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May 11, 2021

There's a growing fog of lies around Israel's defense against Hamas

By Andrea Widburg

One of the constants in modern life is that, if it's the month of Ramadan, there's going to be Muslim violence.  In this case, the violence began slowly in Israel and reached critical mass on Monday.  As usual, the anti-Semites in Congress (I'm talking about you, Reps. Tlaib and Omar) and the media, and even in one "comedy" outlet, ignored the facts and went straight for the propaganda.

As a strictly factual matter, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been a holy spot for Jews since the time of King David, around 3,000 years ago, who built the First Temple.  In A.D. 70, the Romans destroyed the Temple and ransacked Jerusalem.  All that remained was the Western Wall and its courtyard, which continued to be a sacred spot for Jews without pause for the 1,951 years since then.

When Muslims conquered the entire Middle East after Mohamed's death, they gained control of the Temple Mount, where they repurposed the holiest spots by building the beautiful Al-Aqsa Mosque in 705 A.D.

Through it all, Jews continued to live in Jerusalem and worship at the Temple Mount, as they had done since around 1,000 B.C.  In 1948, Jordan was able to capture Eastern Jerusalem.  It evicted the Jews who had lived there for hundreds of years, destroyed or desecrated 58 synagogues, looted and desecrated the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and turned the Western Wall into a slum area, denying Jews access to this holiest of holy sites.

The Jews finally regained access to these areas of Jerusalem in 1967.  This is the iconic photograph of Jewish paratroopers at the Western Wall, now freely available to Jews:


This photo by David Rubinger is now part of the Public Domain.

After the 1967 War, Israel did not destroy Al Aqsa.  Instead, she transferred control over the mosque to an Islamic trust independent of the Israeli government — although Israeli forces may patrol and conduct searches within the perimeter.  Muslims have been trying to oust the Jews ever since.  And that brings us to the current situation.

Muslims from the Palestinian territories have been following Antifa's lead and attacking police across Jerusalem, including in the Temple Mount area.  Militant Jews have responded by trying to engage with Palestinians, although the police have prevented major clashes.  The ostensible reason for the current uproar involves evictions from Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighborhood on land that Jews legally purchased in 1875.  It really doesn't matter the reason, though.  It's Ramadan.

The fighting in the last few days escalated in the Temple Mount area.  Arabs claimed that Jewish forces had spontaneously attacked them, but there are plenty of pictures showing huge piles of rocks the Arabs had collected for an assault against Israeli forces that try never to use live ammunition on the protesters:

There's also been the usual Pallywood propaganda.

On Monday, Hamas took advantage of the chaos to launch more than 150 rockets into Israel.  As usual, Arab children died because the men launching the rockets kept children near them to increase the body count.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, in addition to naming Israel as the aggressor, claimed that she'd been to the sacred Al Aqsa mosque that the Jews were now desecrating.  The fact that she said the Temple Mount is just as holy for Jews was an inadvertent admission that the mosque is built on stolen land.  People had opinions:

Ilhan Omar chimed in on the Arabs' behalf, although someone quickly pointed out the Pallywood lies.

Ted Cruz was deeply unimpressed by Omar's take:

NPR, as usual, lied.  (It was NPR's lies about Israel in the 1990s that turned me into a conservative.)  Its narrative about violent Israeli police allegedly attacking peaceful Arabs breaking their daily Ramadan fast was so extreme that it was belied by outlets such as the AP and The New York Times, neither of which is a friend to Israel.

Even The Onion got into the act, giving a modern touch to the medieval blood libels about Jews killing Christian children:

If you've been reading The Onion, you might want to stop as of, say, yesterday.

By the way, to his credit, Andrew Yang defended Israel.  I like him better for that, despite generally thinking him an amiable leftist dunce.

Here's the bottom line: at every time in history, those nations that have treated Israel well have thrived.  This is because those nations have a greater degree of individual liberty than other nations in the same time period.  If you treat Israel well, you will also be treating your own citizens well.

Every time there's strife in Israel, we get a good snapshot of which nations are free and which are not.  The fact that the Biden administration, in tune with the whole Democrat party, is hostile to Israel speaks volumes about its creeping attack on America's own liberties.

Image: Rocks at the Al Aqsa Mosque.  Facebook photo.

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