SWC Protests Al-Hayat Commentator’s Attack on Judaism -“Jews Invented a Religion to Steal a Land”

Jihad al Khazen challenged to visit historic sites in Israel

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is denouncing a respected Arab writer for alleging in a column in the London-based Al-Hayat thatJews “invented a religion to steal a land from its owners” and that his readers should learn to differentiate between the true prophets of the Koran and the false ones in theJewish Torah.

“We now have to deal with a new theological front in the war against Israel, one that denigrates the ancient religion of Judaism,” charged Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean ofthe Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human Rights NGO. “Apparently, the 3,000 year-old Torah is no longer to be respected in the eyes of Israel-haters, despite the factthat its writings inspired both Christianity and Islam.”

Al-Khazen also alleges, “Any history student in any major Western university will learn that Jewish history is only an amalgamation of biblical myths about prophets, kings, andkingdoms that never existed.”

“Al-Khazen’s remarks are reminiscent of Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan’s infamous labeling of Judaism as a ‘gutter religion,’” said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, Director ofInterfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “In Farrakhan’s case, everyone understood it to be unvarnished hatred of Jews. Al-Khazen on the other hand, asserts thatarcheology supports his claims, apparently blissfully unaware of how unfounded his approach is,” he added. The Wiesenthal Center official invited Mr. Al- Khazen to visithistorical sites in the Holy Land with them. “He will find the archeological connections between the Jewish people and the Land overwhelming and undeniable. A good place to startwill be by sifting through the truckloads of earth removed illegally by the Waqf from the Temple Mount and then dumped. It has yielded priceless treasures dating back to the timeof the First Temple Jewish prophet, Jeremiah,” he concluded.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the UnitedStates. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).