1948 illegal Jordanian occupation of the eastern half of the city, the leftwing Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, committed a calamitous mistake.
Dayan believed that showing friendship to the Muslim aggressors by giving the Waqf the keys to the Temple Mount, the erstwhile Jordanian Muslim religious authorities would reciprocate and Jews and Muslims would worship in peaceful harmony on the Mount. It was a monumental error. For the Islamic Waqf predictably chose to immediately discriminate against any signs of Jewish and Christian prayer on the Temple Mount.
As Giulio Meotti, a journalist with the Italian newspaper, Il Foglio, wrote in 2012:
"The Waqf is now attempting to deliberately destroy all archaeological evidence of Jewish claims to this site, while using terror and intimidation to impose its exclusive claim to the Temple Mount.
"The Waqf has removed every sign of ancient Jewish presence at the site. At the entrance, a deplorable Waqf sign says 'The Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard and everything in it is Islamic property.'
"Today Jews are barred from praying on the Mount and are not even allowed to carry any holy articles with them. With Muslim observers supervising visits, Israeli police, to their shame, frequently arrest Jews for various 'violations,' such as singing or reciting a prayer even in a whisper. Even moving one's lips in silent prayer is a cause for Muslim violence and stoning."
An Indian Hindu friend expressed to me his astonishment that Jews are not allowed to build their Temple again on their holiest site. He pointed out that growing up in India, people always knew that Jerusalem is to the Jews what Mecca is to the Muslims and Varanasi is to the Hindus.
What may well be one of the worst crimes against civilization was the ruthless and relentless destruction of Jewish artifacts and antiquities by the Moslem authorities, the Waqf, who were foolishly given permission to control the Temple Mount in 1967. Remember the Muslim Taliban destruction of the 2,500 year old statues of Buddha in Afghanistan?
It is the same Muslim arrogance and hatred for all other religions which the world has witnessed as the Islamic State (ISIS) obliterates Christian history and Christian lives throughout the Middle East.
The Muslims soon began using heavy bulldozers on the Temple Mount despite Israeli protests. They began digging under the mount, and in the process desecrated tons of precious archaeologically rich soil. One archaeologist described the disturbed sites as "an archaeological crime and an assault upon history and civilization."
One can only shudder at what discoveries of profound spiritual and historical importance have already been destroyed and lost.
Christian Arabs – that endangered and dwindling population who live under the onerous and discriminatory control of the overwhelmingly
Khaled Abu Toameh wrote about the destruction of the remains of an ancient Christian church discovered in Gaza in his April 12, 2016 article in the Gatestone Institute website. He wrote as follows:
"For Palestinian Christians, the destruction of the ancient Byzantine church ruins is yet a further attempt by Palestinian Muslim leaders to efface both Christian history and signs of any Christian presence in the 'West Bank' and Gaza, under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. A growing number of Christians feel they are being systematically targeted by both the PA and Hamas for being Christians.
"Bulldozers were used to destroy some of the church artifacts; some Palestinian Christians accused both Hamas and the PA of copying ISIS tactics to demolish historic sites.
"The plight of Palestinian Christians does not interest the international community. That is because Israel cannot be blamed. If the current policy against Christians persists, the day will come when no Christians will be left in Bethlehem."
Tragically, Israeli leaders are terrified of upsetting the Muslim world and this very timidity and fear allows for triumphalist and tyrannical Islam to commit unspeakable crimes against civilization and history.
Under Islam, Christians and Jews are considered dhimmis, a tolerated but second class who are afforded "protection" by Islam. Dhimmitude is integral to Islam; it is a protection racket that suspends the Muslim conqueror's desire to kill or enslave Jews and Christians, provided they submit themselves to paying a discriminatory tax and tribute.
Writing in the April 12, 2016 Op-Ed section of the Israel National News website, Stephen M. Flatow opined on the sensational discovery of the world's oldest glass kilns found in Judea-Israel.
And, as Mr. Flatow also pointed out:
"Just a few weeks ago, Israeli archaeologists discovered two seals that were used for sealing documents in the 7th or 8th centuries BC, that is, some 2,700 years ago.
"The writing on them was Hebrew, not Arabic. One bore the name of a man, "Sa'adyahu ben Shebnayahu"; the other had the name of a woman: "Elihanah bat Goel" (or Gael). The archaeologists noted that the construction of the names were "in typical Judean fashion for this time period.
"Palestinian Muslim propagandists have tried to bury the name "Judea." They prefer the de-Judaized term "West Bank." But until a few decades ago, nobody ever heard of, let alone used, the phrase "West Bank." Do you know why? Because it has no historical basis and no legal basis."
It was from that ancient Jewish heartland that the Jordanians in 1948 expelled its Jewish inhabitants, destroyed their villages, desecrated 57 synagogues and used ancient Jewish gravestones on the Mount of Olives as latrines for the Arab Legion.
It is high time that the world stopped using the term, 'West Bank' – which refers to the mere 19 year old illegal occupation by the Jordanian Arab Legion of the eastern half of Jerusalem and the ancestral Jewish heartland – and begin to again refer to the territory by its more than 3,500 year's old biblical names: Judea and Samaria.
© Victor Sharpe
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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