Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was erected in 638 on the site of the Temple, is a typical triumphal mosque like the ones Islamic conquerors built all over on the spoils of their brutal campaigns.
Its name betrays the foreign nature of this building: “al-Masjid al-Aqsa,” “the Farthest Mosque.” Despite all the lies parroted by the modern world, the Muslim conquerors knew well that Jerusalem was not their home.
When east Jerusalem was liberated from Jordanian occupation in June 1967, this symbol of centuries of monstrous oppression and exile of Jews really should have been torn down as a symbol against the Islamization of east Jerusalem.
In the 19 years Jordan occupied east Jerusalem, its rule was brutal and destructive. Jordan ethnically cleansed the Jews living there, destroyed Jewish holy sites and dejudaized the part of the Holy City that the Jews had seized in 1948 – before the averted eyes of the holier-than-thou United Nations.This occupation was the result of an illegal Arab surprise attack on the newly established, as-yet weak and defenseless State of Israel, just founded by UN resolution.
Unlike today’s leftist media applause for the statue-topplers who go after Columbus, Washington or even Lincoln, Israel left the Aqsa monstrosity unscathed atop the ruins of the Holy Temple.In light of the incessant violent Arab onslaught on Jewish life and protracted twisting of al-Aqsa’s history as a symbol of Islamic colonialism, this can perhaps be seen as a mistake.
But what would the world have said, or our misguided left-leaning press and politics? Would they have stayed silent as with the Islamic desecration of the Hagia Sophia, and all the atrocities against the Jewish people, its culture, land and holy sites?
The Jordanian occupiers certainly didn’t display the same restraint, instead blowing up the historic Hurva Synagogue, the main synagogue of Jerusalem at the time, immediately after their illegal 1948 conquest, as a way to humiliate the Jews in typical Islamic style. No UN protest ensued.
During the illegal Jordanian occupation of east Jerusalem, the colonizers destroyed 58 synagogues in the eastern part of the historical capital of the Jewish people, before the averted eyes of the world, just as the Nazis had done in Europe a few years earlier. Practically all the synagogues in east Jerusalem were destroyed and Jews banned from the Western Wall by the same Jordanian monarchy that is inevitably presented to us as the peaceful and moderate counterpart to the war-mongering Israelis.
The Mount of Olives, of special importance to Christians, a religion directly derived from Judaism, was devastated. Some 38,000 Jewish graves were demolished, their headstones used to pave streets by the Arab colonial overlords. Only Muslims from all over the Middle East were allowed to settle in the quarters Jews were driven out of.
As Jordanian commander Abdullah Tal bragged in 1948: “For the first time in 1,000 years, there are no more Jews in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single Jewish building is left standing, making it impossible for the Jews to return.”
Today, this Jordanian ethnic cleansing is twisted by politicians in Europe to show that eastern Jerusalem has “always been” Islamic and judenrein.
Christians were also oppressed and evicted, in stark contrast to the way Muslim welfare seekers are treated in today’s Europe, with their mosques going up all over the place, heralded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cheerleaders in the leftist media.
The discrimination and persecution of all non-Muslims – Christians, Circassians, Druze and Jews – during the Jordanian occupation of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem is easily proven to anyone who cares to know, and ended overnight with the liberation by Israel 1967.
Before 1967, Christian churches and schools in east Jerusalem had to close on Muslim holidays, not Christian ones, which were no longer recognized. The New Gate of Jerusalem, erected in 1889 to enable easier access to Christian quarters outside the wall from those within, was walled up along with all other western gates, including Jaffa Gate and Zion Gate.
Churches were prevented from organizing and Christian schools were placed under Jordanian state supervision 1955. Classes took place in Arabic and schoolbooks were issued defaming Jews and Christians and glorifying Islam. Remarkably, the churches had nothing to say about this from 1948 to 1967.
It was the same fate as suffered by the greatest church of Christendom for almost 1,000 years, the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which was brutally sacked by Ottoman janissaries on May 29, 1453.
In the span of a few hours, thousands of nuns were raped before having their throats slit.The men were crucified and impaled. Babies hidden by desperate mothers in the Hagia Sophia had their heads cut off in the name of the “religion of peace,” their little skulls were then used to extinguish the candles.The church was desecrated, the Christian insignias torn down, a way of eliminating all traces of the millennium of Byzantine Christendom.
Before the Ottoman conquest, Anatolia was Greek and Christian. Until the 20th century, a quarter of the population of modern Turkey was Christian, more than 2 million people. When 850.000 Muslims were settled in the Armenian Christian regions of Anatolia, the typical Islamic pattern of rape, murder and extermination unfolded.
But let’s not jump to conclusions when we look at what’s happening in Europe today, in Stuttgart, Duisburg, Berlin-Neukölln and Kreuzberg, Bremerhaven, Offenbach, Marseille, Paris, Cologne, Nice, Lyon, Stockholm, Antwerp, Molenbeek, just to name a few.The streets of Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Dijon just happen to be full of rioting, police-attacking young men of a certain cultural background that, like Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, Shall Not Be Named.
And these riots have nothing to do with increasing attacks on Jews and Christians, with growing “No-Go Areas” in European cities, and the enormously popular policies of Germany’s sainted chancellor. German voters, as we know from sad historical experience, do not like to rock the boat – even when it’s heading for a waterfall.
The writer is the publisher of the German-Jewish monthly magazine Jüdische Rundschau, an important voice for Germany’s Jewish community.