“What temple?”
Columns from the Middle Ages damaged by Palestinian construction on the Temple Mount/photo by Zachi Zweig
In the Los Angeles Times today, Walter Reich remarks on the Palestinians’ ongoing denial of archeological finds relating to ancient Jewish life in the holy land:
But [the King Herod tomb] episode of [Palestinian] archeological denial pales in comparison with the decades of denial in the case of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which is known to Arabs as Haram al Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary.
In 1930, when Britain administered the area, the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem noted that the Temple Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.” But at the Camp David summit in 2000, Yasser Arafat insisted that a Jewish temple had existed not on the Temple Mount but in Nablus. And an Arafat aide, Saeb Erekat, said, to President Clinton’s amazement, “I don’t believe there was a temple on top of the Haram, I really don’t.” Mahmoud Abbas, the current Palestinian Authority president, later agreed with Erekat, as did the mufti of Jerusalem. Arafat later went further and denied the temple existed anywhere in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, including Nablus.
Today, denial of the temple’s existence has become a mainstay of Palestinian rhetoric. “They say that the temple was here,” a Palestinian historian scoffed. “What temple …? What archeological remains?” And temple denial has turned into temple removal. During the last few years, Palestinians have discarded remains of the first and second temples.
Reich, however, then steps on shaky ground when he asserts:
This absurd Palestinian denial of Jewish roots in the land has been matched on the part of Israelis who deny that there was a large and long-indigenous population of Arabs in Palestine when the Zionist movement vastly expanded the number of Jews in the area more than 100 years ago. Fortunately, the denial of Palestinian history has been utterly discredited among nearly all Israelis.
So, while “nearly all Israelis” accept Palestinians’ connection to the land, Palestinian “historians” and the highest level of Palestinian officialdom reject the Jews’ ancient ties to the land. How exactly does one “match” the other?
The false parity is again apparent in the bland, equalizing sub-headline:
How Israelis and Palestinians put their own spin or archeology to claim an ancestral homeland
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