Mahmoud “Fifty Holocausts” Abbas’ latest outrage: his claim that allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount – the holiest site in Judaism – will start World War III. “Antisemite Abbas warns that allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount will start World War III,” Elder of Ziyon, August 22, 2022:
Sunday was the anniversary of the 1969 attempt by Denis Michael Rohan, a mentally ill Australian Christian, to burn the Al Aqsa Mosque.
He told police his study of the Bible had convinced him that God wanted him to destroy the mosque.
At his trial he said he was trying to hasten the return of Jesus Christ, fulfilling the will of God communicated to him through the Bible.
“God told me that because I have obeyed him, I will be lifted up above the Earth and God shall bring all the maidens of Israel to me to bear offspring to God’s glory,” he told the court.
Clearly Denis Michael Rohan was a lone lunatic hoping for a heavenly reward, not an Israeli Jew trying to burn down Al-Aqsa. But Mahmoud Abbas wants you to believe he was an “Israeli extremist.”
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement that threatened a global war if Israel “harms” Al Aqsa, and linked the 1969 arson with Jews visiting the Temple Mount. The official Palestinian Wafa news agency wrote:
The Presidency said: “Infringing upon the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and all our Islamic and Christian sanctities means igniting a religious war whose serious consequences and repercussions no one can bear, not only on the region, but on the whole world, calling on the international community to intervene to prevent this in order to save international stability and security.”
Abbas knows full well that his fellow Arabs have ceased to care very much about the Palestinians, who are no longer a main Arab concern. Indeed, all of the Arab states save Algeria have ended all financial aid to the Palestinians. They have grown tired of the Palestinians with their permanent begging bowl. Abbas nonetheless insists that the Palestinians are still very much at the center of things for his fellow Arabs, so much so that any infringement by the hated Israelis on Al-Aqsa’s autonomy or existence could set off “World War III” — though how exactly that would happen, and what countries would be on which side, are not mentioned.
Israel has had control of the Temple Mount since the Six-Day War. In the 55 years since, the Israelis have scrupulously maintained the rights of Muslims to pray freely on the Temple Mount, continuing to allow the Jordanian-administered Waqf to be in charge of the Muslim holy sites, including Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Only in times of great tension and riots on the Mount, or in Jerusalem, have the Israeli authorities temporarily closed the Temple Mount to visitors, both Muslims and Jews. And the only permanent restrictions enforced by Israel on visitors have been those placed not on Muslims but on Jews, who can visit the Mount only for four hours a day (three hours in the morning, one hour in the afternoon) and only on five days of the week. Furthermore, Jews are prohibited from praying allowed or silently while on the Mount, and are prevented from bringing prayer shawls, prayer books, and tefillin with them onto the Mount. It is not Muslims, but Jewish visitors, who are constrained by the Israeli police.
She indicated that Al-Aqsa and all the holy sites in the occupied city of Jerusalem are still targeted by the Israeli occupation and settlers, stressing that the policy of incursions constitutes a continuation of the crime of burning Al-Aqsa and a continuation of the plan to Judaize the city and prejudice its sanctities.
How is Al-Aqsa “targeted by the Israeli occupation and settlers”? Do they attack Al-Aqsa? Do they try to set fire to it as the Australian Christian Denis Michael Rohan did in 1969? Isn’t it the Muslims themselves who routinely use Al-Aqsa to store weapons – rocks and bottles ready to be fitted with explosives – and thereby undermine its religious nature? Some Palestinians even use Al-Aqsa as a base from which to throw rocks at Jewish visitors and the Israeli police, or to replenish their supply of weapons – chiefly large rocks – which they then throw from the Mount at Jews praying at the Western Wall far below.
Today, August 21, coincides with the 53rd anniversary of the burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Jewish extremist Denis Michael, which comes in light of the continuation of the daily Israeli attacks and violations against Al-Aqsa and its desecration, by sponsoring the settlers’ visits and holding their provocative Talmudic prayers.
Mahmoud Abbas deliberately leaves off the last name ”Rohan,” because it is obviously not a Jewish name, whereas “Michael” as a last name could well be Jewish. Abbas, of course, knows perfectly well that Denis Michael Rohan was an Australian Christian, but when has the truth ever stopped him? For Abbas, the Australian arsonist is most usefully described as a “Jewish extremist.” Many, alas, who were not around in 1969, will believe him.
Abbas’ antisemitism isn’t only his comparing the lives of Palestinians to the Holocaust. His antisemitism can be seen every single day, in statements like this, that declare that respectful Jewish prayer on the holiest Jewish site is an excuse to start a war. It is claiming, year after year,that a mentally ill Christian sheep shearer is a Jewish extremist and part of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Islamic holy places. This is a direct continuation of the rhetorical attacks against Jews planning to destroy Al Aqsa that the Nazi-collaborating Mufti said a hundred years ago.
For decades, Palestinian Arabs have been hysterically warning about Jewish plans to destroy Al-Aqsa. Such charges began with the acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the 1920s to the 1948 war, Hajj Amin El Husseini. Husseini spent the war years in Berlin, where he met Hitler and, as an enthusiast for the Final Solution, was befriended by Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann. Since 1967, when all of the Old City of Jerusalem came under Israeli control, the Israelis have made no move to take over, or to damage in any way, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. If there had been such an attempt one can be sure that Mahmoud Abbas would mention it. The. best he can come up with is the attempted arson of Al-Aqsa in 1969 that he falsely attributes to a “Jewish extremist.”
The English Wafa site, of course, doesn’t publish these explicit lies, incitement and hate against Jews. This daily Jew-hatred and incitement is meant for a Palestinian audience, not for the world to see. The international media plays its part, not bothering to report on the explicit antisemitism of the Palestinian “moderate” leader that is spouted every day and that can be seen in official Palestinian communications in Arabic.
What Abbas says in Ramallah stays in Ramallah; it is only news when he forgets himself and spreads the same hate in Europe.
Abbas makes sure to provide the English-language version of the official Palestinian news site, Wafa, with a sanitized version of his remarks. Thus he can continue to be as extreme in his anti-Israel and antisemitic remarks as he wishes for the Arabic -language programs of Wafa, secure in the knowledge that the international media will rarely discover what he actually said.
Exactly how World War III would suddenly “break out” over Al-Aqsa Mosque, when in 55 years no Israeli – just a lone demented Australian Christian – has tried to damage the mosque, is entirely unclear. But Abbas doesn’t have to make sense. No one has forced him to before. Why should he have to start now?
