The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) rejects this claim entirely, of course, pointing out that neither Jordan nor the Palestinian Authority (which did not exist before 1993) ever had legal sovereignty over the Dead Sea region in which the scrolls were found. But this did not stop the embarrassment of Canadian officials or the cascade of disinformation at the Toronto exhibit.42
Playing the Gene Card
In the article she wrote for the Khaleej Times falsifying Israeli history, Karen Friedemann also ventured into falsified genetics as well, asserting that: "Current genetic anthropological findings based on DNA analysis indicate that the male ancestors of Yiddish Jewry were of Eastern European and nonLevantine Southwest Asian origin while the female ancestors were Eastern Europeans."43
In reality, recent genetic research clearly indicates that most of the Jews in the world today (with the exception of those in Ethiopia and India) are more closely related genetically to the Jews of the ancient Near East than they are to the people of their host countries in the Diaspora. In June 2010, genetic research at the New York University (NYU) School of Medicine concluded that modern Jewish genes can be shown to trace back to a common people of Middle East origin.44
There is some debate as to the comprehensiveness and reliability of this study, especially with regard to the issue of the genetic impact of proselytizing in the Roman Empire when the effort to bring converts to Judaism, in the period before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, may have weakened the Jewish gene pool.45
However, another independent study tends to corroborate the original findings of the NYU study, and support the traditional view that Jews worldwide share not only religious and cultural practices (de spite minor regional and sectarian differences) but also a common genetic heritage, with the genes of widely separated Jewish populations having much more in common than have the genes of localized Jewish populations with their non-Jewish neighbors (despite intermarriage and conversion). These studies also support the Zionist assertion that most Jews, though scattered world-wide, share a common genetic ancestry in the ancient Near East, more specifically in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel).46
The strength of this research lies in the fact that groups examined in the study included not only major communities such as Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe and Sephardim from Bulgaria and Turkey, but also several that are much smaller and, like the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia and Jews from India, Ethiopia and Yemen, are often referred to as the "lost tribes" of Israel. Because the Nature paper compared the Jewish groups to an unprecedentedly broad array of non-Jewish groups, the results make the comparison — and the genetic ties identified — especially robust.
Researchers from eight countries participated. They examined 600,000 genomic markers, distributed over the entire genome, comparing the descendents of 14 Diaspora Jewish communities with 69 non-Jewish populations around the world. The conclusion:
"Historical evidence suggests a common origin in the Middle East, followed by multiple migrations that led to the creation of Jewish communities in Europe, Africa, and Asia - what we call the Jewish Diaspora ... Genome-wide analysis has proven extensive sharing of DNA sequences among geographically and temporally widely separated Diaspora Jewish communities — most of whom bear a Levantine Near East signature."47
In short, the Palestinian assertions denying the historicity of Jewish origins in Israel are thoroughly and comprehensively and decisively contradicted by the genetic research summarized above.
Conclusion
The effort of Palestinians and their political allies in the West to alter, deny and misrepresent Israeli and Jewish history, while increasingly success ful, are so transparently Orwellian that it is valid to wonder why they lie so flagrantly?
The answer is that they lie because the truth does not support their goals.
The concepts of "historic Palestine,""Palestinian homeland," and the "Palestinian people" were all invented to suit the political needs of Arab forces committed to the destruction of Israel.48 These concepts were born in a propaganda war — products of the Soviet Union's exploitation of post-1948 Arab anti-Israel rejectionism — to create a faux-history that changed the appearance of the conflict from a genocidal Arab war against the Jewish State, motivated almost exclusively by traditional Muslim Jew-hatred,49 into a struggle by the "oppressed indigenous Palestinian people" for their national self-realization, political self-determination and freedom from occupation. By rebranding terrorism as a "struggle for freedom," the Soviets, and a compliant UN, could make a genocidal war against Israel could appear as a legitimate and even heroic struggle for nationhood by "freedom fighters."50
But in order for this revisionist history to work, there needed to be a "Palestinian homeland" where the "Palestinian people" had lived from "time immemorial." Because these elements did not exist in reality, the Arab leadership needed to invent them. And the need to invent "Palestine" brought with it an equally deformed Siamese twin: the need to deconstruct Israel, to disconnect Jews and Judaism, Israel and Israelites, from their own traditional homeland and from their history.
And perhaps the greatest irony of all is that Palestinian leaders are open and frank about their desire to erase Jewish history and fabricate their own. Among the "Palestinian papers" released to the world via wikileaks, there is one called "Talking Points on Recogntion [sic] of Jewish State."51 In this paper a Palestinian Authority spokesperson details the reasons for not accepting Israel as a Jewish state. Among them:
"Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination ... Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people's claim to all of Historic Palestine."52
They seek to steal Jewish history from the Jews because if the Jews are allowed to possess their history then their claim to "historic Palestine" is indisputable. So precisely because the Jews do have that history, and hence that claim, the PA leadership must find some way to take it from them.
And since this leadership wants the entire Land of Israel, what they call "historic Palestine," to be the site of a future Palestinian state, a Judenrein state, they must not only steal Israel's history from the Jews, they must also appropriate it to themselves by foisting upon an all too credulous world the transparent lies of an ancient "Palestinian" presence — a paradise lost to the machinations of by nefarious Jews.
The entire endeavor to steal Israel's history and replace it with the fiction of a Palestinian nation of high antiquity in "historic Palestine" is war by other means. And as in all wars, the first casualty is the truth.
Endnotes
1 http://www.yale.edu/ycsd/press/palazzi.html, Yale University, Sheikh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi, the Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Association, spoke on the topic of "Islam and Democracy -- Political Theory in the Qur'an and Islamic Tradition," March 4, 2003.
2 Besser, James, "Obama administration hits Palestinian Authority for Temple Mount 'Study', The Jewish Week, Nov. 30, 2010, http:// www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political_insider/obama_administration_hits_palestinian_authority_temple_mount_study; and cf. also Ami-El, Mark, "The Destruction of the Temple Mount Antiquities," Jerusalem Viewpoints, 1 August, 2003, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp483.htm.
3 Routledge, London, 1996, Keith W. Whitelam, chair, Biblical Studies Department, Sheffield University (UK).
4 For demographic studies substantiating this assertion, cf. Justin McCarthy, Population of Palestine; and Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial.
5 McCarthy, op. cit supra, note #5.6 Syrkin, Marie, "Palestinian Nationalism: Its Development and Goal," in Curtis, Michael, Neyer, Joseph, Waxman, Chaim, and Pollack, Allen, The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction
Books, 1975), p. 200 ff.
7 Ibid, supra note 7, p. 201.8 Dorsey, James, Wij zijn alleen Palestijn om politieke reden, Trouw,
31 March 1977; not available on line but referenced frequently on line at, inter alia:
http://www.think-israel.org/hertz.ersatzpeople.html; http://www.youtube.com/user/blessings18;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuheir_Mohsen; http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?1297324-PLO-executive-committee-member-Zahir-Muhseinquot-The-Palestinian-people-does-not-exist-quot and http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/18157 .
9 such as, but not limited to, the Encyclopaedia Britannica , the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, and other major encyclopedias from the early 20th century on. There are other non-Israelite peoples mentioned very briefly in the Jewish Scriptures, but these nine are the ones best documented and most thoroughly researched by scholars since the mid-19th century.
10http://www.jstor.org/ (and cf. also http://about.jstor.org/). JSTOR is a not — for — profit on-line service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of scholarly content in a trusted digital archive of over one thousand academic journals and other scholarly sources. It enables access to and preservation of scholarly books and articles in collaboration with the academic community. Each non-Israelite nation mentioned above has been the beneficiary of hundreds, and in some cases thousands, or scholarly articles, monographs, and in some cases entire books. These scholarly works can be accessed via the urls below, but may require registration with JSTOR for a fee.
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=canaanites&gw=jtx&prq=philistines&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=philistines&acc=off&wc=on;
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=edomites&g w=jtx&prq=edomites&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on; http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=ammonites+in+a ncient+near+east&gw=jtx&prq=ancient+ammonites+in+canaan&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=amorites&gw=jt x&prq=arameans&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=arameans&gw=j tx&prq=ammonites+in+ancient+near+east&Search=Search&hp=25 &wc=on;
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicResults?hp=25&la=&wc=on&ac c=off&gw=jtx&jcpsi=1&artsi=1&Query=amalekites&sbq=amalekit es&prq=amorites&si=26&jtxsi=26;
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=jebusites&gw=jt x&prq=amalekites&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on.
11 These too can be sources of hundreds of articles on the history, language and culture of these non-Israelite peoples. Go to http://www.hds.harvard.edu/ faculty-research/research-publications/harvard-theological-review and http:// www.asor.org/pubs/basor/basor.html for more details.
12 Among the more highly regarded of full-sized texts on these peoples, see:
For Canaanites: Redford, Donald B. (1993), Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, (Princeton University Press); and Tubb, Jonathan N., Canaanites, (Oklahoma) 1998.
For Philistines: Dothan, Trude Krakauer (1982), The Philistines and Their Material Culture. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press; Idem & Dothan, Moshe (1992), People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company; Idem & Gitin, Seymour, Mazar, Amihai, Stern, Ephraim (1998), Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BC. Jerusalem, Israel: Israel Exploration Society; Ehrlich, Carl S. (1996), The Philistines in Transition: A History from ca. 1000-730 BC. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill; Finkelstein, Israel (December 2002), "The Philistines in the Bible: A Late-Monarchic Perspective". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27 (2): 131 — 167; http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=moabites&gw=jt x&prq=moabites&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;
Killebrew, Ann E. (2005), Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel, 1300-1100 B.C.E.. Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature; and Oren, Eliezer D. (2000), The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment (University Museum Monograph 108). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania and Yasur-Landau, Assaf (2010), The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
For Moabites: Routledge, Bruce. 'Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity, Archaeology,' 2004; Bienkowski, Piotr (ed.) Early Edom and Moab: The Beginning of the Iron Age in Southern Jordan (1992); and Dearman, Andrew (ed.) Studies in the Mesha inscription and Moab (1989).
For Edomites: Piotr Bienkowski, "New Evidence on Edom in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods", in John Andrew Dearman, Matt Patrick Graham, (eds.), The land that I will show you: essays on the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East in honour of J. Maxwell Miller, (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 198ff. For Amorites: Giorgio Bucellati, "Ebla and the Amorites", Eblaitica 3 (1992):83-104; and Alfred Haldar, Who Were the Amorites (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971).
For Ammonites: Cohen, D., (ed.) (1988). "Les Langues Chamitosemitiques". Les langues dans le monde ancien et modern, part 3. Paris: CNRS. Aufrecht, WE (1989), A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions; Lehmann, Ulrich and Lettau, Janine, The Ammonites: Their life and their world (1981); and MacDonald, Burton & Younker, Ran- dall W., (1999), Ancient Ammon. BRILL, Netherlands.
For Midianites: Clines, David and Sawyer, John, eds. "Midian, Moab and Edom: The History and Archaeology of Late Bronze and Iron Age Jordan and North-West Arabia". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series, No. 24. Sheffield Academic Press, 1983.
For Arameans: Beyer, Klaus (1986). "The Aramaic language: its distribution and subdivisions," (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht); Lipiński, Edward (2000). The Aramaeans: their ancient history, culture, religion, Peeters Publishers, Netherlands; Moscati, S., 'The Aramaean Ahlamû', FSS, IV (1959); and the Tel Halaf excavation series: M. Freiherr Von Oppenheim, Der Tell Halaf, Leipzig, 1931 pp. 71 — 198; M. Freiherr Von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf, III, Die Bauwerke, Berlin, 1950; A. Moortgat, Tell Halaf IV, Die Bildwerke, Berlin, 1955; B. Hrouda, Tell Halaf IV, Die Kleinfunde aus historischer Zeit, Berlin, 1962.
For Amalekites: Tanner, Hans Andreas, "Amalek: Der Fiend Israels und der Fiend Jahwes," in Dietrich, Walter, Biblische Enzyklopaedie, "The Early Monarchy in Israel: The Tenth Century," Zurich, 2007.
13 Unless otherwise noted, the references below can be found in Pritchard, James B., & Fleming, Daniel E., The Ancient Near East: an Anthology of Texts and Pictures, 2010.
14 Yellin, Avi, Arutz Sheva News, "King David Era Pottery Shard Supports Biblical Narrative," 1/8/2010, website@israelnationalnews. com
15 Aharoni, Yohanan, The Arad Inscriptions, 1981, University of Virginia: Israel Exploration Society.
16 cf. Rocker, Simon, "What the Koran says about the Land of Israel," The Jewish Chronicle on Line, March 19, 2009, http://www. thejc.com/judaism/judaism-features/what-koran-says-about-landisrael for a full discussion of this issue with reference to medieval Muslim commentators.
17cf.http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=4&x_ article=1843.
18 Author's addendum: For a fully detailed and annotated critique of Abu el-Haj's attempt to discredit Israeli archaeology, see this writer's lengthy article, "Facts on the Ground — Nadia Abu el-Haj's New Salvo in the Arab Propaganda War against Israel," http://www. campus-watch.org/article/id/3890, Middle East studies in the News; and see also ibid in Solomonia Blog, August 15, 2007, http://www. solomonia.com/blog/archive/2007/08/david-meirlevy-facts-on-theground-nadia/http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3890. Abu el-Haj's seemingly endless errors of fact and apparently intentional fictionalization of Israeli archaeology's acquisition and interpretation of evidence are far too numerous to recount here.
19Cf.http://www.klinebooks.com/cgi-bin/kline/24816 for extant copies, and http://www.bibleplaces.com/guide.pdf for the on-line original text.
20 Al-Hayat Al-Jadid
a, August 12, 2000, Translation: MEMRI; and http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2007/11/issues-in-peace-process.html for a reference to his 2002 flippant suggestion that perhaps the Temple was in Yemen.
21 Ross, Dennis, The Missing Peace: the Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, August, 2004; and Gold, Dore, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City. Regnery Publishing, 2002
22 Kay, Jonathan, National Post (Canada), July 19, 2011, "Once again, the Jewish Question,"http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Onc e+again+Jewish+question/5122436/story.html .
23 Davila, James R., "Temple Mount Watch: The BBC is taking Jewish-Temple denial in Palestinian circles rather more seriously than it deserves," Paleojudaica.com, June 2, 2009.
24 Kul Al-Arab (Israel), August 25, 2000; Translation: MEMRI: quoted in CAMERA, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_ issue=4&x_article=1843.
25 Sauwt Falastin (Voice of Palestine) Radio Station, July 26, 2000, Al-Ayyam, July 27, 2000.
26 Die Welt, January 17, 2001, quoted in CAMERA, Hollander, Ricki, "Celebrating Jerusalem amid Denial of Jewish Rights," May 12, 2010, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_ issue=4&x_article=1843; and for his earlier pronouncements of the same opinions, cf. also Al Ayyam, Nov. 22, 1997; and Kul Al-Arab, August 18, 2000.
27 Ibid, note #29, Die Welt.28http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Dahari_letter.shtml,"The WAC Accusation of Israeli Destruction of Archaeological Sites," Jan 7 2004; and cf. also http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090819/full/ news.2009.835.html, "Uproar over Palestinian Archaeology Congress" for more on the debate over these issues.
Stolen History: How the Palestinians and Their Allies Attack Israel's Right to Exist by Erasing Its Past Page 3