The Emirates airline Etihad Airways used a picture of a model it called "The Jewish Second Temple" in its advertisement promoting flights to Israel that will start next March, and after a wave of criticism, the company withdrew it.
Today, Monday, the company - which is wholly owned by the UAE government - published a short marketing clip to promote the flights it plans to operate to Israel, under the title Visiting Tel Aviv, but Etihad Airways deleted the video after the uproar it caused on social media platforms.
In the same video, she said that she will start daily flights to and from Tel Aviv on March 28, and the tape shows a model written underneath "The Second Temple" in English, as it is one of the landmarks in Israel.
Arab Zionists # UAE https://t.co/ZEVWMrknKS
- Khair Eddin Aljabri (@Khair_Aljabri) November 16, 2020
On its website, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that what it calls the Second Temple was destroyed by Roman forces in AD 70, and Israel claims that the Second Temple was located in the place where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located in now occupied East Jerusalem, and accordingly the Jewish extremists in Israel are demanding the demolition Al-Aqsa Mosque and the construction of the Temple on its ruins.
Jewish extremists also use this claim as a justification for storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, almost daily, and holding prayers there.
Muslims reject the Israeli claim, and assert that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a holy place for Muslims only, and that the Israeli allegations that there is a temple under it are just a myth, and are baseless.
The alleys of Jerusalem
as it appeared in the video advertisement also a picture of one of the alleys in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, as it is considered one of the landmarks in Israel.
@Etihadar should apologize for the video theft of Palestinian heritage in order to reinforce the occupation in the Arab mind https://t.co/7usTox5O3a
Rafiq F Naim (@RafiqFadl) November 16, 2020
According to the decisions of the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the United Nations;
East Jerusalem - where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located - is an occupied Palestinian Arab city, and an integral part of the lands that Israel occupied in 1967.
The promotional advertisement was met with widespread criticism on social media, and the pioneers of these sites considered it theft of Palestinian history.
On August 13, the UAE and Israel reached an agreement to normalize relations between them, which was signed on September 15 in Washington.
The agreement sparked widespread Palestinian condemnation, as the Palestinian factions and leadership considered it a betrayal by the Emirates, and a stab in the back of the Palestinian people.