In Israel, the True and the False Desecrations

In Israel, Palestinian rioters in mid-April twice damaged Joseph’s Tomb, a Jewish holy site under Palestinian Authority (PA) control in Area A of the West Bank. Seemingly in defiance of its commitments under international agreements, the PA has hinted that it will not cooperate with Israel to repair the damage. And the PA governor of the area says he will not allow Israelis to enter the Tomb compound to do the repairs themselves.

Joseph’s Tomb, which is one of the holiest sites in Judaism, has been attacked by the Palestinians before. In 2015, they set fire to it, but did not entirely destroy the tomb, which Israel repaired. Now the Palestinians have struck again, smashing the stone covering the tomb, and setting fire to other buildings in the compound. A report on this attack is here: “As Palestinians Destroy Jewish Holy Sites, Media Focus On Fake ‘Attacks’ on Al-Aqsa Mosque,” by Akiva Van Koningsveld, Algemeiner, April 12, 2022:

The affair [the destruction at Joseph’s Tomb] did not generate headlines in any of the major international publications, with the Associated Press only briefly mentioning the arson attack at the end of a piece about the death of a suspected Palestinian terrorist in the West Bank.

Why is it that when Palestinians charge the Jewish state with “desecrating” Muslim holy places, media outlets uncritically echo these false claims, but when the PA administration in Ramallah consistently fails to protect Jewish sites under its control, reporters largely remain silent?

How often, in the Western media, do we hear or read reports of destruction and damage to Jewish religious sites by the Palestinians? How often have you seen any mention of present and past attempts to destroy Joseph’s Tomb, or Rachel’s Tomb? How often have you read of Palestinian attempts to prevent Jews from entering the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the second holiest site in Judaism? What does the world know about the Jordanians destroying or desecrating all 58 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967? What does the non-Jewish world know about the Jordanians uprooting thousands of ancient tombstones from the Mt. of Olives Cemetery, and using them to line the floors of Jordanian army latrines or to be ground up for gravel?

Why do we have such silence about Palestinian – and Jordanian – attacks on Jewish sites, but endless stories in the media that uncritically repeat tales about supposed Israeli plans to damage the sanctity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or to destroy it, and build on the same site the Third Temple?

After Israeli forces on April 8 killed Palestinian gunman Raad Hazem following his Fatah-claimed attack in Tel Aviv that killed three Israelis and injured more than a dozen others, terror groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were quick to link the act of terror to the pervasive lie that the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City is somehow being threatened.

In a statement, Hamas described last Thursday [April 7] night’s terrorism as a “natural and legitimate response” to what it called Israeli “crimes” against the Muslim holy site. Palestinian Islamic Jihad likewise invoked the decades-old “Al-Aqsa is in danger” libel,and declared that the “Tel Aviv operation [sic] is a clear message to the occupation that it must stop its incursions into” the Muslim shrine.

For his part, the terrorist’s father, a retired Palestinian Authority security officer, on Friday called for the “liberation” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the “desecration of the occupiers” — this, as residents of Jenin gathered at his home to celebrate the deadly terror attack.

Fathi Hazem added: “Make us among the victorious troops who are first to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Allah.”…

What is Fathi Hazem, what Is Hamas, what is Palestinian Islamic Jihad talking about? Israel does not control Al-Aqsa. The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf is the Jordanian authority responsible for administering Al-Aqsa. Al-Aqsa needs no “liberation.” It is entirely in Muslim hands. There has been no “desecration” of the Mosque. The Israelis leave it to the Waqf to administer as it sees fit. Only very rarely, once every three years, have Israeli police entered the mosque itself, not to disturb prayers, but in hot pursuit of Palestinians who had been throwing rocks, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, and other potentially lethal objects both at the police and at Jewish worshippers praying at the Western Wall far below. Once they have collared their suspects, the police promptly leave.

Over the past year, a sample of 18 leading US news organizations ran at least 58 articles citing Palestinian claims that Israel, among other accusations, “stormed,” “attacked,” or “desecrated” the Muslim holy site.…

Those news organizations appear not to have understood what was going on when the police entered Al-Aqsa Mosque, for a few minutes in May, to chase down those who had been hurling lethal objects at them and at Jews praying far below. They did not “storm” or “attack” Al-Aqsa, as the Palestinians like to claim, an absurd claim that Western reporters uncritically repeat. They entered the mosque, and touched nothing except the malefactors they were determined to quickly grab, remove from the mosque, and arrest for endangering lives.

While there have been clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police on the Al-Aqsa compound –the enormous plaza on which the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock both sit – that is not the same thing as having Israelis entering Al-Aqsa Mosque itself. It appears that the Israeli police have entered Al-Aqsa Mosque only three times in the last seven years – in 2021, in 2018, and in 2015. And there was no destruction, and no “desecration,” of the mosque.

Meanwhile, the actual desecration of Jewish heritage sites by Palestinians receives almost zero coverage.

According to a recent report by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry, “for a decade now, and with increased intensity since 2016, there have been a series of deliberate moves on the ground to obscure and destroy sites relating to Jewish history, which cannot be ‘repurposed’ as Palestinian heritage sites.”

Naturally any religious site in Israel that the Jews regard as holy offends the Palestinians, and even where, as Muslims, they may also revere that site but, as with Joseph’s Tomb, to a lesser degree than do Jews, they do not hesitate to damage or destroy it.

Early on Sunday morning [April 10], Palestinians in the PA-controlled West Bank city of Nablus (Shechem) vandalized the tomb believed to contain the remains of the biblical patriarch Joseph. Local reports said that about 100 people descended on the site, shattered the tombstone and set fire to rooms inside the complex.…

The next day, there was another attack on Joseph’s Tomb. The Palestinian Authority again failed to prevent destruction at the Jewish holy place, despite its obligation under the Oslo Accords, which are part of the body of international law governing relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

In response to the latest developments, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said he had “delivered a strong message to the Palestinian Authority, demanding the immediate reinforcement of their officials [at Joseph’s Tomb], and decisive action against rioters and terrorists that harm stability and security in holy places.” Gantz vowed to restore the tomb to its original condition.

However, the PA’s governor of Nablus, Ibrahim Ramadan, quickly rebuked the Israeli minister, insisting that “foreign bodies” would not be allowed to access the shrine.

“Foreign bodies” – which us what Jews are In their ancient homeland, according to the PA governor Ibrahim Ramadan, will not be allowed access to one of the holiest sites in Judaism. Surely that’s worth a few reports in the international media, as part of a wider discussion of who has been keeping whom from access to holy sites in Israel. Since it was completed in 19 BC, the Western Wall has been off-limits to Jews only from 1948 to 1967, when Jordan held the Old City. On the other hand, Jews have never prevented Muslims from access to any of their holy sites. That is worth noting. But no one, except in the Jewish and Israeli press, ever does.

Late last month [March 2022], the Jewish cemetery in Hebron was similarly desecrated. Video footage uploaded to social media shows Palestinians damaging the tombstone of Menucha Rochel Slonim, a community leader who lived in the city between 1845 and 1888. The Palestinians burned holy books used by Jewish pilgrims visiting the resting place of the dead.

The Palestinians are out to destroy as many Jewish sites – whether religious or purely archeological in nature – as they can. They would like to efface the physical connection of Jews to the Land of Israel. They are uninterested in preserving history. They are destroying the Jewish past, and manufacturing a Muslim Arab past instead, for this contested land.

Four weeks earlier, Israel Hayom reported that the construction of an illegal Palestinian quarry in PA-administered Area B of the West Bank has caused “irreversible” damage to an ancient aqueduct located between Gush Etzion and Jerusalem. The aqueduct was one of two used to fill Solomon’s Pools, a large reservoir from which water was funneled via other channels to the Temple in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.

Why would the Palestinians care about whether a 2,000-year-old aqueduct remained undamaged? It was built by Jews. it’s not part of Arab or Muslim history, so they need not bother with preserving it.

Meanwhile, Israel’s N12 News in February 2021 aired a segment about the Palestinian Authority turning a blind eye to the destruction of parts of the site archeologists identified on Mount Ebal in Area B of the West Bank as the altar from the Book of Joshua. PA workers interviewed by the broadcaster admitted that they had ground stones from the site’s exterior wall into gravel to pave a road.…

One more example of Palestinian destruction of an ancient Biblical site: the “altar” from the Book of Joshua. As with the tombstones uprooted from the Mt. of Olives cemetery, stones taken from the exterior wall of the Mount Ebal site were ground into gravel, and used to build a road. Thus are so many of the most venerable archeological sites, that link the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, being destroyed by Palestinians who are hostile to their existence They don’t want that mute testimony to the thousands of years of a Jewish presence in Eretz Israel to survive.

Where are the outraged accounts in the Western media about the deliberate destruction of archeological sites in Israel by the Palestinians? Why are the Palestinians not held to account for their attacks on Joseph’s Tomb, on Rachel’s Tomb, on the Jewish presence at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron? Why does the international media not describe the Palestinian rioters on the Temple Mount who hurl rocks, fireworks, bottles, both at the Israeli police on the Mount, and at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall the far below? 

And why does the international media, instead of repeating the baseless charges from the Palestinians about Israelis trying to desecrate or destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, not thoroughly investigate that claim, for which there is not a shred of evidence — and then hold it up for the ridicule it deserves?