The Palestinian Grinch Who Stole Pesach!

Moses was a Muslim who led Muslims in Exodus from Egypt, says PA university lecturer on PA TV. Photo: Screenshot.

With the advent of the Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) this week, we are witness to another astonishingly brazen attempt by the Palestinian Authority to hijack one more obviously Jewish holiday and claim its narrative as its own.

Now anyone with a semblance of Jewish knowledge understands that the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the Splitting of the Reed Sea, receiving the Tablets with the Ten Commandments (and the rest of the Torah) at Mount Sinai, the 40 years of wandering in the desert culminating with the conquest/liberation of the Holy Land by the Children of Israel, is one of the key elements not only in the Jewish faith, but also in the formation of the Jewish People into a Nation. Apparently however, the Palestinian Arab leadership believes that enough people are sufficiently ignorant and intellectually lazy that they, the Palestinian Arabs, can lay claim even on the Passover story as part of their efforts to negate Jewish claims to the Land, and the filling in of their own “invented” historical national narrative.

In an April 3, 2012, Palestinian Media Watch report we learn that “A Palestinian university lecturer taught during a recent Palestinian Authority TV program on religion that Moses, a Muslim, brought ‘the Muslims of the Children of Israel out of Egypt.’”

Accordingly, “While some of this,” PMW report explains, “is retelling of Islamic tradition, some of it is a distortion of even the Koran for political purposes.” It is true that the Koran refers to the “Children of Israel” in their land in many chapters (e.g.: Sura 5), but it never refers to them or anyone else as “Palestinians,” nor does the Koran ever refer to Israel’s conquest as a “Palestinian” conquest.” As one more proof that the Palestinian Arabs have at least successfully taken over “chutzpah” as a their own foremost national trait, university lecturer, Dr. Omar Ja’ara, on PA TV’s religion program, even deviates from Islamic tradition, and reinvents the Jewish People’s conquest of the Land of Israel as “the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine.”

Dr. Ja’ara, who lectures at Al-Najah University in Nablus/Shechem and is considered by his fellow Arab academics as a specialist in Israeli affairs, declared:

We must make clear to the world that David in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to David in the Koran, Solomon in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to Solomon in the Koran, and neither is Saul or Joshua son of Nun [of the Bible].

We have a great leader, Saul, [in the Koran] who defeated the nation of giants and killed Goliath. This is a great Muslim victory. The Muslims of the Children of Israel went out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, and unfortunately, many researchers deny the Exodus of those oppressed people who were liberated by a great leader, like Moses the Muslim, the believing leader, the great Muslim, who was succeeded by Saul [not Joshua], the leader of these Muslims in liberating Palestine.

This was the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the nation of giants led by Goliath. This is our logic and this is our culture.

(PA TV – Fatah, February, 15, 2012)

Last week, a well-meaning but head in the clouds American academic wrote the following sentence: “There is no objective truth in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — each side makes its historical and moral claims to the best of its abilities.” The Pollyannaish politically correct point being is that everyone has equally valid claims; history is somehow amorphous; the past isn’t important so let’s ignore it and concentrate on making everybody happy today.

While well-meaning perhaps, it arrogantly assumes the past is meaningless in determining fact from fiction. If historical fact was not important in deciding right from wrong in this conflict, the Palestinian Arabs would not be so involved in the development and promotion of the “Palestinian Big Lie” about their “deep roots in the Land”, and in classic Muslim fashion, to incessantly negate documented Jewish history and tradition and attempt to destroy any vestige of Jewish artifacts that provide hard evidence to challenge their lies. We see this also in the on-going campaign to de-judaize Jerusalem, and we see this by the Wakf’s ongoing efforts to destroy Jewish artifacts found on the Temple Mount. For the Arabs, the past is the most important thing.

Interestingly, since “Palestine” and “Palestinian” appear nowhere in either the Bible or the Koran, and the fact that no one can name the last or any “Palestinian” King or political ruler, because there never was one, it is still amazing – even in the multi-cultural ultra-liberal academic world – that normally intelligent people still give credence to Palestinian Arab claims no matter how fantastic.

Speaking of whom, one wonders what President Obama will do at his next White House Passover Seder. Will he turn in his regular Maxwell House Haggadot which brings the old standard Jewish version of the Exodus from Egypt, and replace them with a Palestinian Arab narrative – as Moses the Muslim led the Muslim Children of Israel AKA “the Palestinians” out of Egypt? True, it is quite a feat for Moses to be a Muslim more than two thousand years before the birth of Mohammad, but apparently Islam is very flexible. And if it’s not, the Palestinian Arab spin-doctors are. The important thing is the Jews are wrong and anyway they never existed. While it may sound silly to you, many media professionals will push it nonetheless, and liberal-left academics will argue that everything is subjective anyway, so let’s not automatically reject a Palestinian Pesach story…….

I say we get even. If the Palestinian Arabs want to usurp Pesach, fine, let them clean their houses for a month before the holiday to make sure no pita crumbs are hiding behind the couch; eat Matza with the consistency of stale Styrofoam and have to swallow Matza balls that taste like lead tennis balls for a week. Then we’ll talk.

The author is a veteran journalist specializing in geo-political and geo-strategic affairs in the Middle East. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Insight Magazine, Nativ, The Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon. His articles have been reprinted by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the US Congressional Record.

This article first appeared in The Times of Israel.