Palestinian revisionism is the only obstacle to peaceOne correction, or at least nuancing:
By DANNY AYALON
11/27/2010 22:11
The attempt to "refute" the Jewish claim to the Western Wall is merely the latest in a series of efforts to deny the Jewish people’s connection with its homeland.
Talkbacks (40)
The recent Palestinian Authority report stating that the Western Wall has no religious or historical significance to the Jewish people is sadly yet another attempt at political historical revisionism. Under normal circumstances, we could dismiss this as a pathetic and infantile attempt to erase the history and peoplehood of another people. Unfortunately, as the recent UNESCO report on Jewish sites in Judea and Samaria exposed, the Palestinian rejectionist narrative is foisted on the international agenda and is supported by an automatic majority in multilateral forums.
The recent “study” prepared by Al- Mutawakel Taha, a senior official in the PA’s Ministry of Information, attempting to “refute” the Jewish claim to the Western Wall is merely the latest in a series of efforts, stretching back more than 100 years, to deny the Jewish people’s connection with its homeland.
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The myth that Jesus was a Palestinian is told to anyone who arrives on a pilgrimage to Bethlehem or other Christian holy sites under the Palestinian Authority.Correct in what it asserts but not entirely in what it denies. The province of Judea first got this name officially from the Roman empire, but it was used informally of the general region long before that. The word originally comes from the "Philistines," Indo-European invaders who settled on the coast in the late second millennium BCE. Herodotus used the term of the region between Phoenicia (Lebanon) and Egypt in the fifth century BCE (Hist. 3.91).
However, the facts once again don’t add up. The Jewish province of Judea was destroyed by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 C.E. when the Romans quashed the Bar Khochba-led Jewish revolt. To sever the Jewish connection with the Land of Israel, the Roman emperor changed its name to Syria Palaestina, eventually becoming known in English as Palestine.
According to Christian scholars, Jesus was crucified somewhere between 26 and 36, a full hundred years before the term Palestine had even been coined.
I don't think there's much mileage in getting into an argument with the PA over this type of terminology. The point is that, yes, Jesus was a "Palestinian" inasmuch as two thousand years ago he lived in a place one of whose names is now "Palestine," but the earliest texts we have identify him as genetically and culturally "Judean" or Jewish. (For these purposes the distinction between "Galilean" and "Judean" does not seem to have been particularly important.) I have discussed the issue at greater length here. For Galileans vs. Judeans, see my discussion in my book, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, pp. 56-59.
On a related note, Vel Nirtist at the American Thinker blog raises an interesting question regarding Muhammad's Night Journey (Al-Miraj) to Jerusalem, from which the name Al-Buraq Wall comes:
Now, if there was nothing sacred for Muhammad to see there, why exactly did he travel to Jerusalem? Why couldn't he ascend to heaven, and talk to the prophets and to God straight out of Mecca? And if there was anything sacred for him in Jerusalem, what was it?The PA's comments render the first (earthly) leg of Muhammad's Night Journey not "stupid" so much as pointless. Why go to Jerusalem if there's nothing special there?
The Palestinian Authority does not enlighten us. Perhaps it simply cannot, for now it caught itself in a dilemma: deny Jerusalem a Jewish connection -- and you make Muhammad's "night journey" look stupid, and render Jerusalem's status of Islam's "third holiest site" meaningless. But acknowledge Jerusalem's meaning to Muhammad, and you automatically affirm Jewish claims to the City of David.
Background to this discussion is here. On UNESCO and "Rachel's Tomb," see here.