Judea, Long, Long Before Muhammad

Long before the Islamic prophet Muhammad was born, long before Arab armies invaded Jerusalem, there was Judea.

It was called Judea in the Books of Maccabees. The Greek geographer Strabo called it Judea. Josephus called it Judea. The Roman historian Tacitus called it Judea. The Christian New Testament called it Judea. Rome governed a province called Judaea.

And when the Romans defeated the Jews there, they minted coins celebrating IVDAEA CAPTA — “Judea Captured.”

Roman coin from 71AD with Emperor Vespesian on one side and “Judea Capta” on the other

All of that happened centuries before Muhammad was born in Arabia and Arabs invaded the Jewish holy land.

Yet today WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, describes Israel’s use of “Judea and Samaria” as an effort to give its “bogus claims… a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy.”

Bogus?

The Romans weren’t Zionists. Tacitus wasn’t working for the Israeli government. Roman coins celebrating the defeat of a Jewish rebellion certainly weren’t designed to manufacture Jewish history.

They called it Judea because Judea was its name.

And Judea, Judah and Jew share the same historical root. The Jewish people carry the connection to this land in their very name.

So why does the Palestinian Authority choose to call that heritage and homeland claim “bogus”?

Perhaps because acknowledging Judea creates an enormous problem for the narrative the PA and WAFA promote every day, calling Jews living in the land of Israel as “colonists.” But colonizers are outsiders who arrive in someone else’s homeland. It becomes considerably harder to sustain that description while acknowledging that the people being called colonizers take their name from the very land in which they supposedly have no indigenous history.

This is antisemitic historical erasure—and it should be condemned as such.

It should be condemned at the United Nations. It should be condemned by governments that have chosen in recent years to recognize a Palestinian state. Britain, Canada and others should demand something elementary in return: recognition of the history and heritage of the Jewish people.

Because recognition cannot sensibly run in only one direction.

If the Palestinian Authority asks the world to recognize the local Arabs attachment to this land while its own official news agency dismisses the Jewish people’s vastly documented attachment as “bogus,” the problem is larger than terminology.

It goes to coexistence.

Two peoples cannot make peace if one insists that acknowledging the other’s history is itself illegitimate. A Palestinian state cannot be built on the proposition that Jewish history deserves international negation.

ACTION ITEM

Contact governments of Canada, Britain, France, Australia, Mexico and others that they demand that the Palestinian Authority stop calling the long Jewish history in the holy land “bogus.”

The Religious Formula for Ethnic Cleansing Jews

WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official media, has spent years describing Jews who enter the Temple Mount as “storming Al-Aqsa.” I have written about that linguistic sleight of hand before.

Now WAFA is promoting something more dangerous: that Jews have no right to enter Judaism’s holiest site without Muslim permission, and that Jewish worship there is an assault on Islamic sanctity.

In April 2026, WAFA reported a Palestinian statement declaring the site one that belongs exclusively to Muslims, to which no one else has any right of entry without their consent.

On August 13, WAFA carried an Arab League statement condemning Jews entering the site and performing religious rituals as a blatant violation of the sanctity of the mosque.”

WAFA promoted several lies:

  • Muslims do not control entry. Israel controls security and access to the Temple Mount. The Jordanian-backed Waqf administers Muslim religious affairs there. Presenting Muslim consent as a prerequisite for Jewish entry is totally false.
  • The compound does not “belong exclusively to Muslims.” That is a religious and political claim masquerading as settled fact about the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism.
  • Jewish presence does not inherently violate Islamic sanctity. Islam does not have a general rule that a Jew entering Muslim sacred space desecrates it. Restrictions on Jewish prayer under the status quo are one issue; declaring Jewish worship itself an assault on Islam is another.

Then comes another sleight of hand.

Having defined Jewish presence as an offense against Islam, these organizations pivot to demanding action by the international community on behalf of Palestinians.

But those categories – Muslims and Palestinian Arabs – are not interchangeable.

Some 1.85 million Muslims live in Israel, nearly one-fifth of the country’s population. And the Muslim religious administration of the Temple Mount is handled by the Jordanian-backed Waqf. Palestinian Arabs do not exercise control over entry to the site, nor do they represent all Muslims in the region.

So why transform an asserted Muslim religious grievance into a Palestinian national claim demanding international intervention?

Because the lies are the tell.

The argument is no longer about protecting Muslim worship. It takes an assertion of Muslim religious exclusivity, converts it into a Palestinian territorial right, and then asks the world to enforce that right against Israel and Jews.

The implications become darker when the same logic is applied beyond the Temple Mount. Hamas’s 1988 charter declared all of Palestine an Islamic waqf. Combine that doctrine with the claim being promoted around Al-Aqsa—that Jewish physical presence and worship offend Islamic sanctity—and expelling Jews can be transformed into protecting Muslim holy land.

“the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.” – Hamas Foundational Charter, Article 11

That is why the Arab League and WAFA’s language matters. By repeatedly publishing these false assertions, it helps turn a Palestinian territorial claim into a purported Islamic prohibition against Jewish presence.

And it begins at the most perverse possible location: Judaism’s holiest site.

The progression is stark:

  • Declare the Jewish holy site exclusively Muslim.
  • Deny Jews the right to enter without Muslim permission.
  • Call Jewish presence and worship a desecration of Islam.
  • Turn that religious claim into a Palestinian territorial right.
  • Ask the world to enforce it.

The Arab League and Palestinian Authority are building a religious and political case for removing Jews from their own holy land.

When Words Erase a People

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.

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.

Storming Words, Not Mosques

The jihadi war begins in the headline: “Israeli colonists storm Al-Aqsa Mosque under police protection.” Before a single fact appears, the verdict is already written—by the Palestinian Authority’s media outlet—in words designed to inflame.

  • Colonists erases history, recasting Jews as foreign intruders with no connection to the Temple Mount. 
  • Storm supplies violence whether any occurred or not. 
  • Al-Aqsa Mosque collapses the entire compound into the most sensitive Islamic structure to heighten the sense of desecration. 
  • Under police protection reframes standard security by the Israel Police, coordinated with the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, as state-backed aggression.

Then the language tightens. “Talmudic and provocative rituals.” “Frequent Israeli provocations, including repeated raids.” These aren’t descriptions. They’re verdicts. Quiet presence becomes intent. Routine visits become raids. Silent prayer becomes something suspect.

And then the omission that completes the frame. The site is only described as Islam’s third holiest. It is never described as Judaism’s holiest. The reader is left with a single conclusion: sanctity on one side, violation on the other.

This is narrative design. Islamic Supremacy.

Strip legitimacy. Recast presence as desecration. Elevate exclusive holiness. Repeat it daily through a state-backed outlet overseen by the Palestinian Authority.

That is how a holy war is narrated into existence. By the “moderate” Palestinian Authority.

Erasing a Country with a Date

Some arguments don’t come as arguments. They come as word choices.

In a recent dispatch, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, made a choice that says everything. Israel appears as an adjective when attached to institutions. Its actions carry familiar condemnations. And the land itself is recast as “the 1948 territories.”

That is not reporting. That is positioning.

1948 is a year of war and statehood. It marks the moment Israel came into being and survived an attempt to erase it at birth. Turning that year into a place rewrites the present. It drags today back into a permanent opening chapter, where the outcome still hangs in the balance.

A country becomes a placeholder. Sovereignty becomes provisional. Everything sits on ground that the language refuses to make firm.

This is how maximal claims stay alive.

If a state only exists as “1948,” then its future remains permanently negotiable.

The contradiction is visible in plain sight. Daily coordination with a functioning state on one hand. A refusal to grant that state permanence on the other. Even more, that the very land of that state is illegal, stolen. The phrase allows engagement without acceptance.

That approach carries consequences.

Conflicts move when both sides deal with what is actually there. Language that recasts reality into a provisional state keeps the dispute locked at its most basic level. Every negotiation floats above a refusal that pulls it back down.

This pattern extends well beyond a single outlet. It echoes across official statements, classrooms, and international stages. Words are chosen with care because they preserve a claim that facts have long since settled.

Israel is a state with institutions, borders, citizens, allies, and critics. It participates in the global system, fights wars, signs agreements, and argues with itself in open courts. None of that fits inside a date.

Calling it “the 1948 territories” keeps the founding war alive in the present tense.
And as long as that language holds, the conflict never leaves its opening scene.

Palestinian Authority Continues Blood Libel of Organ Heist

Even as the Israel-Gaza ceasefire struggles to take hold, the Palestinian Authority fuels the flames of Jew hatred with public smears that Israel is harvesting organs of Palestinian Arabs.

On October 18, 2025, Wafa, the official media of the Palestinian Authority penned an article that “Israel hands over remains of 15 slain Palestinians from Gaza.” In it, the PA claimed that the bodies of Arab prisoners handed over “appeared mutilated or missing organs.”

Article in Wafa, October 18, 2025

The only way forward for coexistence is to end the demonization and antisemitic attacks. The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly shown it is not up to the task.

Jew Not Jew

Let’s state something openly and clearly: “Anti-Zionism” deserves to be in quotation marks. Israel exists. It is not a theory. Being “anti-Zionism” is anti-Israel, so be clear.

Under this framework of anti-Israel feelings and behavior, “anti-Zionists” claim they are just against the government of Israel or policies of the government of Israel. That’s fine. Many people dislike their own government and some policies. However, it is a curious thing to be consumed by hatred of government policies far away from your own shores, flagging something deeper like a potential hatred of Jews, but let’s just put a pin in that observation for now.

The ongoing deliberate mislabelling of Jews as something other than Jews – say “colonists” or “settlers” – is part of a vilification campaign and clearly antisemitic.

It is true on college campuses, in the media, at the United Nations and of course, from the Palestinian Authority itself.

When Jews – whether from Israel, east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), or around the world – visit the Jewish Temple Mount during regular visiting hours, it should not be news. Yet it is for the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority.

Wafa, the official media of the PA, repeatedly stated that a handful of Jews were “colonists” because they dared to step over the 1949 Armistice Lines. Walking around the Temple Mount was called “storming Al- Aqsa compound.” Their presence disturbed “Palestinian worshippers,” a.k.a. Muslims.

The blatant antisemitism was marketed under a political struggle. Jews were transformed into a combative illegal horde under a political monicker. The PA is not antisemitic, just anti-colonists. It is a mere coincidence that all Jews are considered colonists (Israeli Arabs are called Palestinian citizens of Israel to shed them of potentially being called “settlers.”)

Concealing the word “Jew” does not hide the antisemitism. They are not illegal people and they are not doing anything nefarious. The veneer of United Nations-sanctioned political obfuscation does not wash the religious animus nor absolve the antisemitic hatred.

The “al aqsa flood” being waged by the popular jihadi extremists of Hamas is being vanquished by the Israeli army. It is time to terminate the political and libelous “al aqsa storm” fought by Fatah and the PA, by all people of good conscience.

Related articles:

The Dangerous ‘Settlers Storming Al Aqsa’ Fiction (October 2023)

Palestinian Authority Continues To Incite Violence Against Jews On Temple Mount (May 2023)

The Noxious Anti-Semitism Of “European Settler Colonialism” (September 2022)

“Settlers” Now Means Jews Stepping Over The Green Line (July 2021)

Replacing the Jordanian Waqf on The Temple Mount (July 2020)

Visitor Rights on the Temple Mount (October 2015)

Amnesty International’s And Palestinian Authority’s Obituaries For Israel

Walid Daqqa, a notorious Israeli Arab who tortured and killed a 19-year old Israeli soldier in 1984, died of cancer in an Israeli prison this week. He had been held in jail for over thirty years for not simply murdering Israeli Jew Moshe Tamam, but reportedly gouging out his eyes and castrating him as well. Daqqa acted with a few other Israeli Arabs who were all members of the terrorist group Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, some of whom were released after having their sentences commuted.

For Amnesty International, this brutal atrocity was not even a footnote, as the anti-Israel organization referred to Daqqa – an Israeli Arab – simply as a “Palestinian writer.” Inverting the entirety of cause-and-effect, Amnesty condemned “Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life,” rather than an Israeli Arab’s disregard for an Israeli Jew’s right to life.

Amnesty International condemning Israel for an Israeli Arab who tortured and killed an Israeli soldier, dying from cancer in prison.

Not to be outdone in rewriting history of the past and present, Wafa, the official news agency of the supposedly “moderate” Palestinian Authority, condemned Israel for detaining two people at Daqqa’s funeral tent inside Israel, referring to the Jewish State, as “1948 territories.”

Palestinian Authority’s Wafa calling Israel “1948 territories,” considering them part of “occupied Palestine.”

The media coverage by the Palestinian Authority and international human rights groups of the death of an Israeli Arab who tortured, mutilated and killed an Israeli soldier forty years ago, showcases that the impasse of acceptance of the Jewish State lies deeply in the mental state of “moderate” organizations who conceal the barbarity of local Arabs, as much as the terrorist groups who carry out the actual genocide of Israeli Jews.

The Palestinian Authority and Amnesty International are not actually writing about the deaths of Arabs; they are conceptualizing their desired obituary of the Jewish State.

Related articles:

Palestinian Authority Tries To Fan Flame Of Global Intifada While War Rages In Gaza (October 2023)

Abbas Pays Tribute To Murderers Of Jews Before The United Nations General Assembly, To Applause (September 2023)

Official Palestinian Propaganda Turns Terrorist Into Assassinated “Palestinian Youth” (August 2023)

No Israeli Good Deed Goes Unpunished For Amnesty International and NY Times (May 2023)

Palestinian Inversion Of Facts Based On Refusal To Coexist (July 2022)

Amnesty International’s Rankings for 2017/2018 (January 2019)

The Big Lie About Al Aqsa Mosque Access Is Really About Jews

The first Friday or Ramadan came to Jerusalem amidst the 2023-4 Hamas War from Gaza. The jihadi-political party which leads the Palestinian army called upon Palestinians to confront Israel and come to the al Aqsa Mosque by the thousands.

Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority took the other side of the jihadi extremist coin, and blamed Israel for blocking Muslims from visiting their holy site:

“Israeli occupation forces barred thousands of Palestinian Muslim worshippers from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem this morning to perform the first Friday prayer of the holy month of Ramadan.

Eyewitnesses reported a significant deployment of Israeli troops around the Qalandiya checkpoint to the north of Jerusalem, the Zeitoun checkpoint to its east, and Bethlehem to its south. Thousands of worshippers were turned back and denied access to the city under the pretext of not having the necessary permits.

The occupation forces also deployed thousands of police officers in the alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem, around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and at its gates to restrict the entry of worshipers.

This action follows the installation yesterday of iron barriers at the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, specifically at the gates of King Faisal, Al-Ghawanmeh, and Al-Hadid, in an attempt to exert more control over the entry of worshippers and to restrict access and freedom of worship in the holy site.

Of note, the occupation authorities have already been imposing strict restrictions on entry of worshipers to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque since the outbreak of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people in early October of last year.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest place of worship for Muslims around the world after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.”

The New York Times picked up on the Hamas and Palestinian Authority propaganda of Muslims going to al Aqsa but being denied access by Israelis.

The Times claimed that “Muslim access to the mosque has long been a point of contention… one of many restrictions endured by Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.” It picked up the theme from an article a few days earlier called “Navigating Israeli Restrictions, Many Palestinians Find It Hard To Reach Al Aqsa.

This is a miseducation and misdirection of the public in the extreme. It is Jews who suffer from restricted access to their holiest site in Judaism.

In the entirety of 2023, only 50,000 Jews got to visit the Jewish Temple Mount. That compares to over 1 million Muslims who came to the site over the single month of Ramadan.

The United Nations supports this discrimination against Jews at the Temple Mount. Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, this week calledfor the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem to be upheld and respected,” meaning barring Jews from praying at their holiest site.

Jews are being banned from visiting their holiest site per the demands of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority which consider any Jew visiting Judaism’s most sacred location to be a form of “provocation.” More Muslims get to visit the al Aqsa/ Temple Mount Compound on a single day of Ramadan than Jews over an entire year.

Yet the press inverts the story that it is Muslims who are “enduring” restrictions when in fact it is the Jews who face UN-endorsed discrimination.

Related articles:

We Normalized Jew-Hatred For Years (December 2023)

Palestinian Propaganda Before The Gruesome Massacre (October 2023)

The United States Is “Morally, Historically, and Politically Wrong” About Jewish Prayer on Temple Mount (October 2023)

Palestinian Authority Continues To Incite Violence Against Jews On Temple Mount (May 2023)

On Defenses: Provocative and Legal / Unprovocative and Illegal (January 2023)

The New York Times Lies About Ben-Gvir And Muslim Arabs Regarding Temple Mount Visit (January 2023)

Reuters Anti-Jewish Disinformation Campaign About The Temple Mount (April 2022)

The Inalienable Right of Jews to Pray on The Temple Mount (November 2021)

Dignity for Israel: Jewish Prayer on the Temple Mount (May 2017)

The UN’s Disinterest in Jewish Rights at Jewish Holy Places (September 2015)

The US State Department’s Selective Preference of “Status Quos” (September 2015)

The United Nations and Holy Sites in the Holy Land (November 2014)

Palestinian Authority Tries To Fan Flame Of Global Intifada While War Rages In Gaza

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official state-run news agency, has once again tried to incite 1.8 billion Muslims to fight Jews and the Jewish State.

On October 25, 2023, as the 2023 Gaza War raged, Wafa wrote “Israeli settlers storm Jerusalem’s Aqsa Mosque,” another lie in its long history of lies to incite a jihad.

The Temple Mount has regular visiting hours and Jews have always used it to visit their holiest site. That angers Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs that Jews claim to have rights to the location which Arabs falsely assert is a purely Islamic holy place.

The Wafa article was horrific from its headline to its last sentence:

“JERUSALEM, Wednesday, October 25, 2023 (WAFA) –  Dozens of Israeli settlers Wednesday morning stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied Jerusalem, under protection from Israeli occupation police, according to local sources.

Witnesses said scores of settlers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque in separate groups, where they conducted provocative tours through the courtyards of the mosque, received explanations about the alleged “Jewish Temple,” and performed Talmudic rituals near the Dome of the Rock.

This latest incident adds to the ongoing tensions surrounding Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third most revered site in Islam. The entry of settlers into the compound, backed by Israeli security forces, is often met with condemnation from Palestinian officials and religious authorities.

The Islamic Waqf, the Jordan-run authority in charge of the holy site, has repeatedly called for international intervention to prevent these incursions, which are seen as a direct challenge to the status quo of the holy site and an affront to the sentiments of Muslims worldwide.

Since 2003, the Israeli occupation authorities have been allowing Israeli Jewish settlers into the compound almost on a daily basis, with the exclusion of Friday, the Muslim day of rest and worship.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa Mosque is located, during the Six-Day War in 1967 in a move never recognized by the international community.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is subjected to almost daily incursions by Israeli settlers, except on Saturday and Sunday, which are done under the heavy guard of the Israeli police in an attempt to divide the mosque spatially and temporally between Muslims and Jews.


Jews visit their holiest location during regular visiting hours and need protection of police to keep Muslims at the site from attacking them. Jews go because it is the location of two Jewish Temples and the physical center of Judaism. The fact that Muslims get upset does not make it a “provocation” but goes to the antisemitism of those Muslims.

The Palestinian Authority is attempting to get 1.8 billion Muslims riled up against Jews at this most dangerous time. It must be condemned clearly and quickly and forced to stop promoting lies and incitement.

ACTION ITEM

Email White House “Get the Palestinian Authority to stop claiming that Jews are desecrating the Al Aqsa Mosque in an attempt to incite 1.8 billion Muslims around the world to attack Jews.

Related articles:

The Dangerous ‘Settlers Storming Al Aqsa’ Fiction

Visitor Rights on the Temple Mount

On Defenses: Provocative and Legal / Unprovocative and Illegal

Palestinian Authority Continues To Incite Violence Against Jews On Temple Mount

The United States Is “Morally, Historically, and Politically Wrong” About Jewish Prayer on Temple Mount

Time for Jordan To Live Up To Its Peace Treaty With Israel And Support Jewish Prayer On The Temple Mount