Jerusalem Riots: What the Media — and Rashida Tlaib — Ignore

‘ I was 7 years old when I first prayed at the Al Aqsa with my sity,” Palestinian-American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib claimed Monday, in response to violent clashes near the holy site. “It’s a sacred site for Muslims. This is equivalent to attacking the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, or the Temple Mount for Jews.”

It’s remarkable that Tlaib, a habitual spreader of blood libel, doesn’t seem to know that Jews are forbidden from worshipping at the Temple Mount — or that Al-Aqsa is built on the Temple Mount. As Seth Mandel reminds us, this is the 100th anniversary of the Jewish massacres of 1921, when similar malicious rumors about devious plans to appropriate holy sites were spread to incite bloodshed. It wasn’t the last time such rumors were used to stir up hatred in the region. So, maybe Tlaib does know what she’s doing.

In any event, Israel does not “attack” Al-Aqsa — though it is impelled to quell riots occasionally — or even occupy it. The country handed custodianship to Jordan’s Hashemites to avoid conflict. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is peaceful because local Christians tend not to hurl stones at praying civilians nearby and avoid ransacking their own holy sites. One imagines those who frequent it generally accept that their revered sanctuary is now in the nation-state of Israel, not the future Kingdom of Acre.

The recent rioting in Jerusalem was sparked by the culmination of a long legal battle that led to the possible eviction of five Palestinian families living on land that had been taken from Jewish families after 1948. Palestinians, who demand what is known as a right of return, are upset that the case was adjudicated by a court of law rather than the United Nations or a mob. Then again, it’s a convenient excuse for more violence.

Palestinian allies make the preposterous claim that Israel, with its 20 percent Arab population, is an apartheid state. But it is they who demand a Judenfrei West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. There is no other region in the world, no other conflict — involving no other ethnicity, race, or faith — in which Americans accept this kind of prejudice.

Indeed, the real reason for Palestinian anger is that Israel is again celebrating Jerusalem’s reunification this week. From 1948 to 1967, Jews had been banned from their holy sites in the city, as eastern Jerusalem went through Islamization. And still, at the start of the Six-Day War, Levi Eshkol, then Israeli prime minister, secretly warned Jordan’s King Hussein — who ruled the West Bank and eastern part of Jerusalem before modern “Palestine” was a thing — not to enter the conflict. Hussein, pushed by the Egyptians and Syrians, ignored him. Though if Hussein hadn’t joined the fight, the restive Palestinian majority in his own country would likely have exploded.

Well, Jordan lost. This isn’t Tenet. You don’t get to rewind history every time it doesn’t go your way. If Jordan had stayed out of the war and continued to govern the Western Wall and Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I can assure you the media would not be referring to those sites as “occupied” or “contested.”

Then again, an average American probably needs a translator to make sense of the coverage of this conflict. When the media say “settlers,” they mean “Jewish homeowners.” When they say “ultranationalist Jews,” they mean “Israelis with yarmulkes.” When they say “Palestinian protesters,” they mean “rock-throwing rioters.” When they say, “Israeli car hits Palestinian amid chaos and clashes at al-Aqsa mosque,” they mean, “Palestinians throw rocks at Israeli car until it loses control and crashes — and then attempt to lynch the people inside.”

That sort of thing.

And when someone says “provocation,” they mean “the Jewish presence in Jerusalem.” Despite the efforts of international organizations to deny the religious and historical connection between the city and the people, Jerusalem is not some concocted modern capital. Al-Aqsa sits on rubble of an ancient Jewish temple in a city with a permanent Jewish presence. Palestinian leadership, oftentimes with the help of American governments, keeps deluding their people into believing the city will be their future capital. As things stand, there is no conceivable peace agreement that could include a divided Israeli capital.

The notion that Jerusalem proper would be handed to a hostile, illiberal organization like Fatah might be popular at the Brookings Institution, but it is fantasy. This is not a Likud stance. It’s one of the few issues that all major political parties, left and right, agree on in Israel. Rightfully so.

And it seems likely that these uprisings only solidify the Israeli public’s position. Not only because Fatah stokes these ugly, wasteful conflicts, but because it is easy to see the Palestinian Authority losing power to even more radical forces. Then what?

Palestinians had a chance to create a peaceful semi-autonomous proto-state in Gaza. Instead, they showed the world this is a perilous proposition. It is a place where governing party Hamas is unable to find COVID vaccines for its people but has no problem assembling rockets to fire on Jerusalem, as they did today.

Of course, there is nothing yet from Tlaib on the matter of a mini terror state blowing things up in the sacred city — which tells you exactly how much she really cares about Jerusalem.