Nakba Denial by the Israel - they want us to remember Nazi Holocaust

Israel's education ministry has ordered the removal of the word nakba – Arabic for the "catastrophe" of the 1948 war – from a school textbook for young Arab children, it has been announced.

The decision – which will alter books aimed at eight- and nine-year-old Arab pupils – will be seen as a blunt assertion by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud-led government of Israel's historical narrative over the Palestinian one.

The term nakba has a similar resonance for Palestinians as the Hebrew word shoah – normally used to describe the Nazi Holocaust – does for Israelis and Jews. Its inclusion in a book for the children of Arabs, who make up about a fifth of the Israeli population, drives at the heart of a polarised debate over what Israelis call their "war of independence": the 1948 conflict which secured the Jewish state after the British left Palestine, and led to the flight of 700,000 Palestinians, most of whom became refugees.

Netanyahu spoke for many Jewish Israelis two years ago when he argued that using the word nakba in Arab schools was tantamount to spreading propaganda against Israel.

Palestinians have always maintained that the 1948 refugees were the victims of Israeli "ethnic cleansing". But in recent years a new generation of revisionist Israeli historians has rejected the old official narrative that the Palestinians, supported by the neighbouring Arab states, were responsible for their own misfortune.

Reflecting those changing perceptions, Ehud Olmert, Israel's last prime minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party, referred to Palestinian "suffering" at the Annapolis peace conference in 2007.

Netanyahu's Likud takes a different view. "There is no reason to present the creation of the Israeli state as a catastrophe in an official teaching programme," said the education minister, Gideon Saar. "The objective of the education system is not to deny the legitimacy of our state, nor promote extremism among Arab-Israelis." There was bitter controversy in 2007 when nakba was introduced into a book for use in Arab schools only, by the then education minister, Yuli Tamir of the centre-left Labour party.

"In no country in the world does an educational curriculum refer to the creation of the country as a 'catastrophe'," Saar told MPs in the Knesset yesterday. "There is a difference between referring to specific tragedies that take place in a war – either against the Jewish or Arab population – as catastrophes, and referring to the creation of the state as a catastrophe."

What their leaders have said:

We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.

–David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, 1948-53, 1955-63

There is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."

–Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, 2001-2006

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist.

–Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, 1969-1974

The Zionist faith

Their soldiers commit cold blooded murder; use human shields, kill innocent people, commit massacres and Israelis see nothing wrong with it. They simply adore some one like Rabbi Meir Kahane, they worship Rabbi Goldstein who mowed down Muslim worships in Hebron, they adore their own army that fires tank rounds at children playing on the beach, target civilian apartments, destroy farms and uproot century-old Olive trees for the hell of it. They simply stand up and cheered as their tanks, jets, artillery level Gaza, killing so many innocent women and children and simply destroying the entire Gaza Strip. It looked like the 4^th of July and they were cheering as the jets dropped phosphorous bombs on civilian targets. They cheered the power of their destructive force and they simply have no remorse for what they have done to so many hundreds of thousands of people. They are taught in their Yeshivas, killing Arabs is simply an act of divine order and is part of the new Zionist’s faith.

They try to create facts on the ground, through land and water theft, and they claim they are building a “security wall” rather than an “Apartheid Wall” knowing well they are simply stealing the land, the water, destroying farms simply because they see nothing wrong with it and then they tell the world it is for “security” as if only the Israeli Jews are entitled to have peace and security and the Palestinians are simply God’s trash. If they are talking security then let them build their own wall a mile high along the 67 borders and no one will give a damn. Let them live in the Ghetto they have formed around themselves.

The daily humiliations, millions of Palestinians had to endure should tell all of us something about this new Israeli “Jewish” psyche as part of a grand scheme to dehumanize the Palestinians just like the Nazis did when they commenced to dehumanize the Jews and ended up putting them in death camps. Palestinians have to wait for hours simply to go from one village to an adjacent village or to access their farms, and Israelis do this to supplement their land theft, ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Jerusalem, destruction and demolition of thousands of homes, with 6,000 Palestinian homes slated for demolition in Jerusalem. The Israelis simply do not see anything wrong with their occupation; they see nothing wrong with what they and their army and government are doing to the Palestinians. Israelis and their cousins in the US have some serious issues.

Text taken from Sami Jamil Jadallah - What is wrong with Israeli “Jews”? A whole lot!.

Read Also "Breaking the Silence:" Testimonies of Israeli Soldiers.

The Jericho Six

On 25 April, 2002, four Palestinians were tried in a kangaroo-court by the Palestinian Authority and sentenced to between 1 to 18 years in prison. The four were accused of involvement in the assassination of the Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze'evi, on October 17, 2001. The four were tried in an impromptu Palestinian military court that violated all established principles of international law guaranteeing a fair trial with proper legal representation.

Violations of their detention include:

1. The four defendants were tried in front of a military court despite the fact they are civilians. This is in direct violation of Palestinian law.
2. The trial was presided over by Brigadier-General Ribhi Arafat who has no legal qualifications and no authority to act as a judge.
3. The detainees were not provided with proper legal defence, rather, a soldier with no legal training was appointed to act in their defence.
4. The trial took only 2 hours and a written charge sheet was not presented to the defendants or before the court.
5. The four were found guilty despite the fact there was no written evidence or confessions from them presented to the court. The only material presented before the court were notes written by unidentified people from discussions held with the four defendants while they were imprisoned in Ramallah before the siege. There were no signatures or written verification of the veracity of these notes from the four defendants. These notes were presented as affidavits yet they were not prepared during formal interrogation or by any authorized personnel.
6. The trial took place in the Presidential Compound in Ramallah while it was surrounded by Israeli tanks and heavily armed soldiers. It was held behind closed doors and was not open to the public.

The four detainees have no right to appeal their sentences.

Following sentencing the four political prisoners were transferred to a Jericho Prison under the control of US and British supervisors. In addition to the four, two other Palestinian detainees, Ahmed Sa'adat and Fuad Shubeiki, were also transferred to Jericho Prison. The latter have not faced trial or been found guilty of any offense yet they remain incarcerated in Jericho.

The trial of the four and imprisonment of the six are a severe violation of international and Palestinian law. They are being kept in draconian conditions under the supervision of the US and Britain. According to press reports, the person in charge of this "supervision" is the former head of the notorious Maze Detention Center in Northern Ireland.

Is this what is meant by "reform" of the Palestinian Authority, "democracy" or "respect for the rule of law"? Apparently this is the case for the US, British, Israeli and Palestinian governments.

SOURCE: http://www.addameer.org/addameer/campaigns/jericho/index.html

also: http://sumoud.tao.ca/?q=node/view/553 (EXCELLENT SITE)

BREAKING NEWS: Hamas, Fatah: US wants Palestinians to abandon right of return

They Will Return to their Home Land.

Senior Hamas and Fatah officials stated their objections on Sunday to what they said were US suggestions that Palestinians accept a land swap with Israel and give up the right of return.

The officials said that the US is pushing for a final status agreement with Israel that does not include the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, and maintains so-called Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank.

Senior Fatah official Hatem Abdul Qader, who deals with Jerusalem issues, said “the United States is trying to deceive the Palestinians through these proposals, which they think are creative, but [exist] only in their imaginations.” He called for the US to take concrete steps to stop Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements as an alternative.

The official said, “If the United States cannot take small steps in this direction, then how it can make these big leaps that will not be accepted by the Palestinians?”

“The main challenge for this administration is to stop the settlements and land confiscation, particularly canceling the Israeli decision to confiscate 139,00 dunums [of land along the Dead Sea shores and to stop the settlement plans in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.”

If the US takes these “basic steps,” it could lead to “real peace,” he said. He also said that Palestinians refugees cannot give up the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel, basing their claim on UN Resolution 194. “Going around [Resolution 194] will not lead to real peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”

Meanwhile Hamas senior official Salah Bardawil said that “the issue of land swap was proposed since the Camp David negotiations … President Yasser Arafat rejected this at the time then and paid his life as a price for this rejection.”

Bardawil also said “We cannot accept anything that is proposed by the Americans regarding this issue.” He said “all Palestinian factions” believe that a resolution to the conflict should be based on an Israeli withdrawal from the land it occupied in 1967 (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), the creation of a Palestinian state, and the realization of the right of return.

He also stated Hamas’ “categorical rejection” of the alleged American proposals. “It’s a waste of time for the US administration headed by [Barack] Obama to begin its political maneuvers with a rejected argument.”

Text taken from here.

Children tortured before parents, raped, all covered up by Bush/Cheney

Perhaps the worst incident at Abu Ghraib involved a girl aged 12 or 13 who screamed for help to her brother in an upper cell while stripped naked and beaten. Iraqi journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, who heard the girl’s screams, also witnessed an ill 15-year-old who was forced to run up and down with two heavy cans of water and beaten whenever he stopped. When he finally collapsed, guards stripped and poured cold water on him. Finally, a hooded man was brought in. When unhooded, the boy realized that the man was his father, who doubtless was being intimidated into confessing something upon sight of his brutalized son.

This PDF obtained by The Washington Post tells the whole story.

It takes Two to Tango - They just hate the Palestinian.

In Israel : Testimony - Police severely beat Malak Abu Gharbiya on Tel Aviv beach, June 2009

I live in Jerusalem and sometimes go with friends to the beach in Tel Aviv. On Friday evening, 12 June, I went to Tel Aviv with my friends Muaiad Sha’ban, 21, ‘Alaa Sharaf, 21, Wasfi Zahdeh, 20, ‘Issa a-Safdi and Ibrahim Abu Diab. I drove. We got to the parking lot next to the beach near Jaffa around 10:00 P.M. We got out of the car, put some music on and talked. A few minutes later, we saw some guys I know from Jerusalem fighting. We went and broke up the fight.

A few minutes after that, two blue police patrol cars, Skodas, pulled up. They stopped next to my car. Around eight uniformed police officers got out. One of them was a woman. The guys who had been fighting ran away. My friends and I stayed by the car. A police officer came over to me. He was of average height, was heavyset, and had thin hair and dark-brown skin. “Moshe” was written on his name tag. He told me to give him my identity card. Then he went to speak with another officer, and I gave my ID to an officer who was standing next to me. He was tall, pale-skinned, and had brown eyes. His hair was combed back.

A few seconds later, Moshe came over again and asked about my ID card. I told him I had given it to his friend. He shouted, in Hebrew, “Do you think I’m playing with you?” I told him I wasn’t lying and that he should ask his friend. He kneed me in the stomach and punched me hard in the chest. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I fell onto the car and my head and back hit it. I told him, “Calm down and don’t hit me. You [plural] have the ID.” I asked the other police officers to help me. A few of them tried to stand between me and Moshe, to get him to leave me alone. Moshe hit me hard on the head with a black club, and I started to bleed. I felt dazed. I tried to defend myself. In the meantime, other police officers beat me with clubs and kicked me. They were beating me from all directions. This lasted for less than a minute. I lay on the ground, with police officers around me. They kicked me all over my body, mostly in my head. It hurt a lot. My head was bleeding badly. Moshe kicked me in the face and said, “I warned you I’d screw you.” Read further here.

In Egypt : "Who will hold us accountable?"

I will never forget the image of the elderly woman whose son was dying in a hospital in Egypt. She only wanted to be with him. Crying, her hand touching the glass window of the office of the Egyptian intelligence services, she pleaded, "Please, please. I beg you, show mercy, let me go in." Another woman sat by the State Security office, looking up at an officer blocking her path. "You promised to let me in," she said with her soft, tired and drained voice. "Please let me in" she repeated calmly with her tired voice, then she looked at me with wide, tearful, sad eyes.

I came to Gaza a week before Israel's winter invasion began. After seven months, I spent two days at Rafah crossing with the Egyptian authorities refusing to allow me to return to Lebanon, despite having all the necessary coordination documents, approval and permission from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Egyptian authorities made people wait in the arrival hall at the Rafah crossing, sitting on filthy floors where names for either the entry to Egypt or to return to Gaza were called by the voices of aggressive Egyptian police officers, or state security or intelligence personnel. After hours of waiting, two officers headed towards us: "you are being returned to Gaza." "No!" we would reply, "We have coordination documents!" But, the officers and intelligence personnel grew angrier and threw the papers in our faces humiliatingly: "This means nothing! Move on! Hurry!"

After being asked numerous times "what were you doing in Palestine for seven months," I answered the intelligence officer simply, "what you didn't do." Another officer asked, "How did you come to Gaza?" "By the boats" I replied, referring to the Free Gaza Movement ship that brought me. "So, now you know why you ... can't leave," he answered back. Read further here.

China Pushing Han into Xinjiang (Uyghurstan/Eastern Turkestan) angered muslim Uighur

Uyghur protest in Munich 2008 against China policy. The "Kökbayraq" flag. This flag is used by Uyghurs as a symbol of the East Turkestan independence movement. The Government of the People's Republic of China prohibits using the flag in the country.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the USA, China voiced its support for the United States of America in the war on terror. The Chinese government has often referred to Uyghur nationalists as "terrorists" and received more global support for their own "war on terror" since 9/11. Human rights organizations have become concerned that this "war on terror" is being used by the Chinese government as a pretext to repress ethnic Uighurs. Uighur exile groups also claim that the Chinese government is suppressing Uyghur culture and their religion islam, and responding to demands for independence with human rights violations.

Last week’s riots in Urumqi, resulting in 184 deaths, recall similar protests in Tibet last year, though only 19 people were killed there. Both Uighur and Tibetan exiles demonstrated during the Chinese Olympics, to little effect. Both regions, remote from the heart of Han China, were taken over under the communists, and are important strategically and as storehouses of mineral wealth to feed the new capitalist China’s voracious appetite. They remind us that old-fashion colonialism is alive and well. Neither the Uighurs nor the Tibetans have any hope of independence, but they rightly would like the Han to be less greedy and invasive.

Like Tibet, it is the flood of Han immigrants and the wholesale destruction of the local culture that is the problem. The massive recent influx of Han Chinese, who now make up more than 50 per cent of the population (70 per cent in the major cities Urumqi and Kashgar), has reduced Uighurs to a minority in their homeland, ominously called “Xinjiang” (New Frontier) in Chinese. The use of “Eastern Turkistan”, the traditional name for this region, is outlawed, along with the blue star-crescent Uighur flag. Ethnic Han Chinese dominate nearly all big businesses in the region. All Uighurs must study Chinese, and very few Uighurs can dream of going to university.

They have no official state, only a hollow autonomous region, along with large diaspora communities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and the West. They number 8-10 million worldwide. There are Uighur neighbourhoods in Beijing and Shanghai. Their history is the story of an obscure nomadic tribe from the Altai Mountains rising to challenge the Chinese empire, founding their own in the 8th century, which stretched from the Caspian Sea to Manchuria. Because of their strategic location on the Silk Road, they thrived on trade. They came under Han sovereignty only in the 17th century, but after numerous revolts expelled Qing officials in 1864 and founded an independent Kashgaria kingdom, recognised by the Ottoman Empire, Russia and Great Britain, which even had a mission in the capital, Kashgar. As usual British support depended on its imperial schemes and when the Chinese attacked in 1876, fearing Tsarist expansion, Great Britain supported the Manchu invasion forces. The Brits (excuse me, the Manchus) “won” and East Turkestan became Xinjiang.

Read further here.

"Any Sovereign Nation is Allowed to Bomb Another"

Vice President Joe Biden, apparently speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, has just given Israel the green light to bomb Iran.

“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else,” he told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview broadcast Sunday. “Whether we agree or not, they’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice,” he declared.

The statement is presented in logically abstract terms. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do what’s in its interest regardless of what “we” think, surely. How very reasonable—magnanimous, even, coming from the mouth of the vice-president of the superpower that’s in the last eight years brutally imposed its will on two sizable Southwest Asian countries.

But to test Biden’s universalist logic imagine yourself in 1939, substitute Germany for Israel and Poland for Iran and ask whether “any sovereign nation is” really “entitled to do that.”

Of course Israel doesn’t have any “sovereign right” to attack Iran! And Biden’s implied distaste for the attack (“That is not our choice”), which may presage a calculated distancing from an action in the future, doesn’t undo the fact that he explicitly validates such action here.

They’re entitled to do it, says Joe. Just as presumably they’re entitled to remain outside the nuclear nonproliferation treaty regime, and produce and stockpile the only nuclear weapons in the Middle East, while claiming that the Iranian nuclear program (begun under U.S. encouragement under the Shah) can only have military intentions and can only be designed to produced a “nuclear Holocaust” to destroy the Jews.

Just as presumably they’re entitled to deploy vast resources to pressure the U.S. government to bomb Iran for them. (But no worry about the impact on U.S. foreign policy. “There is no pressure,” says Joe, “from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.” What he really means is: There’s actually a whole shitload of pressure from Israel on us to bomb Iran. But we might not do that. Because Obama thinks that the Israeli-demanded attack on Iran, like the assault on Iraq, might be a “strategic blunder.”)

One could argue, of course, that in positing Netanyahu’s “sovereign right” to bomb Iran, a nation which has not attacked another in modern times, Biden is just shooting off his famous mouth again. But there are at least two reasons his comments should be taken very seriously.

First of all, there is obviously much conflict within the U.S. power structure over the wisdom of a U.S. attack on Iran. The Israel Lobby demanding one may have suffered a defeat at the hands of the Pentagon, which sees such an attack as complicating the imbroglios it faces in Iraq and Afghanistan (and down the road in Pakistan?), and the intelligence community which knows that Iran does not possess a nuclear weapons program threatening the world.

Secondly, the state of Israel continues to depict the Islamic Republic of Iran as an “existential” threat to itself, while threatening to attack it with missiles if the U.S. does not do so. The Bush administration always endorsed Israel’s vilification campaign and conceded the possibility that it might act “on its own” (as though it could really do so without a green light from Washington). Dick Cheney told Don Imus on MSNBC in January 2005 that “Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel [sic (disinformation)], the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.” He implied that if the U.S. didn’t take action, the Israelis would be justified in doing so.

This remains the U.S. position under the Obama administration. And having decided for geopolitical reasons to adopt a tougher line on Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank, Washington is perhaps particularly disinclined to deter Israel should it opt to create the mess of which Cheney spoke. “That was not our choice,” it will say.

WRITTEN BY GARY LEUPP here.

Dear Mr President...

If the dead could speak...

Robert McNamara, one of the "best and the brightest" technocrats behind the escalation of the Vietnam War, eventually came to regret his actions. But his public contrition, which included a book and a series of interviews for the documentary "The Fog of War," were greeted with derision.

"Mr. McNamara must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen," editorialized The New York Times in 1995. "Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late."

McNamara's change of heart came 58,000 American and 2,000,000 Vietnamese lives too late. If the dead could speak, surely they would ask: why couldn't you see then what you understand so clearly now? Why didn't you listen to the millions of experts, journalists and ordinary Americans who knew that death and defeat would be the only outcome?

Though Errol Morris' film served as ipso facto indictment, its title was yet a kind of justification. There is no "fog of war." There is only hubris, stubbornness, and the psychological compartmentalization that allows a man to sign papers that will lead others to die before going home to play with his children.

McNamara is dead. Barack Obama is his successor.

Some call McNamara's life tragic. Tragedy-inducing is closer to the truth. Yes, he suffered guilt in his later years. "He wore the expression of a haunted man," wrote the author of his Times obit. "He could be seen in the streets of Washington--stooped, his shirttail flapping in the wind--walking to and from his office a few blocks from the White House, wearing frayed running shoes and a thousand-yard stare." But the men and women and boys and girls blown up by bombs and mines and impaled by bullets and maimed in countless ways deserve more vengeance than a pair of ratty Nikes. Neither McNamara nor LBJ nor the millions of Americans who were for the war merit understanding, much less sympathy.

Now Obama is following the same doomed journey.

Text taken from here.

The Holy Basin - the ignored facts.

The Holy Basin contains well marked Christian and Muslim institutions and holy places that have had historical placement for millenniums. Although people of the Jewish faith had major presence in Jerusalem during the centuries of Biblical Jerusalem, which included rule by King Hezekiah and control by the Hasmonean dynasties, their control and presence were interrupted for two millennia. Extensive commentary has enabled the two thousand years of lack of control and presence to seem as if it never happened and that today is only a short interval from the ancient years of Hezekiah. Almost one thousand years of Christian and Crusader rule and more than one thousand years of Muslim rule are politely ignored, while their tremendous constructions and creation are not credited. Almost everything becomes nothing and a minor something becomes everything. Myth replaces reality. Spiritual quality replaces actual presence.

Some remains of Jewish dwellings and ritual baths can be found, but few if any major Jewish monuments, buildings or institutions from the Biblical era exist in the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem. The often cited Western Wall is the supporting wall for Herod’s platform and is not directly related to the Second Temple. No remains of the Jewish Temple have been located in Jerusalem.

According to Karen Armstrong, in her book Jerusalem, Jews did not pray at the Western Wall until the Mamluks in the 15th century allowed them to move their congregations from a dangerous Mount of Olives and pray daily at the Wall. At that time she estimates that there may have been no more than 70 Jewish families in Jerusalem. After the Ottomans replaced the Mamluks, Suleiman the Magnificent issued a formal edict in the 16th century that permitted Jews to have a place of prayer at the Western Wall.

The only remaining major symbol of Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Holy City is the Jewish quarter, which Israel cleared of Arabs and rebuilt after 1967. During its clearing operations, Israel demolished the Maghribi Quarter adjacent to the Western Wall, destroyed the al-Buraq Mosque and the Tomb of the Sheikh al-Afdhaliyyah, and displaced about 175 Arab families. Although the Jewish population in previous centuries comprised a large segment of the Old City (estimates have 7000 Jews during the mid-19th century), the Jews gradually left the Old City and migrated to new neighborhoods in West Jerusalem, leaving only about 2000 Jews in the Old City. Jordanian control after the 1948 war reduced the number to nil. By 2009, the population of the Jewish quarter in the Old City had grown to 3000, or nine percent of the Old City population. The Christian, Armenian and Muslim populations are the principal constituents and their quarters contain almost the entire Old City commerce.

In an attempt to attach ancient Israel to present day Jerusalem, Israeli authorities continue the attachment of spurious labels to Holy Basin landmarks, while claiming the falsification is due to the Byzantines, who got it all wrong.

King David’s Tower’s earliest remains were constructed several hundred years after the Bible dates David’s reign. It is a now an obvious Islamic minaret.

King David’s Citadel earliest remains are from the Hasmonean period (200 B.C.). The Citadel was entirely rebuilt by the Ottomans between 1537 and 1541 AD.

King David’s tomb, located in the Dormition Abbey, is a cloth-covered cenotaph (no remains) that honors King David. It has not been verified that the casket relates to David.

The Pools of Solomon, located in a village near Bethlehem, are considered to be part of a Roman construction during the reign of Herod the Great. The pools supplied water to an aqueduct that carried water to Bethlehem and to Jerusalem.

The Stables of Solomon, under the Temple Mount, are more likely a construction of vaults that King Herod built in order to extend the Temple Mount platform.

Absalom’s Tomb is an obvious Greek sculptured edifice and therefore cannot be the tomb of David’s son.

The City of David contains artifacts that date before and during king David’s time. Some archaeologists maintain there is an insufficient number of artifacts to conclude any Israelite presence before David. In any case any Israelite presence must have been in a small and unfortified settlement

The Jerusalem Archaeological Park within the Old City, together with the Davidson Exhibition and Virtual Reconstruction Center also tell the story. Promising to reveal much of a Hebrew civilization, the museums shed little light on its subject. The Davidson Center highlights a coin exhibition, Jerusalem bowls and stone vessels. The Archeological Park in the Old City contains among many artifacts, Herodian structures, ritual baths, a floor of an Umayyad palace, a Roman road, Ottoman gates, and the façade of what is termed Robinson’s arch, an assumed Herodian entryway to the Temple Mount. The exhibitions don’t reveal many, if any, ancient Hebrew structures or institutions of special significance.

Well known archaeologists, after examining excavations that contain pottery shards and buildings, concluded that finds don’t substantiate the biblical history of Jerusalem and its importance during the eras of a united Jewish kingdom under David and Solomon.
Margaret Steiner in an article titled “It’s Not There: Archaeology Proves a Negative” in the Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August, 1998, states:

…from the tenth century B.C.E. there is no archaeological evidence that many people actually lived in Jerusalem, only that it was some kind of public administrative center…We are left with nothing that indicates a city was here during their supposed reigns (of David and Solomon)…It seems unlikely, however, that this Jerusalem was the capital of a large state, the United monarchy, as described in Biblical texts.

Read more Why Jerusalem.