The Palestinian Authority has publicly labeled Jewish worship at the Western Wall to be “sin and filth” in a television program broadcast in Arabic on Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year.
The documentary was broadcast in Arabic on Fatah's PA TV, run by the faction headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and it was translated by the PA media watchdog organization, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).
Abbas is participating Wednesday in a third round of direct talks with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The talks are being personally supervised by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Special Mideast Envoy George Mitchell.
The program, which was broadcast after the first round of talks in Washington two weeks ago, showed Jews praying at the Western Wall – Judaism's holiest site, along with the rest of the Temple Mount area. As the camera panned the scene, the narrator explained, “They [Israelis] know for certain that our [Arab] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our homes, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth [the Jews praying at the Western Wall].”
Denial of the Jewish history in Jerusalem and the existence of the Holy Temples is a central component in the PA's political ideology. One of the most important themes in the harangues of Islamic clerics in the PA is the libelous charge that Israel plans to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque, today perched atop the site where the First and Second Jewish Temples once stood. The clerics whip up Muslim worshippers into a frenzy during their Friday sermons, and they in turn direct their murderous rage at Israeli soldiers, policemen and civilians.
In June, PA Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein warned that Israel planned to implement “plans for Judaization of the Al-Buraq Wall (Western Wall), aimed at turning it into a center for the Jewish nation.” Hussein made the statement in an interview with the Arabic-language Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily newspaper, linked to the Fatah-led PA government in Ramallah.