JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Orthodox Union has condemned a Palestinian Authority study that says the Western Wall was never a part of the Temple Mount complex.
"This official government propaganda is contemptible, historically false and runs afoul of efforts to achieve peace with the State of Israel," the OU’s director of public policy, Nathan Diament, said in a statement Tuesday. "Coming from an official arm of the Palestinian Authority, it is nothing other than official incitement,"
According to the study, the Western Wall, which the Palestinians call Al-Buraq wall and say is an integral part of the Al-Aksa Mosque, is not made of even one stone from the era of King Solomon.
The paper was prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information, according to The Jerusalem Post. Taha wrote that the Jews never used the site for worship until the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
“This wall was never part of the so-called Temple Mount, but Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep over its destruction,” he wrote in the paper.
OU leaders have sent a letter to President Obama asking that Taha repudiate such anti-Israel incitement perpetrated by an official arm of the Palestinian Authority.
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