Denial of an Authentic Jewish Connection to Jerusalem and Its Holy Places

Abstract

On September 25, 2003, a delegation of Arab leaders from northern Israel visited Yasser Arafat at his Muqata’a compound of Ramallah in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians in the al-Aqsa Intifada; the guests were surprised when Arafat lectured to them for about a quarter of an hour on al-Aqsa, making the central claim that the Jewish Temple had not existed in Jerusalem but rather in Yemen.¹ Arafat also told those present that he himself had visited Yemen and been shown the site upon which Solomon’s Temple had stood. The Jewish (and the Christian) reader will undoubtedly attribute this story to Arafat’s detachment from reality. A Palestinian academic and political figure told me that Arafat was impressed by the theory of the historian Kamal Salibi, professor emeritus at the American University of Beirut, who was appointed director of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies in Jordan despite the fact that his book, which claims that the Children of Israel originated from the western Arabian Peninsula, represents his own singular viewpoint, unsupported by any other scholar. Salibi claimed that biblical Jerusalem was located at the Arabian Nimas highlands, halfway from Mecca to Yemen.² This is an instructive example of how far a book’s influence may reach, however esoteric its subject matter may be.