Celebrating 80 years ...

The headline of the Aug. 29, 1969, Jewish Western Bulletin cover story accompanying this photo was “Arabs exploit El Aksa [sic] fire.” The article explained that an Australian member of a fundamentalist Protestant sect had confessed to lighting the mosque on fire. Nonetheless, certain Arab groups and governments were using the incident “to whip up hatred” against Jews. A related story on the cover featured a statement from Monroe Abbey, president of Canadian Jewish Congress, about a demonstration in Toronto by some members of the Muslim faith, “implying Jewish responsibility” for the arson. He said, however, that, “[a]long with Jews in Israel and everywhere, we deeply sympathize with those who mourn the destruction of part of the mosque and we deplore this damage to a sacred Moslem [sic] institution.” He continued, “In sharp contrast to the systematic destruction of 28 synagogues and Jewish cemeteries under Arab rule of the Old City of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, it regrettably needs re-emphasizing that Jews have never been and never will be guilty of purposefully destroying the religious sanctuaries of any religion.”

Abbey noted that the rally in Toronto equated Zionism with Nazism and that it and other reported demonstrations “were, in this regard, part of a new international propaganda campaign which, while exploiting the sentiments of Moslems [sic] in this instance, is directed to exploiting vestiges of anti-Semitism [sic] and similar manifestations of barbaric racism.”