The Illegal Palestinian Construction That the Mainstream Media Ignore
Israeli settlements habitually grab headlines, while the mainstream media never show the Palestinians' outrageous illegal construction over ancient Jewish archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of Moral Clarity.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
The international media hyperventilate about every new Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), yet they devote barely a word to the Palestinians’ unlawful building over ancient Jewish sites to erase Jewish history.
It is morally obscene and logically absurd that Jewish settlements on empty land in Judea and Samaria spark international outrage, while Palestinians building over sacred and ancient Jewish sites sparks none.
When it comes to reporting on Israel, what does not get reported is just as important as what does. The international media’s anti-Israel bias is well-established and selective reporting is one way it skews the narrative to make Israel look bad.
Mainstream media would have you think that Judea and Samaria is Palestinian land that Israel is encroaching on with illegal settlements, while the hapless Palestinians are fighting to hold on to their heritage. Every part of that sentence is wrong.
I will spare you re-litigation about why Judea and Samaria is not occupied and why, in turn, it is part of Israel, or how the media regularly misreport on Jewish settlements. Rather, I will look at the illegal construction that the Palestinian Authority engages in as a matter of policy designed to deny historical truth.
Foreign correspondents do not report on this because they have lazily swallowed the Palestinians’ provably fictitious narrative. It is also partly ignorance. Few reporters have any meaningful knowledge of history, and most of them have spent little time in Judea and Samaria, and done so only under tight Palestinian Authority supervision.
Judea and Samaria is divided into areas A, B, and C. The Palestinian Authority administers Area A fully, and it administers Area B but shares security responsibilities with Israel. Israel has overall security responsibility and authority over Jewish residents there, while the Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction over its Arab residents.
Most Palestinians live in areas A and B. Israel administers Area C, which is where the Jewish settlements are. This framework was part of the 1990s Oslo Accords “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians — agreements that the Palestinians desecrated, and that Israel persists with for reasons that escape me.
Here is a list of Palestinian Authority desecrations in the biblical heartland. These sites are of incredible historical significance and deeply important to Jews and Christians. In theory, many are Muslim holy sites, too. Yet, as we shall see, Muslims do not really care about them.
Sebastia (Samaria)
The ancient city of Samaria was the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th Century BCE. It is in Area B, and the Palestinians have extended nearby villages and planted agriculture on parts of the site. The Palestinian Authority insists that these buildings are not on land formally recognized as archaeological sites, but archaeologists weep just the same, knowing their historical importance.
Samaria is also of great significance to Christians, since it was associated with the early Christian community in the Herodian period, and tradition links it to John the Baptist’s beheading.
Tel Shiloh
“Tel” in Hebrew is generally translated as a short hill (a mound really), but its strict meaning is a hill or mound formed from successive layers of strata.
When you see “Tel” in a place name, it is a strong clue that people have lived there since ancient times. Those people were Jews. Shiloh was an important Israelite religious center before Jerusalem was established as the capital. It is where the Bible says the Tabernacle was located for more than 300 years.
Located in Area C, archaeologists are still working the site and it attracts its share of pilgrims. The Palestinian Authority, however, is busy building illegal shacks and agricultural terraces around it, obscuring the site, and waiting for the day they can build over it completely.
Tomb of Joseph (Nablus/Shechem)
The burial place of the patriarch Joseph sits just outside of the city of Nablus, which is the ancient Jewish city of Shechem. It has been a pilgrimage site for centuries.
In Area A, the tomb has been vandalized and damaged many times, and quite extensively so during the Palestinians’ murderous Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005. The Palestinian Authority has built in the surrounding areas, including obtruding onto the sacred site.
Mount Ebal
This is where Joshua built an altar to God after the Israelites entered Canaan. Archaeologists believe they have located the altar, a claim the Palestinians reject without even having looked into it.
Situated in Area B, the Palestinians have paved new roads over ancient ones connected to the site, and removed stones that could damage or destroy the structure’s foundation. Unfortunately, neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority officially protects the site.
Nabi Samuel
The burial place of the prophet Samuel is an Israeli national park. While Nabi Samuel is in Area C under full Israeli control, it is adjacent to Palestinian communities that expand their villages and grazing lands into the park.
Herodium (Herodion)
King Herod built this fortress between 23 and 15 BCE. Herod himself is buried there. The site includes fortifications, a palace complex, and an extensive reservoir and tunnel system.
This is better infrastructure than the Palestinian Authority can manage today. Located in Area C, southeast of Bethlehem, Israel has declared it a national park. The Palestinians have built illegally and developed farmland around the ancient remains.
Jericho
Jericho is among the world’s oldest cities and the Bible describes the Israelites’ conquest of it in the Book of Joshua, making it of vital religious and cultural significance.
Fully under Palestinian Authority control in Area A, the Palestinian Authority has done a deliberately shabby job of preserving the city, especially the sections connected to Jewish history. It has been the site of significant urban development, where the Palestinian Authority has ignored archaeologists’ concerns, claiming that modernization is essential.
Beit El
Identified as Bethel, an Israelite religious center mentioned several times in the Bible, it is traditionally associated with Jacob’s vision of a ladder reaching to heaven.
Located in Area C, it is close to many Palestinian villages that have deliberately expanded into and encroached upon the site.
Susya
A Jewish village from the Second Temple period, Susya is in the southern Hebron hills. It has an ancient synagogue with a well-preserved mosaic floor, ritual baths, and ancient housing structures.
Susya is in Area C and Jewish settlers and Palestinians in nearby villages contest the area, with the Palestinians building and Israelis subsequently demolishing housing and agricultural buildings there with some regularity.
Al-Khader
This village near Bethlehem has an ancient Jewish cemetery from the Second Temple period featuring rock-cut tombs and ossuaries. It is in Area B and Palestinian construction continues into the cemetery despite protests from Israeli archaeologists and officials.
Palestinian encroachment and development on these ancient sites is not about land; it is about erasing Jewish history. The Palestinian Arabs are colonialist interlopers who know that archaeology proves that Jews are indigenous to Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinian strategy is to try to wipe out traces of this history, by building over it under the guise of “development.” Attempts to eradicate Jewish culture have a long history, which is why the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem was built atop the Temple Mount. It is also a tactic Islamists have used elsewhere, such as the Taliban’s monstrous destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.
This policy reveals another unpopular truth: that Islam hardly cares about Judea and Samaria, just as it hardly cares about Jerusalem. While these sites are theoretically important to all the monotheistic faiths, the Palestinian Authority is eager to build over them. The land of Israel, dating back several centuries, was a neglected backwater under Arabian and Ottoman Muslim rule, with Islam’s most important places being Mecca and Medina.
The Arabs started caring only once Jews regained sovereignty in their homeland. It is this that the Arabs cannot abide because antisemitism is baked into them and their religious-political beliefs, which is the real cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The global lack of outrage about illegal Palestinian construction over sacred Jewish sites, and the media’s lack of coverage of it, shows their anti-Israel bias and their woeful understanding of the conflict’s origins and nature.
The international community — with its imbecilic demands for a two-state “solution” — are de facto supporting these efforts to wipe out Jewish history. It should be a matter of eternal shame that Western governments support such a thing.
It is also an act of suicide. These ancient sites matter beyond religious-political belief. Jerusalem, Athens, and the Enlightenment are Western civilization’s cultural and intellectual pillars. The West is in a civilizational conflict with Islamism, and allowing Islamists to build over ancient Jewish sites is to bury one of the West’s foundations.
That cannot be a good idea.
Thank you for an excellent history of Judea and Samaria and the importance regarding the archeological sites therein. I appreciate the work you do in providing these posts.
If Islam had its way, they would plow under everything Jewish or Christian.