Review:
"Unveiling Jerusalem" Beautifully Showcases Archaeology to Rebut
Historical Revisionism
by Johanna Markind
Special to IPT News
December 21, 2017
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 Pierre Rehov's
beautiful new film, "Unveiling Jerusalem," shines a spotlight on the
city's architectural wonders and amazing recent archaeological finds. Even
more importantly, it exposes why the religious-political conflict over
Jerusalem appears to be getting worse instead of better despite years of
"peace process." It provides much-needed moral clarity on what
causes violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
Rehov's starting point is the Oct. 13, 2016 UNESCO resolution denying any connection between the Temple
Mount and Judaism. The resolution never once refers to the Temple Mount,
but refers to the place 19 times by its Muslim name, Al-Haram al-Sharif.
Likewise, it refers to the Al-Aqsa Mosque 19 times.
"Unveiling Jerusalem" earns its name by offering viewers a
glimpse of new archaeological findings and animated reconstructions of the
Temple Mount, as well as rare shots inside the stunning Dome of the Rock
and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Rehov interviews historians, archaeologists, an
Orthodox priest, a Protestant minister, and a Palestinian Muslim human
rights campaigner; and adds excerpts from extant writings of Josephus and
Tacitus. All confirm the historical as well as religious importance of
Jerusalem and the Temple Mount to Christian as well as Jewish history.
By denying the connection between the Temple Mount and the First and
Second Temples, the latter being where Jesus reportedly spent some of his
final hours, Rehov shows, the Arabs who sponsored the resolution also
denied Christian ties to Jerusalem. The movie notes that most European (i.e.,
Christian) nations abstained from the 2016 vote.
This denial is a new phenomenon. Rehov documents that pre-1967, Arabs
freely acknowledged that the Haram al-Sharif was in fact the Temple Mount.
He shows a stone inscription dated to the ninth or tenth century C.E.,
from an Arab village of Nuba (about 16 miles south of Jerusalem), refers to
the Dome of the Rock as "the rock of the Bayt al-Maqdis," i.e.,
the Holy Temple. He films a 1930 document, A Brief Guide to Al-Haram
Al-Sharif, published by the Supreme Muslim Council – led by the
anti-Semitic Nazi collaborator, Hajj Amin al-Husseini – states, "Its
[the Haram's] identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond
dispute." He also shows a 1962 guidebook to the West Bank, published
when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem. It identifies the Temple Mount as
Mount Moriah, the site of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22,
which was subsequently identified with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Importantly, the guidebook identifies only a part of the Temple Mounts as
being within Al-Aqsa Mosque.
"Unveiling" shows that, since 1967, Palestinians have
increasingly tried to build up their claims and belittle Israelis' by
physically obliterating archaeological evidence of Jewish history.
As the movie describes, the waqf controlling the Muslim compound brought in
bulldozers in 1999 to dig a pit on the Temple Mount,
and simply threw out the debris without making any effort determine whether
it contained anything of historical value. Such evaluations are standard in
construction projects in many places where there is much less reason
to believe anything of historical value exists.
As the movie documents, there is a silver lining here. "We're
digging in the mud they threw out, dumped in a garbage site," explains
Israeli archaeologist Assaf Avraham. Israelis searched the debris and found
a treasure trove of Temple artifacts they otherwise wouldn't have been able
to access. For instance, they found Roman tiles from the Herodian Temple complex, and the base of a column from
the Herodian Temple.
In contrast to its centrality to Jews, in Muslim history the site's
importance was most limited. Despite the construction of the Dome of the
Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, the area held little importance until Palestinian
claims after the Six Day War. The British called it a dump when they
arrived during World War I.
Pictures of the Temple Mount from the period of Jordanian control
(1948-1967) show a neglected site overgrown with weeds. No Muslim leaders
(other than Jordan's King Abdullah I, to his sorrow) visited Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Jews were not permitted either to live in the Arab part of
Jerusalem, or visit to pray at the Western Wall. The Jewish cemetery on
Mount of Olives was desecrated.
Rehov intersperses interviews with Palestinians including Shaykh Omar
Awadallah Kiswani, Director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Yussuf Natsheh, Director of
Islamist Archaeology for the Waqf (the Islamic trust that administers the
Temple Mount compound), and the unnamed Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque. All deny
the importance of the Haram to Jews and Christians and reject their
historical claims to the site. Rehov's success in convincing them to be
interviewed for his film is an extraordinary achievement, especially given
that his movie is one long debunking of their denials.
The speakers talk in a very calm and low-key manner. Jarringly, the film
incorporates clips of Mahmoud Abbas endorsing bloodshed to vindicate Muslim
claims and rioting by Palestinian stone-throwing youths.
Essentially, the movie is a plea for Arabs to accept co-existence.
Rehov's strategy is to show that Muslim refusal to accept the validity of
other claims to the Temple Mount – the same refusal embodied in last year's
resolution – is an obstacle to peace, and perhaps the main one. The Temple
Mount becomes a metaphor for Jerusalem, which serves as a metaphor for the
entire land of Israel/Palestine. In contrast to the popular media and
political perception blaming Israeli "intransigence" for the
absence of peace, Rehov shows that on a more fundamental level,
Palestinians lack the willingness to compromise their claims and so share
the Temple Mount, the city, or the country. As legal scholar Shmuel
Berkovitz says, "I respect their mosque. I respect their belief.
Please, respect our beliefs as Jews..."
Rehov's film isn't likely to change the minds of Palestinians or their
Muslim supporters. The same mindset that throws thousands of years of
Jewish history into a garbage dump is unlikely to be persuaded by findings
about that history. More likely, Rehov is targeting people of the Christian
nations like the ones that abstained from the UNESCO vote.
Whereas veiling has positive connotations in Jewish tradition, and
certainly in contemporary Islam, it has negative connotations in
Christianity. In Christian tradition, the veil before the Temple's holy of
holies ripped upon Jesus' death, thus emphasizing that God was accessible
to all. Judging by Rehov's choice of title, it is Christians he most hopes
to persuade. Hopefully, his case combining hard facts with Christian
history will succeed in making an impact.
Johanna Markind is an attorney who writes about radical Islam,
anti-Semitism, criminal law, and other subjects. She previously worked for
the U.S. Department of Justice and the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Unveiling
Jerusalem, Pierre
Rehov, documentaries,
UNESCO,
Al-Harm
al-Sharif, Al-Aqsa
Mosque, Temple
Mount, Jewish
history, Hajj
Amin al-Husseini, Omar
Awadallah Kiswani, Yussuf
Natsheh, Mahmoud
Abbas, Shmuel
Berkovitz
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