Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: denying Jewish history

Showing posts with label denying Jewish history. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Some good editorial cartoons (for once)

I was looking through a collection of editorial cartoons, and many of them dealing with Israel are horrific - antisemitic, ignorant or both.

But there were a few good ones that hold up..

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US to rejoin antisemitic UNESCO. Why is the WJC praising this?

I'm in the middle of reading "Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership," collection of essays edited by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser:

This book—perhaps the first devoted to this topic—documents the devastating failure of the Jewish establishment, including its leaders and major donors, to defend and protect American Jews as anti-Semitism surges across the country....Betrayed by their leaders, the essayists argue, American Jews require new, strong leadership.

While it is not an American Jewish organization, the World Jewish Congress - led by Ronald Lauder - may be a perfect example of this problem.

The World Jewish Congress issued this statement this morning:

World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder issued the following statement praising the return of the United States to UNESCO:

“The World Jewish Congress welcomes the decision by the United States to rejoin UNESCO after a five-year absence.

“Under the leadership of Director-General Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO has made an immeasurable impact on the world stage by safeguarding history amid tumultuous and complex global events, so that current and future generations can be exposed to and better understand the lessons of the past.

“WJC, a longtime UNESCO partner on Holocaust remembrance and interfaith initiatives, is hopeful that the agency will now be able to share its critical work with even broader audiences.”

One of the themes of this site is Jewish unity, and infighting among Jews is one of the organized Jewish community's worst problems. I do not like to attack Jewish organizations. But this statement is outrageous.

The entire reason the US left UNESCO in 2017 was because if its anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias. That bias was consistent for years, with UNESCO regularly issuing biased reports and statements:

Denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and even the Western Wall

Deploring Jews visiting the Temple Mount

Ignored Israeli casualties in the May 2019 Gaza war

Complimenting Jordan's plan for rebuilding the public ramp to the Temple Mount while condemning Israel's

Calling Maimonides a Muslim named Moussa ibn Maïmoun and refusing to apologize

I'm not saying that there might not be good reasons for the US to rejoin UNESCO. After months of lobbying by current UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay where she tried to reassure Israel she won’t allow anti-Israeli bias in the organization, Israel told the Biden administration last year that it wouldn't oppose the US re-joining. The US is concerned that China is now leading UNESCO in ways against US interests.

All this may be true, but:

The WJC claims that it "protects Jews everywhere and constantly defends the State of Israel against these threats." But Jews and Israel are missing in this press release. Instead, it is cheerleading an organization with a history of horrifying antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

How could it welcome the US decision, and praise UNESCO, without saying a word about UNESCO's antisemitic history? This is not the time for celebratory press release, but for a warning that UNESCO will be watched closely to see if there has been any significant change in its anti-Israel, antisemitic bias.

But the WJC is not saying that UNESCO is on its radar. On the contrary, WJC is giving UNESCO a kosher certification.

It is true that UNESCO has become less noxious under the leadership of Azoulay, but it has hardly ended its bias. Every year UNESCO reaffirms all previous resolutions minimizing the Jewish connection to Jewish holy sites (although it has returned to including the non-Muslim names of the Temple Mount, Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb) as it condemns every Israeli move at all those sites. All the bias and hate are still there, but "softer."

This is hardly reason for celebration.

This is not Jewish leadership. This is capitulation. This is giving the message to world Jewry that their self-appointed leaders care more about access to powerful people than actually fighting for Jewish interests.

Real leaders tell the truth even if that will upset the powers that be. Ronald Lauder is a billionaire - he can say what he wants without any fear of personal consequences. This episode shows that he is no Jewish leader.

(Graphic courtesy of @iTil972)

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

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A Florida history professor outs himself as incompetent about history - and as an antisemite

Yesterday, I tweeted my post about the hypocrisy about how the media and NGOs ignore the deliberate murder of a Gaza child by his stepmother while dozens of articles were written about Israel's accidental killing of a similar child.

One of the responses was most illuminating, but not in the way that the tweeter intended.

The surest way to know I've hit a nerve with the anti-Israel crowd is when they respond with anti-Israel tweets that have nothing to do with the original tweet. They are so incensed that anyone could give a perspective on the conflict that doesn't make Israel into an ogre that they want to ensure that their lying narrative of unrelenting Israeli evil overwhelms any other perspective.

In this case the tweeter clearly didn't even read the Haaretz article he was referring to. It is a very interesting account about how many Nazis were employed by everyone after the war - the US, England, the Soviets, and a significant number made their way to Syria and Egypt to continue their unfinished war against Jews. One who was expelled from Syria was then convinced to give the Mossad intelligence about Syria, intel that would save the lives of Jews. Another was recruited to help Israel hurt Egyptian plans for rockets that would be used against Jews in Israel. In that case, the ex-Nazi asked to be immune from any future Israeli reprisals for his activity during the war, and the Mossad refused to give that to him.

At any rate, one recruits spies from one's enemies. That's how spycraft works.

(The article also shows how the same Mossad that sometimes decided that an ex-Nazi might help save Jewish lives also went after Nazis, sending letter bombs in attempted assassinations, for example. )

What do you call it when Jews are expected to adhere to imaginary moral standards that the rest of the world is not expected to? Yes, that is antisemitism. Of course, so is any claim that Israel has nothing to do with Jews - no one can disagree that a Hebrew speaking state with a Jewish majority on the historic land of the Jews has something to do with Jews.

Normally I would ignore this stupidity, but the PhD in his name made me look at his profile.

This moron is a professor?

Sure enough, he is a part-time professor at American Military University and full-time professor at Indian River State College in Florida.

I looked up some of his publications, and didn't see anything particularly offensive. However, Shelby recently wrote a book about US policy in the Middle East during the Johnson administration and it took me seconds to find both his bias and his sloppiness with facts when it comes to Israel:

The 1947 partition plan gave the Negev to the Jewish state, not the Arabs. And the Arabs didn't reject partition because of the distribution of land - they rejected the idea of a Jewish state on any borders, as they made quite clear in all their public statements at the time.

This is propaganda to minimize Arab intolerance, not history.

So we know that Alex Shelby, who is of Palestinian ancestry, is a poor researcher and that his tweet to me showed he has an antisemitic double standard. But is he really an antisemite?

This pair of tweets, from April 2022 and April 2023, show clearly Shelby's blatant disregard for honesty and consistency as well as his antisemitism.

The first tweet is just sloppy - Byzantines built a church on the site.

But Shelby changes his theory about the Temples that he admits existed in 2022 and then in 2023 claims not only that there is no evidence that they existed, and that Jews "abandoned" it for "over 3000 years."

A history professor claims, against all evidence from the Bible to Josephus to hundreds of First and Second Temple artifacts found there to the different sections of the Temple Mount itself that testify to the dates of its building and expansions, that there is "no empirical evidence" that is ever existed?

That's merely enough to entirely discredit any credentials he has as a historian. But he goes beyond that, claiming that Jews "abandoned" their holiest spot, when for 2000 (not 3000) years we have been praying three times daily towards that exact spot for the restoral of the Temple

No, these are not simple mistakes. This is not a simple example of lying about history This is an attack on Jews today, meant to offend Jews today, about our history and prayers, our art and poetry, all centered on Jerusalem, Zion and the restoration of the Temple. And the earlier tweet about the Temple proves that Shelby knows he is lying but his desire to attack Jews overwhelms his desire to write anything accurate about history.

This is what makes him an antisemite. And Indian River State College as well as American Military University should carefully consider whether they want to employ someone who is so filled with hate that he is willing to lie about history just to offend Jews.

They should at least wonder what other lies he is telling his students.

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!

Palestinians demand EU pressure Israel to cede Jerusalem. As they always do.

Ma'an reports:

Prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh called on Germany to put pressure on Israel to abide by its agreements, to fulfill our right to hold elections in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, and to stop all measures and violations by the occupation and its settlers.

This came during his meeting with the President of the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) Peter Tschentscher, today, Thursday, in Ramallah, in the presence of the Head of the Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the State of Palestine, Ambassador Oliver Ovcha.

The "elections" demand is interesting, because there are no elections scheduled nor is there any prospect for elections in the future. The last scheduled elections were "postponed" indefinitely because polls showed that Fatah would lose, so Abbas blamed Israel - for not allowing voting in Jerusalem.

The only reason that the Palestinian Authority officials talk to the EU about elections is because they want to use that issue to gain control over "east Jerusalem."

Up until now, Israel allowed Jerusalem Arabs to use ballot boxes in Jerusalem post offices. The boxes then get transported to PA-controlled areas where they are unsealed and votes counted. This way, from Israel's perspective, they are absentee ballots being "mailed" in, and from the PA perspective the ballots are being cast in Jerusalem. It is a convenient fiction for both sides.

But the PA then started insisting that Israel allow campaigning in Jerusalem, which they won't do. So they have been requesting the EU pressure Israel to give in to their demands - which are congruent with official EU policy that Israel has no rights to any part of Jerusalem across the Green Line.

It isn't like the Palestinians care about Jerusalem in itself. Before 1967, under Arab rule, it was all but ignored by Jordan and by Palestinians. The 1964 PLO Charter didn't mention Jerusalem once. Neither did the 1968 version, which is the current version.

But they are keenly interested in taking Jerusalem away from Jews.

When the UN proposed that Jerusalem be an international city, as far as I can tell, there was no outcry from the Palestinian Arabs then against that idea, claiming it was theirs or that it was purely Muslim. All those narrative are said only in the context of taking it away from Israel.

That is their only goal. That is why insisting that Jerusalem be their capital is positioned as non-negotiatible - there is no logical, historic or legal reason Judaism's holiest city must be their capital for them to have a state. There are 193 other nations that manage to survive without their capitals being in Jerusalem.

But taking Jerusalem away from Jews would, they know, be the beginning of the end of Israel. It would be cutting the heart out of the Jewish people.

That is the overriding goal. And it always has been.

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!

Another own goal at the "Museum of the Palestinian People"

There aren't too many things to see in the virtual tour of the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC. But several of the objects on display that show the paperwork behind lifecycle events of Palestinians are interesting - unintentionally.

There are two marriage certificates and one birth certificate.

Outside of the handwritten description of the father of the baby having a nationality of "Palestinian," none of these documents, issued by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, say anything about Palestine.

There is also a pair of passports issued in 1946. They don't say "Passport of Palestine." They say "British Passport - Palestine" and there is Hebrew inside along with Arabic.

This same museum proudly shows a 1938 National Geographic map of the Middle East called "Bible Lands" that uses "Palestine" as a clear English translation of Eretz Yisrael, but the museum considers this "proof" that there was a nation called Palestine. But that is a map that had no official function. Every document in the museum from a government proves that there was no such nation.

Why would a museum of the Palestinian people show paperwork that contradicts the idea of a Palestinian nation? And what happened to the parts of Palestine under Jordanian control in 1949?

Palestinians accuse Israel of erasing their Palestinian nationality from before 1948, but....what about Jordan? We see that Jordan did not call keep any vestige of "Palestine" in the areas it illegally annexed. Jordan literally erased Palestine. Why did no Palestinian Arab protest about this?

Yet it appears that Jordan did maintain records of which citizens came from Palestine and who did not - with the aim of potentially disenfranchising the Palestinians by forcibly "returning" them to a Palestine that never existed. Moreover, the family that donated these documents were never refugees - the father was born in Nablus in the 1930s.

The museum documentation doesn't mention any of this, of course. Because it isn't interested in the real history of the Palestinian people, a people created in the 1960s purely to paint Israel as a Goliath. The museum's entire purpose is to delegitimize Israel by not only placing all the blame of the Palestinian "diaspora" on Israel, but also in erasing the entire Jewish history in the Levant as it carefully curates pottery and artwork to avoid any mention of any Jewish presence on the Land.

A careful look at the "Museum of the Palestinian People" shows that there was never a Palestine.

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!

Again, Palestinians use Israel's preservation of Islamic antiquities as proof of Israel destroying Islamic antiquities

The Palestinian Safa news agency "reports:"

The Israeli occupation authorities are still continuing their efforts to obliterate the Islamic and Arab features of Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the Umayyad palaces area, falsifying its identity and ancient history, and stealing its antiquities and historical stones, in order to impose an alleged biblical narrative, and prepare for the establishment of the alleged "Temple".

With its ancient stones and ancient buildings built by the Umayyads, the Umayyad palaces represent an Arab Islamic heritage, and a symbol of Islamic civilization in Palestine, which refutes the claims of the occupation that it discovered Jewish antiquities and assets in the region during its excavations over the past years.

The Umayyad palaces were shown during the early Islamic conquest as a house for the emirate, palaces for the Muslim caliphs and Islamic institutions for managing the affairs of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestine about one thousand four hundred years ago.

In 1967, the occupation took control of this area, and tried to confiscate it under the pretext of the so-called "Holy Basin", in order to suffocate Al-Aqsa Mosque from the southern and western regions, and also turned it into museums, shrines, and Talmudic manifestations, to narrate the biblical Talmudic narrative.

Settlement organizations claim that the palaces are built in the "Holy Basin" area of the "Temple", but the excavations that lasted more than 40 years with the participation of Jewish archaeologists have proven that the buildings are Umayyad palaces and an emirate house, and there is no evidence indicating their relationship to the "Temple" or anything else.

This is a funhouse mirror version of history that ends up not even close to reality.

We've discussed the Umayyad palaces before. They were discovered by Jewish archaeologists and they are being preserved by Israel. If it wasn't for Jews, the Arab world would not even know they ever existed.

The site is there today for visitors. It is preserved by the State of Israel and the Jerusalem municipality. No one is claiming that the Umayyad palaces were never there or that they were Jewish-built. No one is damaging the site.

The real question is why we don't see more Muslim visitors to the area, since it is clearly a major historical Muslim site.

And it is hardly the only Islamic site preserved by Israel in Jerusalem, open to all, with clearly marked signs explaining the importance of the site.

The Safa article also lies in its claims that there is no evidence of any Temple on the southern areas surrounding the Temple Mount. For example, there are dozens of ritual baths in the area which pre-date the Umayyad structures, and the only reason for so many would be if masses of people were preparing to visit the Temple Mount.

The people who are claiming that Jews are erasing history are...wait for it....erasing Jewish history.

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!

Yasir Arafat Museum has a new exhibit on Jewish settlements

Today, the Yasir Arafat Museum opened up a new exhibition.

What part of Palestinian history is it about?

Silly. It is about how terrible Jews are.

Dignitaries, including the Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, crowded the space to see maps and text on the walls showing how Jews are taking over what they consider Palestinian land.

Shtayyeh commented after his tour, "What we saw today in this exhibition is an exceptional effort in documenting settlement crimes and colonial crimes since the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967. Settlement is a tool to destroy the two-state solution, and the colonialists have been defeated throughout history. This is the only case in the world in which the settler-colonial conflict with the indigenous people remains. "

Shtayyeh thanked the management of the Yasser Arafat Foundation for this "exceptional, distinguished and great effort in preserving, presenting and documenting the crimes of Israeli colonialism and occupation."

He called for "Palestine to remain in the heart of every Palestinian, in the heart of every Arab, and in the heart of every free and honorable person in this world."

Shtayyeh also called on the United States and the European Union to put pressure on Israel to stop plans to build new settlement units in the West Bank.

One demand I have not hear before: Shtayyeh called on the US and Europe to revoke citizenship from Jewish settlers who have two passports.

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!

Arafat got the ball rolling.

In a 1997 online article on Azure, Yoram Hazony describes a 1996 festival staged by Arafat's Ministry of Culture, in honor of Ba'al:

Arab youths dressed in robes bearing ancient Canaanite figures brandished torches as they danced about the town square, packed with officials of the PLO’s administration and security services...On the stone stage in the middle of the square, a dramatic passion was acted out, with the Ba’al, god of the heavens and fertility in the pantheon of the ancient Canaanites, heroically struggling against Mut, god of the underworld...the narrator took the opportunity to pour praise on the loyal Palestinian-Canaanite nations, the Amorites, Girgashites, Jebusites and Perizzites, which had fought at his side in the battle against the Hebrew invaders from across the Jordan.

And Arafat kept the ball rolling. On March 30, 2000, Arafat declared during a 'Land Day' speech:

Our forefathers, the Canaanites and Jebusites, built the cities and planted the land; they built the monumental city of Bir Salim [Jerusalem]…

The previous year, his advisor and minister for Jerusalem affairs, Faisal Husseini, said in an interview with New York Times Magazine:

I am a Palestinian. I am a descendant of the Jebusites, the ones who came before King David. This [Jerusalem] was one of the most important Jebusite cities in the area…. Yes, it’s true. We are the descendants of Jebusites.

Similar claims by Abbas and Saeb Erekat are not new.

The Middle East Forum finds efforts of this falsification in 1978 in the Palestinian encyclopedia (Al-Mawsu'at Al-Filastinniya),

which declared, "The Palestinians [to be] the descendants of the Jebusites, who are of Arab origin," and described Jerusalem as "an Arab city because its first builders were the Canaanite Jebusites, whose descendants are the Palestinians."The entry continued, "Ever since the destruction of the Temple, the link with Jews and Christians has been severed. Muslims alone have a right to the Temple."

No Palestinian claim is too absurd to be made -- after all, who in the West ever calls them out on such things. Here is Dr. Hayel Sanduqa on PA TV, on June 2, 2011, claiming that a famous Psalm was actually first said by a Crusader:

[The Israelis] have acted to change Jerusalem's character. Even the expression (Psalm 137:5) “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth.” This statement said by the Frankish (Crusader) ruler of Acre shortly before he left – was borrowed by the Zionist movement, which falsified it in the name of Zionism.

Is the problem really that the West is unwilling to call out the Palestinian Arabs on their falsification of history, or is the problem really much bigger -- is the West actually complicit in this falsification?

UNESCO

Erasing Jewish history seems to be a UNESCO specialty.

In 2011, Elder of Ziyon pointed out how UNESCO identified the Rambam (Maimonides) as Maimouna Ibn Moussa, effectively claiming that the revered Jewish philosopher, legal scholar and leader of the Jewish community during the 12th century was a Muslim.

Other attempts by UNESCO to erase Jewish ties to their land just up to 2011 alone include:

o  November 7, 1974: voted “to withhold assistance from Israel in the fields of education, science and culture because of Israel’s persistent alteration of the historic features of Jerusalem.”
o  November 20, 1974: voted to exclude Israel from its European regional group -- until 1978, after the US withheld $40 million in payments from the organization in protest.
o  1989: claimed “Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem” was destroying the holy city by “acts of interference, destruction and transformation”
o  1990: attacked the “irreversible” changes to Jerusalem's architectural heritage resulting from Israeli “occupation”
o  1993: then-UNESCO director-general Frederico Mayor boycotted an international conference on science in Jerusalem
o  1995: When the UN celebrated its 50th anniversary, UNESCO refused to mention the Shoah in its World War II resolution
o  1996: organized a symposium on Jerusalem at the body’s Paris headquarters without inviting any Jewish or Israeli groups
o  1998: a delegation visiting Jerusalem refused to meet with Israeli officials.
o  2001: UNESCO promoted the “Cairo Declaration Document for Jerusalem Antiquities Preservation,” accusing Israel of destroying Islamic antiquities on the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem’s Old City
o  2002: During the Second Intifada, condemned Israel for “the destruction and damage caused to the cultural heritage in the Palestinian territories” as “a crime against the common cultural heritage of humanity.”
o  2009: designated Jerusalem as a “capital of Arab culture”
o  2010: declared Rachel’s Tomb and Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs as “Muslim mosques.”
o  2011: called on Israel to stop all archaeological works in the Old City of Jerusalem

In the past, UNESCO also has also called for “financial sanctions against Israel” and passed hundreds of resolutions criticizing Israel’s activities in Judea and Samaria

According to the UN Watch Database:

Between 2009 and 2021, UNESCO adopted 82 resolutions against Israel; 9 on Crimea; 4 on Iraq; 2 on Syria; and none on Iran, Sudan, North Korea, or any other country in the world...UNESCO repeatedly denies the ancient Jewish heritage and culture of the holy cities Jerusalem and Hebron – which it has declared a World Heritage site of “Palestine.”

The Supreme Muslim Council in 1925

But when it comes to denying Israel's right to Jerusalem and its Jewish history, everyone wants to get in on the act -- which is ironic, considering how in 1925, the Supreme Muslim Council published A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which in addition to permitting non-Muslims to visit, explicitly recognizes the history of Solomon's Temple as being "beyond dispute" as the location where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque stand today -- and quotes from the Book of Samuel to make its point. The guide goes on to mention in passing that in 637 Caliph Omar "occupied Jerusalem."

The Mosque of Omar, 16 miles southwest of Jerusalem, has an inscription dating back to the 9th or 10th century CE that refers to the Dome of the Rock as “the rock of the Bayt al-Maqdis” -- literally "the rock of The Holy Temple."

Things have changed.

The BBC

Things have changed in the media as well. CAMERA UK has pointed out that while at one point the BBC recognized the Jewish historical ties by referring to The Temple Mount...

...in 2014, after the PLO warned international reporters not to use the term Temple Mount, the media obliged and perpetuates the Palestinian Arab narrative, the BBC among them. Last month, when Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount, the BBC reported:

The hilltop site is the most sacred place in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam. It is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, site of two Biblical temples, and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, the site of Muhammad's ascent to Heaven. The entire compound is considered to be al-Aqsa Mosque by Muslims. [emphasis added]

The BBC includes a graphic that helpfully emphasizes the point:

By perpetuating this distortion, the BBC is aiding the Palestinian Arabs who undercut Jewish rights and Jewish history by increasing the number of mosques on the Temple Mount from 1 to 5 while deliberately destroying archaeological evidence of the ancient Jewish ties to the area.

Helping the Palestinian cause is the EU.

The EU

Back in December, a document came to light describing the EU's plan to help the Palestinians by undercutting the Oslo Accords and help Palestinian Arabs gain a foothold in Area C of Judea and Samaria.

The six-page document calls for mapping the territory in order to prove Palestinian rights to the land and monitoring Israeli archaeological activity, as ancient Jewish ties reinforce Israeli claims.

The document also recommends strengthening Palestinian infrastructure in Area C and supporting Palestinians with legal aid.

The article quotes Shlomo Ne’eman, head of the Gush Etzion Council and the Yesha Council who decries how "the allies of the State of Israel, the European governments, are actively working to change the borders of our country." This is just taking the attempt to arbitrarily refer to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel and taking it to a whole new level.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia is doing its share to falsify history.

Wikipedia

An article on Wikipedia on Iran–Jordan relations, traces those relations back for "most of Jordanian history" -- in this case back to the Persians:

The article on Jordan itself tells you that "the oldest known evidence of hominid habitation in Jordan dates back at least 200,000 years."

You have to check out the Wikipedia article on Iraq-Jordan relations to get the straightforward history starting in the 20th century:

And now the Biden Administration has decided to play along with the Palestinian Arabs.

The Biden Administration

According to a press release from the Manhattan DA's office:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., today announced the repatriation of an ivory cosmetic spoon dating back to approximately 800-700 B.C.E to the Palestinian Authority, marking the first time a cultural object has been returned to the Palestinian people from the United States...

“We are proud to join our law enforcement and government partners in this moment. It is impossible to put a value on the cultural and historical significance of looted antiquities and I thank our talented team of attorneys and investigators who are continuing their incredible work of returning these objects to where they rightfully belong,” said District Attorney Bragg. [emphasisd added]

Rightfully belong?

As Johanna Markind pointed out at Legal Insurrection:

American law calls for repatriation of certain artifacts to Indian tribes, if “the requesting Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization can show that the object was owned or controlled by the Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization.” That is, the Smithsonian would return a qualified Cheyenne artifact to the Cheyenne tribe. It would not return a Cheyenne artifact to, say, the Pawnee.

According to the law, then, the artifact should have been returned to Israel. But that would have been a problem. After all, the spoon was originally looted from Hebron, so returning it to Israel would amount to admitting the Jewish ties to that area.

So instead, we are treated to an onslaught of government officials publically supporting the Palestinian Arabs in fabricating an imaginary history:

o  Ivan J. Arvelo, a special agent in charge of US Homeland Security Investigations in New York, described the transfer of the spoon to the PA as a "historic repatriation”
o  George Noll, head of the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, described the spoon as “an example of Palestinian cultural patrimony.”
o  DHS official, Jeff Brannigan, claimed that, “This repatriation is representative of HSI’s commitment to ensuring the storied heritages of peoples around the world through the preservation and protection of cultural artifacts.”

The Biden Administration is pushing a falsified history -- much as Biden himself famously falsified his own history during the 1988 presidential campaign when he claimed:

o  He graduated from Syracuse University’s law school in the top half of his class.
o  He received 3 undergraduate degrees.
o  He attended law school on a full academic scholarship

But this time, the media is unlikely to call him out on this fake history.

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!

Making up an Arab history of Jerusalem

In 2020, Arab News published an article titled "Arabs founded Jerusalem, says Jordan-based institute."

Among the many references the document uses to make its point is the Amarna Correspondence, a series of diplomatic letters between Canaanite city-state kings and their Egyptian overlords during the 14th century B.C., which mention Jerusalem. The paper presents pictures of the cuneiform tablets uncovered in Egypt in the late 19th century to validate its argument.

Along with archaeological discoveries, the Biblical record is also used as a source to establish original Arab presence in Jerusalem. The Bible, the paper says, shows that “the Arabs, Hamites, Canaanites, and Jebusites were the original inhabitants of the land of Palestine, including the area of Jerusalem.” Canaanites and Jebusites were there long before the Jews, even before Judaism was revealed.

The 108-page document quotes passages from the Old Testament to establish that “Jerusalem was always an Arab city” and notes that, “the Palestinian Arabs of today are largely the direct descendants of the indigenous Canaanite Arabs who were there over 5,000 years ago. Modern-day Arab Muslim and Christian Palestinian families (such as the “Kanaan” tribe, direct descendants of the Canaanites) are the oldest inhabitants of the land.”

The bolded quote makes it sound like the Torah mentions the "Arabs" as one of the Canaanite nations along with the Hamites, Canaanites and Jebusites. And indeed that is what the paper by the Jordanian Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought says.

Obviously the Torah never mentions a nation called the "Arab" nation along with the nations that occupied the land of Canaan. The author made that up.

The paper's argument is contradictory and circular. It doesn't prove at all that Arabs were there - it merely asserts that Canaanites and Jebusites were Arabs, after saying that Arabs were separate from the Canaanites and Jebusites. Then it mentions how the Tanakh mentions that Canaan was inhabited by these nations as if that proves they are Arab.

It also brings as "proof" that "Jerusalem is mentioned by name in the Amarna Correspondence, a series of diplomatic letters between Canaanite city-state kings and their Egyptian overlords during the 14th century."

But no one disputes that the Torah says that it was the land of Canaan and that those nations lived there.. What the paper pretends to do, and fails, is find a connection between Jebusites and Arabs, or Canaanites and Arabs.

The word "Arab" is quite rare in the Hebrew scripture, and never refers to the residents of Canaan. A character named Geshem the Arabian is mentioned in Nehemiah; in Jeremiah 3:2 the word "Arab" is used as a synonym for "bandit."

The term was clearly known to the writers of the Hebrew scripture, and clearly none of them said that Canaan was an Arab land.

Clearly the authors of the paper knew this, and pretended that the Tanach said things it never says.

But why would we expect anything else?

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

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Official, antisemitic Jordanian history of Jerusalem omits Temples, Kings David and Solomon

The website of the Jordanian Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs includes a brief English-language history of the city originally published in 2005.

It glosses over any historic Jewish connection to the city by framing Jews as one of many invaders:

3000 B.C. :
The Arab Canaanites established the city in the third millennium B.C., as archeologists state.

1879 B.C. :
in the Egyptian Tablets, called the Texts of the Curse, the name Ur Salim (the city of peace) was mentioned as the name for the city . The name reoccurred in the year 1300 B.C. in the Tal Al- Amarnah Tablets. At that time, the city was inhabited by the Arab Yabusites.

1300 – 63 B.C. :
The city suffered invasion, occupation and destruction. It witnessed important events during this period . It was occupied by the Egyptians, the Jews, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks.

63 B.C – 636 A.D. :
This was the era of the Roman rule, which lasted around 700 years. The most important events during this period were :

– The appearance of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) around the first year B.C.
– 70 The city was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Titus.

The Canaanites were not Arabs.

There is no mention of Jewish kingdoms, Kings David or Solomon, the Temples, or even the Bible. Even the Quran says far more about Jews in the land than this commission does.

Well, there is an indirect mention of the Temples when it discusses the different names of the city:

Bayt Al-Maqdis (Al-Quds; The Holy) : The name given to the city by Muslim Arabs.

That name, of course, is a corruption of the Hebrew "Beit HaMikdash" - the Holy Temple.

Practically every mention of Jews in this history is a lie. A couple of examples:

1882: The start of the waves of mass Jewish immigration from Russia to Jerusalem and Palestine.

Only from Russia? Plenty of Jews came from many countries, including Arab countries like Yemen, in the 19th century.

June 1967: Confiscation of 116 dunums within the old city and the demolition of the buildings therein for the purpose of building new ones to house the Jews.

That is the restoration of the Jewish Quarter that was destroyed by these Jordanians in 1948.

21 August 1969: The Jew, Michael Denis Rohan, set fire to the blessed Aqsa Mosque.

Rohan was a Christian.

Jerusalem : The Inhabitants

– In 1918, the number of Palestinians in Old and New Jerusalem was circa (ca.) 30,000 .
– In 1918, the number of Jews in Old and New Jerusalem was ca. 10,000.

I cannot find any record of a 1918 census of Jerusalem, but this is all clearly a lie. In 1922, there were 34,000 Jews in Jerusalem, outnumbering Christians (15,000) and Muslims (13,000) combined.

This official Jordanian document also says:

– In 2000, the number of Jews in the western part of Occupied Jerusalem was ca. 275,000 colonial Jews.

Here and elsewhere, it refers to all Jews in Israel as colonialist - not just the "settlers."

Finally, it falsely claims that the number of Christians in Jerusalem has gone down from over 18,000 in 1967 to 5,000 in 1998. In reality, the number plummeted under Jordanian rule from 29,000 to 12,000 in 1967, and it has modestly increased to about 16,000 today.

This is Jordanian, state-sanctioned antisemitism.

(h/t Irene)

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