His erasure of New York City neighborhoods echoes his belief in the Palestinians’ supposed right to Israel.

By Kenneth Levin,, Gatestone Institute

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recently released map of ethnic enclaves in the city provides unintentional but instructive insight into the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The map labels neighborhoods as “Little Palestine,” “Little Egypt,” and “Little Pakistan,” along with other ethnic identities.

But absent is any acknowledgment of, for example, the city’s prominent and historic Italian, Irish, Jewish, or Puerto Rican neighborhoods. Their history and prominence are simply erased.

The distinction given to recently arrived Muslim immigrant communities and the erasure of historic and important non-Muslim groups is virtually a carbon copy of the ludicrous claims by Palestinians and their supporters that the Palestinians should be acknowledged as the exclusive claimants of what is now Israel and that the Jews are recent foreign interlopers whose presence should be nullified and erased.

It is of a piece with Mamdani’s call for the liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea”; that is, the extirpation of Israel and its Jews.

It is likewise of a piece with the rhetoric of the Muslim retreat attended by Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, on the French island of Corsica, over the 250th July 4 celebration. There the Virgin Mary was declared to be a “Palestinian woman.”

The reality is, of course, the opposite of the Palestinian false history, or “narrative.” Jewish history in the land goes back more than 3,000 years. Islam didn’t even exist for most of that time.

Mary was, of course, a Jewish woman. The Jewish presence in the land, even when diminished by forced exile imposed by various conquering empires, was unbroken throughout that entire history.

The Muslim presence only began in the late seventh century, when Arab forces seized the area from the Byzantine Christian empire that then controlled it.

The land was sparsely populated in modern times until the last century. From 1516 until World War I, it was essentially part of the Ottoman Empire.

In the 1830s, the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, broke from his allegiance to the Ottomans, conquered the area that is now Israel, and encouraged the migration of Egyptians into the area to reinforce his hold on it.

By 1841 the Ottomans had pushed Muhammad Ali’s forces back.

They, likewise wanting to strengthen their hold on the area, subsequently encouraged the migration of Muslims fleeing Christian colonial inroads (for example, Muslims from the Caucasus fleeing Russian expansion; Muslims from the lands that are now Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, seeking to escape French imperial conquest; and Muslims from what is now Iran, migrating from upheaval there). The first half of the twentieth century also saw large-scale Muslim immigration into the area.

Again, the Jewish presence during this period was unbroken. Jews were, for example, a plurality in Jerusalem—that is, their numbers exceeded those of Muslims or Christians—in Ottoman counts early in the 1800s and a majority in Jerusalem from the mid-nineteenth century.

There has never been a Palestinian Arab state. The land was under the control of the British via a mandate ratified by the League of Nations after World War I.

When, in 1947, the United Nations voted to divide the mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, the Jews agreed, and the Arabs rejected the proposal.

Palestinian leaders have continued to reject two-state solutions whenever they have been agreed upon by Israel, as in 2000, 2001, and 2008.

They continue to hold out for what Mamdani advocates, an Arab state “from the river to the sea,” with the Jewish state annihilated.

The only coherent use of “genocide” to characterize events in the area is the genocide advocated by the Arab side, where Hamas—the darling now of much of the American Left—calls in its charter for the annihilation of all the world’s Jews as a religious obligation, and the Palestinian Authority advocates the murder of Jews in its media, mosques, and schools and uses much of its annual budget to provide pensions to people for doing exactly that, murdering Jews.

If Mamdani were to publish a map of neighborhoods “from the river to the sea” and associated ethnicities, he would no doubt replicate the methodology he applied to the New York City map, a methodology reflecting the aspirations of Palestinian leaders: every neighborhood on the map would be a “little Palestine.”

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Jordan transferred documents to the PA regarding the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, which Jordan occupied prior to the 1967 Six-Day War.

By World Israel News Staff

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi paid a surprise visit to Ramallah Wednesday to discuss documents supplied by Jordan to the Palestinian Authority relating to claims of Palestinian ownership of property in Jerusalem, Channel 20 reported.

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry announced that it had provided the Palestinian embassy in Amman with historic documents that Jordan says prove ownership and rights of the residents of properties and homes in the the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the capital.

Jordan controlled the eastern part of Jerusalem until the 1967 Six Day War and the Ministry said it forwarded historical documents to the PA including the leases for residences in Sheikh Jarrah, contracts, correspondence, records and statements on behalf of the residents.

At least one of the homes was owned by Jews who fled when Jordanian forces captured that part of the city during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

Jordan also provided the Palestinian embassy in Amman with a copy of an agreement signed between the Jordanian Ministry of Construction and Development and the United Nations (UNRWA) in 1954, after workers searched the archives in the Jordanian capital looking for 60-year-old documents.

“As early as 2019, copies of all the documents found in this matter were provided to the Palestinian Embassy in Amman, at the request of the Palestinian Authority,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Daifallah Al-Fayez.

The statement added that “the official records of the Ministry of Construction and Development in the Kingdom of Jordan prove, after an in-depth examination, that in 1956 leases were signed for housing units with some of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah.”

The Jordanians claim that Israel is trying to “expel Palestinians from their homes and lands and violate their rights,” and the documents are intended to help the Arab residents fighting the Jerusalem municipality’s development plans.

According to Jordan, 28 families were given homes in 1956 with tenancy for 33 years, adding ownership of the land remained in the hands of the Jordanian guardian. However, the Jerusalem District Court recently rejected several appeals against eviction orders for eight Palestinian families still living there.

The report noted that several months ago, Turkey passed a microfilm containing what it claimed were hundreds of documents of ownership of Muslim property in Jerusalem’s Old City. Turkey, in the form of the Ottoman Empire, controlled the area until it was defeated in World War I, although Turkish President Erdogan recently claimed that Jerusalem is “our city.”

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“There is a beautiful poetic justice when you see the house of Hajj Amin al-Husseini crumbling down.” 

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A house belonging to one of the most notorious enemies of the Jewish people in pre-state Israel is slated to become a synagogue, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.

Called Qasr al-Mufti (the Mufti’s Palace), it was built for Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1933, 12 years after he was appointed the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by the British authorities, who ruled what was then Palestine.

While his job was to be the Muslim cleric in charge of the city’s Islamic holy places, the British turned a mostly blind eye to his main activity, which was fomenting deadly riots against Jews across the country.

The empty mansion is situated on a hilltop in the Arab-majority Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which is between the Old City and Mount Scopus. A 28-apartment complex owned by a Jewish developer has been largely built around it.

Daniel Luria, a spokesman for Ateret Cohanim, which helps Jews buy properties in the eastern part of Jerusalem but is not involved in the Mufti development, says the old house will become a synagogue and maybe a children’s day care facility to serve the expected buyers.

“There is a beautiful poetic justice when you see the house of Hajj Amin al-Husseini crumbling down,” he said.

Al-Husseini never actually lived in his grand, 500 square meter home, but his secretary’s family did and it became a social center for wealthy local Arabs and British officials, the Post reports.

The mufti finally drew the attention of the authorities when he turned his attention not only against Jews but also the British, starting a three-year-long Arab revolt against them in 1936. He had to flee the country the next year with a warrant sworn out for his arrest.

He ended up in Germany, collaborating with the Nazis by recruiting Bosnian Moslems for the Waffen-SS and regularly broadcasting propaganda for Hitler in Arabic on the radio. After the war, he fled to Egypt to escape prosecution for war crimes.

Following the War of Independence, the house became part of a hotel, but the state took over the abandoned property when Jerusalem was reunited in 1967’s Six Day War. It was eventually sold to late American billionaire Irving Moskowitz, a philanthropist and Zionist actively involved in building projects that include the Har Homa and Ma’ale HaZeitim neighborhoods.

The small new Jewish enclave is not yet on the market because the company building it has enough land to double its size. This requires rezoning the land, but its request to do so has been stuck since 2008, said the report.

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