By Ryan Jones
Oct 31, 2005
The Taliban's 2001 destruction of ancient Buddhas and this year's alleged desecration of numerous Korans by American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba made international headlines and became incidents of global impact.
Friday's spiteful desecration of bibles and Jewish prayer books by ?Palestinian? Muslims visiting the biblical Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, however, went virtually unnoticed.
Photographs taken by outraged members of Hebron's Jewish community and posted online showed the torn pages unceremoniously dumped behind the Gutnick Center, which stands in front of the compound built by King Herod over the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The official website of the Jewish Community of Hebron noted the desecration occurred on a day the site was closed to Jews to allow Muslim worshippers to mark the impending conclusion of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The Muslims also revere Abraham as their father, and have claimed the Cave of the Patriarchs as their own.
David Wilder, a spokesman for the community, told The Jerusalem Post that as local Jews ?searched the area for the ripped pages, Arab residents looked on with enjoyment.?
The desecration and the Arabs' response was ignored by most of the local and all of the international press.
?One can only imagine the response had? the roles been reversed and the ?Arabs discovered desecrated Korans? at the site, an official statement by the Jews of Hebron read.
Muslims in this region, however, are accustomed to having their intolerance and disdain for all things Jewish and Christian go unanswered.
Some of the more serious recent examples include the international silence in the wake of the desecration and destruction of Joseph's Tomb in Shechem in October 2000 and the apathy towards ongoing Muslim efforts to erase traces of Jewish history at Judaism's holiest site - the Jerusalem Temple Mount.