Reuters, the Swiss cheese historians

As part of its ongoing effort to prejudge the outcome of final status issues and assign Title to Jerusalem to the Palestinian Arabs, Reuters has established a long, sorry record of downplaying or simply ignoring the 3,500-year Jewish connection to the city.

On this, the 43rd anniversary of Israel's liberation of Jerusalem from Jordanian occupation, Reuters correspondent Dan Williams reports on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech before Parliament:

Beset by questions about Jerusalem's future in talks with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached for the Bible on Wednesday to stake out the Jewish state's contested claim on the city.

Williams scoffs at Judaism's claims to the city by relegating these to "the Bible" while showing deference for Palestinian claims stemming from the presence of al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount:

The dispute is further inflamed by the fact East Jerusalem houses al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest shrine

Though Williams also references the site as the "vestige of two biblical Jewish temples", he doesn't acknowledge that it is, in fact, Judaism's holiest shrine.

Williams then quotes pathological liar, Palestinian Saeb Erekat:

"I find it very distasteful, this use of religion to incite hatred and fear. East Jerusalem is an occupied Palestinian town, and East Jerusalem cannot continue to be occupied if there is to be peace."

Pretty rich coming from a man who rejects Israel as a Jewish state while the Palestinian constitution enshrines Islam as the official religion of his own proto-state.  And apparently, Erekat didn't tell the Palestinian National Authority that "East Jerusalem" is a "Palestinian town" because no such place appears on its website.

Finally, Williams conjures up one of Reuters truncated and heavily biased historical timelines:

Destroyed as a Jewish capital by the Romans in the 1st century AD, Jerusalem was a Christian city under their Byzantine successors before falling to Muslim Arabs in the 7th. European Crusaders regained it for a century, after which came 700 years of Muslim rule until Britain defeated the Ottoman Turks in 1917...
As Britain prepared to quit, the United Nations proposed international rule for the city in 1947 as a "corpus separatum."...
That proposal was overtaken by fighting that left Israel holding West Jerusalem in 1948 and Jordanian forces in East Jerusalem. Israel then took the rest in the Six Day War of 1967.

Note how Williams begins with the destruction of Jerusalem in the 1st century, omitting a millennium of Jewish sovereignty well-established in the archaeological record, as well as the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem's majority Jewish population by the Arab Legion in 1948.

Trifling details for a "news" agency which long ago surrendered any semblance of factual reporting.

Pottery jar handles inscribed in Hebrew, "To the King".  Jerusalem, 10th century BC.