Here is how an Arab publication wrote about the event yesterday:
Here is how Time magazine described the events at the time:On the morning of August 21, 1969, a huge fire broke out in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the fire quickly spread to the southern portico, the mihrab of Salah al-Din, and the dome pillars in the blessed mosque, in a Jewish attempt to turn the sacred Islamic heritage, even the most sacred, and rare in human civilization, into a pile of ashes. To build the alleged temple on its ruins.Jerusalemites, Muslims and Christians, rushed to extinguish the fire, just as Palestinians from villages and cities in the West Bank rushed to participate in extinguishing it and saving Al-Aqsa Mosque from the imminent Jewish threat to destroy it.The Israeli occupation army closed the gates of the Haram and Al-Aqsa Mosque, to prevent the Palestinians from entering to extinguish the fire, so that the Zionist flames, which hate to Arabism, Islam and all humanity, would devour it.The Palestinians forced the Israeli army to open the doors after a violent clash that lasted 45 minutes, thinking that "Israel" would turn the Al-Aqsa Mosque into ashes during that period.When the Palestinians started trying to pump water from the wells of the mosque, they found the water pumps unfit for work, so they took the water with small containers and climbed the roof of the mosque to extinguish the fire.And when the fire trucks arrived from the municipalities of Ramallah, Al-Bireh, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Bethlehem and Hebron to participate in extinguishing the fire, the occupation army and the Israeli police prevented them from entering the mosque yard under the pretext that the extinguishing operation is within the jurisdiction of the Zionist occupied Jerusalem municipality. The Palestinians succeeded in putting out the fire after the important part of the mosque was burned, including the mihrab of Salah al-Din, which he took from the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo to Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.And the Israeli government officially announced, as usual in lying and deceit, that the fire was due to a defect in the electrical wires inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.The Arab Jerusalem Electricity Company, at the request of the Islamic Commission, sent a committee of experts and engineers to investigate the causes of the fire, and they confirmed that it was not the result of an electrical fault, as officially announced by “Israel”, but rather an intentional fire.They proved that the fire was meticulously planned, which embarrassed the Israeli government and prompted it to announce the arrest of the person who confessed to having set the arson attack, the Jew Michael Mohan, and brought him to trial and sentenced him to five years in prison, and later issued a decision to release him and deport him to Australia.
SOON after early-morning prayers at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque one day last week, flames burst from the ceiling beneath its famed silver dome. For three hours, the fire raged, destroying part of the roof and an 800-year-old pulpit of exquisitely carved cedarwood and inlaid ivory, a gift from the Islamic hero Saladin (1137-1193). Before Israeli and Arab firemen could extinguish the flames or anyone could investigate the fire, the entire Middle East was echoing with outraged Moslem demands for jihad—holy war.Automatic Assumption. In their fury, many Moslems automatically assumed that the Al Aqsa blaze had been started deliberately—and by an Israeli. Hundreds of Arabs rushed to the still-burning mosque, threatening firemen who were trying to control the blaze and shouting "Nasser! Nass-er!" When Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan arrived on the scene, he was jeered. An Arab mob coursed down the Via Dolorosa—the path Jesus took to the Crucifixion—shouting "Death to Israel!" Police blocked them at the fifth Station of the Cross.The Israelis, who have ruled Arab Jerusalem since 1967, protested their innocence, but in vain. Premier Golda Meir convoked an emergency Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem to offer help in repairing the mosque (the offer was spurned) and to appoint an investigating commission that included two Arab dignitaries (local Moslems named their own board of inquiry). Sheik Hilmi Al-Muh-tasib, chairman of Jerusalem's Moslem Council, quickly summoned newsmen to pointedly announce that "a blond, freckled man dressed in khaki, who did not appear to be a Palestinian," had been seen fleeing from the mosque just before the fire. That was all the information that Arab propagandists needed. Cairo Radio called the fire a "premeditated crime." Al-Fatah, the Palestinian Arab commando organization, demanded shrilly in its broadcasts: "Moslems, what are you waiting for? The Zionists are burning down your sacred shrines. How can you face the Prophet Mohammed?" Jordan's King Hussein, whose grandfather King Abdullah was assassinated by a Palestinian Arab gunman in front of the Aqsa mosque in 1951, called for an Arab summit meeting.At first the Israelis maintained that the fire was accidental. A welding torch was found beneath the roof, where work men had been repairing old timbers treated with inflammable linseed oil.At week's end, however, Israeli police arrested and charged with arson neither a Moslem nor a Jew but a member of the third faith that holds Jerusalem holy: Michael Dennis William Rohan, 28, an Australian ranch hand who has been touring Israel for several months and who, according to the police, belongs to the Church of God, a Protestant evangelical sect. Some reports said that Rohan spoke of a dream in which God commanded him to clear a site in the compound on which to build a Jewish temple. Anxious to damp down the incendiary emotions aroused by the fire, the Israelis held a press conference on the Jewish sabbath—an unprecedented peacetime action—to announce the arrest. Police emphasized that Jerusalem Arabs provided the most important clues by giving them a description of the man and a vest that had been torn from him as he fled from the scene. Said an Israeli police official: "We have enough evidence for any court in this country to convict him."
The Time article is more accurate 54 years ago than the Arab media today. But there were plenty of other lies in current Arab accounts of the fire.
One can see Israeli rescue equipment at the scene. You can look at video of the firefighters and it seems clear that Israeli and Arab firefighters worked together to fight the flames.
Rohan was indeed mentally ill. His trial was covered extensively in Australian papers, where he said things like that he was going to become the king of Jerusalem and that God had "promised him maidens:"
But to spread the lie that Israel was responsible for the fire was not enough. The Muslim world pushed through a resolution blaming Israel for the fire, although not explicitly saying that Israel set it.
The US abstained. It was the first time the US didn't support a resolution against Israel on Jerusalem.
What we see in this episode, as in so many others, is that the Arab lies came first, and the desire to keep the lies going is far greater than any desire to tell the truth. If something terrible happens, the Jews must be behind it. Fatah and Arab leaders didn't waste a minute in blaming Jews for the fire, and they rushed to get the UN to back their lies.
While much has changed in parts of the Arab world since then, the Palestinians have kept the exact same playbook that they had then.
