I have just approved some comments which are hostile to Israel and which clearly distort history. Those commenters may not know themselves of the distortion of history in their comments, and in their political thinking. This is because we are dealing with ideology, with the battle for ideas.
In general, the historical relation of Jews to Judea is hidden, or is overlooked.
Secondly the nature of the Jewish wars againstt he Roman Empire is also hidden, or distorted. The consequent dispersal of the Jews not taken into consideration.
The precarious position of the Jews in the world is also not considered following that historical period of the Roman suppression of the Jews.
Then the nature of Islam as an Imperialist ideology and practice based on that ideology is either ignored or distorted. This had a major effect on many nations, not just Jews. But Arabs did enter Palestine as Imperialists, just as they entered Sapain also as Imperialists (Karen Armstrong notwithstanding!)
When we get to the late 19th and especially the 20th century from 1920 on the distortions of history become more wilful.
The clarification of these issues necessitates a systematic approach. It remains to be said that I am interested in the distortions that are thrown up in replies to our articles. They will of course in time be fully answered.
Which takes us back to the present.
The Arab world is full of cunning ingenuity and much is concentrated in how history is presented in the day to day issues of the present.
One such is the recent news that Arabs are claiming that Rachel’s Tomb is really a mosque
There is only one answer to this type of thing, that is a practical answer, also an answer that the present leadership of the Jews and Israel cannot ever get together. This is at the end of this article
Report by Israel matzav via Israpundit
The picture is Kever Rachel (Rachel’s tomb) as it looked until about ten years ago, when the government turned it into an armed fortress to counteract ‘Palestinian’ terrorists firing upon it.
Earlier, the government almost gave the tomb away.
“During the Rabin administration, Kever Rachel was slated to fall into ‘Area A’, that is, under full Arab civil and military control. Upon seeing this, Knesset Member Chanan Porat [National Religious Party. CiJ] decided that he must speak with Rabin in the hopes of changing his mind. As Chanan Porat was walking to Rabin’s office, Knesset Member Rabbi Menachem Porush [United Torah Judaism. CiJ] asked Porat where he was going. Hearing that Porat was about to fight for Kever Rachel, Porush asked to join in the meeting. At Rabin’s office, Chanan Porat was diligently explaining the ins and outs of the security situation at Kever Rachel and making rational arguments that did not seem to move Rabin.
“Suddenly Rabin looked at Porush and saw that he was crying. Porush held Rabin’s hands and with tears streaming down his face, said: ‘Yitzchak, it’s Mamma Rachel, Mamma Rachel.’ At that moment Rabin’s heart opened, and he altered the map so that Kever Rachel would remain in Jewish hands.”
Now UNESCO has recognized Kever Rachel as a site worthy of historical preservation… as a mosque.
The executive committee of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) a few days ago, recognized the tomb of Biblical matriarch Rachel, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, as the Mosque of Bilal Ibn-Rabach according to a Friday report by Yisrael Hayom (Israel today). The recognition was approved by a large majority despite Israeli opposition and a United States vote against the proposal.
Research by reporter Nadav Shragai shows that while there is a Muslim cemetery surrounding the facility, it was never used as a mosque and always referred to by local Arabs as “Rachel’s Tomb”, until the Temple Tunnel disturbances of 1996, when they started using the name recognized by UNESCO. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz of the Western Wall and other holy places called the UNESCO decision an outrageous distortion of history and said Israel should think seriously about future cooperation.
Indeed. We should have ‘thought about it’ and stopped cooperating a LONG time ago.
Correct by Israpundit.
This is another attack on Judaism by the Nations of the world. It is an attack on our history, on a core belief of Judaism and it is a direct attack and an affront on Judaism. A few Jews may react but most will be indifferent. If Israel doesn’t leave that vile body at least leave UNESCO and refuse them access to the site. I would bar any agency connected with the UN from setting foot in the Land of Israel. Yamit
The position of 4international to this issue as to every other issue which Jews in the world face in relation to Israel
(This is actually a unique way of putting the issue. Israel is not just for the Jews who are at present living in Israel. It is an issue for all of the Jewish people, period.
Wherever they live, Jews are part of the nation.
They are held together as a nation by custom, ethnicity, religion, firm belief in the concept of nationalism.
They have a veryvery long history. I believe it is fair to say that the Jewish people make up the oldest nation known to humanity today.
Leon Trotsky in the 1930s decade imagined the Jewish Homeland in a number of ways and one of these was as a place of refuge against antisemitism.
As long as antisemitism exists in the world, and here I do mention the Holocaust, although it must be ever present in human historical memory!
But Trotsky in imagining the Jewish Homeland as a necessary place of refuge, and therefore to be defensible, in the sense that it had to be defended against antisemitism of different types, and in this remarkably Trotsky referred to not just the of the British, but also the dangerous “Moohammedans”
So the following paragraph is taken from one of a series of articles which we are placing the pages section, that is that column to the right, the following, which may if thought through intelligently throw some light on thisterrible affront to the Jewish people from the Arab antisemites:
4international 