Telling lies to further the jihad — as Muhammad said, “War is deceit.”
“PA Libel: Israel tried to burn down Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969,” by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook for Palestinian Media Watch, March 15 (thanks to all who sent this in):
As Palestinians continue almost daily rioting in Jerusalem and other cities, claiming Israel is damaging places holy to Islam, the Palestinian Authority has chosen to rekindle another libel whose goal seems to be to increase the unrest and rioting.
This renewed libel is based on a rewriting of history by the Palestinian Authority, accusing Israel of assisting in the arson attack in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969.
The facts of the case were as follows: A non-Jewish Australian started a fire in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Aug. 21, 1969. The fire was extinguished and the damage was repaired.
More than ten years ago the Palestinian Authority initiated the lie that Israel was involved in the arson or that it Jew who started the fire with the Israeli government’s help. The libel was revived this week with this slide broadcast on PA TV:
Text on top: “Israeli aggression against the holy places”
Text in middle: “And on Aug. 21, 1969, the Jew Dennis Michael set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, with the support of the Jewish government, which cut off the water supply from the neighborhoods close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque with a view to delaying the operations to extinguish [the fire].”
Text on bottom: “Aggression against the holy places – the occupation: a long history of defiling and desecrating that which is sacred.”
[PA TV (Fatah), March 5, 2010]…
Meanwhile, Pamela Geller does some historical investigation and finds that this sort of incitement has happened before.