In the wake of the disgraceful, flat-earth resolution passed by the the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to declare Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and other major Jewish historical/religious sites as primarily or exclusively Muslim, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has pointed to an extraordinary little-known fact that Islam itself has historically admitted the connection of Judaism and the Jewish people to these sites.
Professor Nissim Dana of the Middle Eastern Affairs Department at Ariel University recently stated that early Islamic sources show that Islam does not have a claim on the Land of Israel ––even by its own standards –– as it recognizes the Jews as the owners of Israel and of Jerusalem. Professor Dana has stated, “Islam was born in the seventh century C.E. and the Jewish Temple existed many years before that so that it is impossible to mistake those historical facts. Hundreds of years before Islam there was a connection between Jews and Jerusalem.”
Professor Nissim’s book on the subject, To Whom Does This Land Belong?: New Insights into the Koran, reveals the sources that establish this fact, while also noting that recent generations of Muslims have been brainwashed into believing otherwise (Yoel Domb, ‘Islam originally recognized Jews as owners of Israel,’ Israel National News, October 19, 2016).
As the ZOA recently noted, falsified claims on behalf of Palestinians have been fabricated with regard to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem. Muslim claims to both these were first made only during the 1929 Arab attacks upon Jews across British-controlled Palestine. Until then, the Islamic tradition of Mohammed’s ascent to heaven on his steed, Buraq, was associated with the eastern and southern retaining walls of Temple Mount, not the Western Wall; while it was only in 1996 that the Muslim waqf in the Palestinian Authority began to refer to Rachel’s Tomb as the Bilal ibn Rabah mosque, a name previously unknown to history.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Professor Dana offers a timely reminder of the reality that several Muslim claims to Jewish holy sites have been deliberately fabricated over the years to provide an undergirding rationale for Palestinian Arab rejection of Israel and repudiation of the Jewish people’s prior religious and historical connection to the land.
“The ZOA has previously noted instances of these: for example, the Muslim waqf supervising the Muslim affairs in the mosques atop Temple Mount used to acknowledge in their own literature that the site was that of the Temple of Solomon. This plain admission disappeared in waqf publications in 1952 and the Jewish connection has been denied ever since. It is now an article of faith in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and, as the recent UNESCO vote shows, is being foisted on the world through international organizations.
“Neither peace nor the truth will be served by dangerous falsehoods of this kind which are simply aimed at delegitimizing Israel and validating Palestinian Arab rejection of Israel into the indefinite future.”