Jerusalem has been a Jewish holy city since the days of King David

[Mason8]

http://youtu.be/xU9CauJP4Pg

[Mason8]

One thousand six hundred years before Islam, we had a kingdom and Temple in Jerusalem. Twice we were destroyed and exiled, and twice we came back home. Four hundred years before the advent of Islam, the Romans changed the name of Judea to Palestine, after the coastal nation known as the Philistines, who had disappeared hundreds of years previously. The Romans sought to erase the connection between the Jews and their land. Now Arabs of the region call themselves Palestinians and say, “We were here before you.” This lie must be exposed at every opportunity. Telling this truth is also our chance at achieving true peace.

[RandoBloom]

One thousand six hundred years before Islam, we had a kingdom and Temple in Jerusalem. Twice we were destroyed and exiled, and twice we came back home. Four hundred years before the advent of Islam, the Romans changed the name of Judea to Palestine, after the coastal nation known as the Philistines, who had disappeared hundreds of years previously. The Romans sought to erase the connection between the Jews and their land. Now Arabs of the region call themselves Palestinians and say, “We were here before you.” This lie must be exposed at every opportunity. Telling this truth is also our chance at achieving true peace.

I guess muslims burned the temple and razed it 2 times did they not?
There were people living there before Jews, and jews invaded their homeland and commited atrocities, as described in bible.

[Shah-Jehan]

I guess muslims burned the temple and razed it 2 times did they not?
There were people living there before Jews, and jews invaded their homeland and commited atrocities, as described in bible.

also known as Caanites in the land of Canaan...

[Mason8]

I guess muslims burned the temple and razed it 2 times did they not?
There were people living there before Jews, and jews invaded their homeland and commited atrocities, as described in bible.

Not quite. The First Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonians. The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans. But the religion of Islam was not created until the turn of the seventh century CE, nearly six hundred years after the fall of the Second Temple, and over a thousand years after the fall of the First Temple.

The Israelite invasions of Canaan described in the Bible were almost certainly embellished for dramatic purposes-- the archaeological record doesn't support a full-scale invasion in one continuous advance, but rather suggests a combination of gradual colonization and occasional wars of territorial conquest. But our ancestors likely found the narrative in the Book of Joshua to be more compelling, and to better serve the need to link in people's minds their homes and lands and the need to serve God.

As for "atrocities," in a sense, any and all war is atrocity-- the word is over-used in many ways. By the standards of the modern era, all ancient wars were filled with atrocities, because the ancient world had few, if any, rules of war, and attitudes about others and the value of human life far different than those we embrace today. It's both pointless and ridiculous to try and judge civilizations of thousands of years ago by modern standards-- they will always fail the test, because progress depends on evolution. If we today are more stringent in our ethical guidelines, and quicker to value human life and condemn those who are casual about its value, that is because it took us so many thousands of years to evolve these views and for them to become common.

Our ancestors did not have the benefit of those years, but they did what they could, to the best of their limited abilities, in the social context of their time and place. By the standards of the ancient world, we had an enormous number of strict rules of war, and were far less vicious and more merciful than pretty much any society around us. For example, in most of the Ancient Near East, there was no compulsion to accept surrender: if the people you were fighting tried to give up, you could just ignore it and kill them anyway. Whereas for us, the Torah demands that we accept surrender, and any who surrender to us must not be harmed. Likewise, for example, in most of the Ancient Near East, soldiers raped women on the battlefield as part of their reward for fighting. Whereas for us, the Torah forbids rape at all times.

What I mean to say is that, sure, by modern standards, the society of our ancestors left much to be desired. But by the standards of the ancient world, they made great social and ethical advances. And those advances-- though in themselves not sufficient in the modern world-- became the foundation upon which succeeding generations of the Jewish People built greatly progressive and forward-thinking social and ethical advances, upon which, in turn, we today may build still more progressive and forward-thinking social and ethical advances, which our descendants surely will better. But it's all part of a process.

In any case, the conquest of Canaan was many thousands of years ago, and the peoples from whom we conquered it have long since disappeared from the face of the earth.