It's not the first time that Palestinians have claimed the Dead Sea Scrolls ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, November 06, 2016

It's not the first time that Palestinians have claimed the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Palestinian Authority is preparing to lay a claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls at the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Israel Radio reported on Saturday night.

The scrolls – a large cache of mostly Hebrew writings from the Second Temple period and its immediate aftermath – were discovered in Qumran between 1947 and 1956. They include many biblical texts and are believed to have been penned by members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes.

Qumran, which is near the Dead Sea, was under British, and later Jordanian, rule at the time of the discoveries.

It is now located in Area C of the West Bank, which is under Israeli civil and military control.

The PA considers Area C to be part of its future state.

Qumran is on the list of preservation areas which the PA wants to see registered under the “state of Palestine” on the World Heritage List.

This isn't the first time that they have made this claim. In 2009, when an exhibit of some of the scrolls was to be opened in Canada, they tried to shut it down:

Last April, the Palestinian Authority appealed to Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, to cancel the show, citing international conventions that make it illegal for a government agency to take archaeological artifacts from a territory that its country occupies.
The P.A. and Muslim activists claimed that the scrolls were “stolen” from Palestinian territory and illegally obtained when Israel annexed East Jerusalem — where the scrolls were stored — in 1967. “The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories” by Israel, wrote Hamdan Taha, head of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities, in a widely publicized letter, calling the show a violation of international law.
Echoing those sentiments on the day of the press preview, Canadian Arab Federation executive director Mohamed Boudjenane called the scrolls “stolen property… seized from an occupied territory,” and repeated the call to close the show on a national newscast.

Interestingly - Jordan also claims ownership:

The Jordanian government has asked Canada not to release the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been on exhibit in Toronto for six months, claiming their ownership is "disputed."
Jordan alleges that Israel took illegal possession of the 2,000-year-old Isaiah scrolls from the Rockefeller Museum in east Jerusalem during the Six Day War.
The Jordanian government claims that the scrolls fall under the auspices of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which allows "cultural property" from "any occupied territory" to be seized by countries that signed the ruling.

Does anyone think for a minute that the Arabs care about the Dead Sea Scrolls as a hugely important historic artifact?

The desire is to erase Jewish history from the region, not to protect any "Palestinian" heritage of the area.

And as was evident from the beginning, the entire purpose of "Palestine" joining UNESCO was that same desire to erase Jewish history.

This is the real politicization of archaeology - and it is not being addressed.

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