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Matt Giwer · Guest

Although this is not exactly what I am talking about it does nail down the
Zionist objection to what I am saying.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=13569

Israeli Bestseller Breaks National Taboo

Idea of a Jewish people invented, says historian by Jonathan Cook

No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has
spent 19 weeks on Israel>s bestseller list â€“ and that success has come to the
history professor despite his book challenging Israel>s biggest taboo.

Dr. Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation â€“ whose need for a safe haven
was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel â€“ is a myth
invented little more than a century ago.

An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Sand drew on
extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this
claim but several more â€“ all equally controversial.

In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land,
that most of today>s Jews have no historical connection to the land called
Israel and that the only political solution to the country>s conflict with the
Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.

The success of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? looks likely to be
repeated around the world. A French edition, launched last month, is selling
so fast that it has already had three print runs.

Translations are under way into a dozen languages, including Arabic and
English. But he predicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book
is launched by his English publisher, Verso, in the United States next year.

In contrast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly supportive, at least
curious about his argument. Tom Segev, one of the country>s leading
journalists, has called the book "fascinating and challenging."

Surprisingly, Dr. Sand said, most of his academic colleagues in Israel have
shied away from tackling his arguments. One exception is Israel Bartal, a
professor of Jewish history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Writing in
Haaretz, the Israeli daily newspaper, Dr. Bartal made little effort to rebut
Dr. Sand>s claims. He dedicated much of his article instead to defending his
profession, suggesting that Israeli historians were not as ignorant about the
invented nature of Jewish history as Dr. Sand contends.

The idea for the book came to him many years ago, Dr. Sand said, but he waited
until recently to start working on it. "I cannot claim to be particularly
courageous in publishing the book now," he said. "I waited until I was a full
professor. There is a price to be paid in Israeli academia for expressing
views of this sort."

Dr. Sand>s main argument is that until little more than a century ago, Jews
thought of themselves as Jews only because they shared a common religion. At
the turn of the 20th century, he said, Zionist Jews challenged this idea and
started creating a national history by inventing the idea that Jews existed as
a people separate from their religion.

Equally, the modern Zionist idea of Jews being obligated to return from exile
to the Promised Land was entirely alien to Judaism, he added.

"Zionism changed the idea of Jerusalem. Before, the holy places were seen as
places to long for, not to be lived in. For 2,000 years Jews stayed away from
Jerusalem not because they could not return but because their religion forbade
them from returning until the messiah came."

The biggest surprise during his research came when he started looking at the
archaeological evidence from the biblical era.

"I was not raised as a Zionist, but like all other Israelis I took it for
granted that the Jews were a people living in Judea and that they were exiled
by the Romans in 70AD.

"But once I started looking at the evidence, I discovered that the kingdoms of
David and Solomon were legends.

"Similarly with the exile. In fact, you can>t explain Jewishness without
exile. But when I started to look for history books describing the events of
this exile, I couldn>t find any. Not one.

"That was because the Romans did not exile people. In fact, Jews in Palestine
were overwhelming peasants and all the evidence suggests they stayed on their
lands."

Instead, he believes an alternative theory is more plausible: the exile was a
myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith.
"Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors
had been exiled as a punishment from God."

So if there was no exile, how is it that so many Jews ended up scattered
around the globe before the modern state of Israel began encouraging them to
"return"?

Dr. Sand said that, in the centuries immediately preceding and following the
Christian era, Judaism was a proselytizing religion, desperate for converts.
"This is mentioned in the Roman literature of the time."

Jews traveled to other regions seeking converts, particularly in Yemen and
among the Berber tribes of North Africa. Centuries later, the people of the
Khazar kingdom in what is today south Russia, would convert en masse to
Judaism, becoming the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews of central and eastern Europe.

Dr. Sand pointed to the strange state of denial in which most Israelis live,
noting that papers offered extensive coverage recently to the discovery of the
capital of the Khazar kingdom next to the Caspian Sea.

Ynet, the website of Israel>s most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth,
headlined the story: "Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital."
And yet none of the papers, he added, had considered the significance of this
find to standard accounts of Jewish history.

One further question is prompted by Dr. Sand>s account, as he himself notes:
if most Jews never left the Holy Land, what became of them?

"It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders,
including David Ben Gurion [Israel>s first prime minister], believed that the
Palestinians were the descendants of the area>s original Jews. They believed
the Jews had later converted to Islam."

Dr. Sand attributed his colleagues' reticence to engage with him to an
implicit acknowledgment by many that the whole edifice of "Jewish history"
taught at Israeli universities is built like a house of cards.

The problem with the teaching of history in Israel, Dr. Sand said, dates to a
decision in the 1930s to separate history into two disciplines: general
history and Jewish history. Jewish history was assumed to need its own field
of study because Jewish experience was considered unique.

"There>s no Jewish department of politics or sociology at the universities.
Only history is taught in this way, and it has allowed specialists in Jewish
history to live in a very insular and conservative world where they are not
touched by modern developments in historical research.

"I>ve been criticized in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European
history is my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is
familiar with the standard concepts of historical inquiry used by academia in
the rest of the world."

====
Also on the subject from the largest jewish language in Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959229.html
Tom Segev is a prominent journalist in Israel and has used official Israeli
records to dispel the founding myths of Israel.

An Invention Called 'The Jewish People'
By Tom Segev
Ha>aretz.com
2-29-8

Israel>s Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in
the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli
schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in
70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return
after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one
of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time.
There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also
never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories
of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt
and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It>s all
fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State
of Israel, he asserts.

According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and
most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of
those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered
by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among
the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs
were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration
of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and
others.

If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them
reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own
volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there
because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion
tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how
there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for
example, notes, "And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the
fear of the Jews fell upon them."

Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel
but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the
Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish
Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs
who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the
Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews.

The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel
and did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar
Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it
was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection
between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East,
some of them as merchants.

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and
black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand,
the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical
continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an
invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who
conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of
genetic studies conducted in Israel.

Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His book, "When and How Was the
Jewish People Invented?" (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to
promote the idea that Israel should be a "state of all its citizens" - Jews,
Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a "Jewish and
democratic" state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and
abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters
are well- written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis
will be astonished to read for the first time.

The Mosquito From Kiryat Yam

On March 27, 1948, a meeting was held in Hiafa concerning the fate of the
Bedouin of Arab al-Ghawarina in the Haifa area. "They must be removed from
there, so that they, too, will not add to our troubles," Yosef Weitz, of the
Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), wrote in his personal diary. Two
months later, Weitz reported to the organization>s director, "Our Haifa Bay
has been evacuated completely and there is hardly a remnant of those who
encroached our border." They were probably expelled to Jordan; some were
allowed to remain in the village of Jisr al-Zarqa. The fate of the Arab
al-Ghawarina Bedouin has recently made the headlines thanks to Shmuel Sisso,
mayor of the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Yam. He has filed a complaint with the
police against Google. The reason is the addition that one of the site>s
surfers, a resident of Nablus, attached to the center of Kiryat Yam in the
world satellite photo, stating that the city is built on the ruins of a
village that was destroyed in 1948, Arab al-Ghawarina. Sisso>s complaint
says that this is slanderous.

The facts are as follows: The lands of the Zevulun Valley were purchased in
the 1920s by the JNF and by various construction companies, among them one
called Gav Yam. The Zionist Archives have the plan for the establishment of
Kiryat Yam, dated 1938, and a letter from 1945 states that there were
already 100 homes there. Government maps from the British Mandate period
identify the territory on which Kiryat Yam was built by two names: Zevulun
Valley and Ghawarina. Thus it appears that this was not a settlement but an
area in which Bedouin resided.

The Web site of the Israeli organization Zochrot (Remembering) states that
there were 720 people at the site in 1948 and that the area was divided
among three kibbutzim: Ein Hamifratz, Kfar Masaryk and Ein Hayam, today Ein
Carmel.

This story has been making the rounds on the Internet and drawing responses,
which can be summed up as follows: "If Sisso is suing Google because they
stated that he is living on a destroyed Arab village, the implication is
that he thinks this is something bad." Sisso, a lawyer of 57 who is
identified with Likud and was formerly Israeli consul general in New York,
says, "I don>t think there is anything bad about it, but other people might
think it is bad, especially people abroad, and that is liable to hurt Kiryat
Yam, because people will not want to invest here. Since we are not sitting
on a Palestinian village, why should we have to suffer for no reason?"

Moroccan-born, Sisso arrived in Israel in 1955. "I wandered around the whole
region and I saw no trace of anyone>s having been here before us and
supposedly expelled." He asked an American law professor how, if at all,
Google could be sued for slander or for damages. This, he says, is the
contribution of Kiryat Yam to the struggle against the right of return (of
the Palestinian refugees).

It could turn out to be the most riveting trial since Ariel Sharon sued Time
magazine, but mayor Sisso has no illusions: "Me against Google is like a
mosquito against an elephant," he said this week.

Who America Belongs To

Two professors, Gabi Shefer and Avi Ben-Zvi, were guests this week on
Yitzhak Noy>s "International Hour" current events program on Israel Radio.
The anchor, sounding slightly concerned, asked whether the achievements of
Barack Obama show that the United States no longer belongs to the white man.
Prof. Shefer confirmed this: Obama is an immigrant, he said. Prof. Ben-Zvi
asked to add a remark: Gabi Shefer is right, he said. They are both wrong.
If Obama were an immigrant, he would not be eligible to be elected
president. He was born in Honolulu, some two years after Hawaii became the
50th state of the union.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959229.html

--
Choices in life come as package deals, not a la carte.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4059
http://www.giwersworld.org a1

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Oct 8, 3:02 pm, Kendall K Down <webmas...@diggingsonline.com>
wrote:

This has nothing to do with sci.lang. Followups set.

Kendall K Down · Guest

In message <7a23e210-5112-41a7-919e-2d480de44e09@a2g2000prm.googlegrou
ps.com>
"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:

[quote]Although this is not exactly what I am talking about it does nail down the
Zionist objection to what I am saying.

This has nothing to do with sci.lang.
Followups set.
[/quote]
It has nothing to do with archaeology either - it>s just Matt the
Pratt airing his nasty nazi views yet again.

Ken Down

--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia>s premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================

Kendall K Down · Guest

In message <7yiHk.13027$gZ3.6947@newsfe16.ams2>
Martin Edwards <big_mart_98@yahoo.com> wrote:

[quote]I surmise, but perhaps the intention is to tease out whatever
archaelogical evidence there may be. In fact there is some of a sort,
though spurious. For example the ruins in Silwan are called "the city
of David" on no other basis than they are about the right age based on
the Bible. Thus the Bible is used to confirm itself.
[/quote]
Yet again you leap to the defence of your idiot idol. Matt the Pratt
has no other intention than to try and propagate his nasty nazi
fantasies - and you, by supporting him, are showing yourself to be as
nasty and anti-semitic.

In addition, you are showing yourself to be as ignorant and opiniated
as he is: the ruins in Silwan have never been called the city of
David. Silwan lies on the opposite side of the Kidron to the area
called "the city of David".

Ken Down

--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia>s premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Oct 13, 11:04 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com>
wrote:

Nothing relevant to sci.lang.

Followups set.

JTEM · Guest

Kendall K Down <webmas...@diggingsonline.com> wrote:

[quote]The difference being that there is plenty of evidence to
support the historical accounts of the Bible -
[/quote]
So much so that you thumpers get excited over things like,
well, like "Hezekiah>s Tunnel."

"The bible writers got Hezekiah>s Tunnel right! This proves
that... well... it proves that they may have actually spent
some time within the vicinity of Jerusalem!"

It>s amazing at the feeble "Proofs" you wingnuts cling too
out of desperation, because there is so little the bible got
right....

Matt Giwer · Guest

Kendall K Down wrote:
[quote]In message <48ec5b1b$0$4920$2318a52a@unlimited.newshosting.com
Matt Giwer <jull43@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
It is the total absence of archaeological evidence of a culture which could
have created and preserved the OT prior to the arrival of the Greeks
that puts it into the field of archaeology.

So the (alleged) lack of archaeology makes it an archaeological
subject? Presumably the lack of linguistics would make it a linguistic
subject, the lack of astronomy would make it an astronomical subject
and so on.
[/quote]
You believers tend to become confused to easily. For purposes of exposition
it is normal to point out the total absence of archaeological finds supporting
the OT FOLLOWED with the observation that more than sufficient finds have been
made to show the OT cannot be true.

Next time I deal with believers cold I will try reversing the order to see if
it gets through to them.

[quote]One of the reasons for posting a thread to a conference is to be refuted. So
again, if anyone here can recite archaeological evidence of such a
civilization in bibleland then sci.archaeology is a place to expect to find
those people.

For the benefit of anyone new to these newsgroups, Matt the Pratt has
been presented with the evidence many times. Earlier this year we had
a couple of posters who so overwhelmed him with evidence that he
pulled his head in and stopped posting until he was sure they had gone
away. Now he>s back spouting his nasty anti-semitic nonsense and
hoping we all have short memories.
[/quote]
Then perhaps you will post the inscriptions from bibleland mentioning the
kings Solomon and David. Perhaps you will present the evidence showing
Jerusalem existed in 900 BC.

Rather as always you will decline to produce any evidence beyond the region
being inhabited. And of course, EVIDENCE itself, not what your fellow
believers say about the evidence.

--
If we have a real Depression everything done will become things never to
repeat even if they had nothing to do with it or were even good on balance.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4055
http://www.giwersworld.org a1

Martin Edwards · Guest

Kendall K Down wrote:
[quote]In message <7yiHk.13027$gZ3.6947@newsfe16.ams2
Martin Edwards <big_mart_98@yahoo.com> wrote:

I surmise, but perhaps the intention is to tease out whatever
archaelogical evidence there may be. In fact there is some of a sort,
though spurious. For example the ruins in Silwan are called "the city
of David" on no other basis than they are about the right age based on
the Bible. Thus the Bible is used to confirm itself.

Yet again you leap to the defence of your idiot idol. Matt the Pratt
has no other intention than to try and propagate his nasty nazi
fantasies - and you, by supporting him, are showing yourself to be as
nasty and anti-semitic.

In addition, you are showing yourself to be as ignorant and opiniated
as he is: the ruins in Silwan have never been called the city of
David. Silwan lies on the opposite side of the Kidron to the area
called "the city of David".

Ken Down

Thanks for the update. And the evidence of a connection is?[/quote]

--
Corporate society looks after everything. All it asks of anyone, all it
has ever asked of anyone, is that they do not interfere with management
decisions. -From “Rollerball”

Kendall K Down · Guest

In message <52e5df1e-6f0c-423b-a732-e2c0b620eeea@l76g2000hse.googlegro
ups.com>
JTEM <jtem01@gmail.com> wrote:

[quote]So much so that you thumpers get excited over things like,
well, like "Hezekiah>s Tunnel."
[/quote]
Sure we do - even now, after doing it I forget how many times, I still
get a thrill out of wading through the thing.

Ken Down

--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia>s premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Oct 13, 11:44 pm, JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
[quote]Kendall K Down <webmas...@diggingsonline.com> wrote:

The difference being that there is plenty of evidence to
support the historical accounts of the Bible -

So much so that you thumpers get excited over things like,
well, like "Hezekiah>s Tunnel."
[/quote]
This has nothing to do with sci.lang.

Followups set.

Matt Giwer · Guest

Kendall K Down wrote:
[quote]In message <7yiHk.13027$gZ3.6947@newsfe16.ams2
Martin Edwards <big_mart_98@yahoo.com> wrote:
I surmise, but perhaps the intention is to tease out whatever
archaelogical evidence there may be. In fact there is some of a sort,
though spurious. For example the ruins in Silwan are called "the city
of David" on no other basis than they are about the right age based on
the Bible. Thus the Bible is used to confirm itself.

Yet again you leap to the defence of your idiot idol. Matt the Pratt
has no other intention than to try and propagate his nasty nazi
fantasies - and you, by supporting him, are showing yourself to be as
nasty and anti-semitic.
[/quote]
The truth cannot be antisemitic.

[quote]In addition, you are showing yourself to be as ignorant and opiniated
as he is: the ruins in Silwan have never been called the city of
David. Silwan lies on the opposite side of the Kidron to the area
called "the city of David".
[/quote]
If in fact Silwan has never been called the city of David why is it this and
other articles all assert that it is? Why are you lying?

Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09262008.html
September 26, 2008
King David Recruited to Expel Palestinians

When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

By JONATHAN COOK

From just outside Jerusalemâ€™s Old City walls, the simple stone and
cinder-block homes of Silwan cascade southwards into a valley known as the
Holy Basin.

The Palestinian residents are used to living in the shadow of history and
religion, given dramatic physical form as the great silver dome of the al
Aqsa mosque and the looming presence of the Mount of Olives. But of late,
history has become a curse for most of Silwanâ€™s residents.

â€œWe have cameras everywhere watching us night and day,â€ said Jawad Siyam,
39. â€œArmed Israeli guards wander through our alleys. Our open areas, the
places where I played as a child, have become no-go zones.â€

The reason is the growing number of settlers who have moved into Silwan
since the early 1990s claiming a biblical right to the land. At least 50
Jewish families, comprising 250 people, have taken over Palestinian homes
dotted across Silwan and turned them into secure compounds over which
Israeli flags flutter.

Similar takeovers are occurring out of sight in other Palestinian areas of
occupied East Jerusalem. The settler organisations, backed by private donors
from abroad, hope to make a peace agreement impossible and so ensure East
Jerusalem never becomes the capital of a Palestinian state.

But only in Silwan have the settlers defied the law so publicly, openly
recruiting an array of official Israeli bodies, from the Antiquities
Authority to the Jerusalem municipality.

Silwanâ€™s takeover is being masterminded by a shadowy organisation known as
Elad, which unusually has been preferred over the Nature and Parks Authority
to run an important archaeological site in the village centre.

With funding provided by secretive backers in Russia and the United States,
Elad has transformed Silwan into the â€œCity of Davidâ€. Even the signposts in
the area are oblivious to the existence of the Palestinian village and its
tens of thousands of residents.

The heart of the City of David is an archaeological park that is being
relentlessly extended into ever more corners of Silwan.

â€œThe settlers began by taking over homes around the site,â€ said Mr Siyam,
whose grandmotherâ€™s home was one of the first to be seized in 1994 after her
death. â€œThen they were given the main excavation site, and built new homes
in the park. And now they are finding new sites, fencing off more land and
digging under our houses.â€

Many homes in Mr Siyamâ€™s neighbourhood have developed cracks in the walls,
he said, after excavations began last year to unearth a drainage channel
believed to be from the period of King Herod. Residents fear their
foundations have been damaged.

The dig was intended to run 600 metres underground to the walls of
Jerusalemâ€™s Old City, but was halted by the courts in February after it
emerged that the archaeologists were digging without licences. Nonetheless,
Elad has recently begun work on other tunnels.

The organisationâ€™s main focus is the City of David site itself, over which
it was given control in 1998 in a dubious deal with the Parks Authority and
Jerusalem municipality.

Elad has poured money into excavating the area and subcontracted Israelâ€™s
main archaeological body, the Antiquities Authority, to oversee the
uncovering of what appears to be the original location of Jerusalem.
â€œThis is an important site, but Elad has a very clear agenda,â€ said Yonathan
Mizrachi, a former archaeologist for the Antiquities Authority. â€œThey want
to use archaeology, even bogus archaeology, to provide cover for their
political agenda of pushing Silwanâ€™s Palestinians out.

â€œWhat is so disturbing is that they seem to be setting the agenda of the
Antiquities Authority, too.â€

Mr Mizrachi and two other archaeologists have been leading alternative tours
of the City of David since January in a bid to challenge Eladâ€™s claims that
it has unearthed the 3,000-year-old palace of King David, thereby making
Silwan the capital of an ancient Israelite kingdom.

But the dissident archaeologists face a Herculean task. Last year, 350,000
tourists were led around the site by Elad guides. The intermittent
alternative tours are lucky to muster a dozen visitors.

â€œIf Elad can convince people that this was once the home of King David, then
it will be easier for them to justify their takeover of Silwan and the
removal of the Palestinian population,â€ Mr Mizrachi said.

The archaeologist in charge of the City of David excavations, Eilat Mazar,
has ostensibly uncovered such evidence in the form of ancient stone walls
she said belong to King Davidâ€™s palace.

But Rafi Greenberg, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, who
was among those excavating the site in the late 1970s, called the work being
done under Eladâ€™s supervision â€œbad scienceâ€.

Once his concerns were widely and publicly shared by archaeologists in
Israel. In the mid-1990s Elad faced a legal battle over its damaging of
ancient relics. In 1997 the Antiquities Authority cautioned against handing
the park over to Elad. And in 1998 archeologists from Hebrew University in
Jerusalem petitioned the Supreme Court over Eladâ€™s mismanagement of the City
of David site.

However, as Eladâ€™s control of Silwan has tightened, and the City of Davidâ€™s
popularity has grown, the voices of dissent have fallen quiet. The
budget-constrained Antiquities Authority needs Eladâ€™s funding, and Israeli
archaeologists, dependent on the Authority for work, dare not criticise its
involvement with Elad openly.

When news emerged in June that, in what the Antiquities Authority later
admitted was â€œa serious mishapâ€, dozens of skeletons from the early Islamic
period unearthed in Silwan close to the al Aqsa mosque had been discarded
without inspection, no archaeologist would speak on the record.
Instead, it has been left mainly to international scholars, including
renowned historians and archaeologists, to launch a petition demanding that
the site be removed from Eladâ€™s control.

Mr Mizrachi said despite the City of David site being one of the most
studied in Israel, no physical evidence shows that King David ever used the
buildings. Little more can be deduced than that the remains date to the
Canaanite period 3,000 years ago. â€œEven if we did find a Hebrew inscription
saying â€˜Welcome to King Davidâ€™s palaceâ€™, that would not justify Eladâ€™s
political aims. The residents of Silwan and their ancestors have been living
here for hundreds of years and their rights cannot be ignored. Every time a
Christian site is found in Israel should the Vatican be given the land and
Israelis evicted from their homes?â€

Such arguments have fallen on deaf ears.

According to a series of reports in the local media, the government, state
archeologists, the Jerusalem municipality and the police have all colluded
with Elad and another settler organisation, Ateret Cohanim, in extending the
settlersâ€™ control of Silwan.

A series of court judgments going back more than a decade have found the
settlers falsified documents to seize land and property from Palestinian
families and that they built in contravention of local planning laws. The
judgments have been ignored and the evictions gone unenforced by the police
and the municipality. The Israeli government is also continuing to fund the
security guards who keep watch over the illegal homes.

Last month, Yossi Havillo, Jerusalemâ€™s legal adviser, pointed out that the
municipalityâ€™s refusal to enforce a long-standing eviction order against
eight families in a settlement known as Beit Yehonatan was likely to â€œarouse
concern of discrimination and of the municipalityâ€™s implementation of
demolition orders against Arabs, but not against Jewsâ€.

He was referring in part to a decision in 2005, under pressure from Elad, to
order the demolition of 88 Palestinian homes in the Bustan neighbourhood,
just below Eladâ€™s archaeological site. Uri Sheetrit, the city engineer,
justified the demolitions on the grounds that the valley is liable to
flooding. The orders were temporarily suspended under international
pressure.

In contrast, the municipality is still assisting in the expansion of
Silwanâ€™s settlements. In May, it began approving a plan submitted by Elad
for a new housing complex, synagogue, kindergarten, library and underground
parking for 100 cars.

Councillors also backed the confiscation of land from nine private
Palestinian owners to create a car park for the City of David. In July the
courts overruled the decision.

In a familiar pattern, said Mr Siyam, the day the court ruling was issued,
the police raided the homes of the Palestinians who had filed the petitions
and arrested them. Similar arrests occurred earlier in the year when
residents petitioned the courts to halt the excavations under their homes.
Meanwhile, Shuka Dorfman, the director of the Antiquities Authority,
recently told reporters that he was against â€œbringing politics into
archaeologyâ€.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His
latest books are â€œIsrael and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the
Plan to Remake the Middle Eastâ€ (Pluto Press) and â€œDisappearing Palestine:
Israel>s Experiments in Human Despairâ€ (Zed Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net.

--
Seems to me the worst was a soldier can fail is to get killed.
Seems to me the second worst way is to become a POW.
I do not see what that has to do with being president.
--The Iron Webmaster, 4075
http://www.giwersworld.org/antisem/ Antisemitism a9

Matt Giwer · Guest

Martin Edwards wrote:
[quote]Kendall K Down wrote:
In message <7yiHk.13027$gZ3.6947@newsfe16.ams2
Martin Edwards <big_mart_98@yahoo.com> wrote:

I surmise, but perhaps the intention is to tease out whatever
archaelogical evidence there may be. In fact there is some of a sort,
though spurious. For example the ruins in Silwan are called "the city
of David" on no other basis than they are about the right age based on
the Bible. Thus the Bible is used to confirm itself.

Yet again you leap to the defence of your idiot idol. Matt the Pratt
has no other intention than to try and propagate his nasty nazi
fantasies - and you, by supporting him, are showing yourself to be as
nasty and anti-semitic.

In addition, you are showing yourself to be as ignorant and opiniated
as he is: the ruins in Silwan have never been called the city of
David. Silwan lies on the opposite side of the Kidron to the area
called "the city of David".

Thanks for the update. And the evidence of a connection is?
[/quote]
As I have pointed out many times this scam is being fronted by the fruitcake
who claims two parallel rows of stones are David>s palace. Several articles
have been posted on Eldad>s fraud and her fronting it. The place is indeed
called city of David and once again Down is lying.

--
If this financial mess has taught us anything it is that the government can
CREATE hundreds of billions of dollars by magic and SPEND them without
authorization from Congress in violation of the US Constitution.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4056
http://www.giwersworld.org a1

Martin Edwards · Guest

Matt Giwer wrote:
[quote]Martin Edwards wrote:
Kendall K Down wrote:
In message <7yiHk.13027$gZ3.6947@newsfe16.ams2
Martin Edwards <big_mart_98@yahoo.com> wrote:

I surmise, but perhaps the intention is to tease out whatever
archaelogical evidence there may be. In fact there is some of a sort,
though spurious. For example the ruins in Silwan are called "the city
of David" on no other basis than they are about the right age based on
the Bible. Thus the Bible is used to confirm itself.

Yet again you leap to the defence of your idiot idol. Matt the Pratt
has no other intention than to try and propagate his nasty nazi
fantasies - and you, by supporting him, are showing yourself to be as
nasty and anti-semitic.

In addition, you are showing yourself to be as ignorant and opiniated
as he is: the ruins in Silwan have never been called the city of
David. Silwan lies on the opposite side of the Kidron to the area
called "the city of David".

Thanks for the update. And the evidence of a connection is?

As I have pointed out many times this scam is being fronted by the
fruitcake who claims two parallel rows of stones are David>s palace.
Several articles have been posted on Eldad>s fraud and her fronting it.
The place is indeed called city of David and once again Down is lying.

Maybe they both are. Believers are not known for observing the unities.[/quote]

--
Corporate society looks after everything. All it asks of anyone, all it
has ever asked of anyone, is that they do not interfere with management
decisions. -From â€œRollerballâ€

Kendall K Down · Guest

In message <UOXIk.17568$Zl2.2438@newsfe01.ams2>
Martin Edwards <big_mart_98@yahoo.com> wrote:

[quote]I surmise, but perhaps the intention is to tease out whatever
archaelogical evidence there may be. In fact there is some of a sort,
though spurious. For example the ruins in Silwan are called "the city
of David" on no other basis than they are about the right age based on
the Bible. Thus the Bible is used to confirm itself.

Yet again you leap to the defence of your idiot idol. Matt the Pratt
has no other intention than to try and propagate his nasty nazi
fantasies - and you, by supporting him, are showing yourself to be as
nasty and anti-semitic.

In addition, you are showing yourself to be as ignorant and opiniated
as he is: the ruins in Silwan have never been called the city of
David. Silwan lies on the opposite side of the Kidron to the area
called "the city of David".

Thanks for the update. And the evidence of a connection is?
[/quote]
Archaeology.

Ken Down

--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia>s premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================

Kendall K Down · Guest

In message <48f563c7$0$13081$9a6e19ea@unlimited.newshosting.com>
Matt Giwer <jull43@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:

[quote]As I have pointed out many times this scam is being fronted by the fruitcake
who claims two parallel rows of stones are David>s palace. Several articles
have been posted on Eldad>s fraud and her fronting it.
[/quote]
The Ophel has been excavated by a number of archaeologists, including
Dame Kathleen Kenyon. The findings are considerably more than "two
parallel rows of stones".

[quote]The place is indeed called city of David and once again Down is lying.
[/quote]
Silwan has never been called "the city of David".

Ken Down

--
================ ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS ===============
| Australia>s premier archaeological magazine |
| http://www.diggingsonline.com |
========================================================


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