Jerusalem, capital of the State of Israel, is referred to by the Moslems as Ierusaleem al-Quds. The reference to Jerusalem as al-Quds is a shortened form of the name that Arabs used to refer to Jerusalem from the 10th Century forward: Bayt al-maqdis. The name is, of course, the Arabic for the Hebrew Beit HaMiqdash, i.e., the Temple. And yet, in a display of ideologically motivated ignorance, the PLO-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, Ikramah Sabri, has stated, “There is no evidence that Solomon’s Temple was in Jerusalem; probably it was in Bethlehem or in some other place.”

From the perspective of Islamic faith alone, the Temple Mount is the place from which Mohammed made his “Night Journey” to Heaven and is the direction of the first qibla, the first direction of prayer. If indeed the Moslems deny that Jerusalem is the place of the Temple, by what logic do they refer to it as al-Quds? This is particularly true when considering that the Moslems initially referred to the city as Aelia, that is Aelia Capitolina, the Roman name given to the city to erase its connection with the Judean Temple, Beit HaMiqdash. Ironically, then, the current Moslem practice to refer to Jerusalem as al-Quds or Bayt al-maqdis is a reversal of a historical linguistic injustice committed by the Roman Empire. Furthermore, the logical problems are compounded when the PLO attempts to curry favor with the Christians and declares their undying defense of the holy places of Christianity in Jerusalem. The holy places of Christianity in Jerusalem are only in Jerusalem, because that was the location of the Temple – the functionaries of which Jesus of Nazareth was challenging.

Similarly, the Romans changed the name of the Biblical city of Shechem to Napolis. The Arabs who eventually migrated to the area could not pronounce the “p” in Napolis, so the name became Nablus. Today, if asked, any PLO functionary will tell you that Nablus is the ancient Arabic name, in an attempt to manufacture a new “Palestinian Arab” history.

Another Roman linguistic attack was the altering of the name of the conquered Jewish State from Yehuda to Palestina. Just renaming the country, however, did not change the fact that the people in the country were still, in their own, rebellious eyes, Yehudim – i.e, citizens of Judea, the Jews. Only after the Moslems, under ‘Ommar ibn al-Khattab, took the Land from the Romans, who had in the meantime become the Byzantines, did the population significantly change in favor of non-Jews. The newly-arrived Arabs had difficulty pronouncing the “p” in Palestina, so they altered the name to Filasteen, in use to this day by Arabs claiming a historical connection to the Land of Israel. In this way, a spiteful decision by a Roman conqueror contributed to the specious claim that there is some historical, Arab nation called “the Palestinians.”