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Palestinian Groups Ahead of ISIS in Destroying Antiquities

(CAMERA) Sean Durns - From July to September 2015, 13 editorials and articles appeared in the Washington Post alone on the threat to and eventual destruction by ISIS of the ancient Roman city of Palmyra in Syria. Yet, ISIS is far from alone when it comes to defacing and destroying evidence of ancient, non-Islamic civilizations. In 2013, more than 200 terror attacks occurred at Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, where the Jewish matriarch Rachel is said to be buried - 119 of those attacks included the use of explosives at the sacred site. In the course of the second intifada, Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem were stoned by Arab mobs on the Temple Mount above them. The Temple Mount is considered to be the holiest site in Judaism. Its sanctity long predates the building of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque at the same location in the century after the Islamic conquest. During Jordan's occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank (1948-1967), Jewish holy places in eastern Jerusalem were desecrated and destroyed and Jews were denied entry to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. In 1996, the Muslim Waqf religious trust brought in heavy machinery to the Temple Mount and excavated and removed 6,000 tons of earth, dumping it in the Kidron Valley. Subsequently, archaeologists have found Jewish artifacts among the rubble. The director of Israel's Antiquities Authority, Amir Drori, called the Waqf's act an "archeological crime." Attorney General Elyakim Rubenstein referred to it as "an assault on Jewish history."
2015-10-02 00:00:00
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