Senior Palestinian Authority official says Israel "playing with fire," calls on Muslims to "converge on al-Aqsa to save it"

"Khader was speaking ahead of a dedication of a renovated synagogue in the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, planned to take place Tuesday." -- headline

Yes, this Tuesday certain organizations are participating in the first annual International Temple Mount Awareness Day. I posted the Temple Institutes website and this milestone event last week, so I would like to repost it again.

The Temple Institute is launching their *FIRST* Temple Mount Awareness Day, and you can read in full detail what is coming on Tuesday, and what they hope to accomplish.

Click on the link below, and then click on the box featuring: March 16, 2010 International Temple Mount Awareness Day: http://www.templeinstitute.org/

This up 'n coming event is huge folks, so please click on the link to get more of the information.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic of Iran races ahead, with Ahmadinejad repeatedly caling for the erasure, the elimination, the end, of Israel. And meanwhile, too, we have Joseph Biden apparently tells the Israelis that their failure to do the bidding of the Obama Administration, their failure to simply surrender their rights, by being required never to exercise them (in Jerusalem and in the tiny patch of land which was always intended by the League of Nations' Mandates Commission to be part of the territory assigned to the Mandate for Palestine for the exclusive purpose of the establishment of the Jewish National Home), Israel's failure to promise it won't try to destroy or severely damage the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear project is "dangerous for us." "For us" -- but apparently the people of Israel are supposed to live with such a mortal threat, because two American administrations, like some previous ones that allowed Pakistan, using American money, to acquire nuclear weapons, have been so ineffective and feckless and now downright pusillanimous in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and all its works and days.

If Israel is beginning to feel more and more like Czechoslovakia in the late summer and fall of 1938, with that Runciman Mission, and then the final capitulation at Munich, with Neville Chamberlain, well-satisfied with himself, returning in triumph to London, believing deeply he had achieved "peace in our time," it has every right to.

The Obama Administration still does not want to begin to try to understand Islam, because to do so would simply require too much concentration and too much effort. And if it were understood, the folly of this "peace-processing" -- the favorite activity of so many Islam-ignorant American administrations-- would be clear, and the recognition that there is no end to, and therefore no "solution" to, the endless Jihad against Israel (just as there is no end to, and therefore no "solution," to, all the other local Jihads whose sum is the world-wide Jihad that many governments and "those taking a leadersip role" simply do not want to hear about, do not want to have to think about it, want only to dismiss it and put it out of their mind, want to refuse to believe the evidence, of Musliim texts and Muslim behavior toward non-Muslims, over the past 1350 years, from Spain to the East Indies -- because they are Podsnaps all, and that's the way they deal, like their great original Mr. Podsnap, with things that don't quite fit their limited world-view, things that might upset their mental applecarts.

In reply to the story, I can't see how this constitutes political or religious agression, or as you would like to put it in your highly simplified manner, 'Jihad'. Maybe you don't understand the situation on the ground in the Old City, but Israel has gradually been building Jewish settlement closer and closer to the al-Aqsa mosque, such that now Jewish apartments are just a few metres away. It is no wonder Fatah officials feel threatened by this.

But I suppose when Jewish settlements are built until they gradually enclose a Muslim mosque, officials are 'Jihadists' to call for it to be defended, but when (as you see it in a rather sensationalist and exaggerative way) Islam appears to be surrounding parts of Western communities, those who speak out against it are the only sane and enlightened ones? Interesting logic..

Israsel is not building "settlements" in Saudi Arabia, or in Jordan. In the immediate case, it is giving permission for apartments to be built in its capital, Jerusalem, a city where all religions enjoy full religious freedom only because Israel is in control, and such religious freedom would disappear just as soon as the only other claimant -- the Muslims -- took power, if they ever did.
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Furthermore, the Mandate for Palestine was abolutely clear: the Middle East did not belong to the Arab Muslims alone. There were other peoples, too, who deserved their own states, even though they may have been scattered. No one doubted that the independent Kurdistan would of course have some non-Kurds within it, and not all Kurds would be included in it. No one doubted that the contemplated independent Armenia would have some Kurds and Turks in it, but so what? And while the Mandate for Lebanon was, early on, tacitly and correctly understood as a refuge for Chrisetians in the Middle East, unfortunately the French as historic protectors of the Maronites weakened, and durinig the last fifty years the position of the Maronites, and other Christians too, has weakeneed. The Mandates system of the League of Nations did not go far enough, for Great Britain, in particular, was not thinking when it created out of three Ottoman vilayets (Mosul, Baghdad, Basra) the country of Iraq, about the future of the Assyrians and Chaldeans, and it ought to have provided for them, somewhere in the north, possibly under a joint arrangement with the independent Kurdistan that might have been created, but was not.

Now, as to the Jewish National Home, or Israel, and its borders. As you surely know, the only reason the Arabs have any claim to the "West Bank" is that the Arab Leagion of Jordan (under Glubb Pasha and Alec Kirkbride) managed to seize it. The claim of the Arabs is only that of military occupier. But when Israel took the "West Bank" in the Six-Day War, its claim was not that of a military occupier, but based on the provisions of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine. And this legal claim was strengthened by a moral claim: the claim that allows countries that fend off those bent on destroying them (and there was considerable evidence of this, right from May 15, 1948 and the declaration of Azzam Pasha that there would be a massacre [of the Jews of Israel] such as had not been seen since the days of the Mongols.

Furthermore, Resolution 242 did not, and could not, have effaced the original League of Nations' Mandate, and its terms. The United Nations took over, assumed, that mandatory system, and did not change it and by its own charter could not change it. And Resolution 242 is all about "defensible borders" and security, and as a military matter, it is simply impossible, given the permanent imbalance of forces - with the Arabs having nearly fifty times the population, more than one-thousand times the land area, and with vast sums spent on arms, far more than Israel ever could manage, because of the trillions of unstoppable dollars that the oil and gas deposits provide.

That is why it is so infuriating to see representatives of an Administration that cannot begin to recognize that the real theatre of war is not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Pakistan, but imperilled Western Europe, refuses still to recognize the central role of the ideology of Islam. For if it were to realize it, it would see the Arab Muslim war on Israal as what it is, and recognize that only deterrence, not "peace processes" leading to utterly worthless "peace treaties" that would of course be based on further surrenders of territory indispensable for the survival of Israel, will keep the peace. The best peace Israel can hope for is the present one, or one made somewhat better by a shared recongition, among the advanced countries, that Islam is a threat to all of them, and that none of them ought to lecture or threaten the others as to what they do, or do not do, in their own attempts to rescue themselves from the menace posed to each by those adherents of Islam -- they are so many -- who take the texts and tenets of Islam to heart. And one never knows when an outward "moderate" will become something different, for all kinds of reasons, some of which may have nothing to do with politics but with a more personal desarroi.

It is maddening to have those who presume to tell others what to do show that they have no understanding of the nature of Islam. Maddening, and for those who live in the West, frightening as well. One hopes for a dozen Geert Wilders, and little by little, there are signs that such will be appearing. Not becuase the "Islamophobes" have been so utterly convincing, but because Muslims themselves, in their attacks on non-Muslims (Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq, Copts, in Egypt, black African Christians in the Sudan, where the slaughter is about to begin again, Hindus and Sikhs and Christians in the subcontinent, and Buddhists too, in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh, as well as in southern Thailand, and then there's the killing of Christians and burning fo thousands of churches in Indonesia, and the attacks in the southern Philippins, and the massacres of Christians by Muslims in Nigeria, which may remind people of why Christians in 1967 tried to fight for their existence against what Colonel Ojukwu called the "Jihad" against them. And so on.
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The evidence mounts and mounts, too much for the usual suave deflections and deliberate confusions. One hopes that among those coming to their senses, all over the Western world, will be those in Israel who for several decades have refused -- so unpleasant is it for them to contmeplate -- that the war being waged against them is prompted by Islam, has no end, and any concessions will whet, not sate, Arab appetites. Such things as the Biden-Clinton tongue-lashings delivered to Israel are so outrageous, so disgusting, that one hopes that it will push more and more Israelis, and those who wish Israel will, in the direction of common sense about Islam. That's all one asks: a little common sense. All over the Western world.

"vut Israel has gradually been building Jewish settlement closer and closer to the al-Aqsa mosque, such that now Jewish apartments are just a few metres away. It is no wonder Fatah officials feel threatened by this." -- from a poster above

A poster above would like you to believe that Al-Aksa Mosque is somehow threatened by the building of apartments for Israelis -- physically threatened,.

Let's take a look at that claim. First, let's take a little look at Al-Aksa Mosque itself, which takes its name from a phrase in the Qur'an, about "the farthest mosque" (al-masjid al-aksa), a phrase the meaning of which was the subject of great discussion and dispute in the period of earliest post-Muhammad Islam -- it was not even clear if it should be given a literal and physical meaning and therefore location, or endowed perhaps more impressively with a meaning that was not of this world, but figurative and spiritual. In the end, an early Umayyad caliph sitting in Damascus decided that, why, tiens, the "farthest mosque" -- from which Muhammad supposedly flew up to the Seventh Heaven and back on his fabulous steed al-Buraq -- must surely be right smack on top of the holiest site to Jews, the Temple Mount, right in the center of a city holy to both Jews and Christians. What better way to establish, and even flaunt, the power and supremacy of Islam, than to plant, as it were, the Flag of Islam, with the Al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (which, by the way, has the clear shape of a Byzantine martyrium, and inscriptions in Arabic that are not Qur'anic, and -- if you believe the philological and other evidence adduced by that brilliant scholar Christoph Luxenberg -- is not Islamic at all but, rather, Christian, in what the writing expresses).

Now what is it we know, if we know only one thing, about Al-Aksa Mosque? We know that it is built not at ground level, but on top of the Temple Mount, that is many tens of meters (or "metres" as the English or English-educated Muslim apologist for Islam known as "Simon" writes it) above the ground. So it makes no sense to claim that the Israeli apartments "threaten" to "creep up" on the Al-Aksa Mosque. If they are in the vicinity -- are they? -- they are perhaps "creeping up" on the ground-level Western Wall, but the last thing in the world they could be "creeping up" on is Al-Aksa Mosque.

And of course the same poster would I think prefer you to ignore many things in the history of Jerusalem. For example, to forget the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by the Caliph Hakim, ruling in Cairo, in 1009. Or if we move forward to just the last six decades since Israel declared its independence, the treatment, by the Jordanians, of the synagoguges in the Old City -- 37 of 38 of them were blown up, and of the ancient Jewish tombstones on the Mount of Olives, that were pulled up and then used to line Jordanian army latrines. And he knows perfectly well that during that period of Arab Muslim rule Jews could not get to the Western Wall to pray. And he further knows -- or does he? -- that not a single Arab leader of note, not a single Muslim religious leader of note, save for King Abdullah himself (after all, the eastern part of Jerusalem was declared to be, with Amman, joint capital of Jordan, but that was merely a pro forma declaratoin), not a single Arab "intellectual" of note, appears to have visited Jerusalem, that is the Old City, when the Arabs controlled it until Jordan's King Hussein, having listened to the siren song (well, the recorded telephone calls) of Gamal Abdel Nasser) of Nasser, foolishly joined in the gang-up on Israel and for his pains, lost that part of Judea and Samaria, 9which the Jordanians had carefully renamed the "West Bank" in the same spirit as the Romans who renamed their pesky because rebellious province of "Judea" as "Syria palaestinorum" or "Syria of the Philistines," and ultimately the shortened adjectival form, "Palestine," gained acceptance in Western Christendom as the toponym of choice.

There's much more one could say, and perhaps if prompted, I will. But the poster above needs to study history, or perhaps he knows that history all too well, and wishes that you not know it, indeeed counts on your not knowing it.

Well, this isn't the website of the BBC or "The Guardian."
Too many people at this website are well-informed, largely by dint of their own efforts, about the history of the war being made on Israel, and more important, on the history of Islam itself, and the war being made, over the past 1350 years, on every conceivable kind of Infidel.

He's come to the wrong website. He's peddling the wrong wares.

A little OT.

It was interesting to see who could be counted to come to courageous, pro-Israel Dutch Politician Geert Wilders' defense, after the savage beating he took from Fox News and Glenn Beck and company last week. Diana West is one courageous woman who stood out.

I've been listing yet again to Brigitte Gabriel's book, "Because They Hate" on audio.

Gabriel is conspicuous by her shameful silence; in not coming to the defence of Wilders. Shameful is the only word I can think of.

Does anyone know why Brigitte chose silence rather than be an upstanding woman of valor and courage?

When the Muslim authorities wasnt to promote rioting and mahem--they scream that the Jews are out to get al Aqsa--this was done in 1929 too--and before then and after then.

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

"That's all one asks: a little common sense."

A little common sense might lead one to conclude that ignorance, willful or otherwise, is misleading.

Our fearless leader was suffused at a tender age of the tenants and teachings of Islam. Fond memories of his youth must strike a chord. Kind of starting on the ground floor of all the troubles the Hippies dropped out of.

He remembered to bow.

Lessons learned young, last a life time.

Yeah, what Hugh said ..woohoo!

ARE YOU AWARE THAT:

The Temple Mount is the holiest place in the world; yet Jews and all non-Moslems are denied the right to pray in groups, and even as individuals; this refusal is accompanied by their constant degradation, and they are granted no opportunity for any religious expression whatsoever on the Temple Mount.

1) Only Jews are forced to wait an extended period of time before being allowed through security.

2) Only Jews are forced to present their ID’s to the police.

3) Only Jews are followed and harassed by Israeli police and Muslim Wakf guards throughout the entire visit on the Mount.

4) Only Jews are arrested for crimes such as prayer, closing eyes, bowing down or singing.

5) The Prime Minister of Israel has failed to include the Temple Mount in his own "Heritage Plan," among those sites of historical, cultural and religious significance to the Jewish people, to receive enhanced government budgeting for the improvement of access, upkeep, and beautification of the sites.

The Mount has completely been abandoned to the Muslim Authorities and is used by Muslims for the following blasphemous activities:

1) Illegal digs causing unparalleled destruction of archeological evidence of the Holy Temple and the historical Jewish presence on the Mount.

2) Endless incitement against the Jewish State and Nation from within the Mosques.

3) Physical attacks against Jews on the Mount and down below at the Western Wall.

In response to this we are calling on all groups to unite to begin fighting this ongoing travesty. We are calling for a day of action to be known as "International Temple Mount Awareness Day."

We have no illusions and we fully understand that a long battle is still in front of us, but yet we must begin the work. We must bring the Temple Mount back into our national heart and mind and begin to restore it to its former glory. Yes, this will be a long difficult path, but so was our return to Zion after 2,000 years of exile. Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had their mission and we have ours.

Above excerpt:
http://www.templeinstitute.org/temple-mount-awareness-day.htm

"Well, we can just ban Israelis under 50 from accessing the Western Wall. You know, the same way Israel banned Palestinians from worshipping at al-Aqsa. There would be no trouble!"

In the first place, "Palestinians" are not banned from wirshipping at al-Aksa save on a few occasions when those same "Palestinians" have been throwing rocks down on Jewish worshippers, and visitors, to the Western Wall --and as there a moment's thought tells one that there are no "rocks" just lying about on the Temple Mount, the rocks are deliberatley carried up, by the Arabs, for the sole purpose of then hurling them down on Jews worshipping below.

But let's offer a hypothetical so that we can partly agree with the sinister poster. Yes, if the Jews worshipping at the Western Wall were to bring in weapons, as deadly in their effect as those rocks flung by Arab Muslims on Jews below, then they should ban them. If they had a record, say, of repeatedly bringing weapons to the Western Wall -- not rocks, because rocks cannot easily be flung upwards, and certainly not all the way up to the Temple Mount --and time after time using them, then the Israeli government would have a duty to, and I am sure would, ban Israelis in the age group likely to be involved (say, under 50). So the next time you can report that Israelis are firing weapons from the ground at peaceful Arabs minding their own business, and merely prostrating themselves Mecca-wards on the Temple Mount above, then of course we will all join you in calling for that ban. But so far no such attacks have been observed by anyone. The attacks are all one way-- Arabs throwing rocks down, rocks that if they hit could seriously wound or kill. And the sinister poster knows it.

Here's Al-Manar TV's (Hizb'allah's television station) "Calls for Urgent Action to Save Al-Aqsa Mosque".

They state that Al-Aqsa Mosque "sits atop the site believed by some Jews to be an ancient Jewish temple". "Some Jews"—actually, this site is regarded by virtually all reputable historians—Jewish or not—as the site of the old Temple.

What a hard-nosed, skeptical bunch, eh? Not so much, when it comes to the "Prophet" Muhamed's "night journey", which even his wife Aisha noted was a dream, or claims that Israel intends to "demolish al-Aqsa Mosque".

They also blast the Palestinian Authority's supposed "connivance" with Israel over this, which may be why Fatah is jumping in here, to secure their cred on the "Muslim street".

http://www.almanar.com.lb/newssite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=126787&language=en

The connection of Jews to Jerusalem is clear, a matter not of religious belief but of history. The coneection of Christians to Jerusalem is clear, a matter not of religious belief but of history.

But the connection of Muslims in Jerusalem is merely a matter of belief, not history: the belief that a man named Muhammad, living in early seventh-century Arabia in the Hejaz, somehow flew up to Jerusalem, a place not once mentioned in the Qur'an, and there, from the Temple Mount, he flew on his Miraj or Night Journey, on the winged steed Al-buraq, up to the Seventh Heaven and back. And that is a matter not of history, to which all can give assent, but a matter of belief.

In 937 the Muslims burned down the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. They made sure they 1st destroyed the tomb where Jesus was laid. They refused to let the Christians rebuild it. They would not even let the the Christians pray at the ruins. Keep in mind this is and was the most holy church for Christians. So as far I am concerned if the Isreali air force was to drop a daisy cutter bomb on the Al Aqsa mosque that would be fine.

From the article - "Khader was speaking ahead of a dedication of a renovated synagogue in the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, planned to take place Tuesday.

'He called Israel's renovation of the Hurva Synagogue a "provocation" and warned Israel that it was "playing with fire."'

Gravenimage - you and Marisol have already drawn attention to the fact that Khader's mindset is shaped by the mean-spirited provisions of the humiliating 'pact of Omar', template and inspiration of all the mass of humiliating and oppressive restrictions imposed by Muslim overlords upon non-Muslims under their scimitar, throughout the Empire of Islam, throughout its history.

Khader is *demanding* that the Jews of the Jewish state of Israel should obey the Rules for Dhimmis; that they must grovel to Muslims and obey the terms of the Pact by neither building new synagogues nor repairing or rebuilding old ones. Incidentally, the Hurva Synagogue is built on the exact location of at least two previous synagogues, both of *which were deliberately destroyed by Muslims*.

It is an almost exact replica of the one which previously stood on the site ...and which the Jordanian Muslim forces gleefully blew up with dynamite, the moment they had ethnically cleansed the ancient Jewish Quarter during the war of 1948.

John Roy Carlson personally witnessed the driving out of every last Jewish inhabitant of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, by the obscenely triumphant and vindictive Muslims...and it was probably only the involvement of the English Arabist Glubb Pasha (who though he hated Jews, and did everything he could to assist and encourage the Arab Muslim jihad against them, did not *quite* dare, not in 1948, to be seen publicly presiding over a Muslim mass-murder of hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem under the eye of the Western media many of whom had not yet been hypnotised by the 'Arab narrative') that meant it *was* an eviction - in the clothes they stood up in, all their poor possessions being left behind as booty for the triumphant Muslims - rather than an orgy of allahu-akbaring raping, mutilation and mass murder.

Here is an article, from the Jerusalem Post, giving the history of the Hurva Synagogue. Archaeologists found, by the way, that there had been three Jewish ritual baths, or mikveh, on the exact same site, during the time of Jesus, that is, during the Second Temple period.

http://www.jpost.com/LocalIsrael/InJerusalem/Article.aspx?id=170834

And here is the JPost editorial:

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=170971

I commend to all who have not yet read it, James Parkes little book, "The Story of Jerusalem".

Francophones may also consult the fourth chapter - 'Jerusalem' - of Jacques Ellul's 'Un Chretien Pour Israel'.

Unlike almost all Ellul's other works, Un Chretien Pour Israel, published in 1983, has not yet been translated into English. It should be.

I will give the whole chapter in several successive postings, paragraph by paragraph; in the original French and in my own - very rough, alas - literal translation. French readers are encouraged to correct my errors.

"Dans toute cette histoire, il faut faire une place a part a Jerusalem.

'On sait que, dans la periode turque, Jerusalem etait divisee en quatre quartiers: deux cinquiemes de la ville formaient le quartier musulman, un cinquieme le quartier juif, un cinquieme le quartier armenien et un cinquieme le quartier chretien, calcule grosso modo.

' Elle comportait soixante mille habitants, avec une majorite de Juifs.

'Apres 1948, il y eut division de la ville en deux, la Vieille Ville etant sous le controle de la Jordanie; seule la ville nouvelle (entierment construite et habitee par des Juifs) restait juive. L’ancien quartier chretien etait sous domination jordanienne.

- In all this history it is necessary to keep a separate place for Jerusalem.

People know that during the Turkish period Jerusalem was divided into four “quarters”: two-fifths of the town formed the Muslim quarter, a fifth formed the Jewish quarter, a fifth the Armenian quarter, and a fifth the Christian quarter, roughly calculated.

It comprised 60 000 inhabitants, with a majority of Jews.

After 1948, the town was divided into two: the Old City was under the control of Jordan; only the New Town (entirely built and inhabited by the Jews) remained Jewish. The old Christian Quarter was under Jordanian rule.'

"Apres 1967, tout Jerusalem est entre les mains d’Israel et est devenue capitale de l’Etat d’Israel par une declaration de 1980.

(je comprends mal le scandale que l’on a fait, cette annee 1980, a cette declaration, etant donne qu’en 1950 la partie juive de Jerusalem avait deja ete declaree capitale d’Israel et que le siege du gouvernement israelien y avait ete transfere.

- After 1967 all Jerusalem was in Israel’s hands and became the capital of the State of Israel by a declaration [made] in 1980

(I do not properly understand the stink that people kicked up about this declaration in 1980, given that in 1950 the Jewish part of Jerusalem had already been declared [the] capital of Israel, and that the seat of Israeli government had been transferred there).

"Mais, actuellement, Jerusalem, la Vieille Ville, anciennement jordanienne, est contestee a Israel, comme les autres territoires dits occupes, Cisjordanie, Gaza, etc.

"C’est alors que commencent toutes les attaques contre la presence des Juifs a Jerusalem.

" Les arguments deployes sont les suivants: historiquement et culturellement, Jerusalem est une ville arabe que l’on n’a pas le droit de dissocier de l’ensemble de la Palestine. Les habitants de Palestine (i.e. les Arabes) sont les seuls a avoir le droit d’habiter cette ville qui ne peut etre monopolisee par les Juifs.

- But at present the Old City of Jerusalem, previously under Jordanian control, is disputed with Israel - like the other so-called ‘occupied territories’, West Bank, Gaza, etc.

'It is then that all the attacks begin against the presence of the Jews in Jerusalem.

'The arguments used are the following: historically and culturally Jerusalem is an Arab city; people have no right to detach it from the rest of Palestine. The inhabitants of Palestine (that is, the Arabs) are the only ones with the right to live in this city, which ought not to be monopolised by the Jews.'

And continuing with Ellul on the subject of Jerusalem:

"Par ailleurs, l’acte qui institue Jerusalem capitale est une veritable annexion, c’est un acte unilateral, illegitime, et qui a ete condamne en tant que tel par le Conseil de Securite de l’ONU (proclamant que ce choix de cette capitale est une violation du droit international).

"Le troisieme argument, c’est que Jerusalem est un “patrimoine sacre” commun aux trois religions monotheists et ne saurait etre accaparee par l’une d’elles.

"Jerusalem contient les lieux saints veneres par l’Islam, le christianisme et le Judaisme.

- Secondly [it is argued that] the act which declared Jerusalem [to be the Jewish] capital is a veritable annexation, that is, a unilateral, illegitimate act, which was condemned as such by the Security Council of the UN (proclaiming that the choice of this capital is a violation of international law).

-The third argument is that Jerusalem is a “sacred patrimony” common to the three monotheistic religions and ought not to be monopolised by one of them.

Jerusalem contains the holy places revered by Islam, Christendom and Judaism.'

"Et ceci s’appuie sur un argument d’evidence: Jerusalem, comme Ville Sainte, concerne huit cent millions de musulmans, un milliard deux cent millions de chretiens et seulement six ou sept millions de Juifs.

"Comment, devant ces chiffres ecrasants, ne pas comprendre que Jerusalem ne peut pas etre une capitale d’Israel! (En bonne logique, alors, elle devrait appartenir aux ‘chretiens’).

"Et il faut, dans ces conditions, qu’elle appartienne a tous, et pas seulement a Israel.

- And this rests on an obvious argument: Jerusalem, as Holy City, concerns 800 million Moslems, 1.2 billion Christians, and only 6 or 7 million Jews.

'How, given these figures, can one not understand that Jerusalem cannot be a capital city of Israel. (Logically, then, it ought to belong to the ‘Christians’).

' And under these conditions it ought to belong to all, not just to Israel. {Note - in this part of the text, Ellul is simply stating what kinds of arguments the anti-Zionists are presenting - dda}.

"Cependant, souligne-t-on souvent, le probleme de Jerusalem, s’il a de fortes implications religieuses, est d’abord un probleme politique.

“Jerusalem et son peuple sont un”.

"Enfin, on attaque durement Israel en ce qui concerne la pratique qui serait suivie de remplacement de la population arabe par une population exclusivement juive, au moyen d’expulsions individuelles ou massives, par le dynamitage de maisons et l’edification de grands ensembles reserves aux seuls Juifs.

"Cette politique defigure Jerusalem et reflete la nature discriminatoire de cette politique.

"Tels sont les principaux arguments.

- However, people often stress that the problem of Jerusalem, although it has strong religious implications, is first of all a political problem.

' “Jerusalem and her people are one”.

' Finally, people attack Israel harshly with regards to the practice that has been followed of replacing the Arab population by an exclusively Jewish population, by the means of individual and group expulsions, the demolition of houses and the building of large apartment blocks reserved for Jews alone.

'This policy disfigures Jerusalem and reflects the discriminatory nature of this policy.
Such are the main arguments."

"Les solutions sont claires: ou bien Jerusalem doit etre integralement remise aux Palestiniens arabes, ou bien on revient au statut d’avant 1967,

"ou bien, et c’est ce qui a la faveur en general, Jerusalem devient une ville sous mandat international, “hors territoire”, avec un statut special et une administration geree par l’ONU.

" Et, implicitement, c’est a cette solution que se rallierait le Pape Jean-Paul.

"Quant au president Moubarak, il est tres categorique, Israel doit restituer Jerusalem, comme il l’a fait pour le Sinai, et il note que par deux fois le president Sadate avait demande la revision du statut de Jerusalem sans obtenir de reponse.

'- The solutions are clear: either all Jerusalem should be given back to the Palestinian Arabs, or we return to the status it had before 1967, or (and it is this which is generally favoured) Jerusalem becomes a city under [an] international mandate, ‘without territory’, with a special status and an administration conducted by the UN {note: the UN, which has a powerful Muslim voting bloc…dda}.

'And, implicitly, this is the solution favoured by Pope John Paul II. {this was written in 1982 - dda}

'As for President Mubarak of Egypt, he is very categorical: Israel must give back Jerusalem just as they did the Sinai, and he notes that twice President Sadat demanded a revision of the status of Jerusalem without getting a response.

"Or, en face de ces arguments, on reste un peu stupefait, surtout dans la mesure ou ils semblent acceptes sans hesitation par des gens de fort bonne foi.

-'Now, encountering these arguments one remains a little astonished, above all insofar as they seem to have been accepted without hesitation by people of very good faith".

Now for part three of Jacques Ellul on the subject of Jerusalem:

"Le premier fait a relever, c’est que jamais Jerusalem n’a ete une capitale arabe.

"Et quant a dire que c’est historiquement et culturellement une ville arabe, c’est faux, a moins d’assimiler les Turcs a des Arabes, erreur que les Francais font souvent, Jerusalem ayant ete ville turque et sous administration turque.

"Quant au peuplement de Jerusalem, il a toujours ete (sauf pendant la breve periode jordanienne ou les Arabes ont expulse les Juifs) a dominante juive.

- The first fact to be noted is that Jerusalem has never been an Arab capital.

'And as for saying that it is historically and culturally an Arab city - this is false, at least in assimilating the Turks to the Arabs, an error which the French often make – Jerusalem having been a Turkish city and under Turkish administration.

'As for the population of Jerusalem, it has always been [since 1850 or thereabouts] mostly Jewish (except during the brief Jordanian period, when the Arabs expelled the Jews). {Note - from the mid-19th century the Jews were the largest single group in the city -dda}.

"Parfois il y avait seulement une faible majorite, mais les Juifs, quoique entasses dans un seul quartier, etaient majoritaires.

"Faut-il redire ce qu’a ete l’occupation arabe de 1948 a 1967?

"Outre ce que j’ai indique plus haut, il faut rappeler,

" ce qui est essentiel, que contrairement aux promesses solennelles repetees ces dernieres annees – a savoir que si on restitue la Vieille Ville aux Palestiniens ceux-ci assureront un libre acces aux “lieux saints” des trois religions -,

"pendant leur domination jordanienne,

"les lieux saints juifs etaient interdits aux Juifs,

"les lieux saints de l’Islam etaient interdits aux citoyens musulmans qui habitaient en Israel,

"et par ailleurs la population chretienne de Jerusalem a ete brimee en permanence par les autorites jordaniennes, si bien que son nombre etait descendu de dix-neuf mille en 1948 a onze mille en 1967, et que depuis cette date, sous autorite juive, il a presque double!"

- At times the Jews had only a slight majority; but although confined to a single quarter they were in the majority.

' Must we describe yet again what the Arab occupation was like, between 1948 and 1967?

'Apart from what I have mentioned above, it is necessary to recall the essential thing, that –
contrary to solemn promises repeated in recent years, that if the Old City is given back to the Palestinians they will guarantee free access to the ‘holy places’ of the three religions –

during Jordanian rule the Jewish holy places were forbidden to the Jews,

the Islamic holy places were forbidden to Muslim citizens of Israel

'and, moreover, the Christian population of Jerusalem was bullied continually by the Jordanian authorities, so much so that their number diminished from 19 000 in 1948 to 11 000 in 1967, and that after that date, under Jewish authority, it almost doubled!'

"Quant au libre acces aux lieux saints des trois confessions, je puis attester que, depuis 1967, il est totalement libre et qu’il n’y a aucune restriction d’aucune sorte pour personne.

"Il n’est nul besoin d’avoir un statut international, de mettre Jerusalem sous l’autorite de l’ONU pour assurer cette liberte et cette independence.

"Par ailleurs, faut-il souligner que, en fait de Ville Sainte, c’est vrai que Jerusalem l’est pour les trois religions dit monotheistes.

"Mais il y a une difference.

"Pour l’Islam, la ville sainte, c’est La Mecque, en second lieu Medine, et seulement en troisieme ligne Jerusalem. Celle-ci est importante, elle est bien appellee ‘la Sainte’, Al Qods. Il est vrai que la priere islamique fut anciennement orientee vers Jeruslem avant de l’etre vers La Mecque. Mais elle est la troisieme.

- As for free access to the holy places of three religions, I can attest that after 1967 it was totally free and that there was no restriction of any sort for anyone.

'There is no need to have an international status, to put Jerusalem under the authority of the UN, to assure this liberty and independence.

'Moreover it must be stressed that, as for being a Holy City, it is true that yes, Jerusalem is sacred to the three so-called monotheist religions.

'But there is one difference.

' For Islam the holy city is Mecca, then in the second place Medina and - in the third rank only - Jerusalem. It is important, it is even called ‘the Holy’, Al Quds. It is true that Islamic prayer was originally directed toward Jerusalem, before being turned toward Mecca. But it is in third place [after Mecca and Medina].

"Pour les catholiques, elle est bien sainte parce qu’elle est le memorial de la crucifixion et de la resurrection de Jesus, mais enfin, la Ville Sainte, c’est Rome. Et quand on celebre l’Annee Sainte, c’est a Rome et pas a Jerusalem.

" Elle est donc la deuxieme.

"Alors que, pour les Juifs, elle est la seule, l’unique, l’incomparable; il n’y a pas d’autre ville sainte pour Israel.

"Pendant mille neuf cents ans exactement, Israel a prie “l’an prochain a Jerusalem”. Il n’y avait pas d’autre lieu possible pour le rassemblement d’Israel. Et l’on voudrait contester cette fidelite?

"L’Islam prive de Jerusalem a sa capitale religieuse a La Mecque,

" les catholiques ont leur capitale religieuse a Rome.

" Les Juifs prives de Jerusalem n’ont rien: voila toute la difference.

- 'For Catholics Jerusalem is indeed holy because it is the memorial of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but in the end, Rome is the Holy City. And when people celebrate the Holy Year it is at Rome not at Jerusalem.

' Jerusalem is, then, second [after Rome].

'Whereas for the Jews it is the one and only, the unique, the incomparable; there is no other holy city for Israel.

' For 1900 years Israel has prayed, “next year in Jerusalem”.

'There was no other possible place for the gathering of Israel.

' And people want to dispute this attachment?

' Islam, without Jerusalem, has its religious capital at Mecca;

'the Catholics have their religious capital in Rome.

'The Jews, without Jerusalem, have nothing; that’s the difference."

Jacques Ellul, 'Jerusalem', from Un Chretien Pour Israel: fourth section.

"Voila pourquoi, une fois de plus, on ne peut pas mettre les “trois religions” sur un pied d’egalite pour cette Ville Sainte.

"Spirituellement, elle est juive. Elle a ete donnee par Dieu a Israel et pas seulement a David.

"En tant que chretien, je ne puis pas savoir autre chose. Et si mon Seigneur est monte a Jerusalem pour y souffrir et mourir, il l’a doublement ainsi consacree comme la ville juive. Il n’a pas cherche un autre lieu pour rencontrer la Passion et manifester la victoire du Vivant sur la Mort.

"C’est le Juif Jesus qui est venu dans cette capitale de la foi juive. Et les sanctuaries chretiens eleves a sa memoire ne sont pas d’abord ‘chretiens’, ils sont d’abord juifs, a cause de la judeite de Jesus et son acceptation de Jerusalem sur qui il a pleure.

- 'See why, yet again, we cannot place the “three religions” on an equal footing for this Holy City.

'Spiritually she is Jewish. She was given by God to Israel, not just to David.

'As a Christian I cannot know anything else. And if my Lord went up to Jerusalem to suffer and die, he has thus doubly consecrated her as the Jewish city. He sought no other place to endure the Passion and to demonstrate the victory of the Living over Death.

'It is Jesus the Jew who came to this capital of the Jewish faith. And the Christian sanctuaries raised in his memory are not, first of all, Christian; primarily they are Jewish, because of Jesus’ Jewishness and his acceptance of Jerusalem, over which he wept.

"Pour le reste, je me reporterai principalement aux articles et aux livres de Jacques Madaule.

"Si on laisse de cote le probleme religieux, les droits les plus anciens et les plus solides sont ceux du peuple juif a l’egard de Jerusalem.

"Certes, elle a ete fondee par d’autres et connue au xe siecle avant J.C. sous le nom de Jebus, mais elle est devenue la cite de David, ou l’ensemble du peuple juif s’est retrouve et par rapport a quoi il s’est organise.

"Elle a ete la capitale de l’Etat juif jusqu’a la prise par les Babyloniens, et elle l’est redevenue peu après jusqu’a la conquete romaine.

" Les Arabes l’ont conquise et, a partir de ce moment, Jerusalem n’a plus joue aucun role politique dans la vie des partenaires (Arabes, Byzantins, Turcs) des conflits de cette region (sauf le bref siecle ou elle est redevenue capitale du royaume chretien au xiie siecle.) Elle n’a meme pas ete capitale de province dans l’Empire turc.

-' For the rest, I will refer principally to the articles and books of Jacques Madaule.

' If one sets to one side the religious problem, the oldest and firmest rights with regard to Jerusalem are those of the Jewish people.

'Yes, it was founded by others and known under the name of Jebus in the 10th century BC; but it became the city of David, where the whole of the Jewish people gathered and around which they were organised.

'It was the capital of the Jewish state until it was taken by the Babylonians, and not long afterward it became so once again, until the Roman conquest.

'The Arabs conquered it and, from that moment, Jerusalem played no political role in the life of those (Arabs, Byzantines, Turks) who took part in the conflicts of that region (except for a brief century when it was the capital of the Christian kingdom in the 12th century). It was never a provincial capital in the Turkish empire.

"Il n’y a donc aucune raison historique, ni demographique, ni religieuse, d’attribuer Jerusalem aux Arabes.

"Or, note Madaule, il est tres remarquable de constater que beaucoup de gens en Occident sont persuades que Jerusalem devrait leur revenir.

" En realite, nous rejoignons ici la propagande (et, dans toute cette recherche politique, il est tres difficile de demeler politique et propagande, celle-ci s’est infiltree partout).

“Une tres habile et insidieuse propagande a reussi a faire passer pour historiques des pretentions purement religieuses.

" L’Islam la troisieme en date des religions abrahamiques, se considere comme la plus parfaite parce qu’elle est l’ultime.

"D’ou l’attitude hautaine qu’elle a toujours eue a l’egard des deux autres; l’aprete de sa revendication sur Jerusaleme, du roi du Maroc au roi d’Arabie, vient de cette pretention dont la possession de Jerusalem serait le sceau” (Madaule).

- 'There is then no reason – historic, demographic or religious – to ascribe Jerusalem to the Arabs.

'Now, Madaule notes, it is very remarkable to observe that most people in the West are convinced that Jerusalem should go back to the Arabs.

' In fact, here we come back to propaganda (and in all this political investigation it is very difficult to disentangle politics from propaganda, the propaganda has gotten in everywhere).

[Ellul now quotes Madaule]: BEGIN QUOTE - “A very clever and insidious propaganda has succeeded in causing some purely religious claims to pass as history.

" Islam – the third in order of the Abrahamic religions – regards itself as the most perfect because it is the most recent [in time].

" Hence its arrogant attitude toward the two others; the lateness of its demand for Jerusalem, from the king of Morocco to the King of Arabia, comes from this claim, which would be sealed by the possession of Jerusalem.” END QUOTE FROM MADAULE.

And Ellul's closing remarks:

"Je crois que, raisonablement, il est tres difficilement discutable que Jerusalem est juive avant tout et compte avant tout, de facon existentielle, pour le peuple et l’ame juive.

"Mais il faut, en terminant, et en dehors des arguments historiques et politiques, bien mesurer l’importance de Jerusalem au point de vue spirituel.

"Parler de “Ville Sainte pour les trois religions” est une superficialite desarmante.

“En ne tolerant pas que les Juifs soient les maitres de Jerusalem, chretiens et musulmans profondement d’accord les excluent par la meme de toute egalite avec eux et les vouent a l’errance dont la possession de Jerusalem avait precisement pour but de les delivrer a jamais” (J. Madaule).

En realite, refuser Jerusalem a Israel, c’est nier dans sa totalite la vocation et l’etre d’Israel.

Pas moins que cela.

Ce qu’aucun chretien en tout cas ne devrait pouvoir tolerer."

- 'I believe that, speaking reasonably, it is very difficult to dispute the fact that Jerusalem is Jewish before all and taking everything into account, in an existential fashion, for the Jewish people and the Jewish soul.

'But in the end, aside from historical and political arguments, one must assess the importance of Jerusalem from the spiritual point of view.

'To talk about the “Holy City for the three religions” is a disarming superficiality.

“By not enduring that the Jews should be masters of Jerusalem, Christians and Moslems are profoundly in agreement, excluding them [the Jews] (by that same fact) from all equality with themselves, and condemning them to that exile from which the possession of Jerusalem had precisely as its aim to deliver them forever” (J Madaule).

'In fact, to deny Jerusalem to Israel is to negate in its totality the vocation and the existence of Israel.

'Nothing less than that.

'A thing that any Christian ought not to be able to countenance". END OF CHAPTER.

In the Avenue of the Righteous, in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, there is a tree planted in memory of Jacques Ellul, Righteous Among the Nations, because of his participation in the saving of Jews from the Nazis in Occupied France during World War II.

But that tree seems to me now to be fitting also because of Jacques Ellul's willingness to name and to oppose that Jihad against the Jews, and against the reborn Jewish state of Israel, that he saw the Jew-haters of the *Muslim* world and their Jew-hating Western janissaries waging, by every possible means, from at least the 1960s onward.

Jacques Ellul, quoted above in several posts by "dumbledore's army," thought about, and wrote brilliantly, on many subjects. He's like Jacques Barzun, one of those people whom you can trust completely. His book "The Technological Society" is in English and is about his great theme: the effect on Man and on Christian society of technology; he wrote on propaganda, on “Lieux Communs” (Commonplaces, that is, Received Ideas and Off-the-Rack Opinions) and on many other matters.

A useful course could be given, to the impoverished students of today, fed a steady diet of what they already believe or think they are supposed to believe, limited to the writings of four men who are not household names (much less household gods): Jacques Barzun, Jacques Ellul, Raymond Aron, and Wladimir Weidle. I’d love to give that course. Hell, I’d love to take it.

To Hugh and Dumbledore's Army - now I have to find Ellul's other work, as I do not speak French.

So many books, so little time.

And while you are looking for Jacques Ellul, poster above, don't forget Jacques Barzun (on French prosody, on teaching, on music, on Darwin, on this and on that), Raymond Aron ("The Opium of the Intellectuals" on Marxism is a good one to read), and Wladimir Weidle (the French way of writing "Vladimir Veidle"), whose "The Death of Art" (in Russian, "Umiraniye iskusstva"), in an Englished, and shortened, version of "Les abeilles d'Aristee" which won the Rivarol Prize, and there are many other books, including "Russia Absent and Present."