SHOWDOWN IN JERUSALEM

A DIGEST BY GERT TIMMERMAN about how Israel was created by the mass murdering Nazi Jews including Hitler, the genocidal Communist Jews including Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky, the evil Jewish Banksters who financed all wars including WW1 and WW2, and last but not least the Jewish Freemasons and the International JEWISH TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS


INTRODUCTION BY JOHN S. TORELL

Beginning in the 1990’s and up through 2004, I wrote a number of articles published in The Dove magazine called, “Showdown in Jerusalem,” “How the Devil Was Defeated in the 20th Century” and the origin of the Cabala. These articles brought out a lot of information that had been suppressed by the media and ignored by the Christian leadership in colleges and seminaries.

Our friend, Gert Timmerman, has done an outstanding job of going through all of the different issues of The Dove and bringing out the main points and key information concerning the question of Judaism, the birth of the Zionist movement and tracing the historical steps. This digest leads the reader through the Cabala, the declaration of Sabbetai Sevi as the Jewish Messiah in 1666, the crypto Jews who today hold political offices in all nations; it also deals with the creation of communism, socialism and fascism; the Russian revolution, World War I and II and the formation of the current political state of Israel.

If Christian Zionists would only take the time to study this truth, there would be no Christian support for the State of Israel and the goal of the Zionist World Federation to some day present the world with a Jewish Messiah which the Bible calls the Antichrist.

Originally, Gert Timmerman constructed this digest to share with friends who are strong Christian Zionists, but as he presented this write up to us, I felt it was a quick and concise review of these historical facts. If you are a serious student of history, you may order copies of the original issues of The Dove magazines from us. We don’t charge for the magazines but it is a big stack; because postage has risen dramatically, please contact us about the shipping cost.

FROM CREATION TO THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

• This world was created by God and He retains the ownership of it. Psalms 24:1
• God gave mankind the authority to manage the earth. Genesis 1:26-29
• Mankind rebelled and fell into sin, and instead of being blessed, man became cursed. God decided to exterminate all people. Genesis 6:1-8
• Only eight people survived after the flood. When they disobeyed God, He scattered them to every part of dry land on the earth. Genesis 11:1-9
• Then God divided them up into nations and set the boundaries for them. (Acts 17:24-27; Deuteronomy 32:8) From the days of Nimrod until now, people and boundaries have been shifted around by man.
• Abraham came from Ur; he lived in Haran until God called him to live in Canaan. He promised the land to Abrahams descendants. Genesis 12:1-7; 17:8
• God promised that Abraham would be the father of many nations. Genesis 17:4-6
• God specifically told the children of Israel that they could only possess the land of Canaan as long as they were walking with Him. Deuteronomy 28:47-68; Genesis 17:8-9
• The Bible records that the land of Israel was lost in two stages. The 12 tribes were split into two kingdoms. (1 Kings 11:9-13) The 10 Northern tribes formed a kingdom called Israel with its capital as Samaria and the 2 Southern tribes formed a kingdom called Judah with its capitol Jerusalem.
• The Northern Kingdom was taken into captivity by King Sargon of Assyria in 721 BC and the land was settled by strangers. (2 Kings 17:1-41) Later some remnants filtered back into the land and intermarried with gentiles and were given the name Samaritans because they were half Hebrew and half gentile.
• The inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom became known as Jews. John 4:1-43
• The Babylonian army invaded the Southern kingdom in 587 BC.
• God used King Cyrus of Persia to allow the Jews back into Jerusalem after He had destroyed Babylon. The Jews were never able to regain full control of the land or the sovereignty of Jerusalem.
• From 587 BC, Canaan was ruled by Gentile empires which allowed Jews to live in the land but not to rule it.
• The only time that the Jews gained control over Jerusalem was from 165 BC to 63 BC when Judas Maccabeaus led a revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes.
• The Roman army captured Jerusalem in 63 BC.
• When Jesus was about 30 years of age and proclaimed to be the Messiah, some Jews wanted to use him to start a rebellion against the Romans, drive them out and set up the Kingdom of Israel again. John 6:14-15
• The Jewish leadership brought a curse upon the Jewish people that will remain until Jesus returns. (Matthew 27:17-26) Jews as individuals can escape the curse if they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
• The Jewish Leadership revolted and took control of Jerusalem for a short time. Then the Roman general Titus came with a large army in 70 AD and slaughtered approximately one million Jews. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and God’s word was again confirmed that the children of Israel that they couldn’t live in the land if they rebelled against Him.

JEWS FILTERING BACK TO PALESTINE

Around 1500 AD, cabalistic Jews began to filter back to the land of Israel. Joseph Nasi (mid 16th century) was a close friend of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He was very rich and wanted to resettle Jews back into the land of Palestine. His plan involved sending ships to collect Jews from Italy and bringing them to Tiberias, but it could not be carried out because a war broke out between Turkey and the city state of Venice. From around 1540, Jews began to resettle in Jerusalem and Safed around Galilee.

Isaac “Ari” Luria (1534-1572)

Issac Luria was a German-Jewish Rabbi. At this time, rabbinical scholars around Safed began to openly practice the teachings of the Kabala. Luria further developed the Kabalistic teachings of re-incarnation.

Isaac Luria considered himself to be the “Messiah, the son of Joseph,” who according to Jewish legend would precede the real Messiah, the son of David. He spread the message among the Jews that the Jewish Messiah would begin to rule in 1648. At the same time, the Christian community started to believe that the Antichrist would appear in 1666.

Sabbatai Sevi (1626-1676)

Sabbatai Sevi was born in Smyrna Turkey and died in exile in Albania. He was of Spanish-Jewish origin and studied to become a rabbi. He came in contact with the Kabbalah in his studies and made it his major study. In 1648, he started to proclaim himself to be the Messiah. He had a personal prophet by the name of Abraham Nathan from Gaza. Nathan studied the writings of Isaac Luria and claimed to have apocalyptic visions that showed him to be the prophet to usher in the coming of the Messiah. He moved in “charismatic gifts”. He convinced Sevi that he was the messiah and that he (Nathan) was his prophet. After some mysterious supernatural events by Nathan, the messianic awakening of Sabbatai Sevi began on the 17th of Sivan (May-June) 1665.

Although Sevi was rejected by some Jewish people, the majority of Jews came to accept him as the Messiah. He was arrested while on a ship from Smyrna to Constantinople by the Turkish navy.

On September 16, 1666, Sevi was brought before a court of the Sultan of Turkey and charged with rebellion against the Turkish government. He was given an ultimatum to prove he was the messiah with a miracle or face execution. He dropped to his knees and asked the Sultan to accept his conversion to Islam. The Sultan accepted and he was given a new name Azis Mehemed Effendi. Three of his rabbinical followers who accompanied him also converted to Islam. The Jewish people were shocked and turned to Nathan for answers. It was then that the true nature of the Kabbalah was brought out to the masses. Nathan explained that Sevi had to commit apostasy in order for him to obtain salvation for his followers. The Jews split up over this issue and some turned back to the old form of Judaism but large numbers turned into “secret” Jews who were strong believers in Sabbatai Sevi and the messianic utopia for Israel which would later become Zionism. The birth of Zionism would follow later through another Jew named Jacob Frank.

Meanwhile Sevi continued having visions, writing them down and spreading them in secret to his Jewish followers. He traveled regularly to Constantinople where he would secretly teach and minister his Jewish followers. They were Muslims outwardly but this was only a cover. Sabbattai and his three rabbis were arrested after a Jewish prayer service on September 12, 1672. On December 15, 1672, Sevi was tried for blasphemy against Islam. He should have received a death sentence but was sentenced into exile to the province of Morea (Albania). Nathan continued preaching that Sevi was the messiah and encountered strong resistance from Jewish non-believers. To his followers, Sevi was continually paying the high price of redeeming the Jewish people from sin. They believed that Sevi would some day become king of Israel and subdue all Gentile kingdoms. After more visions, Sabattai Sevi died on the Day of Atonement in 1676. Nathan convinced Sevi’s followers that he was resurrected. Nathan claimed to have been visited by Joshua and Caleb who appeared to him. Nathan lived in Sophia Bulgaria and kept claiming that Sabbatai Sevi was the true messiah and that there would be no other one but him. Nathan died on January 11, 1680.

Summary of Sabbatai Sevi Messianic Movement

Jews around the world united in “falling into apostasy,” becoming hidden Jews who would take Gentile names and publicly live like Gentiles but secretively were followers of the Kabbalah and Sabbatai Sevi.

The Jewish leadership started to work on a plan to bring Jews back to Palestine. The ones in “apostasy” advanced quickly into government positions in a number of nations and set the policies for the nations. Within the next 300 years, the new global organization was able to control the nations and most of the economic activities.

THE BIRTH OF COMMUNISM AND ZIONISM

Moses Hess (1812-1875)

Moses Hess was born in Bonn, Germany and died in Paris, France. He was practiced Orthodox Judaism but broke away and embraced the Kabbalah. In 1837, he anonymously published his first book, “The Holy History of Mankind,” which revealed his ideas on anarchic socialism. In 1841, he founded the radical newspaper, “Rheineische Zeitung.” In 1842 he promoted Karl Marx, a German Jew to chief editor. Hess introduced Marx to the Freemasons and to communism. In 1844, Hess introduced Marx to the German Jew Friedrich Engels.

Moses Hess is considered the father of two political movements: communism and Zionism. He was buried in Cologne, Germany, but in 1961 his remains were re-buried in the graveyard of Kineret (Lake of Galilee, Israel) next to the graves of other founders of the modern Zionist socialist movement.

Some of his writings:

• 1841, Die Europaische Triarchie: Promoting a formation of socialism based upon German philosophy, French politics and British political economy.
• 1862, Rome and Jerusalem, the Last National Problem: Promoting Socialism, but he also wrote, “I have always been strengthened by the Hebrew prayers.”
• On the Right of Labour
• On Social and Economic reform
• The red Catechism for the German People: Hess wrote, “My religion is the socialistic revolution.”

The writings of Hess promoted that outside of Judaism the following should happen:

• No person should own any private property. (land, house, car, furniture, etc)
• All humans should be moved into a classless society that is ruled by a group outside the law.
• In order to force people into one classless society, it may be necessary to incite different groups against each other to prevent them from working together and destroying the very fabric of current society.
• To force a socialistic revolution using Judaism, racial strife and the battle between different classes in society.
• A Socialist must embrace Internationalism, with the exception of Jews, there should be no patriotism. Only Jews should be patriotic about Israel.

Hess believed that his ideology could be carried out under the banner of the Jewish Rothschild family. He publicly swore destruction and death to anyone who resisted his teachings on socialism, but in private, he was a religious Jew.

Hess told Karl Marx that the Jews had been given the task to transform the Gentiles into wild animals. Meanwhile his public teachings appealed to the young European people because life was hard for the working class. Here was a system that took the wealth from the rich and allowed all people to live a wonderful life in a utopian socialist society.

THE FATHER OF ZIONISM

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)

Theodor Herzl was born in Pest, Hungary and died in Vienna, Austria. Even though he graduated from law school in 1884, he became a writer involved with Zionism. He wrote books and various plays about the problems facing the society of his day. From 1891 to 1895, Herzl served as the Paris correspondent for the Vienna newspaper, “The Free Press,” an influential liberal Vienna daily newspaper.

As a successful play-write, Herzl was able to use his influence to promote the idea of an independent Palestinian state. With the rising of anti-Semitism in France, he began to write articles and plays promoting his ideas of how to solve the Jewish issues by having young Jews join the Socialistic movement en mass. He later took a hard stand that the only solution to establish a homeland for the Jewish people was a mass exodus of Jews from countries which were anti-Semitic. In 1895 he wrote a plan to relocate Jews to Palestine. He looked for financial backing from the Rothschild’s when he presented his plan. Max Nordeau (1849-1923), a Hungarian Jew became a supporter of it.

In 1896, Herzl published a book called, “Der Judenstaat,” in which he outlined his plan to relocate the Jews to Palestine. The first step was to build a strong political base. The book stirred up emotions in the Jewish community worldwide. The Jewish communities in Western Europe rejected the proposal while the poorer Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and Russia embraced the idea of a Jewish homeland; the Zionist Movement was born with Theodor Herzl as the Father. Herzl knew that a gradual colonizing would only stimulate anti-Semitism, so he advocated a population transfer under international supervision.

Summary of Herzl’s Plan:

First was the transfer of the “desperate Jews” fleeing oppression in Russia due to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, in 1881, by a group of Jewish conspirators. This first group of Jews would be retrained for labor to cultivate the soil and build the infrastructure of the homeland

The second group brought in would be the poor Jews from Eastern Europe who would create vast labor pools which would be used to develop the nation commercially.

Once the infrastructure had been built and the farmers were able to support the people, then the prosperous Jews would be transferred to capitalize on the new Jewish state’s trade. The objective would be to bring in Jewish businessmen who could build up the economy of the nation.

The final transfer would be the wealthy Jews who would move in and live comfortably in the land that had been built by sweat and labor of the first three groups.

Theodor Herzl anticipated resistance from comfortable Jews and wrote, “Old prisoners do not willingly leave their cells… Perhaps we shall have to fight first of all against many an evil-disposed, narrow-hearted, short-sighted member of our own race. Whoever can, will and must perish, let him perish, but the distinctive nationality of the Jews neither can, will, nor must be destroyed. Whole branches of Judaism may wither and fall, but the trunk remains.”

Very few leaders of the Zionistic movement were religious. Many of them didn’t believe in God nor had a regard for the Old Testament. Most of them were atheistic or agnostic and similar to secular Jews today. It was not Judaism, but anti-Semitism created by the Jewish leadership which antagonized the Gentiles that helped to create the political state of Israel. Herzl’s plan outlined two organizations that needed to be built before the transfers of Jews could start:

1. “A Society of the Jews” to manage the affairs of the emerging Jewish state. The organization was formed in 1899 with the name “Jewish Colonial trust” was incorporated in England with 2 million Pounds.

2. “The Jewish Company,” a financial banking system. This would take care of the transfer of the wealth of the Jews as they move. In exchange for their current financial status, they would be compensated with land, machinery and homes in the new state. It would also take charge of their former financial matters and sell them of to “honest anti-Semites.” The Jewish National Fund was established in 1901 to purchase and cultivate land in Palestine, and in 1903, a subsidiary bank called, “The Anglo-Palestine bank,” was opened.

Theodor Herzl promised Christian governments good discounts on former Jewish holdings and had no mercy on Jews. They were to give up all their homes, savings, properties and business and move to Palestine and live in kibbutzim.

When Jewish people rejected the idea, Herzl warned them, “Great exertions will hardly be necessary to spur on the movement. Anti-Semites need only to do what they did before and then they will create a Jewish desire to emigrate where it did not previously exist.”

ZIONIST SYMPATHIZERS

Various groups have worked separately with achieving the goals of Theodor Herzl:

• Marxist group for Emancipation of Labor formed by George Plekhanov, (a Russian gentile who married a Jewess named Roza) and the Jewish Marxist’s Vera Zasulich, Lev Deutch and Pinchus Axelrod. They were later joined in 1895 by Vladimir Lenin, a Russian Gentile who married the Jewess Nadezhda Krupskaya, and went back to Russia and started an underground movement. He was arrested and sent to Siberia, released in 1900 and ended up in Geneva.
• Anti-Jewish publication in Vienna called “Ostara” started by a half Jew named Adolf Joseph Lanz who married to Jewess Libenfels, changed his name to Dr. Georg Lanz von Liebenfels and later added the title Baron. The magazine was blatantly anti-Semitic and promoted the Roman Catholic Church and the pure Aryan race.
• “The Thule Order” was a secret society created by Lanz. It later played a major role in the formation of the Nazi Party and the rise of Adolf Hitler. In 1907 Lanz hoisted up a Swastika flag over the castle in Werfenstein.
• In 1909 Adolf Hitler (a half Jew) met with Lanz and became his student.

Lanz told Lenin in Switzerland, “We counter-revolutionaries give Jews the right to create their own state in Palestine.”

• Benito Mussolini at the age of 19 moved to Switzerland and became a student of Marxism. He moved back to Italy after he met with Jewish International Communist leaders.
• At this time the system was in place to move Jews from Europe to Palestine.In order to get the Jews moving, Theodor Herzl become the “Shepherd” and Hitler became the “Prosecutor.”
• Some Jews were upset and angry; others were excited about the plan.

Theodor Herzl tried selling his idea at various times:

• The Jewish congress in September 1898.
• Private meetings with the German Emperor Wilhelm II on October 18, 1898 and November 2, 1898. Under pressure from rich Jewish Bankers, Jewish leaders in Germany and Jewish Newspapers in Germany.
• Private meeting with Sultan Abdul Hamid II of Turkey on 17 May 1901, since Palestine belonged to Turkey. Under pressure from Jewish Bankers again, the Sultan asked for Financial aid for Turkey before opening up Palestine. A second meeting with the Sultan in 1902 was refused.
• 4th Zionist congress in 1900
• Testimony in the Royal commission in England where he met with The Rothchild banking house.
• Meeting with Russian Minister of Interior Baron Vyacheslav K von Plehve. Russia promised to lobby with Sultan of Turkey
• 6th Zionist congress in August 1903.
• Greater Action committee in April 1904.

Theodor Herzl died on July 3, 1904. He left behind a foundation to build upon despite tough resistance from wealthy Jews.

THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONNECTION

Jacob Henry Schiff (1847-1920) was a German Jew who moved to New York in 1865 and became a protégée of the Rothchilds. He married the daughter of Solomon Loeb, a Jewish banker. Schiff became the head of the bank in 1885. His wife’s sister, Nina, was married to Paul Warburg (1868-1932) of the Jewish Warburg banking house in Hamburg, Germany. He also moved to New York and became a partner in the bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Paul Warburg became the first chairman of the federal reserve in 1913. His brother Max Warburg (1867-1946) stayed in Germany and helped to finance the German war efforts during WWII. At the same time Paul Warburg financed the war effort of the American government. It is interesting to note that WWII was financed from both sides by the same banking family, the Warburgs and Kuhn, Loeb and Co. Another brother, Felix Warburg, married the daughter of Jacob Schiff and later became the Chief Operations Officer of Kuhn Loeb & Co.

During the 1890’s, young Marxists/Socialist Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States received terrorist training in America under the Jewish Masonic Lodge (B’nai B’rith). They returned to Russia and tried to overthrow the Russian government through a revolution. Russia started to refuse American passports and punished the Jewish terrorists. As a result, American Jews accused the Russian Government of being Anti-Semitic.

Jacob Schiff and the Jewish leadership wanted to teach Russia a lesson and encouraged Japan to demand concessions from Russia and relinquish territory from its Eastern part. Russia refused and as Japan got ready to attack. Jacob Schiff arranged a financial boycott of Russia and financed Japanese war efforts. Russia was starved for cash and Japan had all the financial aid it needed. The war began on February 8, 1904. While the war was raging, the Marxist/Socialistic Jewish terrorists struck from within Russia with assassinations of government officials and law enforcement personnel. Prime Minister Viachelav von Plehve was assassinated and the Tsar of Russia sued for peace. Russia ceded territory to Japan between August 9 and September 5, 1905. Jacob Schiff was present at the signing of the peace treaty on September 5, 1905. On December 16, 1905, three hundred Jewish Marxist/Socialist terrorists were arrested following the Black Sunday revolution. Schiff was determined to overthrow the Russian government and replace them with a Marxist leadership. He and his International Banker friends arranged to starve the Russian government of any loans while a stronger nation like Germany would be used to attack Russia. WWI was being planned!

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Between 1905 and 1914, Russia progressed very well with landownership programs for farmers. Russia gave voting rights to its people and raised their standard of living. Tsar Nicholas gave Russia a representative government and a constitutional monarchy. A legislative body called the “Duma” was created and free elections were held. Jewish Marxist terrorists tried to assassinate Premier Stolypin in 1906. The second assassination attempt succeeded when a Jewish attorney Mordecai Bogrow shot and killed the Premier in 1911. By 1911, Russia produced 40% of the world’s crop of grain products.

The Russian population was angry with the Jews because they knew it was the Jewish leadership that had set up all the public violence in order to overthrow the government. Russian mobs attacked Jewish stores and homes and over 800 Jews were killed. The violence continued and by 1911 approximately 50,000 Russians had been killed in bombings, shootings and mass attacks on civilians. In 1906 approximately 600 Jewish Marxist/Socialistic terrorists were executed by the Russian Government. The world started blaming the Russian government of being anti-Semitic. Between 1907 and 1908 another 2,328 Jewish Marxist/Socialistic Terrorists were executed by the Russian Government after trials of military tribunals. The result is that about 35,000 Jewish terrorists fled to Palestine, United States and Europe.

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)

Joseph Stalin was half Jewish and half Russian. In 1903 he was recruited by the Russian secret police and led a double life. He was arrested 8 times; he escaped and continued his work in the Marxist/socialist movement.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)

Vladimir Lenin was also half Jewish and half Russian. He was a Marxists/Socialist that worked for the Jewish world leaders. He was arrested a few times and sentence to exile in Siberia where he married his Jewish wife. After he served his sentence, they lived in Germany, Belgium, England, Poland, and Switzerland before returning to Russia. He was never employed but lived a life of luxury in Europe. He was a member of the French freemasons “Art et Travai.”

Leon (Lev) Trotsky (1879-1940)

Leon Trotsky’s real name was Leiba Bronstein. He was under the training of Alexander Parvus (whose real name was Israel Gelfand) during high school. Parvus was a Russian Jewish freemason. He not only taught Trotsky in the Talmud but he also introduced him to the Kabala, Zionism and Marxism/Socialism. Trotsky became a member of the freemasons and the B’nai B’rth.

The Russian police arrested him twice, each time he was sentenced to exile in Siberia but escaped both times. Together with Lenin, Trotsky and Parvus helped arrange the Russian revolution. Trotsky was finally deported to the United States where he lived under the protection and payroll of Jacob Schiff.

In an interview with the publication, “New American Journal,” on February 3, 1949, John Schiff, the grandson of Jacob Schiff told the interviewer that his grandfather had given 20 million dollars to start the Russian revolution. Other American Jews and Gentiles who also donated to the cause of the Russian revolution were Paul Warburg, Harriman, Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan.

In 1917, Lenin and Trotsky started the process of taking over Russia. Joseph Stalin joined the group as a double agent, working also for the Russian government. Some 8,000 Jewish revolutionaries joined at St. Petersburg to form the core of the emerging communist party.

These men took leadership in the Red Army and in the terrible “Cheka” later renamed to NKVD and then renamed again to KGB.

The Russian revolution was in reality a Jewish takeover of Russia in the midst of WWI, in preparation for the formation of the state of Israel and the coming Jewish Messiah.

American Jewish Committee (AJC)

The AJC was started in 1906 by Jacob Schiff and 60 other well-known influential German Jews to forward the Jewish cause in the United States. The majority of the Eastern European Jews were not happy with the AJC. The AJC considered itself the upper class since they were very rich and the majority of the Eastern European Jews were not Marxist/Socialists but were simply trying to survive in a hostile world. But the Jewish leadership had an agenda of creating a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Russia and the United States would be used to force the creation of a homeland for the Jews in 1948 when they forced a positive vote at the United Nations.

Jacob Schiff and his friends lived a life of luxury in the United States as did the Marxist/Socialist leaders in Western Europe while young Jewish activists were sent into Russia to stir up trouble. Most of them ended up sacrificing their lives. WWI had been planned for some time and was ready to be implemented.

WORLD WAR I

The World Government secretly promised France and Great Britain the numerous German colonies as spoils of war once Germany was defeated. These colonies included Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, Mariana Islands, Caroline Islands, Marshall Islands, Western Samoa, New Guinea, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.

A total of 29 nations lined up against Germany and its allies. All of the nations involved in the war had been prepared beforehand. The national bankers were all notified that a war was about to break out; orchestrated and controlled by the World Government through the Rothschild family. Investors were lined up at the stock markets in the different countries and industries were geared up for war production with enormous profits for the operators and shareholders. The war started when Prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated while on a state visit to Bosnia on June 28, 1914. Austria demanded concessions from Serbia, which was a state of Russia and called on it for protection. Austria called on Germany and on August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia and soon France declared war on Germany. During 4 years and 3 months of the war, 8 million soldiers and 20 million civilians died.

Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky would play a major role in 1917 in the take-over of Russia where millions of people were tortured and killed. Together with 200 Jewish revolutionists, they were transported by train through countries of Germany, Sweden and through Finland to St. Petersburg. This operation involved the secret police of Germany, Sweden, Great Britain and traitors within the Russian Okhrana. The Jewish world leadership sponsored the transfer under leadership of the Warburg banking family.

Trotsky had 20 million dollars in gold coins with him when he arrived in St. Petersburg. This was used to buy the non-commissioned officers of the two regiments in St. Petersburg. With the help of these two regiments that were staffed by Trotsky’s American trained officers, Lenin and Trotsky were able to take over St. Petersburg and set up the Communist regime with the Red Army. The armed forces that remained loyal to the Tsar formed the White Army.

A total of 14 nations sent troops into Russia to protect the Bolshevik revolution and defeat the White Army. In Western Europe, the war was raging and German troops were fighting against British, French and American troops, while in Russia the British, French, American, German and Japanese troops worked together to defeat the White Army. In 1918, the Bolshevik government of Lenin and Trotsky signed a peace treaty with Germany.

Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia used this opportunity to declare their own independence while a civil war raged in Russia. There was a terrible hate towards Jews in Russia due to the fact that the Bolshevik leadership was Jewish. More than 100,000 Russian Jews were executed by the White army. The civil war lasted from 1917 to 1920.

During the civil war, Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky ruthlessly killed all opposition and only allowed Communists to work and organize in the Soviet Union. The Russian Jews had no problems; they organized and traveled at will in and out of Russia. This proves that the Bolshevik leadership was in itself a Jewish revolution aimed at taking over Russia.

The Versailles Treaty

The German government sued for peace in October of 1918 and asked President Woodrow Wilson of the United States to act as mediator. The American delegation included members of the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress (Group of Zionistic Jews), such as:

• Julian W. Mack (1866-1943)
• Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (1874-1949)
• Louis D. Marshall (1856-1929)
• Jacob de Haas (1872-1937), Editor of London Jewish World and Zionists and personal friend of Theodor Herzl
• Nachman Syrkin (1868-1924), founder of Socialist Zionism
• Jewish delegations from Palestine, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Poland Eastern Galacia, Romania, Transylvania, Bukovina, Italy, Greece and other nations.

A group was formed during the congress called, “Committee of Jewish Delegations to the Peace Conference.”

• Secretary General Leo Motzkin (1867-1933), a personal friend of Theodor Herzl
• World Zionist Organization
• B’nai B’rith
• The peace deal imposed harsh conditions on Germany. The Jewish leadership had written into the treaty the assurance of a Jewish homeland in Palestine (a province of the Turkish Ottoman empire), including Jewish rights in other nations. The Peace treaty was signed on June 28, 1919.

Six years later when Hitler lead Germany, he bitterly complained about this treaty being the work of Jewish bankers.

The “Balfour Declaration of 1917” was made while WWI was still raging. The British government by the hand of Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, made a declaration and asked Lionel Walter Rothschild to bring this declaration to the attention of Zionist Federation. It was endorsed by Britain’s allies in the war. It was finally endorsed by the League of Nations. The Balfour declaration recognized the right of Jewry to Palestine, while Palestine was still a province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. From this moment on, the Zionist Jews claimed that they have a legal right to Palestine through “International Law.” This claim makes a mockery of the law that God gave Moses and the promise to inherit the land if Israel was to keep Gods law. There was a penalty (the loss of the land) if Israel were to depart from the Lord. (Deuteronomy 28)

BETAR: JEWISH TERRORIST ORGANIZATION

Betar is a Jewish organization that helped bring Jews to Palestine. It was founded in 1923, in Riga (Capital of Latvia) by Vladimir Jabotinsky. The organization started as a youth revisionist movement but later developed into a para-military terrorist organization. It is named after the Jew Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920). Trumpeldor served in the Russian Imperial army. After attending the first Zionist Congress in 1897, he returned to Russia and founded a Zionist society in Pyatigorsk. He graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1912. He evolved into an anarcho-socialist, which promotes taking over rural areas and using them to launch terror against the state until it had been destabilized and destroyed, and a Zionist and called for the settling of Palestine of agricultural Jewish collective farms. He moved to Palestine and worked as a laborer when the war broke our in 1914. The Turkish government expelled him to Egypt, where he met Jabotinsky. In March 1917, Trumpeldor traveled to Russia with the mission to establish a Jewish legion of 100,000 Jewish soldiers to fight its way down to Palestine and free it from the Turks. When Lenin ordered the legion to be disbanded, Trumpeldor formed a Jewish self-defense organization and became involved in He-Halutz, a pioneer organization of Jewish youth that trained its members for pioneering work and self defense in Palestine. When he arrived in Palestine in 1919, he offered British General Henry Allenby help in forming a Jewish legion of 10,000 Russian Jews. After he was turned down, Trumpeldor worked to unite the different trade unions in order to make it easier to bring more Jews to Palestine. In 1920 Trumpeldor was killed in an attack on Galilee. His efforts only paid off after his death.

By 1939, Betar had 100,000 Jewish members in 26 countries and formed the National Workers Federation in 1934. Betar members became powerful under-ground fighters in Palestine where they attacked Arab and British troops.

The first Jewish naval training camp in Civitavecchia, Italy in 1934 and in Riga Latvia in 1935 were established and manned by Betar. As was the first Jewish training center in Paris (1934), Lydda Palestine (1938), Johannesburg South Africa (1939) and New York (1941). Since 1948, Betar groups have formed 45 new settlements particularly in occupied territories. The Zionist leaders have at their disposal a powerful private organization. If a dirty job is therefore needed somewhere in the world, Betar forces can be dispatched without any trace to the Zionist leadership.

The plan to take Palestine from the people living there was not known to the majority of Jews. Although a part of the Jewish leadership knew about it and opposed it, the majority of the Jews were deceived by the Zionist leadership. Most were deceived into believing that the Jewish population in Palestine could be built up peacefully and a Jewish state would eventually emerge. Most of the Jews were comfortable with this approach, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia; however, the Jewish people in Western Europe and North America had no intention of being part of this pioneering effort because they were educated and generally more well-off with homes and businesses. Therefore, the Zionist leadership had to create some kind of force to convince the skilled Jews of Western Europe and North America to leave their security and start over as pioneers. The Zionist leadership decided to target the Western European Jews as the American Jews could not be subjected to harsh pressure since they were financing the Zionistic movement. Theodor Herzl’s 38 year old plan was going to be implemented.

JEWISH FINANCING OF THE NAZI PARTY

In the early 1920’s and early 1930’s, large amounts of money were given to the Nazi party from Jewish banks.

• The Bank House Mendleson & Company in Amsterdam made two transfers. One for 10 million USD and one for 15 million USD.
• Kuhn Loeb & Company in New York (later taken over by Jacob Schiff)
• J P Morgan & Company in New York
• Samuel & Samuel of London
• Royal Dutch Shell sent 10 million Guilders as late as 1937.

JEWISH-NAZI COOPERATION

Rudolf Rezso Kasztner (1906–1957)

Rudolf Kasztner was born to Jewish parents in Transylvania, a state of Austria which was transferred to Romania. Kasztner studied and became an attorney, journalist and a leader in the Zionist youth movement “Aviva Barissia” and “Ha-lhud ha-Olam.” He moved to Budapest in 1942 and joined a local Palestine Foundation Fund which was a fundraising organization of the World Zionist Organization. He also held the post of Vice chairman of the Hungarian Zionist Federation.

Kasztner was in the top management of the Zionist movement and authorized to negotiate with the German Nazis and make deals with them. He was accepted by Hitler’s regime as Zionist leader representing Hungary. Early in WWII, he had open channels to Henrich Himmler (1900-1945). When Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) traveled to Budapest in March 1944, he met with Rudolf and worked out some deals after Hungary surrendered to Germany during the war.

In the early days of Hitler’s government, an arrangement had been worked out between Nazis and Zionists to transfer Jews to Palestine in exchange for payment to the German Government. Only a small number of Jews were allowed to escape. Of the 750,000 Jews in Hungary, 550,000 were sent to their deaths in German extermination camps.

Kasztner did not work alone. Joel Eugen Brand (1906-1964), a Jew from Transylvania started to work with him in 1943 in rescuing Jewish refugees. Brand received an message from Adolf Eichmann to travel to Turkey and convey the message to the Jewish Agency that Hungarian Jews would be spared and released in exchange for military supplies. A meeting took place with the Jewish agency on June 16, 1944. Brand was arrested by British security forces en route to Palestine and sent to a military detention center in Cairo, Egypt. There he was allowed to meet Moshe Sharrett (1894-1965) the head of the Secret Security Commission of the Jewish Agency and a high official in the Zionist movement. The British Government refused to accept the German offer and the shipment of Hungarian Jews to the death camps began. However, Kasztner was able to negotiate with Neutral nations, and some trucks and other supplies were given to the Germans that resulted in 1,786 Jews being released into Switzerland. Kasztner’s efforts were marginal compared to the 550,000 Hungarian Jews who died in Germany. Many of the Hungarian Jews were kept no more than three miles from the border with Romania and were only guarded by a small group of German soldiers since Germany was losing a lot of manpower to the losses against the Allied forces. There were also very strong underground fighters in Hungary which could have overpowered the Germany soldiers. Instead of being warned and helped to flee, Kasztner told the imprisoned Jews that there was no danger and that they should just be patient. The Jews trusted their Zionist leadership and sat like cattle outside a slaughterhouse waiting for their deaths.

Later, after WWII, Rudolf Kasztner was given a government position in Israel as member of the Mapai party. In 1953, he was accused by Malkiel Gruenwald of collaborating with the Nazis and being the direct cause of the deaths of Hungarian Jews. The Israeli government took it very seriously and tried to protect Rudolf Kasztner by ordering the Israeli attorney general to file a criminal lawsuit against Gruenwald! On June 22, 1955, the judge found that the case against Rudolf Kasztner had merit and so the Israeli cabinet voted to order the attorney general to appeal it to a higher court. A vote of no confidence was introduced in the Israeli Parliament, and when Zionists refused to support the vote, it caused a cabinet crisis. If the truth of the Holocaust came out, it could bring down the Zionist Movement and threaten the very existence of Israel. Most Jews didn’t know that the Zionists worked with the Nazi’s. If the public were informed about the truth, they would react with horror and outrage. The Supreme Court would have started its hearings in 1958, but the Zionist movement couldn’t take the chance being incriminated if Kasztner testified. As a result, Kasztner was assassinated on March 3, 1957. On January 17, 1958, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the late Rudolf Kazstner.

Evidence

The story of Rudolf Kasztner and his collaboration with the Nazi’s was reported in a book called “Perfidy” by an American born Jew named Ben Hecht (1894-1964). Ben was a staunch supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine at first but in the end he became a strong anti-Zionist. His book is a well-documented expose of the Zionist movement and how the Zionist Leadership worked with the Nazis in the annihilation of their fellow Jews to create such a hostile climate in Europe that Jews had no other option but to immigrate to Palestine.

More evidence

In 1977 Rabbi Moshe Schonfeld published a book called “The Holocaust Victims.” Schonfeld confirmed the writings of Ben Hecht and wrote that the Zionist leadership was concerned only in the creation of the state of Israel, not with saving Jewish lives. The book had photocopied documents supporting the charges of betrayal against the following three people:

1. Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), a Zionist Leader and the first President of Israel.

2. Rabbi Stephen Wise (1874-1949), a Hungarian born Jew living in the USA.

3. Yitzhak Grunbaum (1879-1970), a Polish Jew and the chairman of Jewish Agency, a high leader in the Zionistic movement and Minister of Interior of the first Israeli cabinet in 1948

Paul Wallenberg was the Swedish ambassador to Hungary. He arrived shortly after 438,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to their deaths in German extermination camps. He issued Swedish passports to approximately 35,000 Jews and made Adolf Eichmann furious. As the Germans would march Jews in what was known as death marches, Wallenburg and his staff would go to train stations and hand out passports to rescue the Jews from being taken. This upset Rudolf Kasztner and his Zionist teams because the goal of the Swedish team was to transport as many Jews as possible to Sweden as soon as the war was over. This was contrary to the goals of the Zionist leadership who were implementing Herzl’s plan. Any surviving Jews were to be taken to Palestine, not Sweden. Wallenburg succeeded in bringing out more Jews than Rudolf Kazstner ever did. When the Soviet army invaded Hungary in January 1945, Wallenburg was arrested on January 17. He was charged with espionage and murdered. Paul Wallenburg had exposed the cooperation of the Zionist leadership with the Nazis and this was a secret that could not be let out. Therefore, the Communist/Zionist leadership eliminated a noble man who had given his all to save Jewish men, women and children.

When the debate about the Nazis working with the Zionists would not go away, the Jewish Leadership decided that something must be done to put the issue to rest. If the gentile population found out about the dark shadow over the formation of Israel, it could undermine current and future support for the state of Israel that cannot exist without the billions of dollars it receives in aid every year from the United States.

Edwin Black, an American born Jewish writer and journalist was asked in 1978 to investigate and write a history of the events. With a team of more than 10 Jewish experts, the project took five years. The book was named, “The Transfer Agreement,” and it accurately points out a whole list of Jews in the Nazi leadership but the conclusion innocently states that the Zionists who negotiated the transfer agreement could not have anticipated the concentration camps and gas chambers. The book is very well researched but still doesn’t tell the history of the Zionist movement and the ideology of Theodor Herzl. Most importantly, it leaves out Herzl’s words that “if whole branches of Jews must be destroyed, it is worth it, as long as a Jewish state in Palestine is created.”

Edwin Black’s book is a great documentation, but it is sad that he and the Jewish Leadership are not willing to face the facts that the Zionist Leadership was the cause of the Holocaust. It is even more sad to think that the Jewish people suffered tremendously during the Nazi regime caused by their own leadership. They were sacrificed for the cause of establishing a “kingdom” on earth, which has no place for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Matthew 23:13-15) Some day in the future the Jewish people will understand that their Messiah, which their ancestors rejected, was the Son of God. (Zechariah 12:10-14)

In 1964 a book by Dietrich Bronder (German Jew) was published in Germany called, “Before Hitler came.” The book tried to come to grips with why the German Jews turned on their own people and caused so much destruction of innocent people. The answer given in the book states that the driving force behind the Jewish Nazis, was the old dream to have a Messiah who could establish a world rule with the Jews in power. The same ideology as can be seen in John 6:14-15.

The most prominent Gentile and Jewish-Nazi leaders were:

• Adolf Hitler: half Jew
• Rudolf Hess: Reich Minister; half Jew
• Hermann Goring: Head of German Luftwaffe
• Gregor and Otto Strasser: brothers and leaders in Nazi party
• Joseph Goebbels: Propaganda Minister; Jewish
• Alfred Rosenberg: Editor of the official Nazi paper “Volkisher Beobachter;” Reich Minister for Eastern occupied territories; Jewish
• Hans Frank: legal council of the Nazi party; Jewish
• Heinrich Himmler: Head of Gestapo; commander of the SS; homosexual
• Joachim von Ribbenstrop: Foreign Minister
• Reinhard Heydrich: Security chief and Second in command of SS; later became the Governor of Bohemia and Moravia; homosexual; Jewish
• Admiral Wilhelm Canaris: Chief of German Intelligence; Jewish
• Abram Goldberg a.k.a. Julius Streicher: Editor of the weekly Nazi paper “Der Sturmer;” homosexual; Jewish
• Adolf Eichman: SS Officer; prosecutor; Jewish
• Robert Ley: Ministry of Labor; organized the slave labor camps
• Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski: SS General
• Odilo Globocnik: SS General
• Helmut Schmidt: officer in Luftwaffe

Documents supporting the “exceptions” that Hitler made for German Jews serving in the Nazi party numbered around 1,200. There were 2 Field Marshall’s, 10 Generals, 14 Colonels, 30 Majors and thousands of lower ranking officers and non-commanding officers who received these exceptions.

SUMMARY

From a rational and economical point of view, it doesn’t make sense that the Nazi leaders initiated the total destruction of German Jews and other Jews in Western Europe by their own accord. Historical records show that the German Jews were the most assimilated. Germany had established a friendly atmosphere for Jews since the mid 1850’s which caused them to prosper greatly. They owned and operated banks, factories, and businesses throughout Germany, especially exports which was the lifeblood of the economy. German Jews posed no threat to Germany; in fact, the German economy had become very dependant on them. The German Jews saw themselves as more noble than the eastern European Jews. In the 1920’s the head of the German Jewish bank in Hamburg, Paul Warburg, even advised the German Prime Minister Ebert to stop the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe.

Warburg later told a Wall Street courier that “with Jews, Hitler means the Polish Jews who polluted Germany since World War I began.”

The Nazi leadership was in their late 20’s to early 30’s who had become disillusioned with the different administrations, having lived through WWI and seen the destruction of the German economy. They had been drawn into the occult and many members of the Nazi leadership were members of the Thule Society which had connections to American and British freemasonry. The Nazi religion was a mixture of Thule Society and the Scandinavian religion of the Nordic gods and the myth of the pure Aryan race with blond hair and blue eyes.

The young German Jews were angry with the Jews in England and the United States and blamed them for starting WWI and destroying Germany. The strong Eastern European Jews who made up the Zionist movement had a fanatical dream of establishing a new Israel.

God was not the one who created the political state of Israel in 1948; it was the work of sinful men. Most of the people in the Zionist movement were atheistic, agnostic or followers of the occult Cabala or Talmud.

Moses Hess, Theodor Herzl and other Zionist leaders never mentioned that God had spoken to them to undertake this project. Instead, they were driven by communism/socialism. What they didn’t know was that the force which drove them was the Devil himself. (Revelation 13:1-2)

IS GOD THE FOUNDER OF MODERN ISRAEL?

Why Hitler and his Jewish followers decided to destroy the Jews in Europe is a mystery that won’t be fully known until the Great White Throne Judgment. All that we know is that the Nazi’s and the Zionists entered into an unholy alliance of death and murder which caused pain on a scale that humanity had never before experienced. Theodor Herzl’s book written in 1896, “Der Judenstaat,” spelled out the destruction of some Jewish communities in order to motivate other Jews to move to Palestine.

Something is wrong in the way that history has been written since 1945. The sanitized history that Hitler and his Nazi’s were all stupid and didn’t know what they were doing doesn’t make sense! Hitler was ambitious and intelligent, he understood that killing off the German Jews and their businesses would have been a suicidal disaster for the struggling economy.

If Hitler really hated the Jews, it would have been smarter to hide his hatred and build up the military power economy first, then attack the different nations, and then afterwards, turn on the Jews. Therefore, a power much stronger than Hitler, the Zionist movement with its blue print laid out by Theodor Herzl, and forced him into the policies he made.

THE ANTICHRIST

The Antichrist is going to rule from Jerusalem someday where he will sit in a temple which is not yet erected. God is not going to establish a temple in Jerusalem and institute sacrifices again. This goes directly against the teaching of the New Testament and is blasphemy against Jesus Christ. (Hebrews 9:11-26)

God doesn’t have a special salvation plan for Jews. There is only one way for Jews and Gentiles to be saved and that is through Jesus Christ. (John 3:1-8, John 14:6, Acts 4:8-13, Galatians 3:26-29)


Source: http://www.eaec.org/newsletters/2008/vol_8/showdown-in-jerusalem-digest.htm

The Modern History of Islamic Jerusalem: Academic Myths and Propaganda

By Ghada Hashem Talhami

No city can match the rich history and universalist values of Jerusalem. Much of this universalism must be attributed to Muslim rule, a period of over thirteen centuries in which the city never lost its reputation for tolerance and religious co-existence.

The city's unique religious pedigree elevated its status beyond the limitations of economic and strategic considerations. Indeed, one cannot contemplate Jerusalem's future without dwelling on its uniquely monotheistic legacy. For, whereas other centers of habitation claimed a divine connection, none can rival the complex and overlapping rights of as many religious communities as Jerusalem. Destined to experience the fragility of political security and power, Jerusalem has never succeeded in excluding diverse religious communities from its space. The stamp of religious universalism is indelibly marked on its history.

Jerusalem was also a place of human habitation, not a city of angels. Those who worshiped at its temples constantly struggled to define their rights through political power. Religion and politics were always two sides of the Jerusalem coin, testing the patience of rulers and clerics. Not surprisingly, the temptation to endow the city with the trappings of political power as the administrative center of this empire or that kingdom often influenced the religious sentiment of the faithful. This is particularly true in the age of modern nationalism, in which the lethal mix of religion and power politics threatens the harmony of the various communities. Additionally, archaeological and political polemics nowadays threaten Jerusalem's universalist heritage. Israeli claims for exclusive control over Jerusalem have benefited greatly from the debates of the archaeologists and historians. The cost has been greater to the city's religious communities, which are threatened with the loss of their traditional autonomy and even permanent exile from the city.

Students of history can only watch with amazement as Israel tries to wrest control of the Old City and make it an exclusively Jewish enclave. Whether or not this grand strategy succeeds will depend not only on the Palestinian population itself but also on those who uphold international law. The Israeli transformation of Jerusalem will also ultimately depend on the willingness of historians to resist the reconstruction of Jerusalem's Islamic past. Two of the major Israeli themes in this reconstructionist approach are the denial of the sanctity of Jerusalem to Muslims and the belittling of the status of Jerusalem, both temporal and spiritual, during the centuries of Islamic control. It is essential, therefore, that attempts by zealot Jewish groups to capture Jerusalem's holy sites be analyzed in the context of the latest eschatological transformation of their religio-political views. The Israeli government's efforts to convert Jerusalem into its eternal capital must also be analyzed in the context of the communal diversity of the city and the multiplicity of rights and religious domains.

Today Muslims, Christians and Jews hold irreconcilable positions on Jerusalem. The fact that direct Christian control of the city ended with the Crusades should not diminish scholarly interest in the Christian legacy of Jerusalem, nor in the potentially enormous influence wielded by some Christian powers over the fate of the city. The Christian picture is further complicated by the political allegiance of Palestinian Christians, and its divergence from the emotional and religious loyalties of Western Christians. But for the Muslims, the sanctity of Jerusalem derives from the Islamic definition of holiness, which prohibits the transfer of religious properties to non-believers.

Jerusalem became irrefutably holy to Muslims as the place from which it is believed Muhammad rose to heaven and received instructions regarding the Muslim prayers. Physical space associated with a divine revelation becomes a religious trust and the occupants its guardians. Muslims today regard Jerusalem as a waqf (a religious foundation), which cannot change ownership. And since Palestine is the final repose of Muslim clerics, learned sheikhs and those who devoted their lives to the service of the faith, then all of Palestine is a religious trust.¹

The story of Muslim regard for Jerusalem begins with the Prophet Muhammad's nocturnal journey, as it is referred to in the Quran, and ascension to heaven. This event was of monumental significance to the development of the Muslim faith. Following news of the journey, Muslims were ordered to face Jerusalem during the act of prayer. Designating Jerusalem as the qiblah signified Muhammad's resolve to create a non-tribal religion based on the universalist concept of monotheism. For Muhammad, Jerusalem symbolized the continuity of the older religions. The sacred rock from which Muhammad rose to heaven was of particular significance to Islam since it was the spot at which Abraham offered to sacrifice his son Ishmael to God. For Muslims, Abraham was not a Jewish prophet; he was the father of the monotheistic idea, the cornerstone of the Muslim faith, which based its theological revolution on the oneness of God. In the Quran, Abraham was presented as neither a Jew nor a Christian, but as the precursor of the one true religion. More important, Muhammad did not designate Makkah as the qiblah at first, because it was the center of the pagan religions of Arab tribes and was dominated by stone idols. Until its liberation from pagan rule and the purification of its temple in 630, Makkah was clearly unsuitable as the direction of prayers. To pray facing Makkah meant to pray to pagan idols.²

Most Israeli and Orientalist writers, however, minimize the Islamic centrality of Jerusalem to Muslims. A major theme in their argument is the brevity of the Quran's reference to Jerusalem and Muhammad's nocturnal journey. In a 1996 study, the Israeli writer Izhak Hasson claims that there was no direct reference to Jerusalem in the Quran by any of its known names (Aelia, Beit al-Maqdes, al-Quds, etc.). He did state that when the tafseer or exegesis of the Quran began, a century after the emergence of Islam, Arab scholars deduced that such names as al-zaytoun (Mount of Olives), mubawwa sidq (safe residence), rabwa that qarar (the eternal hill), and al-masjid al-aqsa (the furthest mosque), were explicitly identified with Jerusalem. It is unclear, however, why these identifications should surprise him, especially the latter reference, which occurs in the opening line of the chapter describing Muhammad's journey. The fact that the earliest Muslim scholars considered al-masjid al-aqsa to be Jerusalem "from time immemorial" did not impress him. He even makes the unsubstantiated claim that early Muslim authorities interpreted al-masjid al-aqsa to be similar to the Judaic concept of a heavenly Jerusalem or a heavenly temple. Hasson then mentions that later Quranic exegesis and various biographies of Muhammad rejected this interpretation. The fact that the heavenly-Jerusalem concept was only enshrined in Shii literature in order to make the ascription of holiness to Kufa more palatable should have persuaded Hasson against this theory.

Hasson then cites the work of S. D. Goitein in the Encyclopedia of Islam, in which the historian of the Geniza Records commented on the connection between the early verses of the Nocturnal Journey chapter and references to al-masjid al-aqsa in the seventh verse. According to Goitein, this linkage can only be explained by the manner in which the Quran itself was collected and recorded. It was during the period of the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan (644-656), that the Quran, hitherto committed to memory by Muhammad's companions, was finally written down. Referring to this process as "editing," Goitein claimed that it was only then that the two aforementioned verses were placed within the same chapter or surah. Collecting the Quran, claims Hasson, involved placing Quranic verses in a special order and fixing titles to various untitled chapters. He further makes the claim that identifying Jerusalem as the site of the Nocturnal Journey was not mentioned in the early decades of Islam, even when the glorification of Jerusalem was a primary objective of the Umayyad dynasty. Hasson does not explain the apparent contradiction between this assertion and the Umayyad's success in establishing the sanctity of Jerusalem in the minds of the believers.³

It is clear from analyzing Muhammad's reasons for choosing Jerusalem as the site of his visit and ascension to heaven that he viewed the city in broader terms than a Jewish holy place. Indeed, modern Muslim scholars, who are angered by exclusive Jewish claims to Jerusalem, often remind us that the city was not built by David. The city boasts a long pre-Israelite history and the dominance and habitation of other non-Hebraic populations. Palestinian historian K. J. Asali, for instance, wrote that King David and his soldiers took over the city by entering it through a tunnel. According to the Old Testament, Jerusalem at the time of King David's takeover in 1,000 BCE was a populated city that had existed for 2,000 years. It had been inhabited at one time or another by Canaanites, Amorites, Jebusites and Hittites. The oldest known name of Jerusalem was actually Urusalem, which was of Amorite derivation based on the Canaanite-Amoritic god Salem or Shalem. The rest of that name, uru, meant "founded by." The well-known American Biblical archeologist, W. F. Albright, had already identified the names of the two earliest Jerusalem rulers as the Amorites Saz Anu and Yaqir Ammo. Asali also reminds us that the Bible states the origins of the Amorites as Canaanite; they may in fact have been the earliest people of the land of Canaan. In the year 2,000 BCE, these people were succeeded by the Jebusites, who were also identified as Canaanites.⁴

Muslims proceeded to build shrines to various religions, not only to Islam, as soon as they entrenched themselves around Jerusalem's sacred-rock area. By the ninth century CE, the Haram al-Sharif, where the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque stood, was also dedicated to non-Islamic religions. Shrines were built to honor David, Solomon and Jesus. In addition, since Jews did not regard the Western Wall of the Temple with veneration until the sixteenth century, the Wall was dedicated as a Muslim shrine commemorating the area where Muhammad tethered his winged horse, al-Buraq, on the night of his celestial journey. Historians assume that a small Jewish synagogue probably stood near the wall during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, but until the beginning of the Ottoman period, Jews worshiped mainly at the Mount of Olives. It was there that the prophet Ezekiel is believed to have witnessed the flight of the "divine presence" from Jerusalem and its disappearance behind that mountain. This occasion climaxed the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king. Major Jewish religious festivals were celebrated at the Mount of Olives, where the worshipers prayed for the return of "the holy presence." And although some European Jewish travelers who visited the city in the fifteenth century noted the impressive size of the stones of the wall, the structure did not inspire any religious feeling.⁵

Muslims, therefore, not only commemorated the pluralist religious traditions of Jerusalem, but at first they attempted to replicate the same modest places of worship they had erected at Madinah. But as the Muslims' building program to immortalize the Nocturnal Journey commenced, non-Muslim historians colored these events with their own political propaganda. Much controversy has surrounded both the initial modest Muslim efforts to mark the holy event and the later resplendent structures built under the Umayyads. Bishop Arculf, a Gallic cleric who visited Jerusalem in 670, during the early Umayyad period, was among the first Christian pilgrims to record his impressions of the city under Muslim rule. He wrote: "The Saracens now frequent a four-sided house of prayer, which they have built rudely, constructing it by raising boards and great beams upon some remains of ruins.⁶

The simplicity and modest proportions of this structure were later interpreted as evidence of the low esteem in which Muslims held Jerusalem. Since Jerusalem was the third direction for prayer, the first two being Makkah and Madinah, it was not considered a major center, according to Caliph Umar's first building in the Holy City. But Muslim authorities describe Muhammad's first mosque at Madinah as also extremely modest, constructed essentially of wood, with one stone to mark the direction of the qiblah. It was a model for the early mosques, expressing rejection of the splendor and opulence of the pagan Kaaba's structure at Makkah and Islam's self-image as the religion of austerity and simplicity.⁷ The earliest Muslim traditions added another explanation: Muhammad himself demanded that the Madinah mosque be kept simple since the Day of Judgment was at hand, heralded by the new faith.⁸

When Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, the Umayyad caliph, constructed the magnificent structure known as the Dome of the Rock (begun in 688 and completed in 691), Jerusalem's status rose in Muslim eyes. Some Western and Israeli writers have interpreted this newly established grandeur in purely political terms. Since the Jerusalem construction program of the Umayyads began at the height of their war with Makkah's ruler, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, who rebelled against the Umayyad caliph Yazid, in 683, it was assumed to be politically inspired. The rebellion lasted until 692, and it was during this period that the Umayyads catapulted Jerusalem to the status of a major Muslim religious center.

A close examination of Abd al-Malik's efforts, however, reveals an entirely different story. Abd al-Malik was clearly conscious of the Christian splendor of Jerusalem, expressed in several domed structures, and wanted to commission a monument equally expressive of the Muslim heavenly vision. Moreover, the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock were not directed at the rebellious Makkans but at Jerusalem's Christians. The Dome was meant to be a structure affirming the monotheism of Islam and its relationship to the other Abrahamic faiths. What could be more appropriate than inscriptions saying that God regarded Jesus as his prophet and that the center of the faith was not the doctrine of the Trinity but the oneness of God?⁹

Muslim rulers, beginning with Caliph Muawiyah, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty, have always recognized the city's sanctity to Christians. Muawiyah and his successors also viewed the Muslim presence in the city as a confirmation of Islam's universal message. He not only received the oath of allegiance in Jerusalem, he also prayed at Golgotha and the Garden of Gesthemane, as well as other Christian holy sites. But to claim, as the Orientalist scholar I. Goldziher did, that Abd al-Malik commissioned the building of a magnificent shrine in Jerusalem in order to direct the pilgrimage away from Makkah, is tantamount to calling the Umayyad caliph a non-believer, since performing the pilgrimage to Makkah is one of the five pillars of Islam.¹⁰

Politically motivated writers have never accepted the Muslim reverence for Jerusalem in the context of the Muslim faith. Reports by the Shiite historian Yaqubi (ninth century) and the pro-Shiite geographer Al-Muhallabi (eleventh century) that the pilgrimage to Makkah was stopped altogether under Abd al-Malik's son, Al-Walid, were clearly in the nature of political propaganda. They both claimed that the Umayyads did not wish to enhance the Makkahn rebels' call for venerating the House of the Prophet. This drastic step was later reported by the Christian historian Eutychius (940) and made its way into the works of modern historians such as Goldziher and K.A.C. Creswell, despite the contrary testimony of Muslim historians of that period.¹¹

Israeli writers, however, emphasize in particular the determination of the city's early Muslim rulers not to convert Jerusalem into a seat of government. They also emphasize that Jews were initially excluded from Jerusalem under the terms of Umar's covenant with Bishop Sophronius. The text of the covenant -- which, according to some modern Muslim authorities, is still housed at the Wadi al-Qilt monastry in Palestine -- granted special privileges and dispensations to the city in recognition of its holiness to Christians. According to the same Muslim historians who rely on al-Tabari's account, the covenant forbade Jews to live with Christians in the city because of the conditions of the peace imposed by the Christians of Jerusalem.¹²

The modern Iraqi historian Abdul Aziz al-Duri provides a careful provenance of Umar's covenant that refutes these claims. Duri asserts that details pertaining to prohibiting a certain population from living in a conquered city were unusual and never appear in the texts of similar sulh (covenant) in the Syrian region. Reference to Jews in the covenant was apparently absent from most Arab sources. It is believed today that this information first appeared in Michael the Syrian's Chronique. Another historian, Al-Himyari, attributed this condition to a specific demand by the Christians of Jerusalem. The author of a well-known work extolling the virtues of Jerusalem, Ibn al-Jawzi, does not even make reference to the Jews in regard to Umar's covenant in his Fadhail al-Quds.¹³ Indeed, the Geniza records indicate that 70 Jewish families from Tiberias relocated to Jerusalem with Umar's approval. It was also during this early Muslim period that Jerusalem was divided into different quarters for each religious community.¹⁴

When Israeli writers allude to the political status of Jerusalem under Muslim rule, there is never an adequate explanation. Moshe Gil has written that the Byzantine administrative structure of the new conquest was retained, with the coastal Palestinian area, along with Judaea and Samaria, constituting one division and the Jordan Valley and the Galilee region another. The two parts were called Jund (military unit) Filastin and Jund al-Urdun. Jerusalem, being within Jund Filastin, was not made a capital. Neither did the Muslims maintain their seat of government in Ceasaria, the former provincial capital of the Byzantines. Instead, the Muslims first based their administration in Lod (Lyddah), then transferred it to the city of Ramla, newly built by the Caliph Suleiman ibn Abd al-Malik. The Muslim judge of Jerusalem was also subordinated to the Ramla judge.¹⁵

But it is clear that the Muslims had two major reasons for basing their administration at Ramla. First, it should be remembered that Jerusalem remained a predominantly Christian city throughout the period. According to the testimony of Bishop Arculf, which dates to Muawiyah's rule, pilgrims and visitors of various nationalities continued to flood the city and attend its annual fair. The other reason was that military troops were normally based in administrative centers. Troops would have made excessive demands on the local population. But Jerusalem did receive a great deal of attention from its Muslim rulers, who assigned it a separate governor and judge. These governors were usually Umayyad princes, such as Abd al-Malik and Suleiman ibn Abd al-Malik. The first judge to be appointed for the city by Umar was Ubada ibn al-Samit, one of the Prophet's companions. Several other companions visited Jerusalem and were buried there. Also, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, the head of the Muslim troops, was on his way to pray at Jerusalem when he died.¹⁶

The sanctity of Jerusalem was recognized by Muslims in several other ways. As a city dominated by various houses of worship and inhabited by religious figures, Jerusalem needed a steady source of income. Muslim rule witnessed the development of the oldest charitable endowments and trusts in the region. The third Muslim caliph, Uthman -- who succeeded Umar -- began this tradition by acquiring the Silwan spring as a waqf (religious endowment) for people of the city.¹⁷ Perhaps the richest endowment dedicated to the needs of Muslim Jerusalem and its poor was the Khasseki Waqf. This bequest benefited a large tekiyya (charitable establishment) that included a mosque, an inn, a religious school, a soup kitchen and a hospice. Khasseki Sultan established a vast and far-flung pious foundation to support these services, numbering many villages and farms located in Syria and Palestine.

The founder of this endowment was Roxelana (otherwise known as Khasseki Sultan or Khurrem Sultan) the wife of the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, who built the present walls of Jerusalem. When she died, the sultan added four villages and farms near Sidon to the waqf. Both the Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties preceded the Ottomans in establishing this particular brand of philanthropy in Jerusalem. The Ayyubid period, beginning with Saladin, witnessed a steady effort to re-Islamize the city following the violence of the Crusader period. Many awqaf were created in order to support the newly opened religious schools, the Sufi centers, the hospitals and the mosques. These institutions restored the city's Islamic culture and were later maintained and increased during the Ottoman centuries.¹⁸

The holiness of Jerusalem was related to the rise and expansion of a certain type of literary genre, known as al-Fadhail or history of cities. The Fadhail of Jerusalem preserved the traditions of the Prophet regarding Jerusalem, the statements of various holy personages, and the city's popular lore. All of these inspired Muslims to embellish the sanctity of the city beyond its status in the holy texts. The greatest source of information for al-Fadhail was the hadith, the Prophet's traditions, which were beginning to be quoted extensively in the last third of the first Muslim century (the seventh century of the Christian era). The traditions were used to enumerate the values of visiting the city and al-Aqsa Mosque. Circulating widely during the Umayyad period, these traditions were often a reflection of the Umayyad policy of enhancing the religious status of Jerusalem. The exegetic literature (tafsir) of the Quran, as well as the tales repeated by popular preachers, also emphasized the religious merit of Jerusalem. Some of these tales were drawn from a body of literature known as Israiliyyat, or the statements of newly converted Jews. Among the most famous authors of the Israiliyyat were Abu Kaab al-Ahbar (rumored to have accompanied Umar on his first visit to the Temple area) and Abu Rihana (said to be related to the Prophet by marriage). These two often delivered sermons at al-Aqsa Mosque elaborating on the merits of Jerusalem.

The literature of al-Fadhail reached its zenith during the eleventh century (the fifth century of the Hijira). Histories and descriptions of cities were first written during the ninth and tenth centuries and focused initially on prominent centers of administration such as Damascus, Madinah, Baghdad and Wasit. Soon the literature extended to Jerusalem, drawing on a history of the city since Muslim rule written by Ishak ibn Bishr. Another source circulating during the same period was al-Ramli's biographies of the Prophet's companions who had moved to Palestine. The descriptions of Jerusalem, known as Fadhail Bait al-Maqdis, developed specifically during the eleventh century. These include the earliest examples of this genre: Wasiti's Fadhail al-Bait al-Muqqadas and al-Maqdisi's Fadhail al-Quds wa al-Sham (The Merits of Jerusalem and Damascus).¹⁹

Al-Maqdisi, for instance, devotes a great deal of space in his book to the merits of the Aqsa Mosque and the holiness of Jerusalem and its saints. The author also explains the religious advantages of visiting the city. It is in this regard that al-Maqdisi and others after him began to make the claim that Jerusalem is the site of the resurrection, and that all the pious of the earth will gather there on Judgment Day. The rock from which Muhammad rose to heaven will serve as a refuge for those seeking to escape the anti-Christ, or al-Dajjal. Virtuous Muslims will then witness the appearance of al-Mahdi (the Messiah) and the beginning of the golden age. Al-Maqdisi, a Jerusalemite himself, makes the claim that Jerusalem combines the merits of this life and the hereafter and is definitely superior to Makkah and Madinah, which will be brought to Jerusalem on the Day of Judgment.²⁰

The popular mind absorbed these ideas readily, and prominent government officials began to ask to be buried in Bait al-Maqdis. Muslims began to perform some of the rituals of the pilgrimage at Jerusalem, such as circling the sacred sanctuary (the Haram) and offering animal sacrifices on its grounds. Some commentators who witnessed the quasi-pilgrimage of Jerusalem reported that large throngs chanted the refrain Lubayka allahumma lubayk, usually chanted at Jabal Arafat in Makkah.²¹

The controversy surrounding al-fadhail literature extends beyond the authenticity of its prophetic traditions. According to Emmanual Sivan, an Israeli writer, the date of Jerusalem's al-Fadhail indicates that Muslims had very little veneration for the city during the early Muslim period.²² In his view, the merits of Jerusalem were only recognized beginning in the second Muslim century, the date of the earliest Fadhail Bait al-Maqdis. Muslims respond to this argument by saying that, had this been the case, Makkah's sanctity is also in doubt since Fadhail Makkah did not appear in print until the same period.²³ Sivan's comments were directed specifically at al-Maqdisi's Fadhail Bait al-Maqdis wa al-Khalil wa Fadhail al-Sham, which was written during the eleventh century, and at the earliest of this genre, al-Wasiti's Fadhail al-Bait al-Muqqadas.

Sivan advances the claim that both were written after the persecutions directed at Christians and Jews by the Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim. It should be noted, however, that both al-Wasiti and al-Maqdisi mention in their books an earlier work by another Palestinian writer, al-Ramli, who wrote Fadhail Bait al-Maqdis. Al-Ramli, who was born in al-Ramla, was also mentioned in some fifteenth-century biographical dictionaries, the date of his death given as 912 CE. Thus, al-Fadhail of Jerusalem literature must now be dated two centuries earlier than has been the case. Apparently the literature of al-Fadhail was well developed and well known before the Crusader occupation of Jerusalem and could not have developed as a result of the Crusader assault on the Holy Land.²⁴

Despite the confirmation of the eminence of Jerusalem under the Umayyads, the city remained open to Christians and Jews. This tradition of accommodation and tolerance continued under the Abbasids, even though the distance between Baghdad, the seat of the new empire, and Jerusalem limited the caliph's visits to the third qiblah. However, the additions the Abbasids made to Jerusalem's Islamic monuments were also notable, particularly after major earthquakes. Caliph al-Mahdi ordered the reconstruction of al-Aqsa Mosque, and al-Maamun commissioned the building of two gates to the east and north of the Haram area. The mother of Caliph al-Muqtadir undertook the major repair of the cupola of the Dome of the Rock.²⁵ And yet, Moshe Gil and others continue to repeat that Jerusalem and Palestine did not receive much attention from the Abbasids.²⁶

The expansion of Christian influence in Jerusalem under the Abbasids was not, it is now believed, the result of the exchange of embassies between Harun al-Rashid and Charlemagne. Instead, it should be apparent that Charlemagne's desire to enhance his Christian credentials as the head of the Latin Church in the year of his coronation as holy roman emperor drove him to seek relations with Jerusalem's rulers. This explains the construction of a hostel for Christian pilgrims and a library, as well as a number of monasteries.²⁷

Some years after the mysterious death of al-Hakim, the Fatimids exhibited unusual tolerance towards the people of the book. Jewish historical records indicate that a Karaite Jew (the Karaites migrated from Khurasan in the ninth century) by the name of Abu Saad Isaac ben Aharon ben Ali became the governor of Jerusalem under Fatimid rule in 1060. A Christian governor by the name of Ibn Muammar succeeded him in that position.²⁸ According to Islamic documents of the Haram, members of Jerusalem's small Jewish community enjoyed full commercial rights, such as the ownership of property and the freedom to transact business under both the Ayyubids and the Mamluks.²⁹

We then learn that during the early Ottoman period, the Jewish community of Jerusalem often opted to seek justice in the Sharia courts even though their dhimmi status allowed them a great measure of legal autonomy. They often filed complaints against coreligionists at the Muslim courts. Jews and Christians were able to purchase houses in the midst of the Muslim area. Jews, Christians and Muslims were freely represented in the city's trade guilds.³⁰ Jews were never subjected to Muslim proselytizing, but would sometimes convert to Islam voluntarily. Jewish oath-taking in the Sharia courts was usually accepted. The dayyan (rabbi) of a Jewish congregation often referred disputes between fellow Jews to the Muslim courts. An understanding existed between the Jewish and Muslim religious authorities, and each bolstered the authority of the other.³¹

The decline of the Ottomans, beginning in the eighteenth century, resulted in the rising power of European consuls throughout the empire, particularly in Jerusalem. Jewish minorities and some of the Christian communities became dependent on the power and protection of the consuls. This aroused the animosity of the Muslims, who lost their position as the community of dominance and influence. Increased Jewish immigration to Palestine also became noticeable. Jews began to settle increasingly outside of Jerusalem's walls. This development began to manifest itself after the Egyptian takeover of Syria during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian governor, began to overturn Ottoman restrictions on land sales and other transactions. Sir Moses Montefiore, the British Jewish philanthropist, financed the building of the first Jewish settlement outside Jerusalem's walls in 1860.

European Zionists, however, did not hold Jerusalem in high regard. Much of the Zionist settlement was concentrated in the coastal area and in the kibbutzim outside of the cities. It is also known that Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, did not wish to make Jerusalem the center of his plan. After visiting the city, Herzl described it in disparaging remarks, alluding to its lack of cleanliness and meager tolerant spirit. Jerusalem was saturated, in his words, with a 2000-year legacy of unpleasant history. Indeed, Herzl suggested that the capital of the Jewish state be built on Mount Carmel in Haifa. Chaim Weizeman, Israel's first president and the architect of the Balfour Declaration, was not anxious to include the old walled city of Jerusalem within the first partition plan offered by the British government. The early Zionists, who were mostly socialists, gloried in acquiring and redeeming the land and did not see fit to concentrate their land purchasing around Jerusalem. The Old City was a place of settlement for a trickle of religious Jews. Safad was settled by followers of a Jewish mystical movement, and Tiberias was always an important religious center.³²

Thus, while the Ashkenazi (European) Jews championed the Zionist ideology and looked to settling the land of Palestine, the Sephardic (Eastern) Jews settled in the Old City of Jerusalem. The latter group firmly believed in the imminent appearance of the Messiah. Descended from the house of David, the Messiah was believed capable of returning Jerusalem to the Jews, uniting Jewish exiles in the land of Israel, and also restoring the Temple. Although scandalized by the secularism of the European Zionists, the religious Jews soon realized that their spiritual aspirations could best be served by the nationalist policies of the Zionists. It did not take long before the religious Jews understood that building a Jewish homeland in Palestine also led to the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. The secularists, for their part, were unable to separate nationalism from Judaism. Religious acquiescence in the Zionist plan led eventually to the founding of the Mizrahi party in 1902, which later became the National Religious party. When all of Palestine fell to the Israelis following the June 1967 war, the haredim, or religious Jews, began to feel that their spiritual vision of restoring a divine people to their original land was finally being realized.³³

In 1947, a year before the declaration of the Israeli state, Jewish policy on Jerusalem was much more cautious than today. The Jewish Agency for Palestine, the quasi-government of the Yishuv (Jewish settlement), voted to accept the U.N. resolution calling for the creation of a corpus separatum in Palestine. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were to be under neither Arab nor Jewish control. This was a pragmatic decision based on the Israelis' fear of antagonizing the Catholic states in the United Nations and their commitment to the Vatican solution. The Israelis were determined to see the passage of the U.N. Partition Resolution through, even with its clause on the internationalization of Jerusalem.

The Jewish Agency did not unveil its plans for Jerusalem even after the adoption of the Partition Plan on November 29, 1947. Recognizing that the United States was wavering in its commitment to the partition of Palestine, the Jewish Agency decided to locate the future capital of Israel just outside of Tel Aviv. Another explanation for the exclusion of Jerusalem from the Agency's plans was the need to maintain good relations with Transjordan and keep it out of the war. Transjordan had already made plans for acquiring control over eastern Palestine (the West Bank) and Jerusalem and revealed them in its secret talks with the Agency. These plans were in defiance of the U.N. commitment to allow a Palestinian government in the Arab part of Palestine.³⁴

After the Jewish government conquered West Jerusalem in 1948 and the Jordanians seized East Jerusalem, the diplomatic battle lines changed. The Israelis declared West Jerusalem to be their capital, in defiance of U.N. Resolution 181, and the Jordanians annexed East Jerusalem (along with the Old City), but without relocating their capital to it. The Israelis, recognizing that they faced the condemnation of the majority of U.N. members, shifted their strategy to a call for the internationalization of the holy sites of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth instead of the whole city of Jerusalem. This policy appeared to be very attractive to the Israelis since most of the holy sites to be internationalized were within Jordanian-held territory. The call for internationalizing the holy sites rather than the city of Jerusalem, therefore, did not entail any territorial sacrifices on the part of the Israelis. The new Israeli policy not only blocked international censure of the new state, it also succeeded in neutralizing U.N. animus over the inflammatory issue of Jerusalem. The call for the internationalization of the Jordanian-held sites was aimed at gaining unrestricted Jewish access to the Wailing Wall.³⁵

But not all of this campaign translated into a benign Israeli policy towards their own Islamic and other religious foundations. Unfortunately, the Israelis considered these awqaf to be enemy property and placed them under the jurisdiction of the non-Islamic Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs. Fully 15-20 percent of cultivable land in the new Israeli state belonged to the waqf, as did up to 70 percent of businesses and shops in major Palestinian cities under Israeli control. By placing these properties under the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Israeli authorities were able to use the Absentee Property Law to confiscate most of the waqf lands and properties. Because the waqf situation in the West Bank and Gaza was radically different in 1967, the Israelis were prevented from duplicating their earlier tactics. The West Bank and Gaza were not annexed to Israel and could not be made subject to Israel's laws. Instead, Israeli military laws were brought into play, and land would often be closed for military reasons, to be lost to the waqf forever. The military governors were given collective control. Jordanian control of the waqf in Gaza was deliberately promoted in order to limit the independence of this institution in the previously Egyptian-held area.³⁶

The Israeli military takeover of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 radically altered Israel's previous call for the functional internationalization of Jerusalem and the placing of its holy sites under U.N. control. The annexation of Jerusalem quickly created a new reality and became an insurmountable obstacle to peace. Immediate measures were taken to bring East Jerusalem and all of its holy sites within the Old City under Israeli control. On June 25, 1967, the Israeli authorities extended Israeli law to Arab Jerusalem. By June 27, a significant step was taken by which the Knesset added Article 11B to the Authority and Judicial System Regulations of 1948. This amendment had the effect of extending state law, the Israeli judicial system and Israeli administration to every area in "the land of Israel." A day later, an appendix to these regulations was published that included the municipality of Arab Jerusalem. Thus, the Israeli minister of the interior was now empowered to override the municipal laws of Arab Jerusalem by applying the Israeli municipalities law. This step-by-step legislation, the Israelis claimed, did not amount to annexation.

The Israeli government continued to present all these measures as simply an effort to integrate the administration and judicial system of Arab Jerusalem with the rest of Israel. But by July 30, 1980, political annexation finally became a reality, when the government approved the so-called Jerusalem Law as part of a number of other Basic Laws. It is well known that Israel has no written constitution and considers its Basic Laws its constitution. The first article of the Jerusalem law reads, "the whole and unified Jerusalem is the capital of Israel."³⁷ Reversing the "administrative integration" of Arab Jerusalem, thus, would now require an act of the Knesset.

Although initially the Israeli military authorities who invaded Arab Jerusalem were prevented from annexing the administration of the shrines of the Haram area to the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Israelis succeeded in annexing a major waqf property.³⁸ It should be recalled that zealous Jewish groups have made several attempts to take control of the Wailing Wall and its environs since the nineteenth century. Jewish groups first offered to buy the Wall when Jerusalem was under the Egyptian administration of Ibrahim Pasha. But the Muslim families of the city reminded the Egyptian ruler that the Wall, consecrated as a waqf because it was the place where Muhammad tethered his horse, cannot be sold. The wall was always known as the al-Buraq Wall.

Under the British administration, riots broke out between the city's Arabs and the followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionist Zionist leader, in 1922, when he tried to expand Jewish rights of worship around the Wall. The Mandate government concluded, following the recommendations of a committee of inquiry, that the Wall indeed was a Muslim property but that Jewish rights of worship should also be protected.³⁹ Thus, international law, as well as the status quo law dating back to the 1852 firman of Sultan Abd al-Majid, which regulated the rights of the various religious communities in the city, were reinstated.⁴⁰ Clearly, as we are reminded today by a Palestinian scholar, the international community has always recognized that International Law is, by its very nature, secular law. Religious claims, unless regulated by treaty or state edicts, as in the case of the status quo law, have no legal basis.⁴¹

Ever since the Israeli adoption in the spring of 1949 of the policy of the functional internationalization of Jerusalem by limiting international control to the holy places only, Israeli propaganda has focused on lack of access to the Wailing Wall. The Israelis were hoping to see the implementation of Article 8 of the Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Agreement, signed at Rhodes on April 3, 1949, which called for a Special Commission to deal with the issues left over at the end of the fighting. The Special Commission included two representatives from each country and was expected to deal with the issue of free access to the holy sites, as well as guaranteeing freedom of movement on major roadways. But complications ensued, and the commission ceased to exist as of November, 1950.

The desire to placate Western opinion about Christian rights led to an informal agreement between Israel and Jordan to permit the passage of Israel's Arab Christians to Jerusalem for purposes of pilgrimage. The Muslim Arab citizens of Israel, however, were not granted that privilege. Israel attempted to address the issue of Jewish access to the Wall through secret negotiations with the Jordanians. But these talks were terminated by March 1950. The Jordanians, hoping to reach a permanent peace with the Israelis, proposed several solutions. The most serious suggestion involved free access to the wall in exchange for Jordan's control over the Arab sections of West Jerusalem. The Israelis adamantly refused.⁴²

The Israelis continued to call West Jerusalem Israel's capital and proceeded to forcibly alter the status of the Wall following the 1967 War. The entire area surrounding the Wall -- the Maghribi Quarter, heavily populated by Muslim families and once a hostel for North African pilgrims -- was demolished. This operation involved not only the forced removal of 135 Arab families but also the destruction of two Muslim shrines, al-Buraq Mosque and the Tomb of the Sheikh (the latter being the head of a religious school, al-Afdhaliyyah, named after its builder, al-Afdhal, Saladin's son). The reason for this gross disregard for human rights and the status quo law was to create a wide plaza facing the wall in order to accommodate 200,000 Jewish worshipers.⁴³

The Wailing Wall was included in the status quo law later in the nineteenth century through regulations expanding the list of four shrines mentioned initially in the Ottoman firman. The original 1852 law regulated the rights of various Christian denominations in major holy sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Church of the Nativity. The expanded list regulated rights to Muslim and Jewish shrines as well. What gave the 1852 firman international status was its inclusion in the Paris Peace Convention Treaty (1856), the Treaty of Berlin (1878), the Versailles Peace Treaty (1919) and the 1922 Palestine Order in Council of the British Mandate Government.⁴⁴

The onslaught on the Muslim heritage of Jerusalem continues today with the full knowledge of the Israeli government. Jerusalem is fast becoming the Jewish capital of Israel through the activities of zealot Jewish groups, as well as through the efforts of liberal, nationalist Israeli politicians. As soon as East Jerusalem was conquered in June 1967, Israeli officials of the ruling Labor party were also converted to the idea that Jerusalem was holy and should never be given up. More important, talk of rebuilding the Temple on the grounds of Haram al-Sharif became more acceptable than ever before. It should be recalled that the idea of rebuilding the Temple was discouraged strongly by the rabbis. This attitude had been adopted following Bar Kochba's revolt in 135 CE, which cost the Jewish people an enormous number of lives. Only the Messiah, it was believed, was capable of rebuilding the Temple.

In the 1970s, however, the ideas of Rabbi Kook and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, came into vogue. Emphasis on rebuilding the Temple was now reinforced by the teachings of Rabbi Kook's Gush Emunim Movement (Block of the Faithful), which called for the building of settlements within the West Bank and Gaza, commonly referred to as Eretz Yisrael. Redeeming the land of historic Israel was considered a prerequisite for the return of the Messiah. Some members of this movement were accused in 1984 of planning to dynamite the Dome of the Rock in order to facilitate the rebuilding of the Temple. Another group, the Temple Mount Faithful, headed by Gershon Salomon, openly calls for Jewish control of the Haram area and the rebuilding of the Temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock.

Not only is Salomon's movement popular with more than 30 percent of Israeli voters, his views are also embraced by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Furthermore, the idea of rebuilding the Temple on Muslim grounds was quickly accepted by the Israeli government. A group calling itself the Temple Institute, located in the Jewish quarter, has mounted a permanent exhibit of vessels, religious vestments and musical instruments that will be used in the rebuilt Temple. The Institute receives funding from the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Ministry of Education and the Municipality of Jerusalem.⁴⁵

Today, religious Israelis are actively settling not only the Old City but also the suburbs of Jerusalem, which are considered holy, as well. Religious Jews believe that the Messianic era is at hand, since more Jews are gathered in Jerusalem. The Messiah will appear riding a white horse only when Arabs have departed the holy city and its surroundings. To these groups, the June 1967 War was divinely inspired, a war that should have been used to seize the Temple area right then and there. The municipality of Jerusalem, through bureaucratic cleansing and the confiscation of the Arab Jerusalemites' residency cards, contributes to the dream of an Arab-free Jerusalem. This goal is also furthered through the denial of housing permits to the Arabs and the demolition of their houses.

The Arabs face ingenious types of confiscations and expulsions. The municipal government frequently declares certain areas "green" zones in order to prevent the overurbanization of the city and its surroundings. These green belts are supposed to be closed to all people. But in a recent episode related by Arnon Yekutieli, a city council member belonging to the leftist Ratz party, liberal Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek appeared to be willing to engage in any scheme in order to thin out the Arab population of the city. When the mayor revealed plans in the late 1980s to construct 4,500 housing units in conjunction with expanding the city limits to Har Homa (Jebel Abu Ghaneem), the same council member pointed out that these units would be built in a "green" zone. The mayor quickly answered "green for the Arabs" only. When Yekutieli inquired further, Kollek explained that in certain areas planting forests was intended to close the land to the Arabs. Apparently, the Jewish National Fund engages in this scheme knowingly by contributing to the forestation of Jerusalem. The fund considers the trees stand-ins for Jews who have not arrived in Israel yet. The trees will hold the land for future immigrants.⁴⁶

This official and popular collusion to cleanse Jerusalem of its Arabs and establish it as the capital of Israel is shared across party lines. The current mayor, Ehud Olmert of the Likud party, states openly that "our preference" is that Jerusalem not even be mentioned in conjunction with the final-status talks of the Oslo agreements. He is only willing to discuss the administration of the holy sites, not the official status of Jerusalem. The political question "was resolved long ago," he claims.⁴⁷

Thus, the Islamic legacy in Jerusalem is being dismantled piece by piece. The Israeli government and Jerusalem's municipal government are changing the status of the city without respect for traditional rights or international public opinion. Unlike the Muslims, who mostly practiced a policy of tolerance towards the other communities, the Israelis are practicing a policy of exclusion and extreme nationalism. What is also disturbing is the revision of the city's history with a view to minimizing its Islamic heritage and centrality to the Muslim faith. Coupled with the efforts of religious groups to settle the Old City in preparation for the imminent return of the Messiah, this poses great danger to the ecumenical heritage of Jerusalem.

Notes:

1 Abdul Rahman Abbad, "The Theology of the Land: An Islamic Viewpoint," Al-Liqa Journal, Vol. 9, No. 10, June-December, 197, pp. 77-8.
2 Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), pp. 220-5.
3 Izhak Hasson, "The Muslim View of Jerusalem: The Quran and Hadith," in Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben-Shammai, eds., The History of Jerusalem: The Early Muslim Period, 638-1099
4 Kamil J. Asali, "Jerusalem in History: Notes on the Origins of the City and Its Tradition of Tolerance," Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4, Fall, 1994, pp. 37-8.
5 Karen Armstrong, "The Holiness of Jerusalem: Asset or Burden," The Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, Spring, 1998, pp. 15-6.
6 Quoted in: Armstrong, Jerusalem, p. 231.
7 Ibid., p. 225.
8 Moshe Gil, "The Political History of Jerusalem during the early Muslim Period," in Prawer and Ben-Shammai, eds., The History of Jerusalem, p. 13.
9 Armstrong, Jerusalem, pp. 236-9.
10 S. D. Goitein, "Al-Kuds," Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. V (Leiden: S. J. Brill, 1986), pp. 324-7.
11 Abdul Aziz Duri, "Jerusalem in the Early Islamic Period, 7th-11th Centuries AD," in Kamil J. Asali, Jerusalem in History (Brooklyn, NY: Olive Branch Press, 1990), pp. 110-1.
12 Sheikh Mohammed Najeeb al-Ja'bari, "The Covenant of Omar," Al-Liqa Journal, a special issue on Jerusalem, Vol. 7/8, June/December, 196, pp. 83-6.
13 Duri, p. 107.
14 Dan Bahat, "The Physical Infrastructure," in Prawer and Ben-Shammai, eds., The History of Jerusalem, p. 53.
15 Gil, pp. 9-10.
16 Duri, pp. 108-110.
17 Ibid., p. 108.
18 Kamil J. Asali, "Jerusalem under the Ottomans, 1516-1831 AD," in Asali, ed., Jerusalem in History, pp. 201-2.
19 Duri, pp. 113-5.
20 Ibid., p. 116.
21 Ibid., pp. 116-7.
22 Emmanuel Sivan, "The Beginning of the Fadhail in al-Quds Literature," Israel Oriental Studies, vol. I (Tel Aviv University, 1971), pp. 263-71, and M. Sharon, ed., "The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam, " Notes and Studies on the History of the Holy Land under Islamic Rule
23 Khalil Athamneh, "Al-wajh al-siyasi li-madinat al-Quds fi sadr al-Islam wa dawlat Bani Umayyah," (The political facets of the city of Jerusalem at the beginning of Islam and under the Umayyads) Al-Abhath, Vol. 45, 1997, p. 63.
24 Suleiman A. Mourad, "A Note on the Origin of Fadail Bayt al-Maqdis Compilations, Al-Abhath, Vol. 44, 1996, pp. 31-5, 4-1.
25 Duri, pp. 112-3.
26 Gil, p. 14.
27 Duri, p. 113; Gil, p. 14.
28 Gil, p. 32.
29 Donald P. Little, "Jerusalem under the Ayyubids and Mamluks," in Asali, ed., Jerusalem in History, p. 195.
30 Dror Zeevi, An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 4, 23, 33.
31 Amnon Cohen, Jewish Life under Islam: Jerusalem in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 74, 127.
32 Roger Friedland and Richard Hacked, To Rule Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 49-50, 53.
33 Ibid., pp. 59, 81.
34 Ibid., pp. 27-8.
35 Alisa Rubin Peled, "The Crystallization of an Israeli Policy towards Muslim and Christian Holy Places, 1948-1955," The Muslim World, special issue "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict," Vol. LXXXIV, Nos. 1-2, January-April, 1994, pp. 94-7, 104-5.
36 For a full treatment of Israel's takeover of the Awqaf administration in 1948 and the confiscation of the properties of pious foundations, see Michael Dumper, Islam and Israel: Muslim Religious Endowments and the Jewish State (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994).
37 Ibrahim Mohammad Shaban, "Arab Rights in Jerusalem," Al-Liqa Journal, a special issue on Jerusalem, Vol. 7/8, June/December, 1996, pp. 96-9.
38 For the full record of the Muslim-Israeli confrontation over the Haram al-Sharif in 1967, see Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem, the Torn City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976).
39 A.L. Tibawi, "Special Report: The Destruction of an Islamic Heritage in Jerusalem," Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring, 1980, p. 182.
40 Chad F. Emmett, "The Status Quo Solution for Jerusalem," The Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Winter, 1997, p. 19.
41 Shaban, p. 103.
42 Gabriel Padon, "The Divided City: 1948-1967," in Msgr. John M. Osterreicher and Anne Sinai, eds., Jerusalem (New York, NY: The John Day Company, 1974), pp. 87, 91-2, 97. Free Israeli access was part of an agreement which also called for the repatriation of Arab refugees. When Israel consistently refused to abide by this, the Jordanians refused to implement the Wailing Wall agreement. See Tibawi, p. 183N13.
43 Ibid., pp. 181, 183, 183, N15, 186.
44 Emmett, p. 20.
45 Armstrong, "The Holiness of Jerusalem," pp. 8-9.
46 Friedland and Hecht, pp. 173, 211.
47 "Interview with the Honorable Ehud Olmert -- Fighting for the Status of Jerusalem," Middle East Insight, January-February, 1999, p. 29. (New York and Jerusalem: New York University Press and Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1996), pp. 352-3, 352, N11, pp. 354-7. (Jerusalem: 1976), pp. 35-41.

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