by Aaron Klein
"We are proud to turn these lands, especially these parts that were for long time the symbol of occupation and injustice, like the synagogue, into a military base and source of fire against the Zionists and the Zionist entity," said Muhammad Abdul-El, a spokesman and leader for the Hamas-allied Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization.
"The liberated lands of the destroyed ugly and Nazi settlements [Gush Katif] is our property, and we have the right to do whatever we feel is suitable for the struggle against the occupation and for the general interest of the Palestinian people," the Committees spokesman told me.
The Committees is a coalition of terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank responsible for launching hundreds of rockets from Gaza aimed at nearby Jewish towns. The Committees' rocket attacks have devastated Israeli population centers nearby, including Sderot, a bustling city of twenty-five thousand and the port city of Ashkelon, home to strategic industrial facilities and one of Israel's largest electricity generators.
Incredibly, Abdel-El blamed the Palestinian desecration of the Gaza synagogues on the Jewish state, claiming the decision to leave the structures in tact was part of an Israeli conspiracy.
"The Zionists left these so-called synagogues in order to make that one day reporters like Aaron Klein would raise the pathetic and rude argument about what we have done to the poor Zionists' holy places. [Israel] left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them," Abdel-El said.
There you have it. The Palestinians are not to blame for acting like animals and burning down holy Jewish sites; instead the synagogue desecrations were Israel's fault and part of a vast Zionist plot to taint the Palestinian image.
Abdel-El was right in one sense, though. Israel should have known what the Palestinians would do once they got their grimy hands on the synagogues. There was no question the structures would be desecrated. Even Palestinian leaders admitted as much, showing just how much faith they have in their own society.
Prior to Israel's Gaza withdrawal, while the debate regarding the fate of the synagogues was still raging, Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat told me he begged Israel to destroy the structures. He too accused Israel of trying to make the Palestinians look bad.
"We of course have the highest respect for Judaism and the Jewish religion, but we cannot guarantee the synagogues won't be desecrated," said Erekat, speaking by cell phone from Gaza City in September 2005. "We are very upset at Israel about this decision to throw their problems on us by leaving the synagogues. They are trying to make us look like barbarians and now we're stuck in a situation about whether to protect. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't."
Trying to make us look like barbarians? Mr. Erekat, the Palestinian mob that destroyed the Gaza synagogues are the worst kind of barbarians humanity has to offer.
According to Abdel-El, whose clan dominates large swaths of Gaza, the mob destruction of the synagogues was not planned but was a spontaneous outburst of "happiness" by young Palestinian men and children:
The looting and burning of the synagogues was a great joy. There was no intention to desecrate them but this was part of the great joy the young men had when they destroyed everything that could remind us of the occupation. I want to say that all photos and video prove that those who destroyed or burnt were children and young people. It was in an unplanned expression of happiness that these synagogues were destroyed.
When I heard that I couldn't contain my anger.
"As a Jew and as someone who prayed in the Gaza synagogues I was horrified by what I saw when the Palestinians destroyed the holy sites. You should be absolutely ashamed of Palestinian society and ashamed of yourself for calling the burnings an expression of joy," I heatedly told Abdel-El. The terror spokesman shot back:
I cannot believe how much guts and arrogance you have to accuse us of destroying and not respecting religion and the holy sites of others. You, would you call your son Muhammad? I am sure not. We the Muslims give our children the names of Moses and Jesus and Mary and this small example is enough to prove we respect the religions of others and shows who are the racists who express their hostility to Allah's religion.
Is Abdel-El kidding? The only reason some Muslims name their sons Moses or Jesus is because their religion claims these figures were prophets who foreshadowed Islam. They're not honoring Judaism by naming a son Moses-they're honoring Islam.
Abdel-El went on to accuse Judaism of disrespecting other religions' sites. He charged Israel turned "hundreds" of mosques into houses of prostitution and bars, a claim that has no foundation in reality.
"No nation in the world like the Jews has aggressed, destroyed, and desecrated the holy sites of other religions," he said.
I asked Abdel-El what a synagogue meant to him. He replied it's a symbol that represents a "divine religion that falsified the Torah."
"The Torah is not the same one that Allah gave to Moses. But although the Jewish Torah was falsified we respect all places that belong to the different religions."
Joseph, My Heart Weeps for Thee
And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.
Exodus 13:19
And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought from sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.
Joshua 24:32
In one of the most flagrant, vile desecrations of holy sites in the history of humankind, on October 7, 2000, after Israeli troops retreated from a post just outside the northern West Bank city of Nablus following coordinated, deadly attacks against Jews there, scores of Palestinians stormed Joseph's Tomb and nearly destroyed the site believed to be the burial place of the biblical patriarch Joseph-the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery and later became the viceroy of Egypt. Joseph's Tomb is the third holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount and the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Within hours of the Israeli evacuation, smoke was seen billowing from the hollowed tomb as a crowd of Palestinians burned Jewish prayer books and other holy objects. Rioters used pickaxes, hammers, and later bulldozers to tear apart large swaths of the tomb structure and a beautiful yeshiva erected at the site. The dome of the Jewish tomb was painted green, and a mosque was subsequently erected in its place.
Seven years later, I caught up with the terrorist directors of the tomb desecration. The leader of the main group responsible told me the Israeli retreat from Joseph's Tomb "proves that when we are determined and when we apply military pressure against the enemy our attacks will work and bring about the defeat of [Israel]." More from him shortly.
Joseph's Tomb is located outside the modern day city of Nablus. The vicinity of the tomb is widely acknowledged by historians and archeologists to be the important biblical city of Shechem, where Abraham built an altar to God upon his migration to Canaan and Jacob purchased a plot of land at which his son Joseph was later buried.
The Torah describes how Jacob purchased the land plot in Shechem, which was given as inheritance to his sons and was used to reinter Joseph, whose bones were taken out of Egypt during the Jewish exodus. Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, are also said to be buried at the site.
Joseph's Tomb has never undergone modern archeological excavation, so some Western archeologists say the site cannot be proven authentic. But to me and to most Jews and to anyone regarding the site through a Biblical and historical perspective, the tomb is absolutely one of Judaism's holiest sites.
Joseph's life story is one of the most complete and instructive narratives of any personality in the Torah. The eleventh son of Jacob and son of matriarch Rachel, Joseph was thrown into a pit and then sold into slavery by his brothers, who were jealous that Joseph was Jacob's favorite
son.
After he was falsely accused of trying to commit adultery with his master's wife, Joseph found himself in an Egyptian prison, where he made a name for himself as a talented interpreter of dreams. Among his fans was a temporarily imprisoned cupbearer for the Egyptian Pharaoh. The Torah relates the story of how Pharaoh once had a strange dream he needed help understanding and the cupbearer remembered Joseph, recommending the prisoner's services to the Egyptian ruler.
Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh's dream about seven fat cows and seven gaunt cows as meaning Egypt would have seven years of plenty and seven years of famine; he advised Pharaoh to immediately appoint someone to oversee the storage of vast quantities of food to survive the famine.
Pleased with Joseph's interpretation, Pharaoh made Joseph viceroy over the land of Egypt. Seven years of bounty were indeed followed by the famine Joseph had predicted and which Egypt overcame due to Joseph's rule. Joseph was eventually reunited with his brothers and father and maintained his Egyptian leadership position until he died an old man.
Shortly before his death, Joseph asked the Israelites to vow they would resettle his bones in the land of Canaan-biblical Israel. As detailed in the Torah, that oath was fulfilled when Joseph's remains were taken by the Jews from Egypt and reburied at the plot of land Jacob had earlier purchased in Shechem, which is believed to be the site of the tomb.
Yehuda Leibman, who until the Israeli retreat from Joseph's tomb in 2000 was director of a yeshiva constructed at tomb, explained, "The sages tell us that there are three places which the world cannot claim were stolen by the Jewish people: the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Joseph's Tomb."
Israel first gained control of Nablus and the neighboring site of Joseph's Tomb in the 1967 Six Day War. The 1993 Oslo Accords signed by Arafat and Prime Minister Yizhack Rabin called for the area surrounding the tomb site to be placed under Palestinian jurisdiction but allowed for continued Jewish visits to the Tomb and the construction of an Israeli military outpost alongside the holy site to ensure secure access to the Tomb for yeshiva students and for Jewish and Christian worshipers.
Leibman's yeshiva, the Od Yosef Chai School (which is Hebrew for "Joseph lives on"), was built at the tomb in the mid1980s and housed volumes of holy books and a Torah scroll. Yeshiva students would arrive at the Tomb as early as six in the morning and would study there most days until midnight. They continued learning at the school daily even after the tomb area was transferred to Palestinian control. The tomb's Israeli military outpost protected the students.
There is data suggesting for more than a thousand years Jews of various origins worshipped at Joseph's Tomb. The Samaritans, a local tribe that follows a religion based on the Torah, say they trace their lineage back to Joseph himself and that they worshipped at the tomb site for more than seventeen hundred years.
But as they do with many important sites of other religions, the Palestinians claim Joseph's tomb is not a Jewish holy site at all but a Muslim one. Muslims say an important Islamic cleric who died about 250 years ago named Joseph Al-Dwaik is buried there and that the tomb is named after him. They claim biblical Joseph, who they say was not a Jew but a prophet for Islam, is buried at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the ancient West Bank city of Hebron. (Muslims also call the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Judaism's second holiest site, a Muslim holy site that has no connection to the Jewish people.)
Following the transfer of control of Nablus and the general area encompassing the tomb to the Palestinians in the early 1990s, there were a series of orchestrated outbreaks of violence in which Arab rioters and gunmen attempted to force Israel to retreat entirely by removing its lone military outpost from the tomb, thus forcing an end to Jewish worship at the site.
Six Israeli soldiers were killed and many others, including yeshiva students, were wounded in September 1996, when Palestinian rioters and gunmen attempted to overtake the tomb, reportedly with the help of Palestinian police.
Eyewitness Hillel Leiberman, who studied at the Tomb's yeshiva, recounted:
After a large demonstration in the central square of Nablus, Arabs began to march on Joseph's Tomb. Within minutes, the tomb was surrounded on all sides by thousands of Arabs, who began to pelt the compound with rocks and firebombs. In addition, the same Arab policemen who regularly served on the joint patrol with the Israelis now began firing at the Israeli soldiers with their Kalashnikov machine guns.
Israeli soldiers [who were called as reinforcements] retreated into the thick-walled building which encompasses Joseph's tomb, and the Arabs advanced into the yeshiva [which neighbors the tomb], after setting fire to an army post and caravan which housed the Israeli soldiers. At this point, the Israeli soldiers again radioed for help.
The Arabs, upon entering the yeshiva, engaged in a pogrom reminiscent of scenes from Kristallnacht, when synagogues in Germany were ransacked by Nazis prior to the Holocaust. Sacred texts [in the yeshiva] were burned by Palestinians or torn to shreds, talises (Jewish prayer shawls) and sacred tefillin (phylacteries) were thrown to the ground, and anything of value was pillaged. The yeshiva's office equipment, refrigerators and freezers, beds, tables, and chairs, and all the food, were stolen.
The library was set afire, the structure of the yeshiva building was extensively damaged, and everything in it was in ruins. The only exception was the building of Joseph's Tomb itself, where the Israeli soldiers had taken cover, and the yeshiva's Torah scrolls, which the Israeli soldiers miraculously managed to save in the course of the riots.
Eventually, the Israeli soldiers gained control of the tomb. But the 1996 riots whetted the Palestinian appetite and served as prelude for what would come next. Israel failed to arrest or take any action against the perpetrators of the deadly riots, even though the leadership of the unrest, many of whom I later interviewed, was well known to the Jewish state.
Then-Palestinian leader Arafat painted the Joseph's Tomb riots as a victory for his people and a first step toward the eventual destruction of Israel. Arafat escalated tension on the Palestinian street as a way of pressuring the Israelis to retreat from more territory. Official Palestinian media and West Bank mosques ramped-up rhetoric concerning the "liberation" of Islamic holy sites and regular land. Sites like Joseph's Tomb, which previously held no great value in Islam whatsoever, were suddenly positioned by the Palestinian propaganda machine as stepping stones along the greater path toward the "liberation" of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the rest of the "Muslim lands of Palestine."
The Palestinians continued to attack Joseph's Tomb with regular orchestrated shootings and the lobbing of firebombs and Molotov cocktails. Security for Jews at the site increasingly became more difficult to maintain. Rumors circulated in 2000 that Prime Minister Ehud Barak would evacuate the Israeli military outpost and give the tomb to Arafat as a "peacemaking gesture." The Israeli army started denying Jewish visits to the tomb on certain days due to prospects of Arab violence.
Arafat returned from U.S.-mediated peace negotiations at Camp David in September 2000 and started his terror infitada.
Then the Palestinians went for the kill regarding Joseph's Tomb during the period of one bloody week in October and the cowardly Israeli prime minister caved in.
On October 1, 2000, Palestinian gunmen from Arafat's military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror organization, attacked Israeli border police at Joseph's Tomb. An Israeli policeman was shot by a Brigades gunman and bled to death after Palestinian forces refused to allow for his emergency medical evacuation.
Heavy fighting at the Tomb continued on October 2.
The next day, clashes led by the Al Aqsa Brigades injured an Israeli policeman and ten Palestinian rioters.
On October 4, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz sent troop reinforcements to the Tomb but noted he was empowered to withdraw the troops if the danger to them became "too high." Barak met with Arafat and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Paris to reach an agreement to end the Joseph's Tom
b violence. A deal was concluded in which the Palestinians stated they will stop attacks and refrain from entering the Tomb; Israelis would pull back forces to pre-violence positions.
Rioting again erupted on October 5 after Palestinian clerics used the funeral of a Palestinian rioter who died of wounds sustained two days earlier to incite the masses. Gun battles raged at Joseph's Tomb between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli forces.
On October 6, Barak gave in to the Palestinian terror campaign and decided to completely evacuate the resting place of Joseph and give to the Palestinians sacred grounds promised in the Torah as an inheritance to the Jews.
An Israeli evacuation was undertaken the next day, beginning at 3:00 a.m., as soldiers clandestinely remove holy materials and a Torah scroll from the site of Joseph's Tomb. But Palestinian gunmen led by Arafat's Brigades terror squad fire at an Israeli convoy as it departed the Tomb, injuring one border policeman. The Israelis retreated completely.
Within less than an hour Palestinian rioters overtook Joseph's Tomb and began to ransack the site despite Muslim claims the Tomb is the burial place of an important Muslim cleric.
Palestinians hoisted a Muslim flag over the tomb. Amin Maqbul, an official from Arafat's office, visited the tomb to deliver a speech declaring, "Today was the first step to liberate Al Aqsa."
Palestinian mobs continued to ransack the Tomb, tearing apart books, destroying prayer stands, and grinding out stone carvings in the Tomb's interior.
One reporter described the scene: "The site was reduced to smoldering rubble -festooned with Palestinian and Islamic flags-by a cheering Arab crowd..."
On October 8 the bullet-riddled body of yeshiva student Lieberman, who penned the earlier eyewitness account, was found in a cave near the tomb. Leiberman, whose father was a professor at my alma mater, Yeshiva University in New York, had disappeared a few days earlier after he went to investigate reports of violence at Joseph's Tomb.
