David Northfield, reporting Saturday morning, 04/06,  on KGW-TV, during tape footage of the "Palestinian" demonstration at Pioneer Square in Portland, mangled the news beautifully by just being ignorant.  He didn't offer a single argument to the "Palestinian" claims.  When done intentionally, this is called a softball interview, and means the "journalist" favors the subject's point of view.  That's called bias.  When combined with a lack of interest in the facts, it's sloppy work, to boot.

I doubt if Mr. Northfield knows a single thing about the subject -- which proves he belongs in the mainstream media, where "broadcast journalist" is an oxymoron.

Here's what he should have known before airing a report on the subject.  Not that he would have used it all.  It's what in the news business is known as background research.  Media outlets, if they are to be considered credible, must find out this sort of information before dealing with a major news topic.  Just sticking a microphone in somebody's face and asking them how they feel is not enough.  He could have learned what you are about to read in a half an hour on the internet, but it seems that as far as he is concerned, you aren't worth ten minutes of research.

For a long time prior to the Roman occupation adjacent to the time of Christ, the residents of the area in dispute were referred to in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible (taken from the Jewish Torah) as Canaanites.  They had no connection with Islam because the religion would not be created for another thirty-five centuries, give or take a few.  The Romans (probably in deference to local custom) took to calling  it "Palestinia," from which we get Palestine, but it isn't in any Latin lexicon to which I have personal or internet access.  Arabic is said to have a similar word, falastyn, but no dictionary of that tongue I have found includes the term.  The only internet reference to it seems to be in modern documents written in the Russian language.  That's a dead end, too, because  Russian dictionaries I've checked don't include it, either. 

My research on the broader subject indicates that before the land was called Canaan (the Promised Land of the Torah and Old Testament), the area was made up of city states with kings -- quite similar to patterns familiar to students of Athenian/Spartan Greece. Like the inhabitants of ancient Greece, classical Rome and even a great many in modern India, the people of the land to be called Canaan were polytheists.  The idea of monotheism (the worship of a single god) seems to have first developed in the tribes of Iron Age Judah, which, if my information is correct, worshipped Yaweh -- the deity today called God by Christians and Allah by Moslems. 

It looks like most city-states had a central deity which was personified in the form of a stone or metal figure of some kind.  It was usually housed in a palace or temple which was considered to be the actual home of the god.  The nearby Assyrians, for example, paid homage to a primary deity named Assur, and the people of Moab prayed to Kemosh. Oddly, quite a few city-state and nomadic faiths bridged the gap between their gods and the gods of their neighbors with a monolatrous approach.  In spite of what you've heard, even the Roman empire for much of its existence did the same thing.  It was far more tolerant of other people's beliefs than is modern Islam as practised by some.

The reason why this matters is that an Arab Mr. Northfield's camera crew caught on tape said that  "Palestinians" have a "right" to include Jerusalem in any settlement because it is their holy capitol.  Jerusalem, however, was not founded by Moslems. 

It was originally called Urusalim (see historical descriptive below) by the city's earliest residents, the Jebusites.  Probably most of them were Semites.  (With the possible exception of the lighter-skinned, blue-eyed Circassians, all Arabs are Semitic.  So are Jews.)  God only knows who the Jebusites prayed to.  It could have been "Shalem." Maybe a god named "Jebu."  It is certain that none were Moslems.  When the legendary King David won the city in battle, he renamed it after himself.  Sometime after that it got its current name, which is similar to the Jebusite original but in Hebrew is a word that means "city of peace."  Considering its long history of warfare, it's an ironic title.
 
 

Unless they were members of some early Jewish sect like those in neighboring Judah, there isn't a Jebusite left on Earth.  The descendants of the Jews have the earliest historically valid claim to the city.  All other claims are the result of subsequent military victories. If one wishes to take the position that the last military victory is superior in valildity to the first, the Jews remain the choice.  Islam's claim to Jerusalem is based on events and victories after the founding of the city and prior to the present situation.  Like the Romans, they owned it in the middle of its long history.  The Jews own both ends. 

Why is Jerusalem so important to Moslems?  In a phrase, it's where Moslems believe Mohammed ascended to heaven.  But, it has earlier Islamic connections than that.
 
 

That is worth repeating.  The Prophet, Himself, considered Islam to be a third version of the One Faith that worshipped the same God.  And, though they all now face toward the Arabian mosque of the black meteorite at Mecca when they pray, in the beginning it was Jerusalem that determined the direction.  Both the original and present conditions were designated by the Prophet, Himself. 

We can surmise that failure by Clinton-era negotiations to turn Jerusalem over to the followers of Islam is one of the reasons Arafat rejected the deal. (As an aside, did you know that under present day [Jewish] control, as it was during most of the periods of Islamic rule, all faiths have access to their holy sites in that city?  Under the most recent, "modern" Islamic rule, however, Jews were forbidden to pray at The Western Wall -- thought by Jews to be the last surviving relic of the Second Temple of King Soloman the Wise.  He was thought of that way in large part because during his reign, the economy was swell.)

For those who have never attended a church or synagogue, here is why Jerusalem is so important to Jews and Christians. First the Jews, then a note about Christ.
 
 

Two notes: Christ also spent some time in Jerusalem.  It was there he debated with the leading Hebrew intellects and amazed them with his knowledge and wisdom.  He was at the time known as a "rabbi," or Jewish teacher, if memory serves. Also, you may have noticed that in the above text "God" is spelled "G-d."  There are many references to periods when followers of a given faith, or sect thereof, were forbidden to speak the name of their god.  During the time of Moses, God was often referred to by Semites (Arabs and what we call Jews or Hebrews) as "He who has no name."  The Old Testament records that while receiving the Ten Commandments, God told Moses that His name is "Iam." ("I am")

The Dome of the Rock referred to above is neither a Jewish synagogue nor a Christian church, these days.  The original structure there was a Hebrew temple.  When Moslems took Jerusalem by force in 638 A.D. they "cleansed the temple mount" and built a shrine (not a mosque) to commemorate the place where Mohammed, brought there by the Archangel Gabriel, led, among others, Abraham, Moses and Jesus in prayer. 

The Dome of the Rock

Islam is a young religion.  Christianity predates it by quite a few centuries.  Older yet is Judaism, which predates the empire of Rome by millennia.  It is in the Jewish holy books that we read about the children of Israel dwelling in the land of Canaan.  (Portions of present-day Israel and the West Bank.) 

There was not a single Moslem on Earth at the time.  Arabs (the descendants of Abraham's firstborn son, Ismael) there were aplenty, but of Moslems nary a one.

As described above, Abraham, a prophet to all three religions, is inextricably tied to the Jebusite-Canaanite walled city of Jerusalem, which has been taken in battle many times over the centuries. Use this link to read a crusader's description of the city walls.

Thus, this KGW Arab's claim to have a superior "right" to claim Jerusalem as the capitol of a new "Palestine" is based on historical precedent that denies it was inhabited by Jews thousands of years before Mohammed was born.

In point of fact, I have read that the majority of people who call themselves Palestinians today are the descendents of people who immigrated to the area in the 1800s and 1900s, just as the bulk of the current Israeli population is most recently European in origin. Arafat's bunch set up shop there after he was ejected from the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.  (Not the only Arab country that  threw him out.  He is widely considered a dangerous troublemaker in the Arab world.)

French "intellectuals," the most moronic academics on the planet, call the reoccupation of Israel by Jews "irredentism," or the claiming of a right to territory occupied by another state or people, on the grounds of distant historical connections.  Since that is the same type of claim the "Palestinians" they support use (including the one on KGW today), it's a farcical argument.  French intellectuals are, as you can see, inconsistant fools.

From a racial standpoint, Jerusalem is probably best described as "Semitic" in origin -- assuming the Jebusites were from that human group.  If that is the case, then since both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples, it seems they have an equal right to the town.  But, from a religious standpoint, it is most certainly the Jews, not the Moslems, who have the edge.  Jerusalem was theirs thousands of years before Islam was born.  (LL)

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