Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: archaeology

Showing posts with label archaeology. Show all posts

Thursday, December 22, 2022

Why did the Muslims put a menorah on their coins? Could be to symbolize Islamic supremacy.

Back in 2013, I wrote an article about a curious phenomenon: some early Muslim coins, minted mostly in Jerusalem, featured a menorah.

The earliest such coins were clearly copied from older Judean coins that featured the Temple menorah, with a seven branched menorah clearly visible. Here's an astonishing example that also includes a six pointed star on the other side, although Muslims also used that star in various motifs.

But soon they morphed to a different styled menorah, although the menorah was still associated with Jerusalem.

This one says on the obverse, "Aliya, Madinet Bayit al-Maqdis" - meaning Aelia Capitolina, the Roman name for Jerusalem, and "City of the Holy Temple."

There were two main differences between the original Jewish style menorah and the one that Muslims started putting on their coins. The Jewish representations of menorahs during the Byzantine period on medals and mosaics had seven branches and a three legged base:

The new Muslim "menorahs," though, while still associated with Jerusalem, changed the base to 2 legs, the number of branches to 5, and they put a line across the top of the menorah.

At the time, some Muslim coins used "visual puns" where a different picture would be seen upside down than right side up. Back in 2013, I mentioned that coin collectors had noted that the upside down version of the Muslim menorah resembles the Dome of the Rock, with the two-pronged Islamic crescent on top.

Another dome-like coin:

Once you see it upside down, it's hard to think it is a coincidence. After all, what kind of candelabra has a solid bar across its cups?

This could account for the changes to the menorah appearance to look more dome-like.

A few years after my post, some Israeli researchers came to the same conclusion, which was debated in certain circles. But a new proof for the upside down theory came from the discovery of an important inscription that was found in Nuba, near Hebron, in 2016:

A team of archaeologists revealed the existence of a 1000-year-old text, dated to the beginning of the Islamic era, which indicates that the Muslims perceived the Dome of the Rock as a reestablishment of the earlier Jewish Temple. They referred to it as “Bayt al-maqdis” in the inscription, which derives from the biblical Hebrew terminology as ‘Beit Hamikdash’, known as the Hebrew reference to the Holy Temple.

Turning the coins upside down could easily symbolize replacing the Jewish Temple, represented by the menorah, with the Dome of the Rock where early Muslims performed their own Temple-like rituals - and called it the "Bayt al-Maqdis," a term that later on started referring to all of Jerusalem.

Whatever the intent of the early Muslims were, though, the menorah on their Jerusalem coins proves that they associated Jerusalem with Jews and the Temple - both of which Palestinians deny today.

They are also trying to turn Jerusalem's history upside down.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

12/08 Links Pt2: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel; BBC faces parliamentary probe over its coverage of Jews and Israel

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel

On November 29, 2022, the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq published yet another antisemitic screed dedicated to denying the Jewish people sovereign equality, by defining Zionism and the State of Israel as inherently illegitimate. For 200 pages, the Palestinian NGO – designated as a terrorist entity by Israel in October 2021 over its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization – extorts the international community to dismantle the Jewish State. To achieve this goal, Al-Haq absurdly distorts Israeli policy and practice beyond recognition, and misrepresents international legal standards.

Central to Al-Haq’s publication is the repetition of the claim that Israel’s existence as a Jewish State represents “apartheid.” This assertion was debunked in NGO Monitor’s 2021 and 2022 analyses: “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State” and “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Al-Haq’s publication is intended to influence the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent Commission of Inquiry’s (the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel,”) plan to formally declare Israel to be committing “apartheid”; to pressure the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli officials for crimes against humanity; and for third states to apply a wide variety of sanctions against Israel, associated institutions, companies, and individuals.

While broader in scope, this publication echoes the same ideological position expressed by Al-Haq in a formal submission to the COI in May 2022. (For more information, see “Al-Haq’s Antisemitic Submission to the UN’s Permanent COI”)

EU and member states support for Al-Haq
If not for the millions of Euros in support from the EU and its member states Al-Haq has received over several years, the Palestinian NGO would not enjoy nearly the same level of influence and access as it currently does. Despite the organization’s reported ties to the PFLP, and its campaigning to dismantle Israel, Europe has yet to denounce and reject its longtime partner.

While the EU froze financial support to Al-Haq in May 2021 as a result of its links to the PFLP, in June 2022, the organization claimed that this freeze had been lifted – and as yet uncorroborated assertion.

Notably, in May 2022, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra, met with Al-Haq officials in the West Bank – despite the Israeli designation.

Moreover, Al-Haq is listed as an implementing partner on multi-grantee projects funded by the French (€900,000 for the entire project) and Swedish (Al-Haq receives over $2.5 million of the over $8 million project) governments.

John-Paul Pagano: What Is a Conspiracy Theory?

When I began studying Antisemitism two decades ago, one of the first things that occurred to me was its essential nature as a conspiracy theory. While mundane anti-Jewish bigotry is always found, the form of Jew-hatred that is historically salient identifies “the Jews” as a preternaturally powerful, secretive, evil elite which enslaves and exploits humankind. Even a surface examination of conspiracy theories shows that while the identity of the elite changes, this narrative outline is common to all of them. Alternately—and with good reason we will explore later—Antisemitism is sometimes singled out as the ultimate conspiracy theory.

So we can better understand conspiracy theories if we widen our scope to include insights from the much larger literature on Antisemitism. The history of the “Longest Hatred” is an opportunity to examine more than a thousand years of the consistent social practice of a single conspiracy theory. In this vast and detailed record, we will detect patterns and peculiarities that expose the essence of the thing.

The definition I propose hence will leverage scholarship on conspiracy theories and conspiracism, but be situated in the living context of Antisemitism—the up-punching form of racism that is centrally rooted in the cultural heritage of the West and has done so much to shape its social and physical reality. This approach yields a dense definition, but one that is also—after some clarification of terms—comprehensive and empirically legible.

It is, as follows:
A conspiracy theory is a belief that a circumstance or event is a deliberate, connected, and occulted product of the timeless struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, attributable to the malign influence of a secret elite that supernaturally coordinates to enslave and exploit humankind, fabricates false consciousness to hide its activities, and indulges in pleasures and rites of extreme misanthropy.

In upcoming (though not necessarily contiguous) posts, I will clarify the terms I highlighted above and will also discuss three conceptual domains—Manichean, Epistemic, and Magical—in which many of the features and themes of conspiracy theories should be evaluated. I will explain and justify my definition over posts that I will specially mark for this purpose, so they become a series that readers can revisit and reference.

As a variety of racism, the historian Paul Johnson viewed Antisemitism as “so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category.” Defining that peculiarity also helps to reveal what is a conspiracy theory—a mode of thought that is in some ways more corrosive than caste-based racism, but against which we’ve mustered no social movement to stigmatize and diminish it.

An open letter to progressives: It’s time to speak out

I wanted to believe perhaps I’d simply missed something. After all, I have always worked in progressive spaces myself. I know how much this movement cares about the safety, dignity, and flourishing of all communities in this country.

But diving into various digital channels and searching through recent public statements yielded nothing. I saw plenty of commendable statements of solidarity aimed at other groups. Perhaps I wasn’t searching hard enough.

It shouldn’t take this much effort to uncover sentiments of support in a time of need.

The progressive movement should be a seamless, natural ally to the Jewish community. But despite the fact that so many Jews in this country find themselves ideologically aligned with the progressive left, for a long time now that movement has behaved as if we are either inevitable supporters – no matter their approach to our oppression – or unimportant ones.

Throughout my tenure in progressive environments, I encountered deafening silence through the violence in Pittsburgh, Poway, and Colleyville. I was told my identity didn’t qualify me to join workgroups focusing on diversity, solidarity, and inclusion. I was called a Zionist (I am one – they meant it as a slur). Assumptions were freely and unapologetically made about my political leanings, my perspectives, and my general pleasantness based on the fact that I was born in Israel and that I am a Jew. Throughout it all, I was expected to continue supporting the causes that have always meant so much to me – and I still do. (h/t jzaik)

The Buraq Wall was never where the Kotel is

Palestinian routinely claim that the Kotel, or Western Wall, is really a Muslim shrine - the Buraq Wall, where Mohammed supposedly tethered his flying steed during his miraculous "night journey."

It turns out that most Muslims never believed that until the 1929 riots and after Israel built the plaza in front of the Kotel in 1967.

The Shaw Commission report of 1930, about the riots that started at the Wall in 1929, describes the competing religious claims to the wall - and does not mention the legend of the Buraq at all, only that it is part of the Haram esh Sharif like all the other walls.

One of the Holy Places in connection with which it has not infrequently been necessary to give rulings of the character indicated above is the Western or Wailing Wall; in Jerusalem. This Wall; forms part of the western exterior of the ancient Jewish Temple; being the last remaining vestige of that sacred place it is regarded with the greatest reverence by religious Jews, whose custom of praying there extended back to at least the Middle Ages. ....The Wall is also part of the Haram-esh-Sherif, which is an Islamic place of great sanctity, being reckoned next to the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina as an object of veneration to Moslems.

If the Kotel was considered the holy "Buraq Wall" by Muslims at the time, certainly that would have been mentioned here. Although it must be mentioned that the testimony included the idea that the Muslims had exaggerated the importance of the Buraq Wall:

Merriman introduced part of Chancellor’s statement to the Permanent Mandates Commission in July, in which he stated that the Moslems are trying to invest El Burak with a sanctity never before attached to it. Merriman implied that the Government was as skeptical as the Jews regarding the sacredness of the pavement to the Moslems.

Wikipedia points to an obscure German source from the 1860s that appears to say that the Muslims claimed the entire Western wall of the Temple Mount to be the Buraq Wall.

A 1932 academic paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature, by C. D. Matthews, discusses the topic of where Muslims believe Mohammed tied the steed and entered the Temple Mount:

Among the orthodox who maintain the legends of Islam as historic truth, the famous "Night-Journey" of the Prophet sanctifies, as could nothing else, Jerusalem as a city of Muslim shrines, especially the Rock itself, from which Mohammed ascended into Heaven, and the Wall of al-Buraq, where Gabriel, the angelic conductor, tied up the divine steed on the arrival at the "further mosque" from Mecca. Unfortunately, this last spot is identified as the same as the "Wailing Wall," involving a clash of religious sentiments which has often led to tragic results. Of course, the factious can always find factors. But is the Wall of al-Buraq the same as the Wailing Wall? The spot of contention is the southern end of the western wall of the Haram area. Muslim tradition is now well established that this is the holy station of their Prophet. Some accounts of the Night-Journey, as for instance our own author, say that Mohammed entered through a "gate through which the sun and the moon incline"--or shine at setting. This would indicate, of course, a western or southwestern gate. It agrees with the ordinary identification as the now walled-up Bab an-Nabi underneath the Gate of the Moors, Bab al-Maghribah, just south of the Place of Wailing, in the western wall of the Haram.

He's saying that the Muslim consensus in Jerusalem was that the Buraq was tethered to the south of the Kotel, under the Mughrabi Gate - not where the Kotel is, north of the gate.

But that's just the beginning:

Further, Ibn al-Fakih (903) says the place of the tying up of al-Buraq is in the angle of the southern minaret-which was at the southwest corner of the Haram. And Ibn 'Abd Rabbih (913) says it is under the corner of the masjid-which Le Strange (in his book Palestine Under the Moslems) takes to mean the Aqsa but which can as well refer to the entire Haram and therefore Aqsa, mean the same as the statement of Ibn al-Fakih.

But Muqaddasi (985), a citizen of Jerusalem and a most careful writer, speaks of the "two gates" of the Prophet, in such terms as positively to identify his choice as the ancient double gate in the south wall of the Aqsa. There used to run here a large entrance which is still a subterranean opening from within the mosque. The location of the former double gate is just as near the southern minaret on the southwestern corner as is the Gate of the Moors in the southern portion of the western wall.

Further, Nasir I Khusrau (1047), despite the earthquake which came between Muqaddasi and him, resulting in changes of structure and name, still speaks of this gate under the Aqsa as the gate of the Prophet. He says (as quoted by Le Strange, P. M., pp. 178-9): "The gate of the Prophet... which opens toward the kiblah point-- that is, towards the south... The Prophet... on the night of his ascent into heaven, passed into the noble sanctuary through this passageway, for the gateway opens on the road from Makkah." It is only when we come to Mujir ad-Din, as late as 1496, an author whose work was almost entirely of secondary material, that we have a definite change of reference to the southwestern gate in the western wall as the gate of the prophet; and even here the author is speaking mainly of the Gate of the Moors over the walled-up gate which he says incidentally is also called Bab an-Nabi. (See Le S., p. 182.)

Finally, Le Strange (p. 182), who had studied thoroughly all the Arab geographers and historians on Palestine, takes the gates of the Prophet as named (not in order) by the two earliest writers Ibn al-Fakih and Ibn 'Abd Rabbih, to be identifiable with those named in the southern wall by Muqaddasi and Nasir. This places the weight of testimony on the western portion of the southern wall of the Haram area, not the southern portion of the western wall, as the proper Wall of al-Buraq of Muslim tradition.

The blue section is where the Kotel is, the green is where the Buraq Wall was accepted as Muslim tradition as of 1932, possibly at the southern corner, and the orange outline covers areas where the original Muslim traditions placed the Buraq Wall.

So when Palestinians today claim that the Western Wall is really a holy Muslim Buraq Wall, they are lying. And it is a lie about Muslim tradition itself, meaning that they are willing to change their own history and legends just to take away any Jewish claim in Jerusalem.

That is what hate looks like.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

11/14 Links Pt2: Israel Deserves Better than the NYTs Prophet of Doom; Chappelle and normalizing black antisemitism; CNN Producer Tweeted ‘#TeamHitler,’ Hamas Terrorists ‘Freedom Fighters’

From Ian:

Braving bigotry and enemy fire, Jews served the Union valiantly during the Civil War

Sgt. Leopold Karpeles had a dangerous job. Serving in the 57th Massachusetts Infantry’s E Company during the American Civil War, he was a color bearer, which meant carrying a flag that identified his unit’s position — a necessary role, but one that invariably drew attention from the enemy. In May 1864, his actions won him the Medal of Honor — a decoration created during the conflict. His citation credited him with encouraging fleeing men to reform ranks and drive back the Confederates during the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia.

Karpeles’s story was one of the more prominent accounts of Jews in the US Army during the Civil War. A new book, “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” by Adam D. Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town, explores the wider narrative around Jews serving in America’s bloodiest conflict. Its release is scheduled for November 15, just a few days after Veterans Day.

“Individual cases obviously gave life and color,” Mendelsohn told The Times of Israel, including when it came to “their decision to enlist, their experience in the army — which was not an easy one, particularly for Jews.”

On the battlefield, there was deadly combat and fear, including the terror Karpeles experienced in Virginia. Jews in uniform also faced ignorance, antisemitism or both from fellow servicemembers and higher-ups. Notoriously, in General Orders No. 11, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews as a class from the war department he commanded in the American South in December 1862.

“Clearly, in the senior ranks of the army, we see in [William T.] Sherman, Grant, [Benjamin] Butler, others, echoing views current in American society at the time of Jewish speculators and shirkers, profiting at the expense of the Union,” Mendelsohn said. “All these things ultimately came to a head in Grant’s order.”

Yet there were also interfaith friendships formed through mutual dependence during wartime.

“What I sensed in the data was the nature of comradeship,” Mendelsohn said. “Serving alongside each other, the experience of fighting together, does bring down the barriers.”

After the war, many Jews joined a nationwide veterans movement called the Grand Army of the Republic, with some even taking leadership roles. While the book states that Jewish veterans were largely unrecognized immediately after the war out of a national desire to move on, this changed several decades later. In the 1890s, the Hebrew Union Veterans Association was established amid a wave of antisemitism sweeping the nation.

The antisemitic history of the Union Army and the US civil war - opinion

The contractor, smuggler, speculator and shirker, however, were more than just figures of scorn. Jews and other “shoddy aristocrats” came to be seen as the creators and beneficiaries of the new economic and social order produced by the war. This “shoddy aristocracy” — whose morals and manners marked them as undesirable, whose profits were ill gained, and whose power derived from money alone — was imagined to lord it over a new and unjust social heap summoned into being by the chaos and disruption of war.

Even as the heated rhetoric of the war years receded after 1865, these ideas remained primed for action. They were returned to service in the Gilded Age.

It was no coincidence that the episode traditionally identified as initiating modern antisemitism in America — the exclusion of Joseph Seligman by Henry Hilton from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs on May 31, 1877 — had at its center a man who had made a fortune as a contractor and banker during the Civil War. Seligman, a friend of President Grant, was viewed as an exemplar of the new capitalism that was remaking America.

Henry Hilton slandered Seligman as “shoddy—false—squeezing—unmanly,” a social climber who “has to push himself upon the polite.” Hilton drew upon themes familiar from wartime antisemitism: the Jew as speculator who trafficked in credit and debt; the Jew as obsequious ingratiator who attached himself to the powerful; the Jew as profiteer who advanced by improper means; the Jew as vulgarian who flaunted his (and her) obscene wealth and did not know his (or her) place; and the Jew as overlord whose money allowed him (or her) to displace others. In short, the “Seligman Jew” was the “shoddy aristocrat” by another name.

In an age of inequality and excess, the antisemite imagined the Jew as embodying all that was wrong with American capitalism. And during an age of mass immigration from Romania and the Russian Empire, they soon added another theme familiar from General Butler’s wartime diatribe: The Jew could not be trusted to become fully American.

Sadly, even as Louis Gratz, Max Glass and many other Jewish soldiers became American by serving in the Union army, the Civil War produced a range of pernicious ideas about Jews that have proven remarkably durable. We have escaped the everyday torments that afflicted Max Glass, but are still haunted in the present by the fantasies of Benjamin Butler and Henry Hilton.

A review of 'Woke Antisemitism', by David Bernstein

The American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter coined the term Woke Racism to refer to the latest wave of elite, radical, ‘anti-racist’ campaigners who posit that racism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of American life that it’s impervious to traditional civil rights and anti-racist legislation.

In order to level the playing field, liberal democratic systems of government – which aren’t up to the Utopian task of achieving perfect racial parity – must be radically re-constituted to allow for what Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How To Be An Anti-Racist”, refers to un-ironically as “anti-racist discrimination” against groups who are ‘disproportionately successful’.

The only thing that matters to such campaigners is the racial disparity in economic and social outcomes, which is viewed as sufficient evidence to demonstrate racism. Not only are all other possible factors for unequal results ignored, but it’s considered racist to even consider other explanations.

Thus, “privileged” whites and those labeled as “white adjacent” must accept a future where they will face ‘progressive bigotry’ until there’s complete racial parity in all areas of life.

Though the proponents of this Woke Racism typically focus only on the Black-White paradigm, the question of where Jews (and other successful, yet historically disadvantaged minorities) stand within this racial binary is rarely prominent within the public discourse.

Jason D. Greenblatt: Israel Deserves Better than the New York Times' Prophet of Doom

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote last week that in the new Israeli government coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu will soon preside over a parade of right-wing horribles whose very existence dooms Israel itself. Friedman then makes a giant leap of logic to suggest that if Jews in America share his distaste for two members of the new Israeli government, they will turn their backs on Israel once and for all. Apparently, these days, members of the Israeli government must pass muster not just with Israeli voters but also with newspaper columnists like Friedman - when in fact Israel, like the U.S., gets to choose its own leaders through free and fair elections.

Friedman claims that Arab countries entered the Abraham Accords only because "they wanted to trade with Israel." First, there's nothing wrong with that. And second, the Arab nations made peace with Israel because they're tired of pointless, expensive hostilities and because they recognize a common enemy in Iran. Friedman ought to have more respect for the courageous Arab governments that normalized their relations with Israel, and for those who may have quietly supported it from behind closed doors.

I abhor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' anti-American comments, his payments to Palestinians to reward them for harming and murdering Israelis, and his comments about the Holocaust - yet I would still work with Palestinians and their leaders to try to improve their lives and seek peace between them and Israel. We don't burn everything down just because we disagree, however strongly, with the views of some of those in power.

Palestinians accuse Jews of planting fake graves. (They're lying as usual.)

Independent Arabia writes:

For years , the Israeli authorities have not stopped erecting what the Palestinians call “mock tombs” for settlers in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, as a means to confiscate the lands built over them on the grounds that they are old cemeteries , according to the residents of the area.

The Palestinians say that "creating fake graves is a way to confiscate the land, because it is not legal to object to that."

These "fake graves" are concentrated in the town of Silwan, which is adjacent to the southern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque, especially in the neighborhoods of Wadi Al-Rababa and Wadi Hilweh in the town that the settlement associations are working to Judaize and expel the Palestinians from.

Witnesses said that "the Israeli authorities are working to create a hole 35 cm deep with a diameter of 40 cm, then pour cement over it, and an old stone is placed on top of it, surrounded by old dirt to suggest that the graves are hundreds of years old ."

The witnesses added that the Israeli authorities are currently working on creating hundreds of fake graves in the Wadi al-Rababa area in the town of Silwan.

However, an Israeli official in the Ministry of Jerusalem said that erecting these graves comes to "preserve the old grave [markers] that were removed by torrential rains and the ravages of time, or by Palestinians."

They've made this claim before, and once even put it in a draft UNESCO resolution.

An left-wing Israeli NGO, Emek Shaveh, works against Israel taking over important archaeological sites. But it had a detailed page on the graves of the Valley of Hinnom/ Wadi Rababa area and how important they are to Jewish history. Excerpts:

The entire area served for burials over thousands of years.

The area contains many tombs excavated into the rocks, where dozens of people were buried over different periods. Burial styles and other findings allow us to date the earliest ones to the end of the Judean Kingdom (7-8th Century BCE), and show continuous burials up to the Byzantine period (4-7th Centuries CE). Along the road that runs from Abu Tur to the valley one can see a number of graves from the Judean kingdom. Additional graves from that period are found in privately-owned land belonging to residents of Abu-Tur.

In the course of digging in the Valley of Hinnom Shoulder/Ras a-Dabus, where the Begin Center is currently located, archaeologists unearthed a silver scroll dated to the 7th Century BCE with an inscription of a section from the Priestly Blessing, a prayer which was familiar in biblical times and is still recited in synagogues to this day. This is a rare and unique find that testifies to the continuity of prayer traditions over thousands of years.

A set of excavated family tombs dated to the First Century CE are located near the [Onuphrius] convent. These are luxury tombs composed of several rooms with carved burial niches. These structures and the ossuaries (sand-stone chests) within them are evidence of a burial style practiced by Jerusalem area Jews at the time of the Second Temple. Inscriptions found on some of the tombs and the ossuaries support this claim. The tombs’ wealth and their presence on this slope testify to the centrality of Jerusalem and of the temple. Pilgrims from throughout the ancient world made their way to Jerusalem, and the rich among them invested a great deal of money to purchase burial grounds and build opulent family graves.[3] The graves served these families over several generations. Inscriptions found on some of the graves include names that appear to belong to families originating outside Jerusalem, such as the cave of the Ariston family, which was based in Apamea, Syria.

This article detailing the existence of hundreds of thousands of Jewish graves from as early as the 8th century BCE was written in 2013, so it pre-dates the claims that the graves are fake.

Ironically, of course, Palestinians have themselves been caught red handed creating fake graves in Jerusalem.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

10/25 Links Pt2: The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews; How did a radical Islamist fool the West?; Adidas drops Kanye West

From Ian:

The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews

In 2016, as “intersectionality” escaped from academia to become a progressive buzzword—and came to to signify a doctrine that all just causes are linked and complementary—David L. Bernstein began to suspect that it was apt to be used against the Jews. As he pointed out in an article published that year, activists argued under the banner of intersectionality that anyone opposed to racism in the U.S. should also oppose the existence of Israel. He thought, however, that there was hope:
While I didn’t say so explicitly, I’d come to believe that the mainstream Jewish community needed to find a way to include the Jewish narrative in the intersectional matrix—to complicate it—so that Jews and Israel were not viewed as the perennial oppressors and Palestinians the perennial victims. Concerned about the growing backlash to my article, I used the opportunity [to participate in a panel discussion with some of my critics] to soften my stance on the topic, stating “I still have much to learn,” and that “intersectionality is a complex, interesting, and nuanced phenomenon that we need to understand, not just from the perspective of the pro-Israel community, but from its own perspective as well.”

Bernstein, at the time still president of the left-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), soon learned that there was little room for such a compromise position:
[In 2020], the JCPA pulled together a Zoom meeting for a coalition called Jews for Criminal Justice Reform, which included top Jewish criminal-justice activists from around the country. After an inspiring talk by Paul Fishman—a former federal attorney from New Jersey—on the need to end mass incarceration, we broke up into smaller groups to discuss next steps. A lawyer named Jared, the group facilitator for my breakout session, asked, “What do you all think our criminal-justice reform priorities ought to be?” Ariella, a young professional staffer from a Jewish civil-rights organization, interjected, “Before we talk about strategy, there’s a lot of internal work we have to do in the Jewish community. We need to recognize our complicity in white supremacy and ensure we have black Jews at the forefront of these efforts.”

More and more, that’s how it is now: a young staff person holding the work process hostage until we recite some prescribed litany of woke pieties. What, pray tell, did Ariella think all this self-reflection would do to help black people get out of being jailed for low-level drug charges? I suspect she didn’t have a clue. And as things turned out, our breakout session never discussed a single criminal-justice reform measure.

In short, Bernstein discovered that there is no room in this brand of progressive ideology to see Jews as anything but oppressors, and for Jews to do anything but proclaim their own imagined sins. This discovery is the subject of his newly published book, Woke Antisemitism.

How did a radical Islamist fool the West? - analysis

Many articles written about Qaradawi after his death emphasized his condemnation of al-Qaeda and ISIS and his moderate rulings permitting certain Western conduct for Muslims living as minorities in Western countries.

These articles portrayed him as many Westerners wanted to see him: a widely accepted authentic Islamic scholar who wanted to dialogue with the West and rejected violence.

However, the intelligence center noted that many of these articles left out that he helped shape “the concept of violent jihad,” especially justifying “carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the US forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes.”

Qaradawi supported violent jihad and suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians. He was a source of supreme religious authority for Hamas at a time when many Islamic scholars still prohibited suicide of any kind.

Qaradawi claimed that violence was a legitimate expression of the so-called “resistance” and that Israel was a militaristic society in which every civilian is a potential soldier, said the report.

His antisemitism was not limited to Israel, with the report saying he frequently expressed antisemitic statements worldwide and even issued a fatwa authorizing attacks on Jews around the world.

In that fatwa, “he claimed that there is no essential difference between Judaism and Zionism, and therefore every Jewish target equals an Israeli target,” according to the report.

‘The Squad’ urges Biden administration to negotiate ceasefire in Ukraine

30 Democratic US Congressmembers – most notably the young progressives who have become colloquially known as “The Squad” – penned a letter to President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday in which they ask the administration to avoid direct military conflict and attempt to bring Russia and Ukraine to a ceasefire.

“Given the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation, which only increase the longer this war continues, we agree with your goal of avoiding direct military conflict as an overriding national-security priority,” the letter read. A call for diplomacy

The congress members noted the difficulties involved in a settlement, particularly with the issue of annexed territories in the east of Ukraine, though they also mentioned Biden’s commitment to end the war. While no concrete plan of action was presented in the letter, the congress members suggested that easing sanctions against Russia would be a natural step to take.

“Such a framework would presumably include incentives to end hostilities, including some form of sanctions relief, and bring together the international community to establish security guarantees for a free and independent Ukraine that are acceptable for all parties, particularly Ukrainians.”

“The alternative to diplomacy is a protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks,” the letter continues.

The signers of the letter also pointed to the food and commodity crises brought upon by the war as reasons to seek an end to the war. “Economists believe that if the situation in Ukraine is stabilized, some of the speculative concerns driving higher fuel costs will subside and likely lead to a drop in world oil prices.”

Perhaps the most important Biblical archaeology discovery in years

From Associates for Biblical Research:

Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) announce the discovery of a formulaic curse inscription recovered on a small, folded lead tablet.

The defixio came to light in December 2019 when Scott Stripling, ABR’s Director of Excavations and the Director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, led an ABR team to wet sift the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s excavations (1982–1989) on Mt. Ebal.

A press conference was held on Thursday, March 24th at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas to announce the extraordinary discovery.

The ancient Hebrew inscription consists of 40 letters and is centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel. The scientists employed advanced tomographic scans to recover the hidden text [and]...deciphered the proto-alphabetic inscription, which reads as follows:

Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.

According to Stripling, “These types of amulets are well known in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but Zertal’s excavated pottery dated to the Iron Age I and Late Bronze Age, so logically the tablet derived from one of these earlier periods. Even so, our discovery of a Late Bronze Age inscription stunned me.”

Almost immediately Galil recognized the formulaic literary structure of the inscription: “From the symmetry, I could tell that it was written as a chiastic parallelism.”

According to Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8, Mt. Ebal was the mountain of the curse. Joshua 8:30 indicates that Joshua built an altar on Mt. Ebal. The defixio derived from previously excavated and discarded material from a structure Zertal believed was Joshua’s altar.

It may be a coincidence that a curse be found on a mountain most famous for its curse, but the dating of the tablet to the Late Bronze Age - the 14th to 13th century BCE - is about the accepted time of the Exodus.

As far as I can tell, this is the earliest mention of the Hebrew God using the tetragrammaton by centuries - the previously earliest find was the Mesha Stele from 840 BCE.

The chiastic structure of the curse (ABCCBA) is clear, and the Hebrew Bible is filled with similar chiastic structures throughout, such as Genesis 9:6: שֹׁפֵךְ֙ דַּ֣ם הָֽאָדָ֔ם בָּֽאָדָ֖ם דָּמ֣וֹ יִשָּׁפֵ֑ךְ, "the spiller of blood of a human, by a human would his blood be spilled." Some chiasms span chapters or entire books.

The researchers are holding back on some of the findings, such as the text on the outside of the tablet that they found.

(h/t Yoel)

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Ancient cloth with "royal purple" dye mentioned in the Bible discovered

Exodus 25:2-4:

Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him.

And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair...

This is the first time of many that Hebrew scripture mentions that specific type of purple, known as argaman, clearly an expensive dye that was used in the Mishkan (sanctuary) and the Temple, as well as worn by royalty.

Israeli archaeologists have just announced the discovery of samples of cloth dyed with that specific purple dating to the times of King David and King Solomon.

Researchers from Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University, and Bar-Ilan University spent years studying colored woven fibers excavated at Timna in the Negev Desert, the site of King Solomon's famed copper mines. Carbon-14 dating determined that they date from 1,000 BCE, the period in which David and Solomon reigned in Jerusalem. They published their findings on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The purple color, known as "argaman" in Hebrew and extracted from a type of Mediterranean sea snail at a distance of some 300 km (186 miles) from the Timna Valley in the southern Negev Desert, is mentioned in biblical sources a number of times. However, this is the first time that a Bronze Age woven fiber dyed royal purple has been found in Israel or anywhere else in the region.

The research was carried out by Dr. Naama Sukenik from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, from the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Prof. Zohar Amar, Dr. David Iluz and Dr. Alexander Varvak from Bar-Ilan University and Dr. Orit Shamir from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Sukenik, who curates organic finds at the IAA, described the discovery of the purple cloth fibers as "extremely exciting and important."

"This is the first time that woven material from the time of David and Solomon died in the precious 'argaman' has been discovered. In ancient times, purple clothing was associated with the nobility, the priestly class, and of course, kings. The beautiful color of the argaman, the fact that it does not fade, and the difficulty of producing the dye, which exists in very small quantities in the bodies of the snails, made it the most expensive dye, sometimes costing more than gold.

This discovery has other implications.

One of the researchers was able to reproduce the process needed to create the specific purple dye from three types of Mediterranean snails, each of which only produce one gram of dye. The dye was extraordinarily expensive.

And Haaretz notes that the existence of such expensive clothing in a nomadic area illuminates other Biblical issues:

The good food and elegant clothes found at Timna are all signs of cultural sophistication, that add to the massive size and standardization of the mining operation there and at other copper extraction sites, such as Feynan in nearby Jordan. All of this points to the hand of a strong, centralized kingdom, despite the fact that we don’t have major remains of permanent settlements in the Negev from this period, Ben-Yosef says.

One possible explanation is that by the 11th-10th century B.C.E. the Edomites had managed to create a sophisticated political system and a highly stratified society despite continuing their nomadic or semi-nomadic ways, Ben-Yosef suggests.

The idea that scholars too often dismiss the complexities of ancient nomadic societies because they don’t leave behind massive archaeological remains for us to find is a paradigm that Ben-Yosef has been pushing for a while, including in an article he recently published in Haaretz.

“The use of royal purple is more evidence that nomads could create a strong kingdom with an elite and vast trade ties, contrary to the traditional perception of nomadic societies as simple and isolated,” he says. “They would manifest power and wealth not by building walls and palaces but by obtaining exquisite artifacts that were mobile like they were.”

While archaeological evidence of a sedentary Edomite polity only dates back to around 8th century B.C.E., Ben-Yosef’s theory, if correct, would jive with the Bible’s assertion (Genesis 36:31) that such a kingdom existed already before the time of King David, that is, in the 11th-10th century B.C.E.

The archaeologist has suggested that this paradigm shift should apply not only to the Edomites but also to the Israelites and the longstanding debate among scholars over the historicity of the great united monarchy of Israel and Judah under David and Solomon. Most experts today argue that there is no archaeological evidence in Jerusalem or its environs pointing to the existence of a great, centralized kingdom as described in the Old Testament. Just as for the Edomites, the architectural hallmarks of political grandeur appear only in the subsequent centuries. So, this line of thought argues, David and Solomon would have been at best small local chieftains who were aggrandized by the Bible, which was put in writing centuries after these legendary rulers lived. However, Ben-Yosef counters, we should at least take into account the possibility that David’s kingdom did exist but was based on a still largely nomadic population, just like Edom apparently was, which would inevitably leave behind little tangible evidence.

At the very least, the newly discovered luxurious textiles at Timna show that the biblical descriptions of royal purple being used by the elites of the Israelites and their neighbors already in the time of King David are not an anachronism inserted by later authors projecting their own traditions back into the past, Ben-Yosef notes.

You have to admit, it is a pretty color.

One of the world's most ancient mosques found by an Israeli Jew. (So much for politicizing archaeology.)

It is accepted as a truism among the anti-Israel left that Israel uses archaeology as a political tool, to cement claims of Jews to the Land of Israel and to ignore (or even destroy) anything that shows Muslim ties to the land.

The only problem is that the facts don't support that claim.

Israeli archaeologists not only eagerly find Muslim sites, but Israel preserves them - even when they are near Jewish historic sites.

Here's a new example of one of the world's oldest mosques, just discovered by a Jewish archaeologist from Hebrew University:

When Islam started to spread in the seventh century, mosques were built across the Middle East, and many have endured to this day as holy places and pilgrimage sites; the most famous are in Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Cairo and Basra. Now it looks like Tiberias in northern Israel may be joining the list – excavations in recent years have uncovered an older layer of the city’s ancient mosque.

Katia Cytryn-Silverman of the Hebrew University, who is overseeing the dig, says this is the oldest mosque in the world that can be excavated; most ancient mosques are still being used for their original purpose.

The Al-Juma (Friday) Mosque is in the south of Tiberias at the foot of Mount Berenice; the city itself is on the shore of the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee. Before Cytryn-Silverman began excavating there 11 years ago, scholars believed that the structure at the center of the site was a marketplace from the Byzantine period. Cytryn-Silverman discovered that it was a mosque from the eighth century in the early Islamic period.

But findings in recent years have shown that under this structure is an even older mosque, dating to the seventh century. Cytryn-Silverman notes that there aren’t many chances to excavate ancient mosques because, in most cases, other mosques were later built on top of them. Such is the case with the mosque in Fustat, currently part of old Cairo and Egypt's first capital under Muslim rule.

Israelis have found and preserved some of the most important Islamic archaeological sites. And that fat simply doesn't fit the lies of the haters.

(h/t Yoel)

A Chanukah-era Jewish olive oil stamp

In 2006, archaeologists discovered an industrial olive oil press in a cave near Alonei Abba in the north of Israel.

It was dated to between the 4th and1st centuries BCE, which would mean it was about the same time as the Maccabees.

On the floor of the cave they saw a stone seal, with a fairly crudely drawn image of a bird and a branch.

That seal remains a mystery.

A paper written some years later determines that it is likely to be of Jewish origin and portraying a dove and an olive branch, a popular motif and one that is known from the Flood story.

The most likely explanation seems to be that this was meant to be a seal for use in identifying olive oil jugs to be unadulterated - scammers would try to dilute olive oil with vinegar and the seal could be some sort of certification. It doesn't seem likely that this seal would certify that the oil is the pure olive oil for use in the Temple, though.

This seal and the olive oil press shows the importance of olive oil to Jews in Israel thousands of years ago. The Chanukah story itself centers on olive oil, after all.

Palestinians have tried to make it appear that they are the ones who have been harvesting olives for thousands of years. Yet there are plenty of olive oil presses from the Canaanite, Jewish and Byzantine periods that pre-date the Muslim period. And olive oil was no less important to them.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art calls tefillin “an Egyptian amulet”

This is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art webpage showing its collections:

This object is obviously tefillin shel rosh, called “phylacteries” in the New Testament, that Jewish men wear for prayer every day (and in the times of the Talmud, all day.)

It is sort of amazing that tefillin could be categorized in the museum as Islamic era amulet since 1962 with no one recognizing it.

This tefillin shel rosh looks startlingly modern with even the four-branched Shin on the side.

While tefillin shel rosh seem to have been cube shaped since at least the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are conical tefillin shel yad in the Cairo Geniza and cylindrical tefillin shel yad as late as a 1725 engraving by a French/Dutch artist Bernard Picart, as well as tefillin shel yad shaped like an arch in (seemingly) the 19th century.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz says that the Talmudic prescription that tefillin shel yad must be square only refers to the base, not the box, as is the case with all of these.

Jordan still nervous Jews will take it over - so it denies ANY Jewish history there

Rai al Youm has a paranoid article about how Jews want to take over Jordan.

On Sunday, Jordan struck down a bill that would have theoretically allowed foreigners to purchase land in Petra. Jordanians are deathly scared that Jews will buy land there and somehow transfer it to Israel.

The author, Ahmed Abdul Basit Rajoub, mentions the filming of "Jaber" that was shut down last year because Jirdan found out that the movie implied a Jewish history in Petra. It mentions that Jews visit the mountain said to be the burial site of the biblical Aaron, and how terrible that is.

Rajoub argues that there is no evidence that the Children of Israel were ever in Jordan. In fact, the ancient Jews were nobodies:

Most historians in archaeology and anthropology tend to believe that the ancient Jews in the East are Arab tribes that were Judaized. They were pastoral, and practiced usury and the profession of mercenaries due to their particular social situation. They did not know stability, agriculture, city building, or fortresses. ...

We are facing a wicked enemy. We must pay attention to every movement he makes, not only in the political field that relates to the Palestinian issue, but rather in the religious, cultural, touristic, etc. areas from which he crept to consolidate his allegations, his lies, to implement his plans.

Indeed, Jordan's archaeological sites regularly erase any Jewish connection out of their paranoia and hate.

One of the less traveled tourist sites there is Machaerus, a fortress originally built by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus around 90 BCE, destroyed but later rebuilt by Herod the Great in 30 BC as a military base.

This is the sort of thing that Jordan doesn't want the world to know.

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Egypt loves Jews - the ones who are long gone, that is

Today, among much pomp, Egypt is opening the restored Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria that fell into disrepair.

The Egyptian government spent some $4 million for the restoration.

No Israeli officials are allowed at today's ceremony, although supposedly they will be allowed to hold a separate ceremony later this year. (Odds are it will be mysteriously canceled for some very valid sounding reason.)

Alexandria once had some 40,000 Jews. Now it has virtually none.

Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass, who used to be minister for antiquities affairs, said that he is very happy with the work of the restoration of the synagogue in Alexandria, adding that when he took over the responsibility of that department in 2002 Egyptian synagogues were neglected and very damaged "but we repaired them because they are part of the history of this country."

He said that Egyptian Jews are part of the Egyptians, just like the Egyptian Christians and Egyptian Muslims, and stressed that the Jewish temples in Egypt must be preserved, and the Jews' heritage and civilization must be preserved because it is part of the Egyptians who lived there.

What Hawass doesn't mention is how he reacted to the news that some Jews had actually celebrated and worshipped at the re-opening of the Rambam synagogue in Cairo in 2010. He said then that the synagogue will not be handed over to the Jewish community in Egypt in any way, that no Jew will be allowed to pray there, nor will he allow any Israeli to pray there.

For Egypt, the money spent on synagogue restoration is to make Egypt look like a multicultural country and to attract tourists. But to actually allow Jews to pray in these once-bustling synagogues? Not a chance.

Eliyahu Hanavi looks beautiful. It has a rich history back to the 13th century, rebuilt in the 19th. But it is a museum, not a synagogue.

And Egypt likes it that way.

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Tour Egypt with an antisemite!

Time Magazine, and probably plenty others, have been featuring this full page add to take a tour of Egypt with an all star list of guides - including famed Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

What they don't mention is that Hawass is an antisemite.

In 2009, he said, "For 18 centuries, [the Jews] were dispersed throughout the world. They went to America and took control of its economy. They have a plan. Although they are few in number, they control the entire world."

He once wrote an article where he wrote, "The concept of killing women, children and elderly people... seems to run in the blood of the Jews of Palestine" and that "the only thing that the Jews have learned from history is methods of tyranny and torment - so much so that they have become artists in this field."

Does his hatred of Jews affect his archaeology? I don't know, but supporting a known antisemite is itself problematic.

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Gaza "scholar" says every single Jewish artifact ever found on the Temple Mount is forged, and claims major museums agree with him

The head of the Department of History and Archaeology at the Islamic University of Gaza, Dr. Ghassan Weshah, has stated that there is no evidence whatsoever of any Jewish presence in the region, ever.

The fact that the Quran itself admits that Jews lived there seems not to bother him.

Weshah says that there is no evidence that there was any building under the Temple Mount, and as evidence he mentions that the Marwani Mosque in the southeast corner, which was built after excavations in the area known as "Solomon's Stables," did not see any evidence of a structure. Of course, the Temple Mount Sifting Project has been going through the many tons of dirt illegally dug out to create that mosque and has found many artifacts of Jewish life in the area.

The most outrageous claim from this academic - who has published a couple of papers about archaeology in Muslim periods in Gaza - is this one:

He pointed out that no matter how the Zionists tried to falsify some of the artifacts and claim that they prove their presence in Palestine, the largest and most famous museums in the world discovered the falsification by the occupation of these pieces and refused to exhibit any artifact coming from the occupation state to display in international museums because they are forged.

This statement alone should be enough to stop any academic journal from ever publishing anything from this fraud.

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Palestinian historian who denies Jewish connection to Jerusalem pretty much admits Palestinian identity didn't exist before 1967

In June, Nazmi Al Jubeh, Associate Professor of History and Archaeology, Birzeit University, told a UN conference in Geneva that there was no scientific evidence linking Jews to Jerusalem.

This is the state of Palestinian academia.

But I found another article of Jubeh's apparently from 2006 where he discusses Palestinian identity, and while he insists it is a real thing, his supporting evidence says otherwise.

Excerpts:

The Palestinian people are not different from other Greater Syrian (Bilad al-Sham) peoples. They are the result of accumulated ethnic, racial, and religious groups, who once lived, conquered, occupied, and passed through this strip of land. Wars and invasions have never totally replaced the local population in any period of history; they rather added to, mixed with and reformulated the local identity. The Palestinian people are the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jabousites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Aramaeans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Turks, the Crusaders, and the Kurds, who once settled, conquered, occupied or just passed through Palestine.

The question is whether Palestinians could reflect their identity in a different manner than they do now. I think the answer is yes. The artificial division of Greater Syria was imposed on the people. If there had been no Sykes-Picot Agreement, I am not sure that the Palestinian people would have chosen an independent state as a container of their identity. ...The idea of an independent Palestinian state was raised quite recently; as a matter of fact, the Palestinian national movement continued to market the conflict as an “Arab-Israeli” one and not as a “Palestinian-Israeli” one. The idea of the Palestinian independent state was raised in 1973 in the aftermath of the October War and specific international, regional, and national political developments; in 1974 the idea became the vehicle of the political program of the PLO. Since then and until now (I do not know for how long) Palestinian life has been completely organized according to it.

With the establishment of the PLO and the different resistance organizations, mainly in the 1960s, Palestinian identity went through an intensive politicization process. The PLO exceeded its national and regional importance, reaching wider circles all over the world. With the PLO, the Palestinian identity became “revolutionary” or at least designated as such. The Palestinian became a young man/woman wearing the kufiyya and carrying a machine gun. The PLO faced a complicated challenge, namely how to unify a nation and to develop a shared identity for people(s) living under different political regimes and living in different socio-economic contexts, Jordanian, Egyptian, Israeli, in addition to the regional and international diasporas. The PLO actually implemented different political, cultural, and social programs and worked very hard to strengthen, shape, reshape and develop a national identity, vis-à-vis an Arab identity, with the aim of creating a fighting nation seeking freedom. This, in the mid-sixties, was a dreamed approach, but it led to very tangible results. The shared political aspiration, which was not easy to maintain and to gather people around it, was efficiently used. This aspiration became the major vehicle in forming the current “Palestinian identity”. ...This hard work also led to recognition of the Palestinian people, first by the Arabs and then, slowly, by the rest of the international community.

Even though other parts of his essay claims otherwise, he's pretty much admitting that there was no Palestinian people - either self-identified of externally-recognized - until the 1970s, when the PLO effectively created them. And his description of Palestinian identity before the 1960s does not indicate anything unique or different about them compared to the larger Arab identity of the region. Bu his watered down criteria, Palestinian identity is no more specific than "Delaware identity" would be - a bunch of people who happen to live in a region but share no other unique characteristics.

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Jordanian "experts" recommend demolishing Aaron's shrine because too many Jews are visiting

From Ammon News:

An expert in ecotourism and natural and cultural heritage, Professor Ahmad Al-Malaabeh said in a lecture held by the Al-Hayat Party entitled "Mount Haroun [Aaron], the myth of the alleged tomb and the purpose of building the Mamluk Mosque", said that there is no evidence that Prophet Aaron was buried in it.

He pointed out that there are attempts to Judaize the site through the visit of the Jews to the site, such as the last visit of 320 Jews to the Mamluk Mosque in Mount Haroun.

He pointed to the absence of any archaeological or historical evidence that the Prophet Aaron was buried in the region, especially as the crossing of the Israelites was from Egypt towards the south and not north.

He stressed that no ancient Hebrew inscription in the area dating back to the 16th or 15th century BC has been discovered, and that Jews are trying to falsify history by placing Hebrew coins and newly manufactured copies of the Torah as archaeological artifacts in the region to support their claims and lies.

He cited research carried out by Jewish archaeologists, including the father of the world famous archaeologist Professor Israel Finkelstein, who works at the University of Tel Aviv and five other scientists, in which they denied the relationship of Jews with the region and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and refuted biblical texts claiming that there was any connection.

After losing the Sinai, where one of the shrines they claim belonged to the prophet Aaron, the Jews returned to try to establish their relationship with Wadi Musa and the so-called Aaron shrine.

He explained that the rituals practiced by Jews at the site, including blowing in the horn of the ram was used by Jews historically to declare war and intimidate the tribes.

He warned against Zionist propaganda trying to market Petra and the site of the Mamluk mosque as Jewish sites.

The Secretary-General of the Party of Life, Dr. Abdul Fattah al-Kilani has pointed in his welcoming speech, to the Zionist ambitions that extend from the Euphrates to the Nile.

For his part, Director of Dialogue Zahir Amr pointed to the need to pay attention to archeology by disproving the Zionist narrative and proving the Arab-Islamic narrative.

During the lecture, there was a dialogue in which speakers linked the visit of the last Jewish group to the attempt to impose the deal of the century.

They considered that the demolition of the tomb as the best response to the attempt to Judaize the site.

He is correct that there is little evidence that Aaron is actually buried at the site. And that ancient Hebrews used to blow the shofar before a war.

Everything else is pretty much fiction.

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