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Palestinian Arabs

Gaza's synagogues only the latest


By Ryan Jones
September 13, 2005

Despite the fervent claims of Palestinian Authority officials that the Muslims living under their rule have the utmost respect for Judaism, the synagogues of Gaza were burned and desecrated even before the last Jew had left the strip.

A cursory check of recent history would seem to belie the PA's assertions, and make this week's scenes from Gaza very much expected.

Between 1949 and 1967, the Jordanians, the majority of whom are numbered as ?Palestinian? Arabs, systematically destroyed over 50 synagogues in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem's Old City. They also desecrated the Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives, using the headstones to pave army latrines.

More recently, the ?Palestinians? overran, burned, smashed and turned into a mosque the tomb of the Israeli patriarch Joseph in Shechem.

In Bethlehem, local Muslims regularly attack the tomb of Rachel, forcing Israel to turn the holy site into a virtual fortress.

At Judaism's holiest site, the Jerusalem Temple Mount, it is not uncommon to hear of Arab Muslims hurling stones down upon Jewish worshipers at that compound's Western Wall.

From an intellectual standpoint, the PA has, at the diplomatic level and in the education of children living under its rule, campaigned to deny the Bible and any Jewish connection to this land.

In one of the more famous examples, former PLO chief Yasser Arafat told a stunned US President Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000 that there never was a Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

Nor is this religious intolerance confined to the Jews.

Just last week ?Palestinian? Christians handed a long list to Church leaders in Jerusalem of recent acts of persecution against them by an ?Islamic fundamentalist mafia? that the PA does nothing to constrain.

Also last week, a Muslim mob ransacked and burned the Christian village of Taibe near Ramallah after learning that a Christian man from there had been dating a Muslim girl from a neighboring village.

Following decades of such discrimination and persecution, Christians now make up only two percent of the population in PA-controlled areas, down from 20 percent 60 years ago.

With such a ?disgraceful record,? Zionist Organization of America director Morton Klein questioned Monday how PA minister Saeb Erekat could claim, ?We maintain the highest respect for Judaism.?

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