Critics of US President Donald Trump say he is delusional for wanting to annex Canada or purchase Greenland. And yet the same people, most of whom are deeply invested in the Palestinian cause, will give a pass to Palestinian leaders for saying things that are beyond insane.

Last week, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas stated quite emphatically that the biblical Temple never stood in Jerusalem, but rather was located in Yemen.

Is Abbas a dummy, a fool, or a liar? There really is no other option. And not only on this issue.

Ample archaeological evidence attests to the Temple being located on Mount Moriah in the heart of Jerusalem, as do the writings of ancient Greek, Roman, and other regional historians. There’s even a big carving of the Romans looting the Jerusalem Temple on the Arch of Titus situated in Rome to this day.

And then, of course, there’s the Bible, both the Tanakh (“Old Testament”) and the New Testament, neither of which is ambiguous in the least about the Jewish Temple being in Jerusalem.

Is Abbas saying that when the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus went up to Jerusalem and entered the temple courts at the time of the Jewish Passover (2:13-14), that our holy book is lying to us? At the very least, I hope this gives pause to those Christians who champion the Palestinian Authority.

Whatever the reason he said it, Abbas’s assertion is clearly just wrong.

So why is everyone letting him get away with it, or even ignoring it entirely?

I suspect one reason is that too many in the West still refuse to acknowledge that this conflict is more spiritual than physical. It manifests in a conflict over land and borders, but if you scratch just a little, that thin veneer gives way to the fact that Islam cannot tolerate land it once controlled being governed by “infidels.” The real conflict is over who rules in Jerusalem–the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and His followers, or Allah and his Muslims.

The only people to whom this isn’t clear are naive “progressive” Westerners. The Muslims admit it outright, which is why Abbas is so eager to relocate the Jewish Temple to Yemen, even though in so doing he violates one of his other tropes, that the Jews are “Western colonizers” with no history in the whole of the Middle East.

The truth of this land’s history, and in particular Jerusalem, is the true stumbling block (ie. source of conflict). Just as God told us it would be. Those who refuse to take seriously Palestinian revisionism and the religious nature of this conflict will never succeed as peace brokers because they deliberately fail to recognize, acknowledge, and understand the truth of the matter.

“You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking what is right.” (Psalm 52:3)

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