Irony of ironies: Palestinians complain about Bibi's map

At the State Department press briefing yesterday, there was this exchange between spokesperson Matthew Miller and Said Arikat of Al Quds:

ARIKAT:  I have a quick question on Mr. Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations at UNGA last Friday. He showed a map that completely erases the Palestinians. I wonder if you saw the map and I wonder if you have any comment on it.

MR MILLER: I did see it. I’m not going to get into any discussion about the map that the prime minister chose to use. I will say that the President has been clear, this administration has been clear that the United States will continue to support a two-state solution.

QUESTION: So it doesn’t bother you at all that the map shows the Palestinians just evaporated and so on? I mean, isn’t that like a cause for concern, a cause for saying “that’s our position and we state it very strongly; there will be no normalization without it or anything of such” – or just maybe a mishap on part of the prime minister?

MR MILLER: I did just state what our position is. In addition to my just stating what our position is, that we support a two-state solution

Whether the US or Palestinians like it, Israel still claims that Judea and Samaria are disputed territories, not occupied, and as such there is nothing wrong with an Israeli map including them as part of Israel before there is a peace agreement. (Admittedly, Gaza should not have been included in this map.)

His map of 1948 that showed an Israel that included the entire British Mandate could arguably include all of the territories because of the legal concept of uti possidetis juris which gave Israel, as the only state that existed after the 1948 war, the presumed borders of the entire Mandate.

But the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have, since 1993, consistently claimed that they accept a two state solution with Israel within what they call the "1967 borders." 

Yet their maps consistently show a "Palestine" with no Israel. 

Looking through recent photographs on Mahmoud Abbas' Facebook page, we see his receiving a report from the Palestinian Lands Authority which has a logo that erases Israel:

Here's Abbas lighting a torch to commemorate the anniversary of the PLO's founding, with the PLO logo that erases Israel:

Palestinian Media Watch has scores of examples of official Palestinian erasure of Israel. 

Every major Palestinian political party has logos that erase Israel.

If they accept the two state solution, and insist that their borders are the "pre-1967" borders and nothing beyond, than what is their excuse for consistently erasing Israel from their maps?

I would say that their hypocrisy is stunning, but it isn't. It is business as usual.

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No, it isn't Israelis who try to use archaeology to erase history. It is Palestinians.

On Tuesday, an exhibition  called "Inscriptions and Writings of Ancient Palestine" was unveiled at the headquarters of the League of Arab States in Cairo.

The exhibit features photos of Canaanite inscriptions from between the 19th and 7th centuries BCE.

The reasons given for the exhibit are almost completely political.

The exhibition is meant  "to purify the history of Palestine and the general culture of myths and legends," meaning to exclude the idea that Jews have a history in the region. 

The head of the scientific committee of the exhibition, Durgham Fares, said that the exhibition, which will be shown in various countries, "aims to strengthen international, Arab, and Islamic public opinion in support of the rights of the Palestinian people to freedom, independence, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, by providing a neutral scientific reading of the history of Palestine." 

Fares also described "the importance of archaeological inscriptions and writings in understanding the ancient history of Palestine, and in refuting the modern allegations of the Zionist movement and the occupation."

This is propaganda, not a sober description of Canaanite culture. (The claim that Palestinians are descended from Canaanites is also quite shaky. Some almost certainly were, but most prominent Palestinian families proudly trace their lineage to other parts of the world.) 

No one contests the idea that the earliest known use of an alphabet was in the region of Canaan, although it appears to have originated in Egypt as a simplified version of hieroglyphics for Semitic languages.

Unlike the curators of this project, the Israel Museum has an entire apolitical exhibit that credits the creation of the alphabet to Canaanite miners who were working for Egyptians in the Sinai, and who converted the thousands of Egyptian pictograms into a simplified, limited set of consonants. 

The Israelis don't hijack history, as they are often accused of. They look at archaeology objectively and if a find is important for Muslim or Christian or Canaanite history they publicize it as well as they do for Jewish history. There is a bias, certainly - everyone is more interested in their own ancestors - but they are not dishonest. In fact, some of the most important Muslim archaeological treasures were found - and preserved - by Israelis. .

As this exhibit shows, the only parties that explicitly use archaeology to erase the history of a people are the Palestinians and their allies. 

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Arabic media has been calling Israel weak and about to disappear since 1948

You can see daily articles in Arabic-language media about Israel's weakness and imminent demise, often with graphics like the one above.

This has been a theme since 1948.

The June 23, 1948 Palestine Post has two articles that discuss how Arab claims on the weakness of the new Jewish state spread quickly, even to the West, and how they were all baseless. 

The first comes from an Australian reporter, Douglas Brass. Note that this was written during the first cease fire of the 1948 war (a cease fire that was repeatedly violated by Egypt and Syrian troops.)

The other was in a report from Dorothy Bar Adon, who was a very amusing columnist for the newspaper:

This continued through the beginning of the Six Day War with reports of huge Arab victories - such reports may have induced Jordan to join the war, which led to its losing the Old City of Jerusalem and the entire west bank of the Jordan. 

The irony is that the sources for the modern versions of "Israel is weak:" comes from Israelis who are sounding alarms for potential issues to be addressed by Israeli society. In other words, the self-criticisms that show the strength of Israeli society are seen by Arabs who have no such concept as evidence of weakness. 

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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.

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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.

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75 years ago: Jordan maliciously destroys the Hurva synagogue in Jerusalem

Hurva synagogue in 1864

The Palestine Post, May 28, 1948, reported on the gleeful and deliberate destruction of the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The secondary story on the right column describes the many times that this synagogue had been destroyed by Muslims, or attempted to be destroyed, and how it had always been rebuilt.

Israel complained to the world about this destruction, to no avail (May 29).

The following month, a delegation of rabbis inspected the Jewish Quarter to see the destruction.

In the end, Jordan destroyed over 50 synagogues in the Old City, over 19 years, to the deafening silence of the world. 

Only Jews can protect Jewish heritage. Which is why Jews rebuilt the Hurva synagogue.

And this is why Jews are restoring the Tiferet Yisrael (Nissim Bek) synagogue which will resume being he highest domed structure in the Old City. 

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Children's book erases Jews and Israel from the Middle East (UPDATE)

Here is a map of the Middle East from the children's book, Amazing Women of the Middle East:

You will notice that there is no Israel in this map. It is replaced with "Palestine."

Modern nations like Jordan and the UAE are mentioned, so it cannot be that the map refers to a time period before 1948. 

Iran and Turkey are shown, so this isn't a map of only Arab countries.

It is a clearly deliberate attempt to erase Israel from the map. 

The list of women that the book discusses seems to be missing a certain type of people as well:

• Scheherazade, Persia, narrator

• Nefertiti, Ancient Egypt, 1370 BCE, Queen of Egypt

• Queen of Sheba, 1050 BCE, modern-day Ethiopia

• Semiramis, ancient Iraq, 811 BCE, Queen of Babylon

• Cleopatra VII, Egypt, 69 BCE, last queen of Egypt

• Zenobia, Syria, 240 CE, Queen of Palmyra

• Theodora, 497 CE, Empress of Byzantium

• Rabiya al Adawiyya, Iraq, 714, poet

• Shajarat al Durr, Egypt, early 13th Century, Sultana of Egypt

• Hurrem Sultan, Ukraine, 1502, Sultana of Ottoman Empire

• May Ziadeh, Nazareth, Palestine, 1886, writer

• Nazik el Abid, Syria, 1887, activist

• Anbara Salam al Khalidi, Lebanon, 1897, activist and feminist

• Saloua Raouda Choucair, Lebanon, 1916, painter

• Fairuz, Lebanon, 1933, singer

• Zaha Hadid, Iraq, 1950, architect

• Anousheh Ansari, Iran/USA, 1966, astronaut

• Somayya Jabarti, Saudi Arabia, 1970, editor-in-chief

• Nadine Labaki, Lebanon, 1974, film maker and actress

• Amal Clooney, Lebanon/British, 1978, lawyer

• Manahel Thabet, Yemen, 1981, economist and mathematician

• Maha Al Baluchi, Oman, pilot

• Nadia Murad, Iraq, 1993, rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner

• Zahra Lari, UAE, 1995, ice skater

• Azza Fahmy, Egypt, jewellery designer

Hmmm. No Jewish women make the cut of Amazing Women of the Middle East. No Queen Esther or prophet Deborah or Golda Meir. 

Some people complained to a Canadian book chain, which removed the book from its shelves. The publisher, Michel Moushabeck who founded Interlink Publishing, wrote a snarky and demeaning response:

This past week, Interlink and my family were subjected to some vicious trolling by a small number of people on social media started by a pro-Israel group, which resulted in the removal of copies of a children’s picture book, Amazing Women of the Middle East, from the shelves of Indigo Books, a large bookstore chain in Canada. The book was banned because the group complained that it was anti-Semitic because the word Palestine—instead of Israel—appeared on the accompanying map that helped identify to children where the women featured in the book originally came from (one was from Palestine). 

We are saddened to see such an important book that celebrates Middle Eastern women of all faiths, be disparaged online. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have been recipients of false accusations of anti-Semitism and this will likely not be the last. The notion that Palestinians are intrinsically anti-Semitic is a harmful and false narrative rooted in racism. This stereotype is harmful to not only Palestinians, but ignores the very REAL problem of anti-Semitism happening around the world. The books we publish amplify marginalized and underrepresented voices, including indigenous Palestinians, who are often left voiceless in Western media. We also publish talented Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, etc. authors who further our cultural understanding of their lived experiences. 

He then went on to make fun of one tweet. 

One of the women profiled is Scheherazade, from Persia. Persia is not listed on the map, which means the children won't be able to identify where she came from!  So from the outset, we can see that the publisher is not being intellectually honest in his defense of a propaganda map that erases Israel.

Moushabeck goes on to misrepresent and demean the feelings of the people complaining. No one is saying that "Palestinians are intrinsically antisemitic." If the map drew Palestine as being in the West Bank, no one would have cared.

But the decision to erase the Jewish state is indeed antisemitic. 

Including women who represent all religions and areas of the Middle East except for members of one religion and one nation is indeed antisemitic. (And saying that women of "all faiths" are celebrated means that to the publisher, Jews don't count.)

There is also another implication in this letter: that women from ancient powerful empires like Egypt, Persia and the Ottoman Empire represent "marginalized and underrepresented voices," that Christians and Muslims who make up billions of people are "marginalized." Is Cleopatra really that marginalized? But the tiny number of Jews from a small ancient kingdom to a small modern democracy are not worth mentioning.

Let's be honest. The reason there are no Jews or Israel in the book is because the author and publisher do not believe that Jews have any rightful place in the region, historically or today. 

Let's be even more honest. If the book treated Jewish women on par with the others, and included Israel in the map and Israeli women like Nobel Prize winner Ada Yonath or Israel Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch or poet Leah Goldberg, the book would be boycotted by the target audience. 

So cut the crap. This has nothing to do with Palestinians and everything to do with what can only be considered a deliberate mindset that Jews are outsiders, colonialists - in short, the enemy. 

That's why this book is antisemitic. 

The publisher's letter that twists the arguments about the book and belittles the Jews who were insulted by it proves the underlying antisemitism more than the book itself does. 

I don't like censorship but this book promotes the idea that Jews do not belong in the region, and it is therefore utterly unsuitable to be bought by anyone who supports the liberal stance that Interlink Publishing pretends to espouse.

(h/t Jim W)

UPDATE: The UK publisher has pulled the book from its website after a legal action by UK Lawyers for Israel.

UK Lawyers for Israel warned Pikku Publishing the book, called ‘Amazing Women of the Middle East: 25 Stories from Ancient Times to Present Day,’ could be in breach of education laws if used as a teaching aid in schools because it featured no Israeli women and had erased Israel from a map of the region.

The book, which is marketed to children over the age of nine, is listed on a web page marked “Teachers’ Resources” on the publisher’s website.

UKLFI warned self-publishing company Pikku if the book were used as a teaching aid in schools it would be likely to result in a breach Section 406 of the Education Act 1996.

This forbids ‘political indoctrination’, which is defined as the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school.

The UK Lawyers for Israel requested the publishers both in the UK and the USA withdraw the book and re-publish it with the correct map and featuring at least one ‘Amazing Woman’ from Israel.

The title has been withdrawn both from Pikku’s website and the teaching resources based on the book have also been removed from the ‘teachers’ resources’ section.

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