Palestinians think Britain stole Big Ben from them

This story came out earlier this year, but I missed it and it is too good not to share:

Less than two years ago, the official news website of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah faction (the party of President Mahmoud Abbas) contended that what’s today known as London’s Big Ben was originally a clock tower positioned at Hebron Gate (more commonly known as Jaffa Gate) in Jerusalem’s Old City.

According to the Fatah website, the Hebron Gate clock tower was completed in 1909, when Jerusalem was still under Ottoman rule. After the British took control of the city and established their mandate, they ordered the clock tower dismantled (which is true) and moved, first to another part of Jerusalem, and later to London (which is not true), where it was eventually placed at the north end of the Palace of Westminster.

Big Ben was built in 1859, fifty years before the Jaffa Gate clock tower was built. 

Daniel Greenfield gave a detailed history of the Ottoman clock in Palestine which is worthwhile reading.

The claim is all over Arab media. Here. Shehab News put them side by side as if that proves something:

There is a bit of a scale problem. The entire Jaffa Gate clock tower was 42 feet high, while Big Ben is 316 feet high. Big Ben's clock face itself is 23 feet across, meaning if you placed it on the ground, it would reach more than halfway up the entire old Jaffa Gate tower!

And the Jaffa Gate tower clock mechanism was built in....Germany. It isn't "Palestinian" in any sense of the word. The idea that the British were so impressed with this small clock tower to disassemble it and ship it to England is about as delusionally egotistical as it gets.

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