Mr. Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian Arab diplomat, is now struggling to stop Mr. Trump from moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim. I must ask Mr. Erekat some questions because he has asserted that his people have lived in our Eretz Yisrael for thousands of years.
1. When the Romans invaded Judea/Palestine in the first century CE, did your Palestinian, non-Jewish - there were no Muslims then - ancestors a) fight alongside the Jews?, b) fight alongside the Romans?, or c) remain non-combatants like today's Quakers?
2. Since (as you assert) your ancestors were present in Palestine at the time of the Roman invasion, any choice above would have been significant. Why is it that not a single historian of that period mentions the choice that your ancestors made from the three alternatives above?
3. Do you share the belief that, until recently, the Jews never held sovereignty or even lived in Palestine?
If you are correct, how was it that Roman sculptors created a fictitious, Jewish-focused relief and chiseled it into the Arch of Titus? It is not credible that 1900 years ago, some early Italian Zionists paid those Roman sculptors to create a historical fraud and received permission to have it stand in Rome. How was it that no Roman writer mocked this historical fraud or mentioned it during the ensuing centuries?
Do you believe that an element in that relief, a 7-branched candelabrum (we call it a menorah), a relic from our ancient Temple, is really a lighting fixture from some pre-Muhammad Palestinian tavern? If your non-Jewish ancestors were in Palestine at that time, they probably frequented taverns or beer halls at night after work to drink liquor and eat ham sandwiches on pita. Obviously, they would have needed illumination there. We both agree that in the first century CE Muhammad had not yet been born so he had not yet provided humanity with his revelation which outlawed alcohol, pork, graven images, etc.
4. If Yassir Arafat, who was born and raised in Egypt, can be a Palestinian, why can't David Ben Gurion, who was born and raised in Poland, be a Palestinian (i.e., an Israeli)?
5. Do you believe both a) the Holocaust did not occur, and b) Israeli soldiers behave like Nazis? Well, if the Holocaust never occurred, then Nazis must have been good guys like the Brits and the Americans, smiling as they distributed candy to children.
(full article online)
The Arch of Titus and Saeb Erekat
