Gaza’s Synagogues- Only the Latest

November 21, 2005

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 located 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 the 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 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chief Yasser Arafat told a stunned United States President Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000 that there was never a Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

This religious intolerance is not confined to the Jews.

In September, 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, 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 2% of the population in PA-controlled areas, down from 20% sixty years ago.

With such a “disgraceful record,” Zionist Organization of America Director Morton Klein questioned how PA Minister Saeb Erekat could claim, “We maintain the highest respect for Judaism.”

By Ryan Jones, Jerusalem Newswire

Photo Credit: