Conference taveng::bagels

914.0. "Public Opinion, and the Palestinian Arab Prophet" by TAV02::FEINBERG (Don Feinberg) Tue Mar 27 1990 10:28

                              The Public Opinion War



                            Eliyahu Tal / Sarah Honig



              [without permission from Jerusalem Post, 16 Mar, 1990]







      Even before the US renewed questions on the status of  Jerusalem  this

      week,  says  publicist  Eliyahu  Tal, "the Arabs have been busier than

      ever, selling the world the idea that  the  city  is  one  of  Islam's

      holiest  sites  --  wrested  from them by `Jewish agression' - and the

      capital of the Palestinian nation.



           Tal, who is completing a study on changing attitudes to Jerusalem

      for  the  Anti-defamation  League  of B'nai B'rith, adds that the Arab

      message is definitely gaining currency.  Recently, Israel TV  featured

      a  clip  of  a  Soviet  TV interview with the caretakers of a Tashkent

      mosque.  They hardly knew where Israel was located, but spoke heatedly

      about the "vile Zionist attempt to set alight the Mosque of Omar."



           "People don't often realize that propaganda can  have  such  dire

      consequences,"  he  warns,  "such  as  the  current  threats by Moslem

      extremists against the Jews of Uzbekistan."



           "Ever since the Australian Michael  Rohan  set  fire  to  al-Aksa

      mosque  on  the  Temple  Mount in 1979, the anniversary of his deed is

      marked throughout the Arab world with a virulent anti-Israel campaign.



           "To date, countless stamps detailing `Israel's crime'  have  been

      put  out.   This  immense  exposure  highlights  the fact that the far

      holier shrines of Mecca and Medina seldom feature in Arab philately.



           "The BBC," he continues, "recently called Jerusalem the `heart if

      Islam.'  Jerusalem  is frequently regarded as `the cradle of the three

      monotheistic  faiths.'  All  this,"  Tal  argues,  "is  nonsense,   as

      historically  the  city  is neither the cradle or heart of Islam.  For

      over a millennium, it was an insignificant town  in  the  Arab  world.

      Whereas Christians and Jews made pilgrimages to it over the centuries,

      Jerusalem hardly featured in Moslem consciousness until the Mufti Amin

      el-Husseini turned it into an explosive political issue."



           Tal points to Saudi King Fahd as exemplifying what he calls "Arab

      hypocrisy" regarding Jerusalem.  "Fahd who had called for a jihad -- a

      holy war -- to free Jerusalem from the `religious and racist arrogance

      of  Zionism,'  never  visited  the city and the sites he claims are so

      holy.  Fahd did not, during the 19 years of Arab Jordanian rule,  take

      the short flight from his palace to the sacred sites," Tal says.



           But  the  most  vehement  exponents  of  the  Islamic  stand   on

      Jerusalem,  says  Tal,  are  the  Shi'ites  with  their  battle cry of

      liberating Jerusalem.  "The fact is that they do not even  uphold  the

      Sunni  claim  that Jerusalem is the third holiest site after Mecca and

      Medina.  On the Shi'ite  scale  of  sanctity,  Mecca  and  Medina  are

      followed by Nejef, located 160 kilometers south of Baghdad.  It is the


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      birthplace of Mohammed's son-in-law, the Caliph Ali."



           Among the propaganda ploys Tal lists in his  ADL  report  is  the

      claim  that  "Jews  are  newcomers to the city, that they only arrived

      here  with  the  `Zionist'  invasion,  and  that  they  are  not  even

      descendants   of   the   Bible's   Jews.    This  conveniently  ignore

      uninterrupted Jewish residence in Jerusalem throughout  the  ages,  as

      well  as  the  fact  that  150  years  ago,  Jews were the majority in

      Jerusalem."



           A recent Jordan TV documentary on the history of Jerusalem  dwelt

      in  detail  on  the  Jebusite  past  of  Jerusalem,  claiming that the

      Jebusites were none other than the  Palestinian  Arabs,  Tal  relates.

      The  program,  which  indulged in such fancies as recipes for Jebusite

      cuisine,  speedily  glossed  over  Jerusalem's  history  between   the

      Jebusites  and the Arab conquest.  The only mention of the Jews was to

      blame them for murdering "the Arab Palestinian prophet ...  Jesus."



           [The  article  is  accompanied  with  three  pictures,  hard   to

      reproduce here...  The captions and descriptions are:



      1.  The Kuwaiti stamp at right, depicting a shattered Magen David, was

          issued  on  "International  day of Solidarity with the Palestinian

          People" (29 November 1984).



      2.  A  luridly  illustrated  Jordanian  souvenir  sheet  recalls  `The

          Massacre  of  the Palestinian Refugees in Sabra and Shatilla Camps

          By Israel'



          (The sheet shows a picture of  a  bandaged,  wounded  child  in  a

          hospital bed with a look of terrible pain on his face.)



          (This, of course, ignores the fact that the Christians carried out

          the  massacre,  and  also the later repeat performance in the same

          place, years after "Israel in Lebanon",  to  say  nothing  of  the

          current situation.)



      3.  The third  is  a  picture  of  a  bloodied  dagger  on  a  map  of

          `Palestine'  (the dagger is stuck into a bloodied Jerusalem), on a

          Kuwaiti stamp marking the  `Twentieth  Anniversary  of  the  cruel

          aggression and massacre of Deir Yassin in Arab Palestine'.



          (The stamp is dated "9th April 1948-1968".  The map of `Palestine'

          is  a  map  of  Israel,  plus  Yehuda  and  Shomron,  minus  Ramat

          HaGolan.)]