First the Smear, Then the Lie

The Guardian, under the new editorship of Zionist Jonathan Freedland, has sunk to new depths with the publication of a blatant propaganda piece by Israel's minister of public security, Gilad Erdan, on the latest surge in Palestinian RESISTANCE to the OCCUPATION of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Predictably titled The terror in Jerusalem is based on a lie (16/10/15), Erdan's piece focuses exclusively on desperate acts of Palestinian resistance, while completely ignoring the intolerable and always expanding STATE TERROR of Israeli occupation, colonisation and oppression which spawns them. Two features, both standard fare for Israeli PR, stand out.

First there's the vile smear, originally trotted out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to the UNGA last September ("Isis & Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree."):

"Just as Isis murders innocent people because of its extremist jihadi ideology, so is the case with Palestinian terrorism, which is based on the same murderous ideology."

Then there's the big lie:

"Amid all this incitement, the most inflammatory charge is the claim that Israel has some kind of plan to change the arrangements governing access to the area within the Old City of Jerusalem, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. This is a lie - and an irresponsible lie at that. I can state in no uncertain terms and on behalf of the government of Israel that my country is not seeking to change the status quo regarding the Temple Mount."

That 'assurance', like all Zionist assurances, has about as much credibility as the following whopper by Nahum Sokolow (1859-1936), one of the Zionist architects, along with Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), of the Balfour Declaration of 1917:

"It has been said, and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent 'Jewish State.' But this is wholly fallacious. The 'Jewish state' was never part of the Zionist programme." (History of Zionism 1600-1918, 1919, I, xxiv-xxv)

Keep in mind that Sokolow's lie came just 23 years after the publication of political Zionism's seminal 1896 manifesto, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), by Theodor Herzl, political Zionism's founding father.

As for Zionist designs on the Haram ash-Sharif these are as old as political Zionism itself. Consider this disclosure by Weizmann:

"I have just remembered another of Samuel's remarks which I have not passed on to you; he said: 'We should rebuild the Temple, as a symbol of Jewish unity.'"

That comes from a letter written to Ahad Ha'am on 14 December 1914, and can be found in the collection The Letters & Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Vol VII, page 82. Herbert Samuel (1860-1963), of course, a British Liberal MP and Zionist Jew, would go on to become British Mandate Palestine's first High Commissioner from 1920 to 1925. 

What Zionists say in public is one thing. What they say in private (or occasionally blurt out) is quite another.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Haram ash-Sharif, with its Al-Aqsa Mosque and golden Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem's crowning glory, is as much at risk from destruction by Jewish State in the Levant (JSIL) as the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra is from that other hideous sectarian entity, Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL).