The Palestinians’ Fantastic Lies About the History of Israel

Information about the Palestinian Arabs’ ongoing campaign to deny the Jews their history in the land of Israel can be found here:

Many statements made by top PA officials and institutions right before the Islamic month of Ramadan, were intended to add fuel to the PA’s ever-burning incitement that the Al-Aqsa Mosque and all its plazas are “purely Islamic” and “belong only to Muslims,” and are in danger of defilement and destruction by Jews.

The PA’s message derived from this lie is that Israel is a foreign colonialist state with no right to exist and is destined to be destroyed. As the PA’s Prime Minister recently worded it: “We have learned from history that colonialism passes in the end.”

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The following are recent examples: 

Abbas’ spokesman denies Jewish history: “No historical proof… [the Jews] had any kind of presence in this land” 

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina: “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Al-Aqsa Mosque are among the foundational pillars of history, and they are Palestinian holy places, and not Jewish holy places. There is no historical proof – despite all the excavations – that [the Jews] had any kind of presence in this land.”

[Official PA TV News, March 20, 2023]

The first Al-Aqsa Mosque was built by the fifth Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) or his successor al-Walid I (r. 705–715) (or both). After being destroyed in an earthquake in 746, the mosque was rebuilt in 758 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. It was further expanded upon in 780 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi. However, it was again destroyed during the 1033 Jordan Rift Valley earthquake. The Al-Aqsa mosque standing today was built in 1035.

The Temple Mount, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built, is Judaism’s holiest site and predates the current mosque by more than 2,000 years. The First Temple was completed in 957 B.C. and destroyed in 586 B.C. And it was precisely because Islam had recognized the Jewish holy site, where both the First and Second Temples had stood, that the Muslims deliberately built Al-Aqsa on the Temple Mount, as a way of triumphantly appropriating the holiest site in Judaism.

The Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, Muhammad Shtayyeh, denies Jewish history:

“Israel has falsified the history of Palestine. Since 1967 Israel has been conducting excavations and has not been able to prove that [it] has a direct or indirect connection [to the land].

A fantastic lie. Perhaps Shtayyeh does not realize it, but along with Israeli archeologists, there have been non-Jewish archeologists – English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, who have helped to unearth the artifacts that testify to the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. Perhaps he should take up his claim with the United Nations, which has declared Masada a World Heritage site, to persuade that organization that it was Palestinian Muslims, not Jews, who fought the Romans at that site in 68 AD, almost 600 years before there was a single Muslim in the world.

“[PA] Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said… that history and all the archaeological artifacts prove that the Palestinians have been holding onto their land since the dawn of human history (sic., the Palestinians have no history prior to the modern period).

He continued: ‘We are the ones who gave Palestine its name and the land its value and its status. This land is ours. Israel is a colonialist state that was established by colonialists and settlers, and which expanded like every settler colonialism throughout history. We have learned from history that colonialism passes in the end.’”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 21, 2023]

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No, it was the Romans, not the Arabs, who gave the “Kingdom of Judah” its new name of “Palestine.” When the Romans conquered the Jewish “Kingdom of Judea,” decided to rename it “Syria Palestina” — “Palestinian Syria” – which then became shortened to “Palestine.” The Romans also renamed Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina,” but that toponym, fortunately, never caught on, and for the non-Muslim world, Jerusalem remained Jerusalem. Centuries later, under Muslim rule, “Palestine” became an ill-considered backwater, as it had not been under the Byzantines, the Romans, or the Jews themselves. It became a place of “waste” and “desolation,” as Herman Melville and Mark Twain described it. Israel is not a “colonial” enterprise belonging to some overseas mother country, but the place where Jews have lived uninterruptedly for more than 3000 years, and to which Jews living elsewhere have returned to rebuild their ancient commonwealth.