The Right To Destroy Jewish History

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

Starting with the Nahḍa, the Arab renaissance of the nineteenth century, and under the influence of European nationalist ideas being imported the former Ottoman Empire, Arab identity was to be constructed as a national category, including Christians, but excluding Jews, despite the important contribution of the latter to the intelligentsia and state apparatus, particularly in Iraq, Egypt and Morocco[6].

This is why it is appropriate to question the use of the expression “Arab Jews” by Arab intellectuals and artists. How can we interpret this a posteriori recognition of the Arabness of these Jewish populations, after they have left the Arab territories, after having ceased to be an important element of Arab societies? The general rhetoric of the above mentioned open letter gives us the answer. In the expression Arab Jews, the function of the adjective is to abolish the nature of the noun Jew, to make it only a facet of the real subject, the Arab subject. Less than a Jewish-Arab culture, there would in fact be only a “Jewish component of the Arab culture“. The Jews are not a reality in their own right, but a part of the Arab heritage. Consequently, it is only possible to talk about them in terms approved by the Arab intelligentsia, and this is precisely what the IMA exhibition does not do, as it gives the floor to Jews from Arab countries, but not the “good” ones according to Elias Khoury, who puts forward an Israeli anti-Zionist academic, Ella Shohat. Born in Israel in 1959 to Iraqi Jewish parents, professor of Cultural Studies at New York University – author of “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the standpoint of its Jewish victims”. Social Text (1988) – Shohat sees the category “mizrahim” as a Zionist artifice to uproot Jews in Arab countries from their Arabness in favour of a uniquely Jewish identity, which she sees as being contrived, with a purpose to enlist them in the oppression of the Palestinian people. For her, the Mizrahim category is constructed in mirror image of the Ashkenazim category and is imbued with the negative archetypes linked to Orientalist representations.

These theses of Shohat are perhaps worth considering, but her claims to define Arab identity as the only authentic identity of the Mizraḥim and the irreducible opposition she portrays between this Arabness and Zionism as well as the claim of the Jews to self-define themselves as a people distinct from Europeans and Arabs, are nonetheless very objectionable.

Indeed, the ambiguities of the Jewish national condition and the blurred contours of Jewish national identity, as explored by Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff (1917-1979) and Albert Memmi (1920-2020), seem to better describe the reality of the Jewish condition in the Arab context. However, Kahanoff and Memmi are Zionists, and therefore unwelcome in the picture painted by the censors of the history of Jews in Arab countries, who do not intend to see these Jews define themselves outside the terms of twentieth century political Arabism, from which they had been excluded.

The conditions of this exclusion belie the attempts of the signatories of the open letter to the A.I.M. to dictate the terms and acceptable partners to account for the varying conditions of Jews in Arab and Muslim countries. Between 1947 and 1972, nearly 800,000 Jews were expelled from the Arab League states, of whom 586,000 found refuge in Israel between 1948 and 1951 alone. This disappearance, in one generation, of cultures that sometimes predate the Second Temple period, should not be read only in the light of Israeli independence and the antagonism of Jewish and Arab nationalisms in Mandatory Palestine, but is part of the long history of asymmetric relations between Arab-Muslim powers and their non-Arab and non-Muslim tributaries since the conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates.

For although the Dhimma[7]was mostly abolished more than a century ago in the states of the Arab League (with the notable exception of Yemen), the mental structures inherited from it have persisted and still play a major role in the collective unconscious underlying the current conflict. They feed both the Israeli society’s feeling of being under siege and the narcissistic wound of the defeated Arab societies. They are hidden behind the agitated surface of controversies such as that of “normalisation”, of which the IMA is accused.

Read article in full

'Arab Jew' is another manifestation of Arab denial • Point of No Return

The Juifs d ‘Orient: une histoire plurimillenaire exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris earlier in 2022 broke with conventional taboos and commendably illustrated Jewish history and culture in their own right, although the Arab antisemitism that precipitated the Jewish exodus was...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

[rylah]

MK Ben Gvir clarifies his position regarding the Temple Mount

Following a post in an influential Israeli forum, in which it was falsely claimed
that 'MK Ben Gvir backed down on the issue of prayers at the Temple Mount',
and that, 'Netanyahu will decide in matters involving the Temple Mount',

Ben Gvir demanded the post be removed,
directly addressing the readers,
to clarify his position -

"The issue of the Temple Mount has not yet come up in the talks, and when it comes up it is clear that I intend to demand that the place be treated as a sovereign country treats its most important place".

 

[Sixties Fan]

“European Jews, like European Christians, are converts to these strange Palestinian religions,” declared Columbia University professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history Joseph Massad on Nov. 11 in Washington, D.C. This well-known antisemite’s assertion that Jews in the Western diaspora have no ethnic ties to the historic Jewish nation was merely one howler among many in his anti-Israel keynote address to the Palestine Center’s annual conference.

His talk, entitled “Jewish Self-Determination in the Land of the Palestinians,” is part of the decades-long attempt by academics to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state by denying that modern Jews are the descendants of the ancient Hebrews. What they lack in facts, goodwill, and honest scholarship, they try (and fail) to make up for in hatred and vitriol.

In this case, Massad promoted the discredited theory that Ashkenazi Jews in Europe are the descendants of converts to Judaism. “If the European Jewish converts somehow claim to be descendants of the early Jews of Palestine, then why are European Christians also not claiming that they are descendants of the early Palestinian Christians,” he analogized. The obvious answer is that Christianity is a proselytizing religion transmitted via baptism, not lineage, and its spread among gentiles (non-Jews) throughout the Mediterranean world meant that its adherents represented myriad genetic pools: Greek, Roman, Germanic, Celtic and more. Massad also failed to explain why Jews throughout history have endured so much repression, including Nazi genocide, if their identities as Jews stemmed from religious practices alone.

Moreover, roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population does not descend from the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the Americas. Rather, these Mizrahi Jews descend from Jews who fled Muslim repression in the Middle East and North Africa after Israel’s creation in 1948, a fact that completely debunks Massad’s European colonial narrative about Israel. Massad offered no analysis of whether these Jews, who have their own indigenous history of Zionism, simply hail from converts in the Middle East.

Rather than the Jews, Massad claimed as the Holy Land’s “indigenous” population the Palestinians, a local Arab population whose ancestors derive largely from across the Middle East, including Egypt and Arabia. Egging him on, moderator Eid Mustafa, the board vice-chairman and treasurer of the Palestine Center’s parent organization, the Jerusalem Fund, invoked the hoary modern Palestinian claim that they descend from the ancient Canaanites. He claimed that an uncited Hebrew University genealogical study showed that “most of the [Jewish] Israelis have no connection to the land, while the Palestinians are the original Canaanites who have lived ever since history.”

Columbia professor’s attempt to delegitimize Jews backfires—again

No rewarding conversation is possible with a racist demagogue like Joseph Massad. His slanders against Jews and Israel amply justify the denouncements of his tenure at Columbia.

www.jns.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

Columbia professor Joseph Massad is very upset that Jews are claiming the right to self-determination. If Jews indeed have the right to self-determination, then opposing that really is a form of antisemitism, and antisemites like Massad cannot admit to that.

His normal method is to claim that Jews aren't a people, and that most Jews do not originate in the Middle East. If they aren't a people, then they have no right to self-determination.

But Massad knows that everyone knows that is a lie besides dyed in the wool antisemites who call Jews "Khazars."

So he has come up with a new argument: that the self-determination argument was never a Zionist tenet, rather it was a Palestinian Arab one.

Since the inception of their war against the Palestinian people, Zionist ideologues did not argue for Jewish self-determination but rather sought to delegitimise the indigenous Palestinians’ right to it. In the tradition of all colonial powers which denied that the colonised were a nation, the Zionists began by denying the nationness of the Palestinians.

Actually, the Zionists didn't even address the "nationness" of the Palestinian Arabs, who themselves didn't assert such a status (except for a tiny number of intellectuals) until decades after Zionism was established.

At the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I, the Zionist Organisation (ZO) did not invoke any "Jewish" right to self-determination, even though self-determination was all the rage at the conference, with colonised peoples from around the world affirming this right to liberate themselves from the colonial yoke.
The ZO instead argued that Palestine "is the historic home of the Jews…and through the ages they have never ceased to cherish the longing and the hope of a return".

Massad takes this statement out of context. The ZO's proposals were not meant to be a definition of Zionism, rather recommendations to the allies with an eye to what was politically possible. Even so, they did use the language of rights in their suggested conference statement: "The High Contracting Parties recognize the historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine and the right of Jews to reconstitute in Palestine their National Home. "
Massad then makes an astoundingly incorrect assertion:

It is most important to note in this regard that, unlike the more recent and increased use by Zionists of the notion of Jewish self-determination, neither Herzl’s writings, the 1897 first Zionist Congress, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, nor the 1922 Palestine Mandate employed the language of "rights", let alone the right of self-determination.

Herzl's definition was "Zionism has for its object the creation of a home, secured by public rights, for those Jews who either cannot or will not be assimilated in the country of their adoption."
The phrase "public rights" was coined by Italian jurist Pellegrino Rossi in the 1830s. It meant universal rights for people - what it now called human rights. Herzl's definition of Zionism was based on the idea that Jews have the same rights as any other people, which would by implication include self-determination, a phrase that didn't gain popularity until the 1910s.
Massad cherry picks specific documents and statements and says that because they don't invoke "rights' or "self-determination,"then Zionists as a whole didn't use that language until recently. That is laughable.
A book on Zionism and the Jewish question by famed juror Louis Brandeis in 1915 says, "Jews collectively should enjoy the same right and opportunity to live and develop as do other groups of people."
Similarly, Jessie Ethel Sampter published "A Course in Zionism "in 1915, and wrote, "The Jew is always foremost in every modem movement towards justice. In the 18th century he fought for individual human rights, as his rights. In the 20th century he fights for the rights of the small nations to life and autonomy, also as his right. It is the democracy of nations, internationalism. "
Massad is even wrong in his assertion that self-determination is a new claim by Zionists. "A Jewish State in Palestine" by David Werner Amram (1918) says that the Zionist movement was partially a result of the "consciousness of the right of self-expression and self-determination of the Jewish people." The phrase did not have to be said explicitly by the early Zionists; it was well understood as one of many national rights that Jews should have as a people.
Similarly, the preface to a book written by the Zionist Organization in London in 1918 says, "Only by their resettlement in their ancestral land of Palestine...will the Jews be able to exercise the right of self-determination."

Early Zionists always asserted their national rights as the Jewish nation as well as the right of self-determination. It is not a new phenomenon. Massad's pretense that this is a new definition of Zionism is yet another failed attempt to delegitimize Zionism - and to push his brand of modern antisemitism.

https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2022/11/joseph-massad-lying-again-claims-that.html

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Satire ]

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Washington, November 24 - The distant progeny of seventh-century invaders of the Levant from the Arabian Peninsula and of later immigrants from around the region voiced puzzlement today that the White people who colonized and eventually took over the New World have not followed the same playbook they themselves did, namely to insist that they were there since the dawn of time and therefore the only legitimate people with collective political rights in the area.

Pro-Palestinian activists and political figures wondered Thursday what might explain Europeans' collective neglect of a powerful tool in the rhetorical repertoire, namely claiming that one's people occupy the same territory since time began, and that others who make claims on that territory have no historical validity to do so - despite that claim flying in the face of all the evidence indicating that one's ancestors in fact came much later.
"It works well for us, and I can't imagine why Westerners don't do that same thing," stated Nour Erakat, a commentator and political activist. "It would be so much easier for the US, for example, to dismiss 'Indian' claims by calling those claims lies, as we do with Jewish claims to our land. My clan in particular came to Palestine in the nineteenth century, but that doesn't stop us from insisting we're the original inhabitants going back to prehistory. And that we always identified as 'Palestinian,' even though no native group ever referred to itself as such. It would be so much less complicated that the current mess those New World governments have to deal with, what with the treaties, reservations, and other hassles. Just get rid of those other people and say you were always there. What's the big deal?"

"I understand the Western reluctance to abandon the factual realm entirely," acknowledged James Zogby. "Without an anchor in documented history, the Western mind can't make coherent sense of the world. But with time, we can teach them to create narratives that do not rely on such a flimsy basis as 'facts' and 'evidence' - and that will free them to do as we have done, to deny the legitimacy of indigenous peoples restoring their political nationhood, by denying the historicity of any such nationhood."

"Also, if Muslims can claim pre-Islamic and Biblical figures as Muslim," he added, "why all the fuss over anachronism? Just call the Lenape New Yorkers and Seminole Floridians and be done with it. It works for Al-Khalil, Al-Quds, the Haram al-Sharif, and Al-Aqsa."

Descendants Of Arab Conquerors Confused Why European Settlers In Americas Never Claimed Land Was Always Theirs (PreOccupied Territory)

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

PA TV misrepresents Israeli coastal city Jaffa as in “Palestine”

Official PA TV narrator: “The city of Jaffa… its location has a special significance because it overlooks the Mediterranean Sea, relatively warm and quiet waters, and therefore it is one of Palestine’s (sic., Israel’s) points of access to the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the country’s main gates to the west. Through it, Palestine connects to the Mediterranean Sea states and the states of Europe, Africa, and even America.” [Official PA TV, Palestinian Cities, Nov. 11, 2022]

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Cave of the Jewish Matriarch and Arab Cultural Appropriation

The Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs is the site of the very first Jewish burial. It contains the remains of six of the seven original Jews (the seventh is located in the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem).

www.israelunwired.com

 

[Mindful]

NOV. 28 2022
0 PRINTEMAIL

In a recent search of the house of an individual suspected of stealing archaeological artifacts, Israeli authorities found a 2nd-century BCE bronze coin bearing a likeness of King Antiochus IV. Michael Horovitz writes:

Antiochus IV was a Seleucid monarch remembered in Jewish history for his promotion of Hellenization and suppression of religious observances. While he was battling the rival Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt for control of the Levant, Jewish zealots rose in revolt against Antiochus and the Hellenized high priest installed in Jerusalem’s Second Temple.
Antiochus returned from Egypt and attempted to quell the uprising. After his death on a subsequent campaign in Persia, Hasmonean rebels led by Judah Maccabee and his clansmen succeeded in wresting control of Judea from the Seleucid Greeks, restoring the Temple and forming a Jewish kingdom that ruled for a century. The Hanukkah holiday celebrates the Maccabees’ victory over the Greeks and Hellenized Jews.
According to [the numismatist] Danny Synon, what is unique about the currency series that the bronze Antiochus IV coin is part of is that it was minted during what he calls an “economic experiment” conducted by the monarch in which he allowed four municipalities to mint their own local coinage. One side of the “municipality coin” usually featured a local god, said Synon, and the other side was engraved with an image connected to the local area. In the case of the recently recovered coin, one side features the king, and the other shows a ship and the name of the port city of Tyre.

Just in Time for Hanukkah, a Coin with Its Villain’s Face Is Discovered » Mosaic

Together with a cache of looted artifacts.

mosaicmagazine.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Mindful]

Jeremy Corbyn.

Thank goodness he never became PM.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma’ada died of his wounds three days after an Arab terrorist set off a bomb at the bus stop where Ben Ma’ada stood, awaiting his bus. Ben Ma’ada was murdered because he was a Jew, and he was buried as a Jew. But you might not have read about him in your newspaper. That’s because Ben Ma’ada doesn’t fit the CRT narrative of the Jew as white and privileged. Privileged he was, as a Jew who “came home” to Israel from Ethiopia 21 years ago, but white he was, of a certainty, not.

Not that it matters even one little bit. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. It’s not that we “don’t see color.” It’s that we don’t care. Ben Ma’ada died al Kiddush Hashem, in sanctification of God’s name, because he was murdered precisely for belonging to the Jewish nation. That makes him holy. In Hebrew, in fact, martyrs are referred to as kedoshim, holy ones.
Ben Ma’ada wasn’t one of those “we are the real Jews” like Kyrie Irving, Ye West, or the Black Hebrew Israelites, but an actual real Jew who had zero interest in a trinity, or even Malcolm X.
Ben Ma’ada, after undergoing the Jewish purification ceremony, was buried in his tallit, his Jewish prayer shawl, like every other Israeli Jew. Those who paid their final respects, wore kippot, yarmulkes.

The Black Hebrew Israelites, on the other hand, during their recent march on New York in support of Kyrie Irvingdistributed leaflets that left no doubt as to their religious affiliations, reading in part:
“The biblical Israelites are targeted and accused of hate day and night without rest. Our knowledge of our heritage and laws has been systematically removed from us through the monstrous holocaust known as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They may lie to the world and deny us of our birthright, yet Jesus the Christ, our Black Messiah, confirms the truth of who we are. We are not antisemitic, we are Semitic.”

To the Black Hebrew Israelites, it is Black Christians who are the real Jews, a nonsensical idea. Because the Jewish belief in one God, a belief certainly shared by the Jewish martyr Ben Ma’ada, is the diametric opposite of a belief in a trinity. For a Jew, it’s simple: God cannot be both dead and alive, nor is he a son of himself, while somehow a father, all at one and the same time. These ideas are not consonant with Jewish thought and practice, and would not have resonated with Ben Ma’ada, because he was a Jew like any other Jew.

(full article and tweets online)

Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma’ada: Killed Not for the Color of His Skin but for His Jewish Faith (Judean Rose)

Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma'ada was a real Jew but not because he was black.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

In early May 2021 Israeli authorities had to cope with a high level of unrest and accompanying violence on the part of Arabs in Israel in several locales; nowhere was the situation more intense than at the Temple Mount.

Those riots were incited by Hamas. During that time of unrest, as in several similar periods in the past, accusations were made by Palestinian Arab terror groups – whether the Palestinian Authority or Hamas – charging that the Jewish presence on the Mount was improper, infringed upon Arab Muslim rights, and had to cease.

Mahmoud Abbas of the PA, drawing on this theme back in September 2015, had charged:

“The Al-Aksa [which refers to the mosque and also the entire compound of the Temple Mount] is ours…and they [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem.”

The notion that Jerusalem (the Mount) has to be “protected” from Jews is part of a larger theme of incitement: In December 2020, an analyst on PA TV declared:

“The Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger of being bombed and destroyed. This is a true and serious Zionist threat.”

In May 2021, the theme was similar, when Khaled Mashal, a leader of Hamas, declared:

“The most important conditions are the exit of occupying Israel from Al-Aksa Mosque, the recognition of freedom of worship to our people and Muslims in Al-Aksa Mosque…”

Mashal drew upon the motif of Muslim rights to freedom of worship, which is a flashpoint for Muslim Arab anger. But there was more: the charge that Jews are “occupiers” on the Mount and must leave because they have no place there.

What is being said here should not be missed: it goes to the heart of what is happening with regard to the Temple Mount.

There was a time in decades past when Muslim Arabs recognized the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. Consider these two examples among many:

[] A nine-page English-language tourist guide entitled “A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif [the Temple Mount] was published by the Supreme Moslem Council in 1925. It states that the Temple Mount site “is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.” (Emphasis added)


https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/supreme-moslem-council-recognized-jewish-connection-to-temple-mount

[] Some 25 kilometers southwest of Jerusalem in the village of Nuba is found the Mosque of Umar, which bears an ancient inscription that dates to the 9th or 10th century CE. It says that the mosque is an endowment for the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque (see below for more on these). What is noteworthy is that the Dome of the Rock is referred to in the inscription as “the rock of the Bayt al-Maqdis” — literally, “The Holy Temple.”

(full article online)

The Temple Mount: Whose Is It? - Jews Down Under

In early May 2021 Israeli authorities had to cope with a high level of unrest and accompanying viole

jewsdownunder.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Likkmee]

Moses spoke to the Red Sea and told it to part. It didn't. They took a right and hauled ass.
That's where Ukraine came from

 

[Sixties Fan]

CAMERA’s Israel office today prompted correction of Reuters’ Nov. 25 article (“Israeli far-right’s Ben-Gvir to be national security minister under coalition deal“) which had qualified the historical fact that the Jewish temples were located on the Temple Mount as unverified.

The Temple Mount on a stormy day (Photo by Akiva Sternthal)

While archeologists are in total agreement that the Jewish temples stood on the Temple Mount, Chacar reported this information as merely a claim, referring to “The site, said to have once housed two ancient Jewish temples . . . ” (Emphasis added).

There is no archeological dispute about the fact that the Jewish temples were located on the Temple Mount. As The New York Times was compelled to acknowledge in a 2015 correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the question that many books and scholarly treatises have never definitively answered concerning the two ancient Jewish temples. The question is where precisely on the 37-acre Temple Mount site the temples had once stood, not whether the temples had ever existed there.

Indeed, Reuters itself has rightly cited as recently as August the “ancient temples which once stood on the site.”



(full article online)

Reuters Corrects: Ancient Jewish Temples Were Located On Temple Mount

CAMERA prompts correction after Reuters qualified the historical fact that the Jewish temples were located on the Temple Mount as unverified, citing 'The site,

www.camera.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

I saw once again today the assertion, in an academic paper, that Arabs and Jews lived quite well together in the late 19th century in Palestine. I looked at the footnote and it refers to a 2014 paper by Menachem Klein, which brings an impressive amount of evidence for cooperation between the Jews of Palestine and the Arabs, including Arabic words that became part of Palestinian Yiddish and Yiddish words that became part of Arabic, as well as evidence of the groups working together, even politically, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Whenever I read this sort of thing, I wonder how this jives with anecdotal evidence of derision and insults from Arabs to Jews in the 19th century. For example, John MacGregorpublished in 1870 that "Men in Palestine call their fellows 'Jew' as the very lowest of all possible words of abuse."

In an 1824 letter from Rev. W. B. Lewis to the London Society, he writes, "Jerusalem is truly miserable, groaning under the tyranny of the oppressor. Jews...are subject to daily insults, and are shamefully and inhumanly oppressed." He then gives page after page of examples of Muslims treating Jews like garbage, stealing from them, the Ottoman authorities falsely accusing Jews and their Rabbinic leaders of petty crimes and torturing them and extorting obscene sums of money as fines. (See below)

James Finn, the British consul to Jerusalem from 1846-1863, says that Jerusalem Jews were forced to bury their dead at night: - "the usual practice is to pay the gate-keeper to let them out of the town in the middle of the night, and this from fear of having the dead disinterred by Moslems or Christians."

There were pogroms against Jews in 1834 in Hebron and Safed, in 1837 in Safed again, and in 1847 a Jewish boy was accused of a blood libel in Jerusalem.

How can we reconcile the stories of Arab abuse of and attacks on Jews in Palestine with the academics who claim that Jews and Arabs lived so cooperatively?

It appears that before the 1840s, the Jews were indeed treated like dirt. Then things started changing. The reason is that the increasing number of European Jews could appeal to their own governments for protection, starting in that decade. Different European powers even competed for influence in the Ottoman Empire and protecting Jews gave them more power. Oddly, in 1848 the Russians told their Jewish subjects that they would no longer be protected, and the British consul stepped in to be their protector. This protection made it much harder for Jews to be routinely harassed by the Arabs - being backed by European powers suddenly gave the Jews powers they hadn't had beforehand.

Only after the Jews came under the protection of European states did the Arabs start to treat the Jews with more respect. The Ottoman leaders were no longer able to mistreat most of their Jewish subjects out of fear of creating an international incident.




It is an old story: Arabs respect power. When Jews were powerless, Arabs treated them like garbage. Only when they had some protection did the Arabs start to "live with them together in peace." Did the Arabs suddenly become philosemitic? Of course not. But they were practical: The Jews couldn't be attacked with impunity anymore.

And that is the story of Israel in a nutshell. When Israel acts weak, it invites Arab (now, Palestinian) derision and attacks. Acting strong is the only formula for peace. It isn't a peace based on love or friendship, but a peace based on respect.

It is no different now than in was 200 years ago.

(Some information here comes from Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine: Two Worlds Collide, by Alan Dowty.)

Did Arabs and Jews live in peace in 19th century Palestine?

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[rylah]

High On The Har + Rabbi Pini Dunner: Ascending To The Temple Mount​

 

[rylah]

Looters Caught Red Handed in Ancient Cave near Bedouin City of Rahat​

Last Tuesday, the Antiquities Theft Prevention Unit in the Israel Antiquities Authority caught a team of three antiquity robbers “on the job” while they were excavating and destroying historical layers in an Ottoman well next to the cemetery of the Bedouin city of Rahat in the Negev. The robbers are suspected of searching for a hidden treasure, which, according to a Bedouin myth, was buried in the well, inside a cave.

The archaeological site of Horvat Maaravim, near Rahat, which features ancient remains from the Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, and Ottoman periods, was being watched by the IAA. On Tuesday, in the early evening, suspicious figures were seen approaching the site and entering the cave with the rock-hewn water well on the southern side of the site.

The IAA Antiquities Theft Prevention Unit inspectors hurried to the site, and reached the cave entrance without being detected, to catch the robbers in the act of digging up the archaeological site.

The suspects, in their twenties, were arrested—with the assistance of Border Patrol Police and the security staff of the Rahat municipality—and were taken for questioning overnight.

One of the looters had been arrested and charged for a similar offense in 2020 when he was placed on six-months probation and was fined NIS 30,000 ($8,735).

“After the summer heat, we witness an increase in antiquity robbing activities,” said IAA Director, Eli Escusido. “The Israel Antiquities Authority is busy combatting the phenomenon of antiquity theft day and night. The looters are motivated by greed, and they rip the finds from their archaeological context, damaging the country’s heritage.”

Looters Caught Red Handed in Ancient Cave near Bedouin City of Rahat

The site was being watched by the IAA.

www.jewishpress.com