Who's to blame for the Gaza violence?

There are a lot of diplomatic I-told-you-so’s rocketing into Washington from around the world right now. Critics of President Donald Trump’s move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday are in high dudgeon. As they warned, the Palestinians reacted violently to the move. Thousands massed on the edges of the Gaza Strip to protest the American move, and economic hardships in Gaza.

We, too, cautioned last year that moving the embassy, though mainly symbolic, would likely provoke Palestinian ire. What happened Monday, though, is more disturbing than that.

According to The New York Times, “loudspeakers on minarets urged Palestinians to rush the fence bordering Israel, where they were met by army snipers.” The Washington Post reports that “organizers urged demonstrators to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them.”

Which suggests that Hamas, the terrorist group that rules Gaza, incited protesters to dash toward Israeli military positions, likely knowing that many would be killed. Hamas leaders had to know that the carnage would ignite an international backlash against Israel and the U.S.

If Palestinian leaders want to know who is responsible for the deaths Monday, they should glance in the mirror.

That said, let’s also note that many of the demonstrators were peaceful. They came to protest what they call the nakba, or catastrophe: the creation of the state of Israel 70 years ago. They came to reassert their “right of return” to what is now Israel. They came to express their despair — as generations of Palestinians have. And they came to denounce the U.S. embassy switch.

But let’s be clear: Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem doesn’t preclude anything in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. The fate of Jerusalem has always been part of negotiations between the sides, if and when they start speaking again.

A Palestinian state is not foreordained, however. Early in his term, President Trump shook up the Middle East status quo by declaring that he would not insist on the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a peace accord.

Leaders of the Palestinians have a choice: They can keep sending their young people to their deaths.

Or they can turn from violent confrontation to constructive negotiation. They can resume their path toward a Palestinian state.

Even as we write that sentence — expressing the hope for a two-state solution that we’ve repeated over and over — it seems more far-fetched than ever. The reality on the ground is that nothing will change until Palestinian leaders stop inciting violence and start telling their people the truth: Palestinians can have a state. But not until they accept that the Israel they loathe is in the neighborhood to stay.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman: Liberal media sides with Hamas over Trump, By Amb. David Friedman | Fox News

This past Monday, the United States at long last opened its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. The opening occurred 70 years to the day that Harry Truman led the United States to be the first nation to recognize Israel as a sovereign nation. The event, authorized and directed by President Trump, was a moving tribute to the enduring and unique friendship between our nation and the State of Israel.

Moving our embassy, however, was not just an act of friendship. It was an act that Congress had endorsed. In 1995, both houses of Congress overwhelming passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act urging exactly this action. As recently as last year, the United States Senate re-affirmed the Jerusalem Embassy Act by a vote of 90-0. While past government leaders have argued, from time to time, that the embassy should only move as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians, Congress said no such thing.

Past Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all campaigned on the pledge that Jerusalem must always be the capital of Israel. Clinton and Bush also promised to move our embassy to Jerusalem. None of them honored their word. President Trump made a similar promise, but, in contrast to his predecessors, he kept it.

The opening ceremony was a beautiful and uplifting event attended by hundreds and watched by millions. As the ceremony proceeded, there were a few sporadic, peaceful protests from among the hundreds of thousands of Arabs living in Jerusalem. The West Bank remained calm.

The apparent success of the embassy’s opening ceremony enraged the liberal media. Could this be yet another diplomatic triumph by President Trump? The prospect was unbearable.

Hamas to the rescue. These thugs, acknowledged nearly universally as a terrorist organization, had been rioting in Gaza over the past six weeks for purported reasons not connected to the embassy move. They were more than willing to provide the media with a dark side to an otherwise uplifting story.

No nation in the world allows foreigners to storm its border. Period. When the declared intention of the aggressors is to kill that nation’s citizens, it is laughable to even suggest that a forceful response would not ensue.

For weeks, Hamas had been pursuing a direct and unambiguous operation against Israel: On Fridays, after stirring up emotions at weekly prayers, it incited waves of Gaza residents to violently storm the border with Israel, hoping to break through and kill Israeli citizens and kidnap Israeli soldiers. In addition, given the likelihood that these malign efforts would fail, Hamas also created “kite bombs” painted with swastikas that it launched in Israel’s direction when the winds were favorable.

No nation in the world allows foreigners to storm its border. Period.  When the declared intention of the aggressors is to kill that nation’s citizens, it is laughable to even suggest that a forceful response would not ensue.

Regrettably, Hamas convinced impressionable young adults that the border had been breached and directed them to run all the way to Jerusalem and murder their enemies. Thousands unfortunately took up the call and entered harm’s way.

Some 60 Gazans, the overwhelming majority of whom were known Hamas terrorists, lost their lives because Hamas turned them into a collective suicide bomb. They were neither heroes nor the peaceful protesters they were advertised to be.

At least not before the liberal media entered the scene. Desperate for a narrative to discredit the president’s decision to move our embassy to Jerusalem, they broadcast the opening ceremony on a split screen simultaneously displaying the Gaza riots, and condemned the insensitivity of the ceremony’s participants to the carnage that seemed next door on TV but which in actuality was occurring 60 miles away!

The next day, the liberal media vilified everyone associated with the embassy move and glorified the poor Hamas terrorists. Failed diplomats who never brought peace or stability to the region were pulled out of mothballs to regurgitate their calcified thinking. And the most deranged even accused the administration of having blood on its hands.  Tellingly, not a single pundit offered a less-lethal alternative to protecting Israel from being overrun by killers or its soldiers from being within range of pistols, IEDs or Molotov cocktails.

Let there be no mistake. Every life is equally precious, whether Jewish, Palestinian or other. But no nation should ever be called upon to sacrifice its own citizens to preserve the lives of aggressive infiltrators intent on murder and mayhem.

Ironically, Hamas had recently woken up to the fact that most responsible journalists were on to its game and Hamas was considering ending its suicidal assaults on the Israeli border. But seeing the opportunity to curry the front page or the A Block from reporters willing to shed a negative light on our president, Hamas enthusiastically launched its youth back into the fire. So who really has blood on their hands?

David Friedman is the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. 

THIS FATHER SHOULD BE IMPRISONED ALONG WITH ANY PARENT WHO, NOT ONLY, ALLOWED BUT ENCOURAGED CHILDREN INTO THE IDF LINE OF LIVE FIRE IGNORING WARNINGS OF DANGER!!!!!

Palestinian Mother: "Where are you going with baby Laila Anwar?"
Father: "Why, I'm taking up to the demonstrations at the Israeli boarder."
Mother cry's: "Are you mad???? Laila is only 8 months old! Have you not read the leaflets the Israelis have dropped warning anyone who approaches the boarder that they would be in grave danger and you want to take are baby??? No you are not taking her!!!" (see copy of the GREEN leaflet that warned Gaza residents they will be risking their lives if they approach the border during a planned mass protest.

The army says in the leaflets dropped by jets Monday that it will "act against every attempt to damage the security fence or harm IDF soldiers or Israeli civilians)
Husband: " Hamas promised all of us we would be safe so I'm going and so is Laila."
Husband leaves holding the baby , wife crying out: "Please, please don't go, I beg you!!!! Israel has warned us!!!" 

This father is nothing but a murderer bringing a baby to one of the mot dangerous places on earth after been warned not to go!!!. 

WHO WOULD ALLOW AN 8 MONTH BABY TO CRAWL ACROSS A FIELD WITH LANDMINES.????? 

Time you losers learn the truth ans this time it comes from your heroes Hamas!!!

SWC: Inconvenient Truths About Gaza, Hamas and Israel's Border

• Why is there a border fence between Israel and Gaza? 

Israel captured Gaza from the Egyptians during the 1967 Six-Day War. For decades, there were no border fences. Many Israelis shopped in Gaza and many Arabs worked in Israel proper. In 2005, then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, unilaterally removed all military posts, as well as the thousands of Jews who had settled in the Gaza Strip, and gave Palestinians full control of the territory.

In 2006, Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, a terrorist organization whose Charter calls for the total destruction of the Jewish State. Soon, suicide bombers and thousands of missiles targeted Israel leading to military confrontations.  In recent years, Hamas built a network of underground terror tunnels to circumvent the border fences.  Israel, like any other nation in the world, cannot be expected to tolerate an attempted invasion of its land.

• Why are the conditions in Gaza so bad? 

Hamas diverted building materials and other aid intended for civilians, and instead chose to build massive underground tunnels to launch attacks against Israel. Rather than turning Gaza into an international tourist destination on the Mediterranean and dramatically improving the economy and the life of the people, Hamas’ only interest is its radical terrorist ideology, which chooses to create severe shortages of goods and services vital to the pursuit of a normal future.

Rather than admit their culpability in allowing this unbearable situation to fester, the international community, including the United Nations, and the European Union, continue to cynically blame Israel and Israel alone.  But the simple fact is that none of those nations, faced with a similar crisis would act any differently than the Israelis.

• Don’t Palestinians have the right to peaceful protest without fearing they would be killed? 

Of course, everyone has the right to protest both individually and collectively, but what if the Million Man or Women’s March decided to violently storm the White House or Congress?  What would our police and soldiers do?  How much more critical is the situation at the Gaza border, which has a long history of terrorists blowing up restaurants, buses, and schools.   Hamas admits now that 50 out of the 60 deaths on Monday, May 14, 2018, widely condemned by leaders and the media as an Israeli "massacre" or "slaughter", were in fact, members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups. Meanwhile, the Israeli government continues to send leaflets warning Palestinian protesters to stay a safe distance from the border. 

 

• Don’t Palestinians just want to live in peace?

Without question, many Palestinians want peace. But under Hamas rule, their children are taught otherwise in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools. Textbooks never mention the word Israel, maps show only Arab names for cities and sites in Israel proper. The new Hamas Charter says, “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”

Even UNRWA, the single largest employer in Gaza, has been co-opted by a Hamas-driven agenda. In fact, UNRWA closed schools on May 14-15, knowing full well many of the children would be put in harm’s way.

• Are women and children targeted at the border? 

There has been video evidence showing that women and youngsters are being brought into the fray to act as human shields and cannon fodder. Hamas’ hope is that the most vulnerable amongst them will be shot by the Israelis, which would lead to headlines denouncing Israel as carrying out massacres against innocents.  It is the worst form of child abuse to deliberately place children in danger, just to score a few paragraphs in the international media and social media.

• Would these events have occurred if President Trump hadn’t moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem? 

Hamas needs little excuse to engage in their most profitable enterprise — terror — especially when they know anything involving President Trump would garner international headlines. Proof of this is that these marches actually began on March 30th, six weeks prior to the US Embassy move. 

Hamas selected May 14th, Israel’s 70th anniversary and the inauguration of the new US Embassy to gain maximum coverage. And it worked – rioters rushed the border, Israeli soldiers defended their nation, and the media, continues to give a moral pass to Hamas while denouncing Israel, again and again.  

Gaza’s Miseries Have Palestinian Authors, by Bret Stephens

For the third time in two weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have set fire to the Kerem Shalom border crossing, through which they get medicine, fuel and other humanitarian essentials from Israel. Soon we’ll surely hear a great deal about the misery of Gaza. Try not to forget that the authors of that misery are also the presumptive victims.

There’s a pattern here — harm yourself, blame the other — and it deserves to be highlighted amid the torrent of morally blind, historically illiterate criticism to which Israelis are subjected every time they defend themselves against violent Palestinian attack.

In 1970, Israel set up an industrial zone along the border with Gaza to promote economic cooperation and provide Palestinians with jobs. It had to be shut down in 2004 amid multiple terrorist attacks that left 11 Israelis dead.

In 2005, Jewish-American donors forked over $14 million dollars to pay for greenhouses that had been used by Israeli settlers until the government of Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Strip. Palestinians looted dozens of the greenhouses almost immediately upon Israel’s exit.

In 2007, Hamas took control of Gaza in a bloody coup against its rivals in the Fatah faction. Since then, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups in the Strip have fired nearly 10,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel — all the while denouncing an economic “blockade” that is Israel’s refusal to feed the mouth that bites it. (Egypt and the Palestinian Authority also participate in the same blockade, to zero international censure.)

In 2014 Israel discovered that Hamas had built 32 tunnels under the Gaza border to kidnap or kill Israelis. “The average tunnel requires 350 truckloads of construction supplies,” The Wall Street Journal reported, “enough to build 86 homes, seven mosques, six schools or 19 medical clinics.” Estimated cost of tunnels: $90 million.

Want to understand why Gaza is so poor? See above.

Which brings us to the grotesque spectacle along Gaza’s border over the past several weeks, in which thousands of Palestinians have tried to breach the fence and force their way into Israel, often at the cost of their lives. What is the ostensible purpose of what Palestinians call “the Great Return March”?

That’s no mystery. This week, The Times published an op-ed by Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the organizers of the march. “We are intent on continuing our struggle until Israel recognizes our right to return to our homes and land from which we were expelled,” he writes, referring to homes and land within Israel’s original borders.

His objection isn’t to the “occupation” as usually defined by Western liberals, namely Israel’s acquisition of territories following the 1967 Six Day War. It’s to the existence of Israel itself. Sympathize with him all you like, but at least notice that his politics demand the elimination of the Jewish state.

Notice, also, the old pattern at work: Avow and pursue Israel’s destruction, then plead for pity and aid when your plans lead to ruin.

The world now demands that Jerusalem account for every bullet fired at the demonstrators, without offering a single practical alternative for dealing with the crisis.

But where is the outrage that Hamas kept urging Palestinians to move toward the fence, having been amply forewarned by Israel of the mortal risk? Or that protest organizers encouraged women to lead the charges on the fence because, as The Times’s Declan Walsh reported, “Israeli soldiers might be less likely to fire on women”? Or that Palestinian children as young as 7 were dispatched to try to breach the fence? Or that the protests ended after Israel warned Hamas’s leaders, whose preferred hide-outs include Gaza’s hospital, that their own lives were at risk?

Elsewhere in the world, this sort of behavior would be called reckless endangerment. It would be condemned as self-destructive, cowardly and almost bottomlessly cynical.

The mystery of Middle East politics is why Palestinians have so long been exempted from these ordinary moral judgments. How do so many so-called progressives now find themselves in objective sympathy with the murderers, misogynists and homophobes of Hamas? Why don’t they note that, by Hamas’s own admission, some 50 of the 62 protesters killed on Monday were members of Hamas? Why do they begrudge Israel the right to defend itself behind the very borders they’ve been clamoring for years for Israelis to get behind?

Why is nothing expected of Palestinians, and everything forgiven, while everything is expected of Israelis, and nothing forgiven?

That’s a question to which one can easily guess the answer. In the meantime, it’s worth considering the harm Western indulgence has done to Palestinian aspirations.

No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood, violence and fatalism symbolized by these protests. No worthy Palestinian government can emerge if the international community continues to indulge the corrupt, anti-Semitic autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction the despotic killers of Hamas. And no Palestinian economy will ever flourish through repeated acts of self-harm and destructive provocation.

If Palestinians want to build a worthy, proud and prosperous nation, they could do worse than try to learn from the one next door. That begins by forswearing forever their attempts to destroy it.

PMW: “Bring a knife, dagger, or handgun,” kidnap Israeli civilians, and murder soldiers and settlers - Instructions on Facebook to Gazans for “March of Return” by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Two Palestinian Facebook pages and a forum directing rioters in Gaza gave explicit instructions to murder and kidnap Israelis on May 14, the day the US embassy opened in Jerusalem, as well as suggestions on how to accomplish this goal. It is not clear if Hamas itself was the group sending these messages. What is critical is that Gazans were encouraged to bring weapons to the demonstrations and use these weapons to either murder or capture Israelis. Israeli soldiers may have been facing Palestinians who were using the cover of demonstrating civilians to attempt to break through the border with the goal of murdering and kidnapping Israelis.

 

The following are the instructions to bring weapons, murder "soldiers and settlers," and kidnap Israeli citizens for use as bargaining chips to impose conditions on Israel:

 

"Rebelling young people,

Treat seriously and do not take lightly the requests to bring a knife, dagger, or handgun, if you have one, and to leave them under your clothes and not use them or show them, except if you identify one of the [Israeli] soldiers or settlers. Do not kill Israeli civilians, instead hand them over to the resistance immediately, because this is the point that Israel fears, as it knows that the capturer can set any condition he wants."

[Independent Palestinian Facebook page 

"The Great March of Return", May 14, 2018]

 

The instructions also described how masses of Palestinians would "collectively" breach the security fence aided by bulldozers:

 

"At a certain time... there will be a collective advance towards the barbed wire fence until we remove it with our strong hands and exposed bodies all at once, while being aided by loudspeakers and calls of 'Allahu Akbar' (i.e., Allah is greatest) by the masses. Therefore, do not advance individually, make do with the collective advance according to the instructions, because there will be bulldozers at the back that will advance in order to completely remove the fence."

 

Gazans were instructed not to deal with "the wounded or the Martyrs" but to concentrate on "the battlefield":

 

"Do not busy yourselves with the wounded or the Martyrs (Shahids), as the medical teams behind us are ready for this. Just pay attention to the battlefield and act wisely and according to the instructions."

 

The portrayal of the events in Gaza by some news agencies as peaceful demonstrations is clearly false.

 

The Facebook page "The Great March of Return" was opened in March 2018 and states its goal as "live and continuous coverage of the activities of the Great March of Return." It posts updates from the march every few minutes and has around 6,000 followers. It is not clear if Hamas itself is involved in this page. The second Facebook page that ran the post is called "Gaza Now," [May 13, 2018] but the post was later removed from this page. Likewise, the instructions were shared in a forum thread on the "March of Return" protests on a Palestinian web forum named "PALDF." [May 13, 2018]

 

The following is the full translation of the instructions to Gazans to bring weapons, and murder and kidnap Israelis:

 

Posted text: "#IMPORTANT #Instructions for participants:

Rebelling young people,

Tomorrow, Monday [May 14, 2018], we will begin by standing along Jakkar Road from Beit Hanoun to Rafah at 10:00 a.m., and at a certain time that we will notify you about later there will be a collective advance towards the barbed wire fence until we remove it with our strong hands and exposed bodies all at once, while being aided by loudspeakers and calls of 'Allahu Akbar' (i.e., Allah is greatest) by the masses. Therefore, do not advance individually, make do with the collective advance according to the instructions, because there will be bulldozers at the back that will advance in order to completely remove the fence.

 

Rebelling young people,

Treat seriously and do not take lightly the requests to bring a knife, dagger, or handgun, if you have one, and to leave them under your clothes and not use them or show them, except if you identify one of the [Israeli] soldiers or settlers. Do not kill an Israeli civilian, instead hand them over to the resistance immediately, because this is the point that Israel fears, as it knows that the capturer can set any condition he wants.

 

Rebelling young people,

Disperse the [Israeli] snipers and make them leave their posts and run, and always check the area, and think what to do and then act. Do not busy yourselves with the wounded or the Martyrs (Shahids), as the medical teams behind us are ready for this. Just pay attention to the battlefield and act wisely and according to the instructions."

[Independent Palestinian Facebook page "The Great March of Return", May 14, 2018]

 

The same text was also posted on the independent Palestinian Facebook page "Gaza Now" on May 13, 2018, but was later removed. Likewise it was shared in a forum thread about the March of Return protests in Gaza on the Palestinian website PALDF on May 13, 2018.

Hamas Says "Children and Women Make the Best Human Shields" - Matt Bradley (MSNBC)

David Keyes, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC on Tuesday:

• "Hamas' interior minister said that 'children and women make the best human shields.' That's not my words. It's an exact quote from Fathi Hamad, Hamas' interior minister....What kind of people send women and children into the frontlines, hoping that they die?"
• "The same group which has been helping organize this march - Hamas...openly calls not just for the death of every Israeli soldier, but for the death of every Jew, and not just every Jew - every American."
• "This is what we're up against and it's a tragedy because instead of investing in their own people, they're actually telling their children to go and wage war against Israel. It's insanity."
• "There are people who stayed very far away from Israel's border and didn't try to infiltrate into Israel, and they can protest as much as they want. But when we saw masses of people gathering, with the express aim of infiltrating into Israel, in order to kill women and children, we did what any state in the world would have done, which is protect our people."
• "Iran not only fired 20 missiles just a few days ago at Israel. It also funded and armed Hizbullah and Hamas, who have launched tens of thousands of missiles at Israel. It's blown up Jews around the world. It's openly calling for our annihilation."
• "Those are acts of war which Israel has been the recipient of for far too long....Iran's aim is very clear - the total an

The Quran, The Gospels And Tanach Say Jerusalem Is Jewish So Why Doesn’t Everyone?

Personal Note: Today is Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day when supporters of Israel celebrate the day during the 6-Day-War when Israel reunited the holy city of Jerusalem, and for the first time in almost 20 years Jews had access to the holy sites in East Jerusalem. For me, the holiday is a split decision. I am ecstatic that Jerusalem is united, but saddened that I am celebrating the day here in my home office rather than in Jerusalem.

According to UNESCO, the Palestinians, and the Muslim States, Israel, and the Jewish People have no right to Jerusalem. It is this fake belief that until Donald Trump became president, kept the U.S. from recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the Jewish world. Most of the world outside America continues to believe the Palestinian/Muslim propaganda that ignores that the ancient Greeks, Romans, Christians, and even the ancient Muslims, reported Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were the property of the Jewish people.

Let’s start out with the basics. Jerusalem was NEVER part of a Palestinian State because there was never an independent state of Palestine. After the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, the Romans punished the Judeans (Jews) for revolting for the second time in sixty years. They changed the name of their country from Judea to Syria Palaestina (after the ancient enemy of the Jews, the Philistines who were destroyed a thousand years earlier). At the same time, they changed the name of the holy city from Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina (literally Capitoline Hill of the House of Aelius). After the Romans threw out many of the Jews, the holy land was ruled by the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and finally, the British mandate before it once again became a Jewish State in 1948.  During all that time, the holy land including Jerusalem had a very large population of Jews.

During the period of 135 CE through 1948, which was when Jordan began to occupy Jerusalem, there were large populations of Jews in Jerusalem. In fact, beginning with the earliest information available (1844), there were more Jews in Jerusalem than any other faith.

Source: Manashe Harrel, “The Jewish Presence in Jerusalem through the Ages” in Sinai and Oestericcher, eds., Jerusalem, John Day, 1974.

Source: Manashe Harrel, “The Jewish Presence in Jerusalem through the Ages” in Sinai and Oestericcher, eds., Jerusalem, John Day, 1974.

To the ancient Muslim, Greek, and Roman pagan authors, Jerusalem was a Jewish city. Their text indicates the unanimous agreement that Jerusalem was Jewish by virtue of the fact that its inhabitants were Jews, it was founded by Jews, and the Temple located in Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish religion.

These ancient texts, disprove recent attempts by Muslims and others to deny the historic connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem and the location of the Temple in Jerusalem, through fabrications and lies. Below are just some of the examples from Greek and Roman times originally published in a November 2008 Report issued by the JCPA:

• Some writers recall distinctive Jewish customs, such as the absence of representations of the deity, male circumcision, dietary laws and the observance of the weekly day of rest, the Sabbath. Indeed, in 167 BCE, the Greek Seleucid King Antiochus IV ordered Jews to place an idol of Zeus in the Temple, outlawed circumcision, demanded the sacrifice of swine and forbade Sabbath observance (I Maccabees 1:41-50). He thus desired to eliminate those unique features of the Jewish religion which had been noted by pagan writers. 

• In an account by Hecataeus of Abdera (c. 300 BCE), Jerusalem appears toward the conclusion of his counter-Exodus account and before his description of Jewish society and practices. He attributes the expulsion of the Jews to the pestilence which the Egyptians blamed upon the presence of foreigners, not only Jews, who caused the natives to falter in religious observance. “Therefore, the aliens were driven from the country.” While some went to Greece, most “were driven into what is now called Judaea … at that time utterly uninhabited … on taking possession of the land, he [Moses] founded, besides other cities, one that is the most renowned of all, called Jerusalem. In addition, he established the temple that they hold in chief veneration, instituted their forms of worship and ritual, drew up their laws and ordered their political institutions.” 

• Several of the selections in Against Apion which include the anti-Exodus narrative also provide descriptions of the interior and exterior of the Temple and some of its rituals. For example, Hecataeus states that in the center of the city is an enclosure where there is “a square altar built of heaped up stones, unhewn and unwrought.” The Temple itself is “a great edifice containing an altar and a lampstand, both made of gold … upon these is a light which is never extinguished … there is not a single statue or votive offering, no trace of a plant in the form of a sacred grove, or the like.”Hecataeus “On the Jews”, in Against Apion I, 198-199; Stern, I, V, No.12, 36-37 

• And in his account of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem, Tacitus describes the Temple as “… built like a citadel, with walls of its own … the very colonnades made a splendid defense. Within the enclosure is an ever-flowing spring.”[Tacitus, Historiae V:12:1 (Stern, II, XCII, no. 281) 22,30. 

• In addition to physical descriptions, the authors mention the religious aspect of the Temple which differed radically from Greek and Roman paganism. In the text preserved by Diodorus, Hecataeus mentions the priests and their duties in the Temple and even describes a worship service and sacrifice. Similarly, the first-century Roman historian Livy remarks that the Jews do not state “to which deity pertains the temple at Jerusalem, nor is any image found there since they do not think the God partakes of any figure.”Hecataeus, in Diodorus, Aegyptiaca, Bibliotheca Historica XL, 3, 4-6; Stern, I, V, No. 11, 26-28. 

From The Second Temple, Warning In Greek delineating a section of the Temple complex which was off-limits to Gentiles

From The Second Temple, warning in Greek delineating a section of the Temple complex which was off-limits to Gentiles.

It is noteworthy that an earlier capture of Jerusalem by the Greek-Egyptian King Ptolemy, son of Lagus, provided an opportunity for the obscure Agatharchides of Cnidus (second century BCE) to remark about the fact that “the people known as Jews, who inhabited the most strongly fortified of cities, called by the natives Jerusalem” lost their city because they would not defend it on the Sabbath. Josephus includes this selection in Against Apion as one of the early pagan critiques of the Jewish Sabbath which Agatharchides deemed as “folly,” “dreams,” and “traditional fancies about the law.”

The Palestinians point to the fact that there is little archeological evidence that either Temple existed, which ignores the very convenient fact that there is no digging allowed on the Temple Mount in respect of its holiness to the Muslims. But when the Muslims dug up part of the Temple Mount to add to their Mosque, they dumped the tons of dirt with artifacts outside the holy city.

The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the institution overseeing the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, carried out excavations on the Temple Mount between 1996 and 1999 as part of the construction of a subterranean mosque in an area known as Solomon’s Stables. Tens of thousands of tons of dirt — roughly 400 truckloads — were excavated by heavy machinery, without the supervision of archaeologists, and were dumped outside the Old City.

Archeologists have been sifting through the dirt for years (the project’s called the Temple Mount Sifting Project), and have found artifacts from the Holy Temples. For example in 2005 an archaeologist found what is now known as the Gaalyahu Seal which in Hebrew says belonging to Gaalyahu son of Imer.  The house of Imer was a well-known priestly family at the end of the First Temple period, roughly from around the 7th – 6th Centuries BCE.

There are references to the Jewish Temple in texts the Muslims consider sacred.

The Qur’an refers to the existence of both temples in verse 17:7. In this passage, the Qur’an deals with God’s punishment of the Children of Israel for their transgressions:

(We permitted your enemies)

To disfigure your faces,
And to enter your Temple
As they had entered it before,
And to visit with destruction
All that fell into their power.

The word translated as “Temple” by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (and by the influential translator Marmaduke Pickthall before him) is masjid. This word, which is usually translated as mosque, has the meaning of a sanctuary wherever it appears in a pre-Islamic context. The usual Muslim exegesis of this verse (including that of Abdullah Yusuf Ali) holds that it refers to the destruction of the First and Second Temples.

Muslim tradition is especially adamant about the existence of the First Temple, built by Solomon, who appears in the Qur’an as a prophet and a paragon of wisdom. Verse 34:13 is an account of how Solomon summoned jinn (spirits) to build the Temple:

They worked for him

As he desired, (making) Arches,
Images, Basons
As large as wells,
And (cooking) Cauldrons fixed
(In their places)

Found By the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount-From Second Temple Inscribed, “To the Place of Trumpeting.” The spot where the Priests blew the Shofar to announce the Beginning and end of the Sabbath and Holidays.

The very verse in the Quran that makes the Temple Mount holy to Muslims also proves that the spot was occupied by the Jewish Temple:

The Islamic sanctity of the Haram al-Sharif [what the Muslims call the Temple Mount] is based upon verse 17:1

Glory to (Allah)
Who did take His Servant
For a Journey by night
From the Sacred Mosque
To the Farthest Mosque

This is the textual proof of the isra’, the earthly segment of the Night Journey of the Prophet Muhammad: overnight, Muhammad was miraculously transported, round-trip, from “the Sacred Mosque” (al-Masjid al-Haram)-that is, the Ka’ba (or its vicinity) in Mecca-to “the Farthest Mosque” (al-Masjid al-Aqsa). Later Muslim tradition came to identify “the Farthest Mosque” with Jerusalem. But during Muhammad’s lifetime, no mosque stood in Jerusalem; the Muslims conquered the city only several years after his death. Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s commentary on this verse summarizes the traditional explanation: “The Farthest Mosque,” he writes, “must refer to the site of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem on the hill of Moriah.“

When Muslims did build a mosque on this hill, Muslim tradition holds that it was built deliberately on the verified site of earlier sanctuaries. According to Muslim tradition, when the Caliph Umar visited Jerusalem after its conquest, he searched for David’s sanctuary or prayer niche (mihrab Dawud), which is mentioned in the Qur’an (38:21). (David was believed to have chosen the site on which Solomon built.) When Umar was satisfied he had located it, he ordered a place of prayer (musalla) to be established there. This evolved into a mosque-precursor of the later Aksa Mosque. Thus began the Islamization of the complex that later came to be known as the Haram al-Sharif. It became the tradition of Islam that Muslims restored the site to its earlier function as a place of supplication venerated by all the prophets, including Abraham, David and Solomon.

Then there is Koran, Sura 2:145, “The Cow”

“…They would not follow thy direction of prayer (qiblah), nor art thou to follow their direction of prayer; nor indeed will they follow each other’s direction of prayer…”

Commentators explain that “thy qiblah” (direction of prayer for Muslims) clearly refers the Ka’bah of Mecca, while “their qiblah” (direction of prayer for Jews) refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

This Koranic passage appears to show that the holiness of Jerusalem a Jewish concept, and should not be confused with an Islamic concept, as the 13th-century Arab biographer and geographer Yakut noted: “Mecca is holy to Muslims, and Jerusalem to the Jews.”

The Official 1925 Supreme Moslem Council (Wakf) Guide Book To Al-Ḥaram Al-Sarif, recognized the presence of the Jewish Temples atop the Mount.  Shown below is paragraph two which appears on page four, it says, “It’s [the Temple Mount] identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”  Now 90 years later the head of the Wakf is disputing it.

And let’s not forget that the Jewish Temple is mentioned in the Christian Gospels which pre-date Islam. For example, in Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47 Jesus accused the Temple authorities of thieving and this time names poor widows as their victims, going on to provide evidence of this in Mark 12:42 and Luke 21:2. Dove sellers were selling doves that were sacrificed by the poor who could not afford grander sacrifices and specifically by women. Note: Luke refers to the writer of the Gospel of Luke, NOT the last Jedi.

According to Mark 11:16, Jesus then put an embargo on people carrying any merchandise through the Temple—a sanction that would have disrupted all commerce. In the Gospel of John 2:15-16 Jesus refers to the Jerusalem Temple as “my Father’s house”, thus, making a claim to being the Son of God.

He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.”

Overturning The Money Changers Tables

Overturning The Money Changer Tables

What does this all mean?  Ancient text, Muslim text, and Christian text all agree with the Jewish text that there was a holy temple on top of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.  So it’s well past time for the Europeans and other world Governments to stop denying Muslim, Christian, and Jewish history, press the BS button on UNESCO and point out the truth.

No amount of lies, not from UNESCO, not from the Palestinians, not from any UN committee or any world leader–no one except the Lord God himself, can take Jerusalem away from the Jewish people. 

The video below is of my favorite song about Jerusalem;  Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, Jerusalem of Gold: