'Arabs, Not Jews, Founded and Built Jerusalem' - Well, Actually...

Paper by Jordan's Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought claims

Old Testament proves "Jerusalem was always an Arab city." 

Palestinian official: Paper debunks the exclusive Israeli narrative used to negate Palestinians' rights in Jerusalem.

In the past, PA President Abbas also claimed Jesus was Palestinian.

By  ILH Staff  

A Muslim worshipper prays outside Jerusalem's Old City amid the coronavirus restrictions,

May 8, 2020 | File photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad

A Jordanian institute presented a new spin on regional history over the weekend, claiming that it was the Arabs – not the Jews – who founded Jerusalem in biblical times.

According to Saudi daily Arab News, a position paper by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, an Amman-based think tank, asserted that Arabs were the first inhabitants of Jerusalem and have lived there for at least 5,000 years.

Jerusalem is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

According to the report, the institute is an Islamic NGO headed by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, who has been serving as a special adviser to Jordan's King Abdullah since 2000.

The institute states in the paper that it "seeks to correct the misperception that Arabs are newcomers to Jerusalem" using unpublished documents, archaeological discoveries, and the Biblical record to assert its claims.

Among its many references, the paper sites the Amarna Correspondence, a series of diplomatic letters between Canaanite kings and Egyptian overlords dating back to the 14th century BCE, which mention Jerusalem.

"The Arabs founded and built it [Jerusalem] in the first place – and have been there ever since," the paper states, noting that Islam has been dominant in Jerusalem for 1,210 out of the last 1,388 years.

Moreover, the 108-page paper argues that the Old Testament itself "shows that the Arabs, Hamites, Canaanites, and Jebusites were the original inhabitants of the land of Palestine, including the area of Jerusalem," thus allegedly proving that "Jerusalem was always an Arab city."

"The Palestinian Arabs of today are largely the direct descendants of the indigenous Canaanite Arabs who were there over 5,000 years ago. Modern-day Arab Muslim and Christian Palestinian families are the oldest inhabitants of the land," the paper argued

Palestinian National Council member and former Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun told Arab News that the Jordanian institute's position paper "articulates the diverse historical realities away from the exclusive narrative that Israel is adopting to deny the cultural, human, historical and religious rights of the Arab Palestinians whether we're Christians or Muslims.

"It puts the readers face to face with their own misconceptions and lack of knowledge, thus debunking the exclusive Israeli political or Biblical narrative which is used to negate the right and the existence of the Palestinian rights in Jerusalem or the Palestinian land at large," she said.

This, however, would not be the first time the Palestinians have tried to rewrite history.

In a 2013 Christmas message, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that Jesus Christ was a "Palestinian messenger of hope."

The move was immediately labeled a Palestinian attempt to brace the link between the Palestinian and Christian narratives in global public opinion and was met with scathing criticism, as few scholars dispute that Jesus was raised as a Jew.

In my study of Genesis, it became obvious that Jerusalem was built by Canaanites while the Israelites were in Egypt. Jerusalem was not a city worth mentioning when Jacob journeyed from Bethel to Bethlehem, though he would have passed right through it. Also, though Rachel was buried very close to where it would be, again it was not mentioned. Extra-Biblical literature from Egypt mentions Jerusalem about 100 years before the Israelites returned to the Promised Land. So, it was certainly built while the Jews were in Egypt. 

But if you are going to use the Bible to prove that Arabs built the original Jerusalem, then you should probably not ignore the fact that God gave that land to Abraham and his descendants. It was God who enabled Joshua to conquer the land. Those Arabs still in the land were slaves for at least 1500 years, so to say that it was always an Arab city is absurd and wishful thinking.

Furthermore, if building and being the first occupiers of a city mean entitlement thousands of years later, then we Christians have a very good claim on Constantinople. Would you agree President Erdogan?

Poland’s Holocaust-Revisionism Law Triggers Backlash from Israel

The "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at the former Nazi German concentration camp Auschwitz, in Oswiecim, Poland,

January 27, 2018. © Kacper Pempel / Reuters

Israeli leaders are up in arms over pending legislation in Poland that would officially outlaw blaming Poles for the heinous Holocaust crimes committed on Polish soil during World War II.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposed law, passed by the lower house of the Polish parliament on Friday, “baseless.” The new legislation prescribes prison time for using phrases like “Polish death camps” to refer to the notorious mass concentration camps Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II.

“One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied,” Netanyahu wrote on Facebook late on Saturday, adding that he had asked the Israeli embassy in Poland to “meet tonight with the Polish prime minister to relay my firm stance against this bill.”

The bill, which still needs approval from Poland’s Senate and president, is perceived by critics as an attempt by the country’s nationalist government to target anyone who seeks to contest its official stance on the conduct of Poles during the war, which places emphasis on heroism and sacrifice while rejecting the complicity of some in mass murder. Under the new legislation, anyone who publicly attributes blame for the crimes committed by the Nazis to Poles or the Polish state would be liable for penalties.

“Non-governmental organizations indicate that every other day the phrase ‘Polish death camps’ is used around the world,” Poland’s deputy justice minister Patryk Jaki said in a speech before the lower house on Friday. “In other words, German Nazi crimes are attributed to Poles. And so far the Polish state has not been able to effectively fight these types of insults to the Polish nation.”

Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial has issued a statement opposing the Polish legislation, saying it is “liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust.”

“There is no doubt that the term ‘Polish death camps’ is a historical misrepresentation,” the Yad Vashem memorial said. “However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people’s direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion.”

Former Finance Minister Yair Lapid, the head of Israel’s centrist Yesh Atid party, also lambasted the controversial bill on Twitter.

“I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that,” Lapid wrote.

His comment added fuel to the fire, sparking the Polish Embassy in Israel to respond: “Your unsupportable claims show how badly Holocaust education is needed, even here in Israel.”

“My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles,” Lapid replied. “I don’t need Holocaust education from you. We live with the consequences every day in our collective memory. Your embassy should offer an immediate apology.”

To which the embassy retorted: “How does that relate to the fact that WW2 death camps were German Nazi, not Polish (our thread)? Shameless.”

Noting that 73 years had passed since the Auschwitz death camp on Polish soil was liberated, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said that respecting the tragic page of history is a must.

 “The Jewish people, the State of Israel, and the entire world must ensure that the Holocaust is recognized for its horrors and atrocities,” Rivlin said. “Also among the Polish people, there were those who aided the Nazis in their crimes. Every crime, every offense, must be condemned. They must be examined and revealed.”

For decades, Polish society tried to avoid discussing the killing of Jews by civilians, with atrocities usually blamed on the Nazis. The discussion was reinvigorated by the book “Neighbors,” published in 2000, by Polish-American historian Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jews by their Polish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne in 1941. Holocaust historians have gathered a large dossier of evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis. According to one scholar at Yad Vashem, of the 160,000-250,000 Jews who had sought help from fellow Poles, only between 10 to 20% survived.

In 2011, Poland’s then-President Bronislaw Komorowski offered an apology during ceremonies marking 70 years since Polish villagers murdered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors in a World War II massacre.

Jedwabne, Poland