Conflicts of Heritage

There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Shakespeare; Henry IV, part 2 (1597), act 3
Jeremy Sharon found himself thrown into the virtual lions’ den at CiF with his article of March 3rd about the recent riots instigated as a reaction to the Israeli government’s announcement to invest in heritage sites. Like the Palestinians and apparently the US government, many CiF commentators seem to think that earmarking 399 million shekels for the restoration of 100 heritage sites in a region of the world with great historical importance to several major religions and significance for the history of humankind in general is somehow a bad thing. This abuse of heritage for political ends sets a dangerous precedent which risks the loss of sites which should be important to all people, regardless of creed or ethnic background. For too many years investment in heritage has not received the attention it deserves in Israel and this latest government decision to address the problem should be welcomed by all who appreciate that heritage is for everyone.
Jeremy Sharon summed up the situation in very precise terms when he wrote

“The riots and denunciations spawned by the heritage sites plan, as well as those over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and numerous others, illustrate the ongoing battle being waged by the Palestinian political and religious leadership to disconnect national Jewish symbols from the state of Israel. And this tactic is just part of a wider strategy to delegitimise the very notion of a nation state for the Jewish people, a campaign that is being orchestrated both by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as by their sympathisers in the west.”

Four days after Sharon’s article appeared, the Turkish PM Erdogan added his two cents worth to the row. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday continued his verbal assault on Israel, according to Saudi paper Al Wattan, which quoted him as saying that that al Aksa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb “were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites.”
Whilst such statements may not come as a surprise when voiced by Erdogan or anyone from the PA or Hamas, it is extremely unbecoming, and more than a little worrying, that an American or any other Western government should jump on this bandwagon. We have after all ample evidence of the lack of respect for places of worship, burial grounds and historical sites belonging to other religions on the part of extreme Islamists, both in the Middle East and further afield and whilst both Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs may be situated in areas which the PA hopes to make a future Palestinian state, there should be no reason, if their intentions are truly peaceful, why the co-operation necessary to preserve these historic sites cannot take place. Equally worrying is the fact that even if the PA has objections to Israel investing money for the restoration of these sites, its default action is not discussion of the issue, but to allow, and even encourage, violent riots to take place. The American administration’s acceptance of this situation indicates very clearly the nature of its tragically low expectations of the Palestinian Authority and bodes ill for any Israeli hopes that our neighbours may be learning the art of international relations and diplomacy. But then again, if every time the PA has a hissy fit about some perceived slight, America jumps in with the behavior of a ‘helicopter parent’, there is little reason for the leaders of this aspiring nation to mature into statesmen.
Of course this latest row is by no means an isolated incident, and as Jeremy Sharon quite rightly points out, the PR campaign to delegitimize Israel by denying its historic connections to the region has been going on for some time and is just one front in the war of public relations being waged against Israel by Palestinian factions, with despicable co-operation from too many in the West.
The success of this campaign was reflected in the many (408) comments on this article with many invoking the bizarre ideas of Shlomo Sands as ‘evidence’ for their claims.

CJP1946

3 Mar 2010, 11:59AM
I am not a historian, but…
Prof Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian has concluded that the exile of the Jews was actually a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.
“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land – a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to.”
In Sand’s view, “at a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk https://mail.google.com/mail/#drafts/1272730437d85b60character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people “retrospectively,” out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace.”
See Ha’aretz, Mon., April 13, 2009 for a fuller account.
Quest2008
3 Mar 2010, 12:01PM
“The connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel has lasted for more than 3,500 years … This is the land of our forefathers.”

Recently reading the works on Israeli historian Sholo Sands who puts doubt on this.
He claims that in his opinion that the Jews were not expelled from Palestine, and that the likely decendants of original Jews in the region are the modern day Palestinians. Current genetic research also backs this theory.

Quest2008
3 Mar 2010, 12:08PM
@ CJP1946
Sorry you beat me to it.
There a couple of good video on You Tube re Sholo Sands analysis.
If true it really puts the middle east conflict on its head.
He states that the many people are trying to dicredit him and his research because of his conclusions.

SdeBoker
3 Mar 2010, 1:05PM
properbostonian
I suppose it’s purely coincidental that because he agrees with you, someone with absolutely no axe to grind, you consider him a profound and unbiased thinker.
Shlomo Sand has merely collated existing evidence. He hasnt come to his own conclusions alone. Merely by publishing that book it probably gave others access to a lot of study that would not have necessarily been known about. he’s a minority voice and deserves to be heard.
theres nothing profound about the book at all.

also i noticed MattSeaton mention he was an anti-Zionist. Is being an anti-Zionist a crime then? I didnt realise that.

FieldingMelish
3 Mar 2010, 2:28PM
Oh. Up to 1967, the Israeli state recognized that most Jewish immigrants into the Levant were originally Khazars and had no hystorical connection to the region. For political reasons Israel then rewrote history. Another inconvenience which the evidence is pointing to, many Palestinian muslims were probably historically Jews who converted during the Arab advance in the 7th century.
Ah the rubbish I mentioned earlier. Is there anything more sly and nasty than this?
Only a w****r with an agenda would post this

Imnotagrook
4 Mar 2010, 10:51AM
The ’empty’ land to which Jewish immigrants arrived was as any other country at the time, most people lived in the countryside, mainly in villages, a large part lived in towns.

An ongoing propaganda from Zionists, which include belying Shlomo Sand and the film maker Maryse Gargour wo made the documentary La terre parle arabe, The Land speaks Arab, is the real concern here. The resources seem to be infinite when it comes to propaganda to back Israel’s Biblical claims.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/126471/terre-parle-arabe

There were also plenty of comments from people apparently unable to appreciate that a wish to restore historical sites might not conceal the ulterior motives they so enjoy ascribing to Israelis such as land stealing or ethnic cleansing.

DerKleinePrinz
3 Mar 2010, 11:49AM
If you look at a map of Isreali territory today and compare it to a map of the proposed original partition of Palestine and Isreal (see culture section of The Guardian for example) the state of Isreal is immediately ‘delegitimised’, Jeremy.
Isreal is guilty of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, and biblical justifications for stealing land do not hold much weight with rational thinkers.

Tugster
3 Mar 2010, 12:01PM
I remember reading the following article in the Economist (I’m afraid you have to be a subscriber to view the whole article):

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TTDTGDJ

Here’s a taster:

“The most sinister thing about the latest Israeli assault, they claim, was its targeting of their national and ancestral heritage. During the army?s 17-day reoccupation of Nablus, the city?s oldest mosque was gutted, soap factories destroyed and an ancient bathhouse ransacked. In Bethlehem, tanks have levelled to dust the refurbished old market; a Syriac Orthodox church was bombed; hermitic caves dynamited. ?That?s not about security. That?s about erasing history. Ours,? says a Palestinian academic. Israel, naturally, denies any such policy.”

There’s one aggressor here, and it’s the one with the massive well-funded army that spends every day stealing more and more Palestinian land.

Every day, more stealing. And the world looks on…

FalseConsciousness
3 Mar 2010, 12:29PM
ReclaimTheLeft

People that deny the Jewish heritage of Israel are both historically ignorant and anti-semitic.

The historically ignorant are those who rely on glorified superstition to justify stealing land and creating an apartheid state. And the real anti-Semites are those who claim that all Jews have a special connection to Israel.

OopsItsMe
3 Mar 2010, 1:45PM
Again, Israel playing the world’s permanent victim card again…
Be it true or not (historical & biblical claims), the Israeli’s real goal here is to take Jerusalem as theirs and theirs only and once that is completed, then there will be no Palestinian territory left, no Gaza, not West Bank, just Israel. So don’t give in to this rubbish, they’re (Jeremy Sharon included) are just playing with words and emotions and history and everything else to justify their evil monstrosity.

RMartins
3 Mar 2010, 12:35PM
And God said to Moses: “Go there and take the land of others, by force if necessary”. And they have been doing just that, ever since. Now we have “religious” and “archaeologic” reasons as additional justifications for ethnic cleansing.

MilesSmiles
3 Mar 2010, 1:02PM
Neither is Israel Claim to those sites
That’s not the point, is it now?
People were asking why the Palestinians were annoyed and making trouble about it. Presumably, the reason is the large scale ethnic cleansing they were subject to by the people who now want religious rights to the small patches of land they are permitted to reside in.
The often heard claim that the Palestinians are in fact the region’s indigenous inhabitants also seems to be ever popular.

sheikratlnrol
3 Mar 2010, 12:19PM
Apart from biblical mumbo jumbo no proof forensic, archeological or otherwise exists to support the presence of a Davidic or Solomonaic civilisation.

MiddleEnglandLefty
3 Mar 2010, 12:31PM
It’s interesting that recent immigrants to the area (in the last 60 years) claim that their historical ties to the land trump those of people who have continually lived in the area for 1400 years, and who, recent studies are beginning to show, may actually be descendents of the original Israelites and thus have continually lived there for over 3000 years.

And here are a few examples of pure bigotry and anti-Semitism:

TwoSwords
3 Mar 2010, 12:54PM
This is for Jeremy Sharon and PetraMB
Someone’s ancient ancestors having lived somewhere is probably the most asinine argument anyone can make for rights to a place.
Great – let’s redraw the maps of the world and ethnically cleanse people (Israeli style) in order to conform with the Collins Atlas of the Ancient World.
This is about as sensible as saying Italy should London and Greece should get Istanbul.
By this logic, if we excavate deeper and we were to find relics indicating ANOTHER group (oooh, let’s say a stateless group like Assyrians) than the ancient Hebrews lived in present day Israel prior to to the Hebrews since “time immemorial”, I presume that means that means that Petra and Jezz will be packing up their bags to make room for the newly established state of Assyria? Or would expecting a vast number of people to become refugees because someone is citing ancient racial property rights a jackass idea?
I know that deep-seated racists like Petra and Jezza might not see this but RACES don’t get rights. PERSONS have rights. The right to self-determination. The right to not be ethnically cleansed. The right to return to one’s home after a conflict that drove one out of said home is concluded.
Until you and Israel itself as a concept move anway from the racist paradigm in which you live there won’t be peace.
Israel isn’t entitled to land because of some historical relics.

petrifiedprozac
3 Mar 2010, 3:33PM
ZacSame She’s your ex mate get over it, move on….
The property will be my childtren’s.
I notice Jewish people have difficulty getting over property stole form them.
One law for one, one for the other?

magnets
3 Mar 2010, 4:03PM
Hasbara word of the week – delegitimisation.
Been popping up everywhere.
The whingers have been using it non stop.
Compliments their paranioa and delusion perfectly.

And finally, check this out for a variation of ‘The Ben White Manoeuvre’:

gazagirl
3 Mar 2010, 1:47PM
JeremySharon
The question is why do Palestinians think it is provocative for Israel to identify with these sites and mark them for refurbishment? What is provocative about that? Why does that justify rioting, strikes, inflammatory rhetoric and incitement to violence?
Look, I do not support or encourage violent resistance but I do understand it! The State of Israel’s overall actions in regarding to Palestinian human rights and common human decency is one long provocation!
Yes, brutal provocation alternating with cynical denial.

This willingness by some supporters of the Palestinian cause to sacrifice the history of an area which can be called the cradle of civilisation and risk throwing unique and irreplaceable historic sites on the scrap heap for the sake of short-term political point-scoring is something which future generations will surely regard with disdain and dismay. Such myopic initiatives should be a cause of grave concern to anyone who values history, heritage, culture and archaeology, be they Jewish or not. Israel may be bearing the brunt of this ugly campaign of cultural and historical delegitimisation, but if it is allowed to succeed, the loss will be to the world as a whole.