Notre Dame Burns, And A Civilization With It

 


Today, Paris's centuries old cathedral Notre Dame caught on fire and is in the process of being destroyed. The world famous spire and roof of the Gothic cathedral are gone, and the wooden structure that's  supporting the roof is being destroyed by the blaze. It is quite likely that if Notre Dame is ever rebuilt, it will both take years, cost a great deal and lack the historic milleau of its predecessor, built in the 12th century and completed a century later. A century to build, a day to destroy...

Officially, the fire is being referred to by the authorities as an 'accident occurring while renovation work was in progress. ' While this might be true, the complete destruction involved is against it. To think of this as an accident is to assume the following:

1.The timing (holy week) and the recent previous vandalizing of Churches throughout France in recent weeks at Saint-Sulpice and Saint Denis (and its priceless pipe organ) are just, you know, coincidences. ( Just in passing, the media isn't reporting much on this)

2. The Muslims in Paris are very  peaceful, law abiding and respect other religions.

3 The construction crew doing the repairs would never hire Muslims.

3) No Muslim or Muslims would risk their jobs to  take the opportunity to destroy one of Christianity's most famous buildings in Holy Week.

4 The construct crew was so incompetent that they set multiple fires in different parts of the area they were working on...whoopsie.

Let's just say Je suis très sceptique. *

On the other hand, we all know the timing and the previous vandalism of France's churches is suspicious, also that generally, speaking many Muslims in Paris are neither peaceful, law abiding or respectful of other people's religions in the least. And that it Muslim migrants frequently are involved in construction work, and that any construction company entrusted with working on a famous landmark and a major tourist attraction would be chosen by the City of Paris based on their track record of safety and successful completion of jobs like this.

The last I heard, the fire had spread to Ile de la Cité, a pleasant little  island in the Seine within the city of Paris. The population of about 1,000 people has been evacuated. The Seine isn't particularly wide there, so there's the unpleasant possibility of spreading further.

Eh Bien, what happens if the authorities find out it was Muslims who burned down Notre Dame?
My guess would be nothing. Much of France's media has already bought into surrender, and President Macron's victory in what was one of France's few crooked elections was definitely helped by a Muslim block vote, especially in Paris and Marseilles. So in my opinion, no matter what this will be kept quiet and marked down as an accident...tres triste, n'est pah?**

Even if it does go public, the media will caution against, you know, hate speech. After all, what's a few centuries of civilization? Even Pope Francis would likely call for calm and tolerance.
What Hitler and the Nazis couldn't do, France's invited 'guests' seem to have begun, and not just in Paris. The match has been lit. We'll see what happens.

Update: Twitter and other social media are filed with French Muslim Arabs cheering the fire at Notre Dame. just mentioning this in passing .


* I'm very skeptical.
**Very sad, isn't it?

 




Rob Miller writes for Joshuapundit. His articles have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Examiner, American Thinker, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Clear Politics, The Times Of Israel, Breitbart.Com, Yediot and other publications.

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Obama Administration To Return Stolen Jewish Artifacts To The Iraqis Who Stole Them

This is truly despicable.

Harold Rhode over at Pajamas Media has a piece ( h/t, Liberty's Spirit)  that outlines how Jewish historical artifacts, Torah scrolls and holy books stolen from the Iraqi Jewish community before they were forcibly expelled from Iraq were recovered and preserved...and are scheduled to be returned not to the Jews that they belong to but to the anti-semitic country of Iraq that stole them:

The National Archives is readying an exhibit of Iraqi Jewish artifacts due to open on October 11. Appallingly, the U.S. government has agreed to then return the Iraqi Jewish archives — including holy books — to Iraq, which systematically expelled its Jewish community, by June of 2014.

How did the Jewish Iraqi community — which dates to 721 B.C.E. when the Assyrians conquered Samaria and eventually deported the population to central Mesopotamia, and which was one of the two main sources of Mishnaic and Talmudic learning — lose, find, and lose again its patrimony?

The incredible story of how this unlikely turn of events came to pass has never been told in its entirety until now; I am one of the few who can tell it.

After American forces entered Baghdad in May 2003, the head of the Jewish and Israel section of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat (intelligence agency) came to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), offering information about Saddam’s intelligence operations against Israel and Jews. He did this in order to curry favor. Former Iraqi officials frequently came to opposition groups to tell their stories, in return for which they would get “safe passage” documents stating that since they were cooperating with post-Saddam authorities, they should not be harmed.

The tipster visited the INC to talk about the rumored Jewish archives hidden in the basement of the Mukhabarat headquarters. After his visit, INC chairman Ahmed Chalabi called Judy Miller, the former New York Times reporter then embedded with a mobile unit looking for WMD, and me. I was an Arabic/Hebrew speaking policy analyst with the Office of Net Assessments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, then assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority, at the time.

We rushed over to talk with Chalabi, who told us that a former Mukhabarat employee reported that a huge treasure trove of Iraqi Jewish and Israeli material was amassed in the Mukhabarat building, and that he was prepared to show us where it was located. He also said there was an ancient copy of the Talmud written on leather or parchment.

Miller and I then went off to the Mukhabarat building with the former Saddam officer and an INC contingent.

The tipster indicated from outside the building where in the basement the Jewish and Israel sections were located. Then — he promptly disappeared. Despite the bombed-out structure’s instability, looters were overrunning the building. Danger was everywhere.

We were, in fact, standing beside a large metal device which had lodged itself halfway into the ground. We later learned that this live, undetonated bomb had penetrated through three or four stories of the building and destroyed the building’s water system. It had pierced the wall almost at ground level. We saw, through the hole it made, that the Jewish and Israel sections were flooded.

Rhode goes on to relate the amazing story of how the artifacts were rescued, restored and shipped to America, with the aid of Ricard Perle and Dick Cheney, among others. And then
tells how they were stolen in the first place:

After Israel became a state in 1948, martial law was declared in Iraq and many Jews left in the mass exodus in 1950-51. Almost all of those who remained behind left by the 1970s. They were not allowed to take much with them.

In 1950-51, they were allowed one suitcase with clothing — sometimes not even their personal documents — and nothing more. They were forced to leave everything else behind, including their communal property. For many years, Jews were not permitted to leave Iraq at all and were persecuted. With time, the few Jews who remained in Baghdad transferred what communal holy books and religious articles they had to the one remaining synagogue which functioned. This was in Batawin, a section of Baghdad which in the late 1940s was the neighborhood to which upwardly mobile Jews moved. The remaining Jews stored this property in the synagogue’s balcony, where the women sat during prayer.

The Jews did not freely relinquish this material. They did it under duress, having no other option.

In 1984, Saddam sent henchmen with trucks to that synagogue. Those scrolls, records, and books were carted off to a place unknown. Local Jews who were at the synagogue at that time witnessed this thievery, and described to me personally how the material was carted off against their will.

The post-Saddam Iraqi authorities agreed to the Jewish artifacts being taken to America to be restored, but guess what? These thieves now want 'their' stolen property returned. This is the equivalent of heirs of Nazis demanding that artwork stolen by Hitler's henchmen from all over Europe be returned to them as rightful owners.

Moreover, considering how Iraq feels about Jews, there's no guarantee the artifacts will be given the care and reverence they deserve.

They belong to the Iraqi Jewish community, almost all of whom now live in Israel. And their proper home is the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center outside of Tel Aviv, the only museum in the world dedicated to the history of Iraqi Jewry.

There's a petition you can sign here to stop the transfer and return these historic and holy artifacts to their rightful owners.

These holy artifacts must not go back to the people that stole them.

Egypt: Christian Schools, Churches Looted By Islamists, Nuns Abused As 'POWs'

While the Muslim Brotherhood fascists haven't performed so well against the Egyptian Army, they've done somewhat better when it comes to assaulting Egypt's Christians. Over 47 churches and monasteries have been burned and looted by the Islamists since Morsi was deposed, along with dozens of homes and businesses owned by Christians. The latest tactic of the Islamists is to mark the targets with red paint graffiti beforehand, so the mobs know where to go.

Pictured above is the Coptic Saint Virgin Mary Church in Al Nazla, which had just been rebuilt after 13 years of construction in a country where the government strictly curtails building permits for churches, in accordance with sharia law.

“First they stole the valuable things, and then they torched the place,” says Sami Awad, a church member who lives across the narrow dirt alley from the church. “Whatever they couldn't carry, they burned.”

The attackers left graffiti on the ruins of the church reading “The religion of God is Islam.”

The UK's Daily Mail reported on what happened to the latest victim in the Brotherhood's war against Christians, the Franciscan School in Cairo.

Sister Manal, the principal told the Daily Mail how she watched for six hours as a mob looted the building, knocked the cross off the gate and replaced it with the black banner of jihad.

The classrooms were then burned to the ground and the nuns, along with several Christian women who worked at the school were taken away to be paraded through the streets as 'prisoners of war' by the Brotherhood.

‘We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us,’ Sister Manal said. ‘At the end, they paraded us like prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to another without telling us where they were taking us.’

The frightened women were groped, hit and insulted by the Islamist mob.

‘I am terrified and unable to focus,’ said Boulos Fahmy, the pastor of a Catholic church a short distance away from Manal’s school. ‘I am expecting an attack on my church any time now.’

And Bishop Ibram, head of the local Coptic church, said he had instructed Christians and clerics not to resist the mobs of Islamists to try and avoid any loss of life.

‘The looters were so diligent that they came back to one of the five churches they had already ransacked to see if they could get more,’ he said.

‘They were loading our chairs and our benches on trucks and when they had no space for more, they just destroyed them.’

In contrast to the Brotherhood regime that was recently ousted, the current Egyptian regime has said that attacks on Egypt's Christians will not be tolerated and has promised government aid in rebuilding the burned churches and religious facilities.

President Obama has made a huge point  of being a professed Christian. Have you ever heard him say a word about this? Has he ever once criticized the Muslim Brotherhood for attacking Christians and burning churches?

Why I'm Boycotting the Olympics; IOC Admits Muslims Prevented The Honoring of Murdered Israeli Athletes

The Olympics are due to start in London. But I will not be watching them, discussing them or even thinking about them, and I urge anyone with a claim to human decency to do the same.

In 1972, at the Olympics in Munich, 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by PLO terrorists. The games, of course, went on, and there has never been any effort to memorialize the victims.

On this, the 40th anniversary of this barbarism, the families of the victims, led by Munich widow Ankie Spitzer petitioned the International Olympic Committee to honor the memory of the murdered athletes with a minute of silence, something most western countries were in favor of:

Munich widow Ankie Spitzer spearheaded the campaign by launching an online protest, which has since garnered support from across political spectrums in several countries including Israel, Canada, the UK, Australia, the US, Belgium and Germany.

In the latest development, some 140 Italian parliamentarians signed a letter to [IOC president] Rogge this week, calling for minute’s silence to be instituted.

The appeal was driven by Italian Jewish MP Fianna Nirenstein, who is vice president of the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs, and who said the gesture would mark “a moment of pity for these murdered athletes and a firm condemnation of terror”.

In a letter launching her campaign for an official silence to mark the 40th anniversary of the Munich Massacres, Spitzer wrote:

“Silence is a fitting tribute for athletes who lost their lives on the Olympic stage. Silence contains no statements, assumptions or beliefs and requires no understanding of language to interpret.”

The Olympic Committee refused. And the reason is illuminating.

According to Mrs. Spitzer, Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC told her when they met that 'his hands were tied' by the 46 Arab and Muslim members of the IOC.

She replied, “My husband’s hands were tied, not yours.”

The BBC,of all places, lends credence to this by mentioning as a genteel aside that the Arab and Muslim members threatened a walk out if the Israeli athletes were memorialized.

Yes, as if you didn't know it before, a substantial number of Muslim are just fine with terrorism, barbarism and murder if the targets are Jews. In Britain itself, the first move by the Muslim Council of Britain after it was formed in 2001 was to call for a ban on the UK's Holocaust Memorial Day. And British schools are now routinely banning teaching anything about the Holocaust for fear of 'contradicting versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.'

The IOC obviously concurs with this sort of pandering. And it easily meets Natan Sharansky's 3D test of anti-semitism.

So I'll be boycotting the Olympics this year, in thought, word, and deed and I urge you to do likewise. I won't watch the coverage, buy any of the merchandise or follow the games in any way.

They are unworthy of attention by anyone who still values what the Olympic spirit is supposedly about.

The one thing I will be doing is letting the suits at NBC and any company advertising themselves as Olympic sponsors know why.

That will be my moment of silence, my tribute. Call it one man's call for simple decency.

I hope you'll join me.

Pope Benedict Meets With Abbas, Calls For A 'Palestinian' State

You'd think that given how the PLO treats Christians in the areas it controls, let alone Hamas, Pope Benedict would get a clue.

But here's this Pope standing next to Arafat's Holocaust denying number two in Rome, the man who was Yasser Arafat's assistant in presiding over the decimation of the once majority Christian town of Bethlehem and endorsing more of the same.

Pope Benedict may not have consciously decided to side with the oppressors against the oppressed, but he has decided to accomodate, appease them and not confront them -which amounts to the same thing.That kind of moral delinquency is exactly how Pius XII dealt with the Nazis.

Abbas was a part of the PLO whose thugs invaded the Church of the Nativity and wrecked it, using Bibles for toilet paper and threatening the monks. These are the same people who desecrated and attempted to destroy the tomb of Joshua, Joseph's tomb, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave Of The Patriarchs, all places that are revered in the Christian tradition as well as the Jewish one.

But defending the Church and it's traditions apparently means nothing to this Pope next to appeasing Islam.


I'm surprised the Pope didn't wear his Keffiyah.



Pope Benedict wasn't always like that. In the beginning of his term, he clearly identified the fate of the Church with that of the Jews and even challenged Islamism in a famous speech at the University of Regensburg that directly challenged radical Islam and spoke out forcefully against jihad and `fanaticism in religion'.

The reaction to that speech - the firebombing of churches, threats to church property like the the church of the Holy Sepulcher still in lands under Muslim control, death threats towards the Pope himself and the actual murder of several priests and nuns - frightened him into dhimmitude and cowardice.

This Pope's alignment with Islam against the Jews and Israel commenced forthwith.

The saddest part of all is that I know that Cardinal Ratzinger was a man of brilliance, courage and intellect before he donned the Papal robes. But now, when the Church needs a strong warrior, they've received a weak reed. A man of Pope Benedict's history and essential decency understands only too well the choice he's made and its consequences...and I pity him.

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Update on Joseph's Tomb Murder; PA Police Shouted 'Allahu Akbar' As They Fired

As more and more details come out about the incident at Joseph's Tomb in which an Israeli was murdered by 'Palestinian Authority' police and five others wounded, it's becoming obvious that this was a deliberate attack.

According to an eyewitness account Palestinian police officers fired at the convoy as they were on their way in to the Tomb, and continued firing at them as they left,killing Ben-Yosef Livnat,(HYD) a 24 year-old father of four from Jerusalem and the nephew of Minister Limor Livnat, and injuring five others as the police yelled "Allahu akbar":

One of the Breslover Hassidim who was in the second car in the convoy and was lightly wounded told Ynet: "We arrived at the tomb like on many occasions in the past. Near the tomb we saw a spikes chain. One of the guys jumped out of the car and moved it aside.

"At this point a uniformed Palestinian police officer with a Kalashnikov in a jeep woke his colleagues up and they started firing into the air…I was in the front seat. We started driving fast in the direction of the tomb; we got out of the vehicles and kissed the tomb.

"When we got back to the vehicles the police shot at the vehicles, they were screaming 'Allahu Akbar'. It was crazy, they were shooting to kill. I screamed at the driver to drive out of there quickly. When we got to Har Bracha we attended to the wounded."

While it's pretty obvious that the Breslovers broke a road block to make a visit to the Tomb (which is supposed to be under Israeli control anyway), such occurrences are reportedly fairly common, and have occurred without incident.

This time, the 'Palestinians' decided to shoot to kill in the name of Allah.

Add that to the vandalism that occurred within the tomb that was likely done by 'Palestinian police', the suspiciously quick gathering of a mob of Arab protesters from Nablus and the attempt by the 'Palestinians' to set the Holy Site on fire again and the implications are obvious.

This amounts to a staking out of territory by the 'Palestinians'. They want to make Joseph's Tomb a Jew-free zone. As such, that's an act of war. Certainly the 'Palestinians' would treat it as one, if the IDF fired on peaceful Muslims en route to a Holy Shrine who posed no threat whatsoever.

Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak was quite correct to refer to this a murder, even if the IDF is taking the cautious road and referring to it as 'a security incident.'

Ben-Yosef Livnat,(HYD) was buried today at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Like so many Israelis, he was killed simply for being a Jew who was at he wrong place at the wrong time.

I wonder how many more deaths it will take before the Israeli government reacts the way any other country would and ends the masquerade known as the Peace process with people who are their sworn enemies.

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Jews Shot En Route To Prayer; Jewish Holy Site Desecrated By 'Palestinians' - Again

Pessah ( Passover) is a traditional time for Jews in Israel to make a pilgrimage to Joseph's Tomb, located outside of the 'Palestinian' occupied city of Nablus in Samaria.

This year, hundreds of Jewish worshipers who arrived at Joseph's Tomb were shocked to find the Holy Site severely vandalized – again.

When the group of 500 worshipers entered the tomb, they found it had been defaced – the headstone smashed and swastikas sprayed on the walls, graffiti of a blood-dripping sword over a Star of David, and visible boot prints all over the tomb itself.

As you may know, anything to do with the bottom of one's shoe - like a boot print - is a deadly insult in Arab culture. The prints are identical with the 'Palestinian' police standard issue boots.

This is hardly the first time Joseph's Tomb has been desecrated by the 'Palestinians'. Israel retained sovereignty over the site according to the Oslo Accords, but Israel's then Prime Minister Ehud Barak turned it over to Arafat's thugs in October 2000, in exchange for a 'Palestinian' agreement to protect the site and allow Jews access.

The 'Palestinians' promptly burnt it down and turned the site into rubble.

Israel reclaimed the area after Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, but The IDF did not allow Jewish worshipers to enter it for a long period of time due to security concerns; deserted, it has been burnt down and defaced by the Arabs many times.

Joseph Tomb's was finally restored in December of 2008 and the military began allowing worshipers to visit it once more, but always at night and under heavy military guard.

The latest series of recent concessions saw the 'Palestinian' police allowed equal rights to patrol the area, and IDF checkpoints removed.

The result was the site's desecration and the ambush shooting by 'Palestinian' police of a second group of Israelis en route to the site to pray that murdered Ben-Yosef Livnat,(HYD) a 24 year-old father of four from Jerusalem and and wounded five others. According to witnesses, the police yelled "Allahu akbar" as they fired on the civilian vehicles and continued shooting even as the vehicles fled the scene.

The group were Breslov Hassidim, easily identified as religious Jews whose intentions were hardly hostile.

Gershon Mesika head of the Shomron Regional Council said that the Palestinian officers were clearly at fault: "Breslov Hassidim come to the Tomb to pray every week. They [the 'Palestinian' police] know them but for some reason, they decided to open fire this time."

No mystery, really...they decided to open fire because the 'Palestinians' are getting increasingly bolder about killing Jews, given the events in Egypt and in the UN. They are staking out territory, trying to destroy yet another piece of Israel's Jewish heritage and make yet another piece of the Middle East into Dar Islam and a Jew-free zone.

Imagine, just for a moment what the world reaction would be if the IDF opened fire on Muslims attempting to pray at the al-Aksa Mosque.

And don't make the mistake of thinking that this only concerns Jews. When Pope Benedict visited Turkey and toured the mosque that was created with fire and blood out of the Cathedral of St. Sophia, he was virtually ordered by his Turkish hosts not to pray or take any sort of religious posture in what was once Christian hallowed ground. And I doubt that Christians have forgotten the Palestinian terrorist takeover and desecration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a few years ago.

If a Jew like Ben-Yosef Livnat can be murdered for praying at a Holy site, there's no reason Christians won't be shot down for the same 'crime' if they attempt to visit a Christian Holy site Muslims decide they shouldn't be able to visit any longer.

This process, including the wholesale desecration of Jewish religious sites in the region by Muslims is certainly nothing new, and should give people who are pressuring the Israelis to acquiesce to the creation of a violently hostile state next door with control of the Jewish Holy Sites in Jerusalem some food for thought.

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Obama Tells Israel They Have No Right To Their Religious Shrines

If anyone still had any doubts about how innately hostile the Obama Administration actually is to Israel and the Jewish people, this little item should convince them.

The Israelis decided that in view of things, they should designate a number of their Holy sites in Judea and Samaria as part of a list of Jewish heritage sites marked for renovation and preservation. Included among them were Rachel's tomb and The Me'arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

The idea of preservation and renovation is especially important, since it is due entirely to Palestinian violence and vandalism that these shrines need to be protected and renovated in the first place. There's a long history here.

It was the Palestinians who burnt the synagogues in Gaza to the ground after the Jews left,who destroyed 28 historic Synagogues in Jerusalem and used the tombstones of the historic Jewish cometary as pavement during the Jordanian Arab occupation, who desecrated the tomb of Joshua, Joseph's tomb, the Yeshiva in Homesh, just as the Iraqis are now 'de-Judaizing' Ezekiel's tomb.

And these are only the most prominent examples of historic synagogues and Jewish Holy sites destroyed by the Arabs over the last sixty odd years.

As for the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron,the Israelis actually attempted to share that with the Muslims. Their reward for this open-mindedness was to find anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled all over the shrine and to discover that the Palestinians had actually urinated and defecated in the area used to store the Torah scrolls.

As for Rachel's Tomb, situated in Bethlehem, the Palestinian attempted to firebomb it a couple of years back.

Nor is it just Jewish Holy sites. It was the Palestinians who invaded and trashed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and are disinterring Christian bodies wholesale in Gaza as well.

In view of this history, Israel's decision to make a commitment to preserve these Holy sites is not only understandable but entirely justified.

There's even a clear basis for this under international law.

So what do you think the response was from the Obama Administration and the UN was when Israel made the announcement that they were making preserving these shrines official policy?

You guessed it. Outright condemnation:

The Obama administration sharply criticized Israel on Wednesday for designating the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb, both in West Bank cities, to the list of Jewish heritage sites marked for renovation and preservation.

The government's decision, announced Sunday, sparked Palestinian protests and has drawn criticism from other quarters, including the United Nations. {...}

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the administration viewed the move as provocative and unhelpful to the goal of getting the two sides back to the table.

Toner said US displeasure with the designations of the Cave of the Patriarchs in the flash point town of Hebron and the traditional tomb of the biblical matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem had been conveyed to senior Israeli officials by American diplomats.

Israel is frequently accused by its critics of 'ignoring international law.' In fact, it's just the opposite - international law ignores Israel, the Jew among nations.

As for Barack Obama, given given whom he is, none of this surprising.

Some people have speculated over whether the current occupant of the White House is an anti-Semite. Frankly it doesn't matter, since he continues to act like one at every opportunity.

Obama may very well end up acheiving his goal of destroying the relationship between America and its ally Israel, but it will not be without significant cost to the United States.

-selah-

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Joseph's Tomb Vandalized By Palestinians

Israeli visitors to the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph ( Yosef in Hebrew) in Nablus yesterday found that it had been badly vandalized by Palestinians with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti:

"We saw a drawing of a Star of David with a boot stamping on it on one wall," said David Ha'ivri, a spokesman for Samaria Regional Council chairman Gershon Masika, who was one of the visitors.

"Putting your foot on something is the ultimate insult in the Arab world," added Ha'ivri. "It is sad that is the way they treat a holy site. But nobody was particularly surprised."

Ha'ivri said that in the past year, since Masika was elected head of the regional council, there had been regular monthly visits to the tomb coinciding with the new Jewish month.

"Every time, we bring white paint to cover up the graffiti," said Ha'ivri.

The tomb - which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under Israeli control - is surrounded by territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

This sort of treatment of Jewish religious sites by the Palestinians is hardly unique.

Nathan J. Diament, director of public policy at the Orthodox Union, issued a statement decrying the vandalism and calling on "all people of good will to join us in condemning such acts of desecration of holy sites."

"We also call upon all people of good will, especially those in positions of responsibility in the American, Israeli and other governments who, in their sincere desire to pursue a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, consider plans which would have Israel relinquish sovereignty over other Jewish holy sites - most notably in Jerusalem - to view this as not the first, but another warning that this is what happens when such holy sites are not secured by Israel," the statement said.

That, of course, is exactly the point, whether we're talking about the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Jospeh's Tomb, or the illegal destruction of Jewish artifacts in illegal excavations by the Muslim wakf on the Temple Mount. Many Muslims, who demand inordinate respect for their own religion and traditions seem to have no respect or tolerance of anyone else's....which is why Israel will never give up a unified Jerusalem under Israel's control.