Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The City of David

The City of David is an archaeological site to the east of the Dung Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. The findings of excavations there are consistent with extant descriptions of King David's Palace and the city that stretched below it, down to the pool of Siloam. Because the pool was outside the city, extensive caves were dug through the rock to allow access to the water from within the city. It is quite exciting to still be able to traverse these caves (as I described in a previous message), although this is not a trip for the old and lame. These excavations have provided sure proof for the existence of a Jewish city on the site of Jerusalem 3,000 years ago. Apart from anything else inscriptions in ancient Hebrew have been found inside these long-lost caves.
On April 11, Dominic Waghorn reported on Sky News about the City of David in a report entitled "Unholy row over City of David excavations" http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1312506,00.html . Instead of giving a factual description of the exciting excavations, incredibly he used this as an excuse to attack Israel and Jews. It was a clear example of pro-Palestinian media bias. In this article he stated that the web site describing these excavations had no mention of the Palestinians who live in the village of Silwan on the site of the City of David, as if this was a deliberate omission. This shows his ignorance of the basics, OF COURSE there is NO mention of Palestinians on the website, they didn't arrive on the scene for another 3,000 years! Mohammed did not initiate Islam for 1,600 years after King David and the Palestinians were not recognized as an Arab people until ca. 1966. In fact Silwan is an Arab transliteration of the original (Jewish) Biblical name of Siloam! And of course the Palestinian Arabs don't like to acknowledge any historical relationship of Jews to this Land, so they use their media sympathizers to present their case.
Waghorn also indicated that the "settlers," another bad word for religious Jewish Israelis, were developing the site and beginning to live there, as if that in itself was a bad and immoral thing, and in doing so that they were ignoring the rights of the Palestinians. No Israeli sympathetic to the relationship of Jews to this site was interviewed. As far as I saw he gave no actual evidence for any mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs in Silwan, other than that Jews were beginning to move into the neighborhood (terrible thing!), where King David had his city for hundreds of years (and the excavations are causing roads to "crack.")
He used the title "unholy" for his report, which is sensational and inaccurate! There is nothing "unholy" about Jews moving into an ancient Jewish area, within the confines of the municipality of Jerusalem. What a poorly conceived, inaccurate and biased report! Sky News should replace Dominic Waghorn for presenting a series of pro-Palestinian reports with no balance and no sensitivity towards Israel and Jews at all.

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