Nearly 80 years ago – decades before Israel was established as a Jewish state – then-Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al Husseini (who subsequently allied with Adolf Hitler) embarked on a campaign of incitement to foment a jihad against Jews.
His focal point? The area near the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, and more specifically, the Western Wall — the last remnant of the Jewish Holy Temple compound. The canard upon which he based his campaign was that Jews were planning to destroy or take over Muslim holy sites. His battle cry? “Defend [Muslim] Holy Places.” The result? Anti-Jewish pogroms carried out across Palestine, with massacres in Hebron and Safed that killed, mutilated or wounded hundreds of people. (For more details, see here.)
Haj Amin al Husseini’s battle cry was so successful in igniting a jihad that it became the go-to slogan and theme to promote anti-Jewish violence in the Middle East. During Jordan’s 19-year, illegal occupation of Jerusalem, Jews were barred from visiting their holy sites and the theme became a non-issue, but since Israel’s recapture of the area in 1967, it has been used successfully by consecutive Palestinian leaders and has become part and parcel of the campaign to separate Jewish people from their holiest site. (For more details, see here.)
Journalists are under tremendous pressure from the Palestinian Authority and Abbas to adopt words that reject the history of the area to promote Arab/Muslim supremacy there. For example, a “media advisory” put out in November 2014 by the PLO Negotiation Affairs Department warned journalists not to refer to the site as “disputed” and to reject any non-Muslim terminology in regard to the site as invalid.
The theme is part of an aggressive Palestinian campaign to turn public opinion against Jewish history and rights. It is one that reverses the perpetrator and victim. Muslim perpetrators of violence to deny non-Muslims their freedom of visitation are now the victims, while Jewish history, rights and attachment to their holiest site are pronounced null and void.
Most recently, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas successfully employed the theme to incite a violent jihad against Israelis. (For more details see here.)
We have criticized some in the media for abandoning their journalistic duty to highlight the lie that is employed to incite violence, or by downplaying it as a valid position. But now AJ+, Al Jazeera’s social media news channel that has replaced the failed Al Jazeera America television channel, has taken it a step further by actively creating content promoting the false Temple Mount propaganda that is used to incite Muslims, posting a film about the recent Palestinian perpetrated violence on the Temple Mount that again reverses the perpetrators and the victims.
Watch the Al Jazeera film here and then view the Stand With Us video response below.
After CAMERA alerted Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO) to the objectionable clip, the GPO asked Al Jazeera to remove it. It remains to be seen if and when that happens.
Originally published on camera.org.
Contributed by CAMERA Research Analyst Ricki Hollander.
