Muslims have become accustomed to thinking that their lofty faith deserves the respect of everyone, while other religions must absorb without protest all the calumny and abuse they might care to heap on them.

The result is that the Muslims under Israeli rule or in the neighborning Palestinian territories become accustomed to thinking that their lofty faith deserves the respect of everyone, as of right, while other religions, especially Judaism, must absorb without protest all the scorn, humiliation, calumny, and abuse they might care to heap on them. Thus we find the Chief Mufti of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, who was appointed by Arafat, denying any Jewish link to the Temple Mount and refusing to recognize any remote Jewish rights there, while aggressively declaring the place a Muslim waqf (Holy Endowment), contending that the Muslims alone have the exclusive claim to that compound. And lest the Jews advance the argument that the rubble of their Holy Temple is buried under the Mosque, he declared that the validity of the waqf also extended seven stories above and seven beneath the actual level of the contemporary Muslim buildings. The experiment in sharing that Israelis had instituted in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron since 1967, far from serving as a precedent and model of tolerance, merely sharpens the acuity of the totally negative stance of the Muslims toward the Jews.

It is evident that in a confrontational situation, no one expects the parties to love one another or even to develop empathy towards one another. However, even in a state of hatred, where there is contempt and deprecation of the rival, there must be some measure of respect for facts and reality. It is possible to take the basic deficiencies of the enemy and inflate them so as to score propaganda points. But inventing "facts" and "events" creates a devil larger than life with which no accommodation is possible.

One is reminded of the legendary "map hanging on the Knesset wall" which allegedly depicts the coveted boundaries of Israel "from the Nile to the Euphrates." There are Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset (those mistakenly dubbed "Israeli Arabs") who could confirm as first hand witnesses the vanity of that claim, but the Palestinian leadership would not let the facts confuse it. Of late the Palestinians have discovered another "irrefutable proof" of their allegation when they spotted on the Israeli flag the two blue stripes which, for them, represent those two rivers. Go explain to them that the stripes are taken from the Jewish prayer shawl, that same artifact that they desecrated when they paraded a donkey donning it in the streets of Ramallah.

Then there is the invention of the myth tracing the origins of the Palestinians to the Canaanites. If they did that only to create a national myth that would cement in a remote past their claim on the land, one could perhaps nod with a smile of understanding. But when they, at the same time, deny the existence of one millennium of documented Jewish history on that land, with its two commonwealths and exiles, just in order to brand the Jews as forgers of history, and they end up believing in their own concoction to boot, this is self-delusion, pure, and simple.

As depicted by the Palestinian (and much of the Arab) leadership, Jews are inherently evil, the scum of the earth, devoid of human feelings, scheming, greedy, and treacherous. The same is true for the state which they created. Therefore, there is no limit to the imaginary atrocities that Israel can be blamed for and there is no boundary, in time or space, to its evil doings across the world. Muslim writings accuse Israel of having caused all wars and denounce Jews for having instituted both capitalism and communism, of taking over the media and fi-

August 2001               - 5 -               Outpost