Abbas Unhinged and Identity Theft

How bad was Mahmoud Abbas' historical revisionism?

[UPDATE: The transcript]

Let us count the ways.

First from the censored WAFA version I caught earlier:

The Question Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations...and via the essential and lauded role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - UNRWA - which embodies the international responsibility towards the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948. 

1. If the UN counts, why not the League of Nations and its support for the reconstitution of the historic Jewish home in Palestine?

2. Mentioning discredited UNRWA?

The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine.

3. No. The Palestinian Authority refuses to recognize Jewish national identity.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people 

4. Those activities are specifically guaranteed by international law, Article 6, League of Nations, July 1922.

5. Moreover, if Jews cannot 'settle' in the Land of Israel, where can they reside?

At the same time, the occupying Power continues to impose its blockade on the Gaza Strip and to target Palestinian civilians by assassinations, air strikes and artillery shelling, 

6. If no Arab terror activity, no shellings, mortars, rockets or tunnels, no restrictions.

In recent years, the criminal actions of armed settler militias, who enjoy the special protection of the occupation army, has intensified with the perpetration of frequent attacks 

7.  Attacks have gone down. They are dealt with by police. Are Arab terrorists paid the the PA coffers for killing Jews?

we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.

8. Of all the original territory of "Palestine", Israel is but 25%.

I appealed to the British Government to rectify the grave injustice it inflicted upon the Palestinian people when it issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, promising Jews a national homeland in Palestine, despite the fact that Palestine was inhabited by the Palestinian people and was among the most progressive and prosperous countries

9.  To do that, Abbas is requesting a negation of Zionism per se.


This "official" version, as does Haaretz and Times of Israel, leaves out all this negative, irrational, myth-creating and fantasy.  And watch the MEMRI recording. As Noah Pollack writes:

the [NY] Times left out all the good stuff–the rank anti-Semitism, the crazed conspiracy theorizing, the threats of violence, the glorification of terrorists. 

Even Barak Ravid, formerly of Haaretz and now Senior Diplomatic correspondent, Channel 10 News had to admit:

Palestinian President Abbas's speech at the PLO conference right now is becoming more and more delusional

And former US Ambassador Shapiro wrote it was:

a shameful speech full of bizarre canards about Israel's illegitimacy

Now, to the MEMRI clip: 

Again, the "Palestinians" preceded the Jews:

Cromwell came up with an idea:

Why?

What really happened is

In 1653, at Oliver St John’s suggestion, Cromwell issued an official directive to authorise, “Menasseh ben Israel, a rabbi of the Jewish nation, well respected for his learning and good affection to the State, to come from Amsterdam to these parts.”

In other words, just the opposite direction! 

This too:

To do what?

The man is psychotic.

More:

He wasn't a grandfather and it was in 1841:

More. In 1840,

And what did Herzl declare? Really?

He mentions the fictitious Campbell-Bannerman report.

It gets worse. Watch it all.  And now, read it.

I have termed this "identity theft".

And read this blogpost.

And this one, too.

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Contra Attempts At Identity Theft

One of my themes is the attempts by Arabs to discount the historical Jewish connection with the Land of Israel, prior to political sovereignty, during and even after the same, through 18 centuries of exile from power.

And now, we have this:

A 1,500 year old seal bearing an image of the seven-branched Temple Menorah was discovered near the city of Akko.

A ceramic stamp from the Byzantine period (6th century CE) was discovered in excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is currently conducting at Horbat Uza east of Akko [known as] “bread stamps” because they were usually used to stamp baked goods.

According to Gilad Jaffe and Dr. Danny Syon, the directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “...The Temple Menorah, being a Jewish symbol par excellence, indicates the stamps belonged to Jews, unlike Christian bread stamps with the cross pattern which were much more common in the Byzantine period”. According to Syon, “This is the first time such a stamp is discovered in a controlled archaeological excavation, thus making it possible to determine its provenance and date of manufacture. The stamp is important because it proves that a Jewish community existed in the settlement of Uza in the Christian-Byzantine period. The presence of a Jewish settlement so close to Akko – a region that was definitely Christian at this time – constitutes an innovation in archaeological research”.

Yes, Jews were definitely here before the Arabs arrived in the 7th century.  The Jews hung on in the face of hostility, of foreign rule, of oppression, of great difficulties.

This was our country, we Jews acted like it was, sought to stay here, sought to return under all circumstances.

No one can steal that identity of ours as a national group with Eretz-Yisrael as our national homeland.

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The Continuing Identity Theft Theme

As CNN notes:

At the press conference to announce the find, archaeologists were flanked by two government ministers from the right-wing Likud party who used the discovery to press Jewish claims of sovereignty over Jerusalem.

“The works of the digs are uncovering our roots,” said Education Minister Gideon Saar. “They could not be carried out if Israel was not the sovereign in control of Jerusalem and emphasized the work in this area.”

The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem, where the excavation is located, and Palestinians consider the eastern part of the city as the capital of their future state.

Oh, the discovery?

Here.

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The Highs and the Low in Archaeology in Israel

In addition to the ideologically-driven pro-Pal. archeologists who seek to actively undermine Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Land of israel, Jewish or other, people like Taha Hamdan of whom it is said:

“When people talk about doing something in Palestine and they learn that it will have to go through Taha, the advice is basically to forget it” because, he says, Taha is “very political” and takes control of projects to consolidate his power.

who is supported by Gerrit van der Kooij, of the Leiden University in the Netherlands archaeologist, there is a professional and academic dispute going on whether the Bible is confirmed by today's science and whether the Bible can be thought of as a credible source and is its chronology reliable (a related previous post).

More information and understanding can be gleaned from a profile on Dr. Eilat Mazar, "Archaeology's Rebel":-

..."I'm suggesting that what we've revealed can be related quite safely to King Solomon." Such a bold biblical connection from a modern Israeli archaeologist is rare. It provokes other archaeologists (except for evangelical ones), but it also exposes how the discipline has changed over the past several decades...

...In 1998, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), the main professional organization for archaeologists working in the Middle East, changed the name of its magazine from Biblical Archaeologist to Near Eastern Archaeology in order to separate itself from that modus operandi...

...also noted [are] objections from Israel Finkelstein, a professor at the Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology...Finkelstein is the chief proponent of the Low Chronology, which re-dates archaeological findings from the 10th century B.C. This method of dating minimizes the significance of David and Solomon, suggesting that they were minor chieftains rather than major rulers. The Low Chronology is based in part on the paucity of archaeological evidence for David and Solomon's rule in Jerusalem itself.

Mazar's team discovered a 3/4-by-1-inch fragment of a clay tablet inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform script. The tablet was dated to the 14th century B.C.—the oldest writing ever found in Jerusalem.  "It's very small, but it does tell much because it was written by a very highly skilled scribe," Mazar said. The dating puts it in the period of the Amarna Letters, a cache of correspondence sent from vassal Canaanite kings to the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. Six of the letters were from Abdi-Heba, the ruler of Jerusalem.

...Mazar doesn't shy away from being called a biblical archaeologist, as some of her colleagues might. She likes the terminology..."it's not like I'm here because it's some anonymous place. This is Jerusalem, which we know best from the Bible...I don't believe these [modern] archaeologists who ignore the Bible," she said. "To ignore the written sources, especially the Bible—I don't believe any serious scholar anywhere would do this. It doesn't make any sense."

...archaeologists working at sites such as Khirbet Qeiyafa and Khirbet en-Nahas have found new evidence for a centralized Judean monarchy during the time of David and Solomon. The pendulum is swinging away from the biblical minimalists.

Mazar calls the Bible a historical document. But she also says that it needs to be tested and examined. While evangelicals can appreciate her vigorous defense of the Bible as an independent narrative in the field of biblical archaeology, she does not view it as holy writ.  "I'm not religious," she said. "The only interest we share is interest in historical sources, either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Everything [in the Bible] is important to me in order to be examined or studied.

...Mazar secured financing and began to dig in 2005 [in the northern section of the City of David]. Soon the diggers uncovered the remains of what she called the Large-Stone Structure. The impressive size of the remains made it clear this was no ordinary building. Diagnostic pottery tests allowed for a 10th century B.C. date. Mazar announced that the most logical conclusion was that she had found the remains of King David's palace...[and] One of her supervisors working inside the Large-Stone Structure spotted raised letters on a flattened ball of clay about the size of a fingernail. Called a bulla, it was the seal impression from an important document. It read, "Belonging to Jehucal, son of Shelemiah, son of Shovi."... Mazar wrote, "I felt as though I had just resurrected someone straight out of the Bible."...[another] bulla was unearthed with the name of one of Jehucal's colleagues: Gedaliah, the son of Pashhur, also mentioned in Jeremiah 38:1. "That is why archaeology is so fascinating," said Mazar. "It's written in the Bible, and then we find these seal impressions. It demonstrates that this biblical story is so accurate."...

Academic and scientific debates are fine. Minimalism or whatever.

Identity theft is another matter. And denying Shiloh as Jewish is not only personally downright insulting but rather highlights to ludicrous of the effort on the one hand, and the simplistic incredulousness displayed by those at the UN, the EU and foreign ministries of countries that delight in pumping the Pals. with money to undermine Jewish nationalism and what Zionism has achieved.


UPDATE

Anyone attemnding this lecture:

'Dangerous Archaeology: The Ethics of Fashioning the Past in Jerusalem'

A public lecture by Professor Raphael Greenberg (UCL and Tel Aviv University), With response by Dr Beverley Butler (who was co-author of Keys to the Past, Keys to the Future: Developing a National Policy for Museums in Palestine. Consultancy paper commissioned by Palestinian Authorities/ UNESCO. She argues for a "need to problematise the ‘over-determined’ assertions (or appropriations) of ‘heritage as cure’ and ‘heritage as healing’ and the accompanying overdetermination at play"). Sponsored by the UCL Centre for Museums, Heritage, and Material Culture Studies, Thursday, November 17th, 6pm, Room 612, Institute of Archaeology, UCL, All welcome.

Abstract

Archaeologist are both producers and interpreters of the
archaeological record. Where ideological pressures are powerful,
archaeologists, their discoveries and their interpretations are often moulded to conform with them. The dangers of a conformist archaeology will be discussed, as will its ethical alternatives, with particular reference to Israel/Palestine and ancient Jerusalem.

In other words, no real debate, no real confrontation of theses.

Rafi is one of the 'antis':

...the ostensibly dovish Ha'aretz reporter Danny Rubinstein saw no shame in closing an op-ed piece critical of Elad's settlement plans by asking rhetorically, "But who can remain unmoved by the important addition to the study of Jerusalem's past that is now being revealed by the City of David digs?"

Tel Aviv University professor of archaeology Rafi Greenberg, for one, can. As he leads the alternative archaeological tours that he and a small group of like-minded Israeli colleagues have begun to conduct around Silwan and the City of David site--in a modest but concerted effort to counter the grossly skewed version put forth by Elad and the archaeologists on its payroll...he is deeply troubled by what is happening--to Silwan, to Israel, to his profession...

He's been a bother for the past few years, aiding the new paradigm of "politicisation of urban heritage" theme or what Noam Chomsky terms (p. 54) ‘the counterrevolutionary
subordination of scholarship’, or, in short:

“The Bible should not be the guiding principle or the yardstick of an archaeological site,” Greenberg says. “Archaeology should tell an independent story

and see here.

Butler, mentioned above, presented a paper in December 2010 which drew, in its first part, on the work of Derrida, Said and others

"who have identified the marginalising capacity of dominant Euro-North American archival and cultural-museological institutions. The second half of my text grounds the above conceptual-ethical issues in the context of Palestinian cultural politics and memory-work, in particular with reference to the imagining of Jerusalem, both as a place of exile and return but also as something to capture, aspire and build. I use this critical framework to draw out the silences in archives and cultural institutions and the epistemological and 'real' violences at play in what Derrida characterises as 'archive trauma' and to respond to Said's call to 're-read' the colonial
archive 'contrapuntally' in order to create an 'othering' of dominant archival discourse. My paper will that what is needed to provoke such an 'othering' is a commitment to rethink the archive in terms of alternative understandings of 'hospitality', 'memory-work' and in terms of what Derrida has referred to as 'heritage dignity'...

Greenberg, along with Butler, Chomsky, Said and Hamdan, is not independent but quite mobilised.


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