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| Herzl postcard to his daughter from Jerusalem, October 30, 1898 |
The article starts with a quote, supposedly from Theodor Herzl:
"If we ever get Jerusalem and I am still alive and able to do anything, I will remove everything that is not sacred to the Jews in it, and I will burn the centuries-old monuments."Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement
The rest of the article goes on to falsely claim that Israeli archaeologists ignore anything non-Jewish in their digs and research, an absurd lie.
What about this supposed Herzl quote?
Here is what Herzl really wrote in his journal on October 31, 1898, during his visit to Palestine:
If I remember you in the future, Jerusalem, not with pleasure will I remember you. The moldy residues of two thousand years of cruelty, intolerance, and filth lie in the stinking streets. If we ever get Jerusalem, and if it is within my ability, I will clean it first. I shall remove everything that is not sacred, I shall set up housing for laborers outside of the city, I shalI empty out the nests of filth, destroy them, burn those ruins which are not sacred, and the bazaars I shall move to another place. Preserving the old building style as much as possible, I will erect a modern, convenient, clean and functioning city around the holy sites.“
At no time did he differentiate between things that are sacred to Jews and to non-Jews, and indeed the postcard that he sent his daughter pictured above shows the Dome of the Rock - certainly not something the secular Herzl wanted to destroy.
Al Jazeera is lying, explicitly, in both the quote and the story itself. Why do people still put any trust in this propaganda rag?
