Who knows?

 

     It may have just been a way for the murderous Egyptian imp to get out of his hole in Ramallah. The Israelis could have put him in the ground (and probably saved many innocent Jewish and Arab lives) decades ago. My bet is that, after his Halloween Parisian sojourn, this ghoul will emerge yet again to orchestrate yet more barbarism.

 

     While there's legitimate talk about a future post-Arafat era, my worries are more immediate.

 

     Arafat thinks that he's going to be buried--whenever his time comes--on the mount above al-Buraq's Wall.

 

     What's that, you say?

 

     Well, Infidels, it's the wall Muhammad's winged horse, al-Buraq, was tied to prior to the Prophet of Islam's flight to Heaven from atop the mount. The Zionists call it the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, and claim that it was the remnant of a great temple first built by the Jews in the days of King Solomon. What they won't do to Judaize purely Arab lands! They call it the Temple Mount...racist imperialists that they are.

 

     So much for Arab truth.

 

     Israel right now has to deal with the very real possibility that hundreds of thousands of Arabs may march on Jerusalem demanding Arafat's burial atop the mount where, since the 7th century C.E., the Dome of the Rock and a mosque sits. Untold numbers of Jewish saints and sages over the millennia have had no such privilege (and would seek none due to the holiness of the site), but the supreme perpetrator and mastermind of Jew butchery since Hitler thinks that his carcass will desecrate the site which Jews have turned to in yearning and prayer for almost three thousand years.

 

     Since King David conquered it from the Jebusites, renamed it, and gave it its Jewish character, no other people except the Jews has ever made Jerusalem their capital, despite its conquest by many imperial powers, including that of the caliphal Arab successors to Muhammad as they burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E. and spread in all directions. Damascus and Baghdad were the seats of Arab imperial power, and Mecca and Medina the holy cities. While this is not to say that Jerusalem was ignored by Muslim conquerors (the Umayyads built the Dome of the Rock/Mosque of 'Umar on the Temple Mount, making it Islam's allegedly third holiest city), it is to say that Jerusalem was and is in no way the focus for Islam that it is for Jews and Judaism.

     Since David made Jerusalem his capital and it became the site of his son Solomon's Temple, Zion became the heart and soul of Jewish national and religious existence. Jews from all over the early diaspora made their pilgrimages and sent offerings to its Temple...seventeen centuries before Muhammad was even a thought.

      "By the Rivers of Babylon we wept..." and "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning..." were just a few of the many Biblical expressions of the Jews for Zion. Such yearning persisted throughout subsequent millennia in the Diaspora as well. "Next Year in Jerusalem" sustained the Jew throughout countless degradations and humiliations culminating in the Holocaust and witnessing the miracle of Israel's rebirth itself.

     There is no Muslim parallel to these claims, despite constant efforts to portray "Palestinian" Arabs (most of whom were new arrivals -- settlers -- in the land themselves), as the "new Jews."

     Coming from a hundred different lands (including those native to Israel itself), Jews didn't have almost two dozen other states to choose from and suffered dearly for this statelessness. Most Arabs want sole rights over Jerusalem the same way they want sole rights over Tel Aviv. In their eyes, only they have legitimate political rights anywhere in what they regard as the Dar ul-Islam. Just ask a black African in the Sudan, a Kurd in Syria or Iraq, a Berber in North Africa, or an Egyptian Copt (in addition to kilab yahud--"Jew dogs"-- from the Arab countries themselves) for starters.

     From a somewhat different yet related angle, Jesus' earlier experiences in Roman-occupied Judaea and Jerusalem were those of a Jew living under extremely precarious conditions. Thousands of his countrymen had already been killed, crucified, and such in the subjugation/pacification process of Pax Romana. The contemporary Roman and Roman-sponsored historians themselves--Tacitus, Josephus, Dio Cassius, and others--had much to say about all of this. Consider, for example, just a few telling quotes which I frequently refer to from Tacitus. And notice, in particular, that the Romans made a clear distinction between the Jews fighting for their freedom and the Arabs who joined the Romans to gain a piece of the prospective kill:

" Vespasian succeeded to the throne...it infuriated his resentment that the Jews were the only nation who had not yet submitted...Titus was appointed by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea...he commanded three legions in Judaea itself...To these he added the twelfth from Syria and the third and twenty-second from Alexandria...amongst his allies were a band of Arabs, formidable in themselves and harboring towards the Jews the bitter animosity usually subsisting between neighboring nations," Volume II, Book V.

     These oppressive conditions led to open revolts and guerilla warfare to rid the land of its mighty pagan conqueror --wars which would eventually lead the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, to rename the land itself from Judaea to Syria Palaestina in 135 C.E. in an attempt to stamp out any remaining hopes for Jewish independence and national existence. Judaea was thus renamed after the Jews' historic enemies, the Philistines, a non-Semitic sea people from the eastern Mediterranean or Aegean region, to drive home the point.  

     Judaea Capta (not "Palaestina" Capta...hear that, Yasir?) coins were issued, and the towering Arch of Titus was erected after the first major revolt in 70 C.E. and shows, among other things, the Romans carrying away the giant Menorah and other objects from the Jewish Temple that Arafat and many, if not most, Arabs and other Muslims claim never existed. It stands in Rome to this very day to commemorate Rome's victory over the Jews and Jewish Jerusalem.

     When Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, fled Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. (the Hijrah), the inhabitants welcomed him. Medina had been developed centuries earlier as a thriving date palm oasis by Jews fleeing the Roman assault (the banu-Qurayzah, banu-al-Nadir, and other tribes as well) and its mixed population of Jews and pagan Arabs had thus become conditioned for a native prophet speaking the word of G-d.

     Muhammad learned much from the Jews. While the actual timing of his decision on the direction of prayer will never be known, during his long sojourn with the Jews of Medina, his followers were instructed to pray towards Jerusalem. Early prominent Arab historians such as Jalaluddin came right out and stated that, given the importance of Jerusalem to the Jews, this was done primarily as an attempt to win support among the influential Jewish tribes (the "People of the Book") for Muhammad's religio-political claims.

     As was already discussed, it is from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven on his winged horse, and a mosque and the Dome of the Rock would later be erected on this Jewish holy site after the Arab imperial conquest of the land in the 7th century C.E.

     Despite the claims of Arafat and his kind, there is no doubt among objective scholars that Jews had an enormous impact on both Muhammad and the religion that he founded. The holy sites for Muslims in Jerusalem --the mosques erected on the Temple Mount of the Jews--are now deemed "holy" precisely because of the critical years Muhammad spent after the Hijrah with the Jews.

     The Temple Mount had no prior meaning to pagan Arabs. An ascent to "Heaven" from Jerusalem or the Temple Mount would have been meaningless to them.

     While there was also some early Christian influence, intense scholarship has shown that the Holy Law (Halakha) and Holy Scriptures of the Jews had a tremendous influence on the Qur'an, Islamic Holy Law (Shari'a), and other aspects of the Muslim faith as well. Muhammad's "Jerusalem connection" was most likely not established until after his extended stay with his Jewish hosts. This was no mere coincidence...Muslim religious beliefs regarding Muhammad's conversations with the Angel Gabriel or whatever notwithstanding.

     When the Jews refused to recognize Muhammad as the "Seal of the Prophets," he turned on them with a vengeance. Before long, with the exception of Yemen, there were virtually no Jews left on the Arabian Peninsula. And the direction of prayer was changed away from Jerusalem and towards the Kaaba in Mecca instead...

     While it may not be politically correct to say this, to state that Jerusalem has the same meaning for Arabs and/or Muslims as it has for Jews is to simply tell a lie.

     "Palestine" became largely "Arab" the same way that most of the two dozen states that now call themselves "Arab" today did... by the conquest, occupation, settlement, and forced Arabization of other native, non-Arab peoples and their lands.    

     Given all of this, the mere thought of Arafat--born in Cairo and, like many other Egyptian and Arabs from Syria and other lands as well, entering into the Palestinian Mandate after World War I but telling Jews that it was off limits for them to do this themselves (even though half of Israel's Jews were refugees from Egypt and other "Arab" lands ), is appalling.

     Israel must stand firm on this issue.

     Arafat must not be given a shrine atop the Jews' most holy of places from which yet more incitement to kill yet more Jews will certainly arise.

     There will likely be violence over this issue. And when Israel does what it must do to quell it, America must be there to give it the support it will need against Arafat's French hosts and numerous others who will surely blame the Jews for the bloodshed.

     Bury his despicable bones in Cairo.