This Sounds Familair

This sounds familiar:-

The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of 'ethnically cleansing' east Jerusalem of Palestinians, following the tearing down of dozens of buildings in the capital's east.

"There is an unprecedented escalation of the Government of occupation and what they call the municipality of Jerusalem against the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem through the destruction of tens of houses and the issuance of demolition orders against dozens of others," said Nabil Abu Roudeina, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"This is an infuriating campaign by the municipality to 'Judaize' the city and expel the Palestinian population," he added.

1.

On May 28, 1948, [the Arab Legion] conquered the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City (i.e. inside the walls of the Old City), expelled the Jews who lived there and took part in the destruction of the Synagogues therein.

2.

In the battle of Old Jerusalem, the losses of the Jews were as follows:

1. Three hundred Jewish extremist fighters were dead.
2. Eighty Jews were wounded.
3. Three hundred and forty Jews were taken by the Arab Legion as prisoners of war.
4. The destruction of the whole Jewish Quarter.

3.

After the Jewish Quarter was captured, the destruction, desecration and systematic looting of Jewish sites continued. 57 ancient synagogues, libraries and centers of religious study were ransacked and 12 were totally and deliberately destroyed. Those that remained standing were defaced, used for housing of both people and animals. Appeals were made to the United Nations and in the international community to declare the Old City to be an 'open city' and stop this destruction, but there was no response. This condition continued until Jordan lost control of Jerusalem in June 1967. (Terence Prittie, Whose Jerusalem? Frederick Muller Limited London 1981; Peter Schneider and Geoffrey Wigoder, Jerusalem Perspectives 1976 .) In addition, thousands of tombstones from the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives were used as paving stones for roads and as construction material in Jordanian army camps. After the 1967 war, Israelis who visited the cemetery on Mt. of Olives and saw the desecrated graves and smashed gravestones noted "that Jordanian soldiers and local residents had helped themselves to the stones to use as building materials." Graves were broken into pieces or used as flagstones, steps, or building materials. In 1967, graves were found open with the bones scattered. Parts of the cemetery were converted into parking lots, a filling station, and an asphalt road was built to cut through it. The Intercontinental Hotel was built at the top of the cemetery. Sadar Khalil, appointed by the Jordanian govt. as the official caretaker of the cemetery, built his home on the grounds using the stones robbed from graves to build it. In 1967, the press published extensive photos in which Jewish gravestones were found in Jordanian army camps, such as El Azariya, as well as in Palestinian walkways, steps, and pavement.

4.

After the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem was captured, the destruction, desecration and systematic looting of Jewish sites began and continued. 57 ancient synagogues (the oldest dated to the 13th century), libraries and centers of religious study were ransacked and 12 were totally and deliberately destroyed. Those that remained standing were defaced, used for housing of both people and animals. The city's foremost Jewish shrine, the Western Wall, became a slum. Appeals were made to the United Nations and in the international community to declare the Old City to be an 'open city' and stop this destruction, but there was no response. This condition continued until Jordan lost control of Jerusalem in June 1967.

On the Mount of Olives, the Jordanian Arabs removed 38,000 tombstones from the ancient cemetery and used them as paving stones for roads and as construction material in Jordanian Army camps, including use as latrines. When the area was recaptured by Israel in 1967, graves were found open with the bones scattered. Parts of the cemetery were converted into parking lots, a filling station, and an asphalt road was built to cut through it. The Intercontinental Hotel was built at the top of the cemetery. Sadar Khalil, appointed by the Jordanian government as the official caretaker of the cemetery, built his home on the grounds using the stones robbed from graves. In 1967, the press published extensive photos documenting that Jewish gravestones were found in Jordanian Army camps, such as El Azariya, as well as in Palestinian walkways, steps, bathrooms, and pavement.

The Hurva Synagogue, attributed to Rabbi Moses Ben Nahman (Ramban), was the main synagogue in Jerusalem in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (and possibly much earlier), until the Ottomans closed it in 1589 because of Muslim incitement. It was burned by Arabs in 1721 (Hurva = destruction in Hebrew), but again rebuilt by Zionists in the 19th century, becoming the most prominent synagogue on the Jerusalem skyline. For that reason, when it was captured by the Arab Legion during the battle for Old Jerusalem in 1948, they dynamited it to show that they controlled the Jewish Quarter. When the Jews in New Jerusalem saw the Hurva burning, they knew that Jewish life in the Quarter had ended (again).