Solomon’s pools | First One Through

The United Nations is right about one thing.

Words matter.

This week, the UN will commemorate the genocide at Srebrenica under the theme “From Words to Violence.“ The lesson is that language is never merely language. The words societies choose shape how they understand people, history, and ultimately what actions become acceptable.

That lesson should not stop with Srebrenica.

Over the past month, another campaign of words has accelerated – not directly aimed at the destruction of lives, but at the erasure of history.

A month ago, I wrote about the battle over Solomon’s Pools. At the time, the concern was that one of Judaism’s great archaeological treasures was being detached from the people who built it.

Today, the campaign has moved far beyond stewardship.

The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, now repeatedly describes Solomon’s Pools as “Palestinian archaeological and heritage sites,” “Palestinian cultural heritage,” and “an integral part of the Palestinian people’s national identity.” It accuses Israel of attempting to erase the site’s Palestinian identity while announcing plans to seek UNESCO protection for that very narrative.

This is historical revisionism.

For more than two thousand years, Solomon’s Pools have been recognized as part of the ancient water system that supplied Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Yet the new narrative increasingly erases that Jewish history while attempting to replace it with a Palestinian Arab one.

That is how historical erasure begins, with words.

It continues with cultural appropriation – taking another civilization’s achievements and presenting them as one’s own. A site built to sustain Jewish Jerusalem is no longer described as part of Jewish civilization, but as an expression of “Palestinian national identity.”

Solomon’s Pools is not an isolated example.

Over the years, Palestinian rhetoric has increasingly described biblical figures and ancient Jewish sites through a Palestinian national lens.

Ancient Israelites and Jews have been called “Palestinian Hebrews.”
Jesus has been falsely recast as a Palestinian Arab.
The Jewish Temples are falsely described as being located in Yemen.
Ancient Jewish heritage sites have increasingly been recast as Palestinian heritage, such as the Jewish Temple Mount being only called the “al Aqsa Complex” and as a purely Islamic site to prevent Jews from praying at their holiest site.
The Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron is only called “Ibrahimi Mosque”, also solely an Islamic site.

Individually these statements may appear rhetorical. Collectively they reveal a sustained and malicious effort to replace one people’s historical memory with another’s national story.

When a people’s documented history is systematically erased, it reveals a bigotry directed not only against living Jews but against Jewish civilization itself. It reflects national chauvinism, elevating one national identity by absorbing the achievements of another.

And it does this with particular purpose: to strip Jews of their indigeneity in their holy land, to recast them as interlopers and “European settler colonizers” which is deeply infused with a righteous sense of xenophobia.

That is why UNESCO’s role matters.

An organization created to preserve humanity’s cultural heritage should never become an instrument of historical revisionism. If it legitimizes narratives that obscure the well-documented Jewish origins of sites like Solomon’s Pools, it is no longer merely protecting monuments. It is helping redefine what future generations believe those monuments represent.

Turkish media TRT lies to the world that Solomon’s Pools are a 6,000 year-old Canaanite site, as Palestinian Arabs have attempted to recast themselves as ancient Canaanites to pre-date the Jewish forefather Abraham

The danger is larger than a single archaeological site. Words are attempting to erase Jewish history and heritage throughout the Jewish homeland.

The United Nations is correct: words can lead to terrible consequences.

And these words and actions have a particularly dangerous strain of antisemitism. It does not involve attacking Jews physically, which Palestinian Arabs have done repeatedly at scale. It is an insidious attempt to get the world to endorse a narrative that Jews are foreigners in the land to frame a future without the Jewish State. This is the destruction and genocide that emerges from language.

When international institutions lend their authority to that process, they cease to be guardians of history and become participants in its erasure.

The Palestinian Authority has announced plans to transform Solomon’s Pools, between Bethlehem and Efrat, into a major Palestinian tourist, cultural, and religious destination. The project includes a mosque, tourism infrastructure, educational programs, international advocacy campaigns, and efforts to preserve what officials describe as the site’s historical and demographic character.

The irony is hard to miss.

Solomon’s Pools are among the most important surviving engineering works of ancient Judea. Built during the Second Temple period, the reservoirs and aqueducts supplied water to Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple. Their existence is evidence of the Jewish civilization that built and governed Jerusalem over two thousand years ago, that grew the city towards the end of the Second Temple period to approximately 50,0000 people.

*Mazar, A.A. 2002. Survey of the aqueducts to Israel. In The Aqueducts of Israel, ed. Amit D., Patrich J., and Hirschfeld Y., 212–244.*

Without Jewish Jerusalem, there would be no Solomon’s Pools.

Yet Palestinian officials speak of preserving the site’s historical character while proposing changes that have no connection to the history that made the site significant.

If the goal is to preserve the site’s historical character, why alter it?
If the goal is to protect its demographic character, what demographic character existed when the reservoirs were built?

The people who built Solomon’s Pools were Jews. The reservoirs were built to serve a Jewish capital. The aqueducts carried water to the Jewish Temple. The site’s significance is inseparable from ancient Jewish Jerusalem.

So why place a mosque at a reservoir built by Jews to serve Jewish Jerusalem while claiming to preserve its historical character?

The answer appears in the language of the project itself. Officials speak of strengthening Palestinian presence, reinforcing Palestinian identity, and mobilizing international support for Palestinian claims.

This is not preservation. This is a battle of historical replacement.

A generation from now, visitors may encounter a mosque, Palestinian tourism facilities, and Palestinian historical narratives. What may become increasingly distant is the reason the site exists at all: it was built by Jews to serve Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people.

“We know that the prime Zionist goal is emptying this land of its Christians and Muslims. They [the Jews] don’t want anyone here other than themselves. The Christians before the Muslims, because the Christians were here on this land before the Muslims… the Christian is the brother of the Muslim. They celebrate together, suffer together, live together, work together, and fight together against their enemy, because we have been the owners of this land since this land’s existence… We will remain in this land forever, while the attackers [the Jews] have no place in Jerusalem and no place here.” – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas March 2023

That is how historical replacement works. The monument is not destroyed. The identity of its builders is replaced.

Solomon’s Pools stand as evidence of Jewish statehood, Jewish engineering, and Jewish life in the land of Israel long before the rise of Christianity, Islam, or modern Palestinian nationalism.