Speaking in Qatar on Feb. 26, at an Arab League conference, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas resumed the Palestinian attack on the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem. This diplomatic strategy began with his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, who questioned whether the Temple ever existed at the end of the July 2000 Camp David summit...Arafat then asserted that Solomon’s Temple was in Nablus, not in Jerusalem. Two years later in leading pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat, Arafat continued: “They found not a single stone proving the Temple was there ...”
...Abbas himself continued with Arafat’s ideological position on the Temple in an Israeli-Arab weekly, adding: “... they claim that 2,000 years ago they had a temple. I challenge the claim that this is so.”...Nabil Shaath spoke to al-Ayyam and spoke about the Israeli claim that “its fictitious temple” once stood in Jerusalem.
Chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, also declared: “For Islam, there never was a Temple at al-Quds, but a ‘distant mosque.’” Yasser Abd Rabbo told Le Monde, in September 2000, “There was no archaeological evidence that the Temple ever existed on the Temple Mount.”...
Now, Abbas is once again renewing this line of attack...
...Since Arafat first told Clinton that there never was a Temple, there has been a full-scale effort over the last decade, on the part of the Palestinian leadership, to make this idea of Temple denial take root through programs on Palestinian television, articles in the official Palestinian Authority newspapers, and mosque sermons that aim to deny the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem...The great irony of this new Palestinian version of Jerusalem’s history is that it contradicts the original Islamic tradition.
...the fact [is] that Umar himself allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, after the Romans and Byzantines kept them away for 500 years...what is going on here?...this is not a matter of establishing what is historical truth. Instead, the almost obsessive Palestinian preoccupation with denying Israel’s ties to Jerusalem is actually a new kind of political warfare they have decided to wage...The Palestinian Authority leaders have observed that most of the assertions they have made about Israel in recent years – like comparing it to apartheid South Africa – eventually get accepted without question or criticism. They have every reason to hope that the denial of the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem will gain supporters worldwide.
Israel...needs to insist that its representatives understand and learn for themselves Israel’s historical rights...
In my experience, the lack of knowledge as well as fundamental slow-off-the-mark behavior - both in thought processes and action items - is killing Israel and Zionism.
As Isi Liebler notes:
...Netanyahu is blessed with an extraordinary gift of articulating Israel’s case. But unless he also ensures that the government employs competent people capable of expeditiously responding in the war of ideas, he must be held accountable for our failures in this area...Netanyahu must recognize that one of the highest priorities of his office is to provide effective liaison between the Israel Defense Forces, the Foreign Ministry and other divisions to ensure that Israel responds speedily and acts efficiently in the face of the ongoing defamatory campaigns being launched against us.
Only too often we remain the last to take action when it comes to damage control. By the time we respond to Palestinian lies and subterfuge, it is invariably too late and the initial falsehoods that dominated the media cannot be undone...Netanyahu’s direct obligation to ensure that his office is manned by the best available staff. Until now, notwithstanding a number of talented individuals serving in the PMO, overall the information services remain an abysmal failure...
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