Forward.com

To see the scrolls up close was a remarkable experience, the presentation is world class, befitting an instituion such as the ROM. Kudos to the shows' organizers, Bravo to all.

"We’ll end up in the Western Hemisphere with just tepees.” Mr. Neustein's comment, completely on point, goes awry at the end. There's no need to disparage native people's art in favor of "old world" art.

The 1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property makes reference not only to the territorial provenience of cultural properties but also the cultural provenience of such properties. It would be an oversimplification to say that territorial claims in the West Bank have yet to be resolved, however, the 1994 Israel—Jordan Treaty of Peace would seem to have tacitly ratified transferring responsibility for the Scrolls from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The cultural provenience of the Scrolls is more clear cut. It is doubtful that a cogent argument could presented that manuscripts written by Jewish scribes, many in Hebrew, containing the TaNaKH, Jewish pseudepigraphical and sectarian texts are part of the Palestinian people’s cultural heritage. Conversely, Israel’s cultural claims are self-evident.

The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property also addresses the preservation of cultural properties. The record of Waqf that administrates the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif on this count has been less than stellar under the Palestinian Authority. This is sufficient to cast grave concern over curation of the Scrolls by the PA.

This has nothing to do with the ownership of the scrolls. This is a blatant attempt at identity theft. The Palestinians want to appropriate the history, culture and mantle of ancient Israel. They want to portray themselves as the new Jews, just as antisemitic early Church fathers tried to portray themselves as the new Israel. To the Palestinians-keep your bloody hands off our culture and history. Attempt to create your own, with something more positive than suicide bombers and qassam missiles, which to date are your only accomplishments.

Perhaps all concerned should read the documents instead of fighting over them ... just a thought.

"Words That Changed the World"

I am disappointed that the Forward article does not contain some synopsis of the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments exibited in Canada, because the Judaic content of the scrolls would likely impact discussion of the appropriateness of the Palestinian objections.

Khaleej Times op-ed columnist Karin Friedemann explains the basic issues and violations associated with the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in Khaleej Times: Israel Steals Palestinian Heritage, History

The article URL is http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2009/05/khaleejtimes-israel-steals-palestinian.html .

Well, let's see...The Dead Sea Scrolls were originally penned in territory that was at the time part of the Roman Empire. As such, the Palestinians have no claim to property that was from this Jewish province of the Empire. Given their logic, perhaps the scrolls should be turned over to Italy!

Joachim Martillo's wife, Karin Friedemann, together with Joachim, expend their energies attacking Zionism. Below is a quote about how she justifies Palestinian claims over the Dead Sea Scrolls.

"The Palestinians’ ancestors created the Hasmonean Kingdom, composed the Hebrew Bible, followed Jesus, wrote the New Testament, compiled the Mishnah, and redacted the Jerusalem Talmud. The Palestinian people constitute the living link to the earliest beginnings of the heritage from the Torah and Gospel.

Zionists are almost pitiable, for they are so ashamed of their own history that they have usurped one belonging to another people. When the Israeli government sends the Dead Sea Scrolls to Canada, by its own law Canada must turn them over to their rightful owners — the Palestinian people."

In other words, the latest in Palestinian warfare against Israel is that the Jews are not really Jewish and the Palestinians really are Jewish, therefore the Jews have no claim to Israel but the Palestinians, the "real" Jews, do.

The good thing about Karin's theory is that it acknowledges that the people who "created the Hasmonean Kingdom, composed the Hebrew Bible, compiled the Mishnah, and redacted the Jerusalem Talmud" have an inherent right to Israel. It's nice to see Joachim and Karin line up behind Zionism.

Joachim Martillo is an Internet handle for a Nazi/Muslim activist. His name belongs on spam filters everywhere, as well as several other names he uses.

Joachim Martillo "Khaleej Times op-ed columnist Karin Friedemann explains the basic issues and violations associated with the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in Khaleej Times: Israel Steals Palestinian Heritage, History"

Bullshit.

There was no Palestinian history in 1949. There was an Arab history of which the people living in Jordan,(West Bank), Egypt (Gaza) were a part.

Besdies Joachim is a nazi antsemite who has been posting on Jewish website antisemitic comments.

joachim and his wife karin are a modern day josef goebbels and wife - and I hope they meet the same fate as little joe.

When it comes to evidence of Jewish presence in Jerusalem, Palestinians are shown up for their huge lies they continue to feed their own people and the world, that Jews have very little history here. Another example is how they have hid and destroyed artifacts of Jewish nature found on the Temple Mount.

I saw the exhibit when it was in Fort Lauderdale and it was wonderful. I cannot remember athing that had anything to do with the Palestinians. I remember allot of Jewish objects, even a stone with a description of the place to blow the shofar at the Temple.

This is just another sad attempt for legitimacy by some scoundrels.

Nice one, Char! Yasher koakh!

Arafat, like all Palestinian leaders, declared many times that Jews never inhabited Palestine. Consequently, Israel has no right to exist. So who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls ?

It is almost certain that an overwhelming majority of those alive today whose ancestors include the Hebrews/Jews of what is now Israel/Palestine have no identification with Judaism or Jewishness. Some of them do have such identification, even if most of their genetic material comes from peoples converted to Judaism outside of Palestine.

Most of the descendants of the Jews who stayed in Palestine over the millennia converted to Christianity and/or Islam and mixed with other peoples who lived in or passed through the area.

Would Zionists want to base their test for Jewishness on DNA analysis? I doubt it! Would they want to base it on adherence to the religious ideas of the Jews of Roman and pre-Roman times? If they did, they would find that most Christian and Muslim Palestinians would get a far higher score on such a test than the mostly-atheist founders of Zionism and the secular Jews of present-day Israel.

What it boils down to is that Zionism was and is a white/European project to colonize a part of the non-European world and displace the population that was long-established there. But I'm sure you could find better refutations of Zionism in the archives of the Forward itself from its years as a socialist, anti-Zionist Bundist paper.

The scrolls were taken from the part of Jerusalem that was part of Jordan in 1967. Jordan attacked Israel and attempted to kill the Jews. Israel defended themselves and defeated the Jordanians. If the Palestinians have a complaint, let them take it up with the Jordanians.

Remember Jordan was part of the original Palestine under the British Mandate . Let the Palestinians go back to Jordan which is really the Arab part of Palestine,

No Aaron Aarons, you are wrong.

"Would Zionists want to base their test for Jewishness on DNA analysis? I doubt it!"

Good point, since Judaism isn't a race. It's a religion. Second, I suspect you're purposely ignoring Jews who lived in Arab and Muslim lands for millenia.

"Would they want to base it on adherence to the religious ideas of the Jews of Roman and pre-Roman times? If they did, they would find that most Christian and Muslim Palestinians would get a far higher score on such a test than the mostly-atheist founders of Zionism and the secular Jews of present-day Israel."

Actually, that's pretty debatable. First of all, the atheist founders of Israel spoke the same language as the Jews of Roman and pre-Roman times. Hebrew is the main language in the Scrolls. Christians and Muslim Palestinians don't. Second, the "religious ideas" of the Dead Sea Scrolls evolved into rabbinic Judaism as well as Christianity and elements of both are found in Islam. All those mikvehs they found at Qumran, for example, speak to Judaism not to Islam and despite the importance of baptism in Christianity, it is not a purefying mechanism like a mikveh is in Judaism. The Scrolls are the product of Roman and pre-Roman times and the biblical books they contain are also closer to Judaism than to Christianity or Islam, in content, in language and in their importance over the past 2000 years. The non-biblical books tend to be mostly explanations of the biblical books so that doesn't pass muster with your statement either.

Bottom line, these are Jewish scrolls representative of Jewish culture at an early stage of the Judaism we have now.

Aaron Aarons also says, "What it boils down to is that Zionism was and is a white/European project to colonize a part of the non-European world and displace the population that was long-established there."

No, Zionism was and is a return of the Jewish people to their native homeland after a couple of thousand years when they were in the diaspora or remained in small numbers in Israel. It was a democratic, nationalist movement that sought to fairly return a people to their national home and to do so without depriving the local inhabitants of their rights or even their homes. That's why those early "atheist" Zionists you falsely disparage in the other paragraph were willing to pay handsomely to buy land in Palestine and wrote at length about making the new Jewish home into a democratic one. Even Jabotinsky was a proponent of democracy.

And just to remind you again, Aaron Aarons, over half of the Jewish population of Israel is Mizrachi or Eastern Jews who came from countries that were colonized not colonizers.

Char: "First of all, the atheist founders of Israel spoke the same language as the Jews of Roman and pre-Roman times. Hebrew is the main language in the Scrolls. Christians and Muslim Palestinians don't."

Actually, the Jews of Roman times spoke mainly Aramaic and Greek. They probably used Hebrew less than medieval Christians used Latin. And the atheist founders of Zionism spoke mainly Yiddish, along with German and/or one of the Slavic languages. If they learned Hebrew, it was a political choice, just as learning Gaelic is a political choice among some Irish nationalists (who don't, however, propose to drive English-speaking Irish people out of their country). Arabic, as spoken in Palestine, is much closer to ancient Hebrew and Aramaic than either is to Yiddish or any other Indo-European language. (Yiddish uses Hebrew characters -- unsurprising since most of the literate Jews were probably religious students -- and contains many Hebrew word, but it is still a Germanic language in its syntax, morphology, and most other linguistic aspects.)

While the majority of Jews in Israel/Palestine today are Arab Jews (Mizrahim), most of whom were transformed into self-hating Arabs in order to be accepted in Ashkenzai-ruled Israel, they had almost no part in the founding of the state or the expulsion of the non-Jewish Arabs in 1948.

I'm not going to get into refuting the lies about the "democratic" intentions of the founders of Israel. Israeli historians like Sternhell and Pappe have done a good job of that already.

I'd love to write more, but I have other things to get done inside and outside of Cyberia.

It is almost certain that an overwhelming majority of those alive today whose ancestors include the Hebrews/Jews of what is now Israel/Palestine have no identification with Judaism or Jewishness. Some of them do have such identification, even if most of their genetic material comes from peoples converted to Judaism outside of Palestine.

Most of the descendants of the Jews who stayed in Palestine over the millennia converted to Christianity and/or Islam and mixed with other peoples who lived in or passed through the area.

Would Zionists want to base their test for Jewishness on DNA analysis? I doubt it! Would they want to base it on adherence to the religious ideas of the Jews of Roman and pre-Roman times? If they did, they would find that most Christian and Muslim Palestinians would get a far higher score on such a test than the mostly-atheist founders of Zionism and the secular Jews of present-day Israel.

What it boils down to is that Zionism was and is a white/European project to colonize a part of the non-European world and displace the population that was long-established there. But I'm sure you could find better refutations of Zionism in the archives of the Forward itself from its years as a socialist, anti-Zionist Bundist paper.

Apologies for the accidental re-send of my earlier comment. I hope it can be deleted, along with this note.

"I'd love to write more, but I have other things to get done inside and outside of Cyberia."

That's a good clue how seriously to take your mixed-up pseudo-history. You probably live in your mom's basement and LARP in your spare time. Playing word games with DNA and colonialism and Yiddish and whatever else you want to throw in, shows that you have no idea how Jewishness works. I have been reading stuff like yours on comment forums for years and I always find it hilarious that people like you think DNA is some kind of trump card. I have never met a Jewishly-involved Jew who cared about DNA. Seriously.

There is an unbroken continuity of Judaism as a religion and Jews as a people in Israel for 3000 years. It has mutated considerably throughout that time but one of the interesting things about Judaism is how outmoded parts of the enterprise get carried forward anyway. For example, after the Temple was destroyed all the Temple practices were moot, but instead of letting the religion die or completely changing it, our sages recast the Temple sacrifices as home and synagogue based prayer services and rituals performed by families and/or local prayer leaders. The Mishna was written to describe the details of the outmoded services and to discuss how to carry forward their essential meaning to enable Judaism to keep going. If our holy scriptures and prayers contain passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls, how can you say they have no relation to each other?

As for "white-European colonial project", Jews were never thought of as European, I mean, that was Hitler's whole point right? Everyone knew Jews were from Palestine which had been Israel. No one doubted that for 2000 years. As someone said: When we were in Europe, they kept telling us we don't belong there, go back to Palestine. Now they tell us, you don't belong in the Middle East, go back to Europe!

But anyway, "Aaron", you know all this. Your goal is the same as the instigators of this ridiculous claim about the Dead Sea Scrolls, to keep dripping the water of revisionist history in hopes that it will wear away truth. I am mildly curious what is in it for you? I mean, assuming you are a Palestinian sympathizer, how does this pathetic attempt to rewrite history make their lives better? If I were an educated Palestinian I would be horribly embarrassed that my people were wasting their time making laughingstocks of themselves on an international stage.

Aaron Aarons wisdom:

"What it boils down to is that Zionism was and is a white/European project to colonize a part of the non-European world and displace the population that was long-established there."

This is crap Aron Arons:

Among the ealry Zionists were many Sphardim like Abraham B, Yehoshua as well as Mizrachi Jews from Yemen and elsewhere.

Moreover Israel is close to 50% Mizrachi and Sphardi today. Most Israelis are the offsprings of intermarriages between Ashkenazi and non Ashkenazi Jews.

You are just recycling anti-Zionist talking points dear to the left the very same left that supported the Bolshevik massacres of Jews in Europe.

You are a piece of work Aarons or whatever your name is.

Ashkenazy Jews were murdered in Europe by the millions because they were not white and here the fool "Aarons" says that they were and are "white colonizers."

The man is malicious or is he just ignorant?

Damn right, Toby. I am an Ashkenazi Jew and no one would accuse me of being "white."

The idea that Israel is a colonial State is old hat. It's also a leftist lie.

If you are going to call Jews living in Israel imperialists what would you call the 30 million Arabs living in Europe? Tourists?

The ultra right wing in Europe has already started to call them "settlers and colonialists." The borrowed the language from the left.

This isn't the first time. They also borrowed the idea of holocaust denial from the left.

Shame on all you leftists antisemites.

No, no, no, no. What Aaron Aarons is trying to say is that Zionism is merely part of an ancient and nefarious plot so subtle that the Arabs —a people long known for their subtly— can’t figure it out. That’s right, the centuries of European anti-Semitism were all part of a clever ruse to disguise white Europe’s actual intentions to colonize the Middle East. When Constantine I made Christianity the state religion of Rome and instituted numerous anti-Jewish laws —as if it were easy to be Jewish under Rome before— that was part of the plot. Jews found tolerance in Visigoth Spain because the Visigoth rulers were Arian Christians and had little antipathy toward Jews. But in the 500s, the Visigoths converted to Roman Catholicism and began persecuting the Jews as part of the secret program of European colonization of the Middle East. The Crusades were the first physical incursion of Europeans into their target. Along the way, crusaders slaughtered Jews in Europe and the Levant in order to throw off Arab and Turkish suspicions. And of course we all know Hitler’s slaughter of millions of Jews. It was all to create world sympathy for the Zionist shock troops that Europe had prepared to colonize Palestine, the Palestine that had been named by Hadrian when he tried to erase Jewish presence in the land by renaming it and then expelling the Jews. No, wait a minute... that doesn’t make sense. Why would Hadrian expel the Jews when they were going to colonize the Levant for Europe? No, sorry, my mistake. Aaron Aarons —if that is his real name— is full of it, i.e., malice or ignorance. Take your pick, he prob’ly has plenty of both.

Aaron Aarons - The entire American continent is a white-European colonial project that has displaced and destroyed the native population that was long established there. Assuming that you live there (in the USA), I understand that you don't really object to such colonial projects. Moreover, it would seem obvious (since you live in a white-European colonial project that displaced the native population) that the USA, founded out of such an event, is nevertheless legitimate and has a right to exist on her stolen land. Interesting, English is a foreign European language, without any connection to any native language in North America - and that doesn't seem to bother you at all. Only the foreign character of Yiddish vis-a-vis Arabic is worthy of mention. Now, in your view of history, Israel is also a colonial project (it isn't - but we'll go along with you), and our language heritage is out of place in the Middle East. Why does this bother you? Could it possibly be that the settlement of North America by foreigners is legitimate, but someone else's "project" is illegitimate? No. The real answer is that you are not at all concerned about colonialism. You are concerned only with Israel. You think she shouldn't exist. The colonialism nonsense is just an attempt to justify an opinion that was formulated beforehand. Since the USA is not on your agenda for disqualification, her real colonial background an violent history are irrelevant and didn't come to mind.

I've never heard of DNA testing being necessary in political discourse. The legitimacy of Israel is a fact of life. She is one of the members of the UN, just like Portugal or Tunisia. The fact that you attach importance to DNA is only an indication of a racist point of view. Strange that a Jew has a racist point of view only about his fellow Jews.

[Apologies for the solid block of text above. I never remember how many returns it takes to format a paragraph on this editor. I hope the below is easier to read.]

To return to the Dead Sea Scrolls and language: The Scrolls are in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, depending on the text. When the Scrolls were compiled, during the late Second Temple Period, Aramaic was the day-to-day language of Israel. Jews living in more cosmopolitan cities would have also spoken Greek, as would others whose livelihood depended on contact with the Hellenistic world. Hebrew was still used in religious contexts, e.g., reading the Torah and Temple ritual. Altho’ Aramaic was the lingua franca of the region, numerous dialects developed, including a subset referred to as Judeo-Aramaic. Judeo-Aramaic of the Second Temple Period is marked by vocabulary taken from Hebrew to describe Jewish concepts, grammatical structures adapted from Hebrew, high frequency of grammatical structures that are common to Hebrew and Aramaic, and spellings [such as using ה instead of the usual א to mark a final long /a/].

The Scrolls were hidden around the time of destruction of the Second Temple, 70 C.E., and a new period of Jewish literature began, the Talmud. The Talmud was composed in varying amounts of Hebrew and Aramaic, depending whether it is the Yerushalmi or Bavli edition. The compilation of the Talmud, which was completed ca 500 CE, indicates that Hebrew and Aramaic continued among the Jews as languages for discussion and composition.

The Torah and Talmud continued through the Middle Ages [and continues today] as texts for study and commentary, which necessitated literacy in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Middle Ages was also marked by a re-blooming of Hebrew poetry. I don’t want to suggest that average medieval Jews were conversing in the streets in Hebrew [or Aramaic] but they certainly heard it on a weekly basis, studied it if they were fortunate, appreciated and identified with the loshen kodesh. As the Diaspora spread further from the Mediterranean basin, Jews adopted the languages of the peoples they found themselves living among, developing new Jewish dialects, some of which —despite lacking an army or navy— became languages in their own right. Most of these did not belong to the Semitic language family, nevertheless Jews adapted the Alef Bet to write them. Yiddish is an excellent example for this discussion: 1) because of the origin of the FORWARD, 2) because Yiddish is the most well-known of all the Jewish languages outside the Semitic language group, and 3) among those whose deny the legitimacy of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim have for some reason acquired special contempt. The percentage of Yiddish vocabulary derived from Hebrew is estimated to be at least 10 percent. Yiddish has "dual spelling" rules: words of Hebrew origin —including personal names— are spelled as in Hebrew; words of German, Slavic, Turkish, English and other non-Semitic origins are spelled using י ,ו ,א, and ע to designate vowels. A small industry developed to produce translations and paraphrases of Hebrew and Aramaic [mostly religious] texts for those who could not read the original [mostly women]. Even if a Yiddish-speaking Jew could not converse in Hebrew, Hebrew remained a close and constant presence in Yiddish.

Literary use of Hebrew was revived in the modern period beginning with the Haskalah. Use of Hebrew as a everyday language had largely ceased, because secular use was considered unseemly for the loshen kodesh or downright blasphemous. When in the 19th and 20th centuries Hebrew was revived through the efforts of Jews like ben Yehuda and Ahad ha’Am, it was not so much reviving a dead language as reconstructing a secular vocabulary for daily life and promoting a more heymish usage rather than the high style of psalms and liturgy.

The point of this essay is that the Jewish people have maintained a continuous, evolving connection with the Hebrew language unlike any other people. Hebrew is part of our Jewish heritage as are המגילות הגנוזות, the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Aron Arons is another name for Joachim Martillo who after he had been outed as a nazi is poting on different websites under assumed names.

The great majority of the Scrolls are in Hebrew.

Is there anybody here who has a better library of literature from that era who can dispute that the main language was Hebrew? The Dead Sea Scrolls offer tangible evidence that is more comprehensive than anything else we have to teach us which languages were in use at the time.

As for Aarons' other remarks, all I can say is, Ilan Pappe?!

Aaron Aarons - Well, of course, you are a defender and a supporter of the country that you were born in. You're part of the economy, part of its society. It's simply not true that you are working for its demise (if you were, they would probably put you in jail). You surely are not working on the removal of the population that has taken over the continent and on the restoration of its resources to its rightful owners. You're not even removing yourself back to Poland. Obviously, you are not reaching deep into your pockets to compensate the natives for their suffering and impoverishment. You accept reality as it is today - enjoying the high standard of living that the USA provides you - merely expressing a meaningless verbal protest about the evils of colonialism. Okay, we've heard your empty words.

Why would an extreme person like you be busy at all with Israel? A whole continent has been stolen and its population reduced to the reservations, and you are busy with the "modern Jewish invasion" into a small land the size of a postage stamp? Why would you even care about such a small issue and the DNA of the "invaders"? Are you for real?

Here's the real issue, Aaron Aarons. You are uncomfortable with Jewish identity. There seem to be a few Jews who find it difficult to regard their own group as normal and good people. I don't know why. Any other group of people in the world would take only pride in having such an ancient and gripping history of exile and return - with such creativity and with such a positive influence on mankind. Most Jews, obviously, take pride in themselves. It's very justified, and it's quite normal as well. Perhaps, centuries of anti-Jewish propaganda have rubbed off on a certain percentage of Jews who seem to believe that there is indeed something wrong with us. How strange.

"Since I was old enough to think politically, I have worked for the defeat of the U.S. and its imperialist allies (including Israel) in every war they have been involved in. I have also defended the right of people from anywhere in the world -- especially the descendants of indigenous people born on the other side of the artificial border, to come here without the permission of the heirs of the European conquerors. And I advocate the expulsion of U.S. military forces and U.S. (and other) imperialist plunderers from everywhere in the world by any means necessary."

Had you done any of this in the open you'd be in jail. You are a traitor Arons or whatever your name is. Like the man before me said, be consistent why don't ytou remove your self from this country and give your home and posessions to some deserving "native American."

You are a fraud who just talks BIG on insignificant internet forums.

I'd like to see you do something in person.

Aaaron:

"Since I was old enough to think politically, I have worked for the defeat of the U.S. and its imperialist allies (including Israel) in every war they have been involved in. I have also defended the right of people from anywhere in the world -- especially the descendants of indigenous people born on the other side of the artificial border, to come here without the permission of the heirs of the European conquerors. And I advocate the expulsion of U.S. military forces and U.S. (and other) imperialist plunderers from everywhere in the world by any means necessary."

You need to do more than that. You need to remove yourself to the European country from which your family came from. Then when you get to Europe you and millions of Arabs who are colonizing Europe need to be sent back to the Middle East from which your ancestors came from.

The Arabs living outside Arabia need to go back to their ancestral country which they imperialized.

Every one go back to the place your ancestor came from

At least the Zionists know that already and have moved back there before they are chased out in the name of antiimperialism.

Aaron Aarons—

1. Okay, you're not Joachim Martillo, you’re some guy who feels that Berkeley’s Pacifica station is not far enough to the left. You might also have played a panhandler in a 1997 Joe Mantegna vehicle _Facedown_. You apparently can communicate in Spanish but your knowledge of Hebrew and English is faulty enough that you suggest Joachim = Jack. You also claim your following paragraph will also distinguish you from the real Joachim Martillo....

2. Nope. Your paragraph 2 does nothing to distinguish your viewpoint from that of Martillo’s. However, as x peacenik and Ben Levi have noted, your paragraph 2 is treasonous. Not protest or reasonable criticism of the US government, but treason. But don’t worry, as the big Jews that overtly and secretly run the US government all prob’ly read the FORWARD —with its socialist labor background and all— you can look forward to the black helicopters landing in your front yard any day now. That is, unless you already gave your front yard back to the Huichin people. Also clever as “the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa” is, it plays havoc with your argument in paragraph 4.

3. Your defense of your motives regarding DNA is disingenuous, and your interpretation of the DNA is wrong. DNA studies of modern Jewish populations show descent from populations originating in the Middle East. Similarities to and differences from other Middle Eastern populations indicate that neighboring non-Jewish [Arab] populations are as much the product of population flow, e.g., immigration, invasion, as are Jews.

The motivation of your mention of religious similarities and differences is similarly suspect, your reasoning being reminiscent of the British Israelites or Christian Identity groups. You completely lack understanding of Jewish peoplehood. We’re not a religion, we’re not a race, we’re a TRIBE. Judaism is our tribal religion and we’re descended from Abraham just as assuredly as the Hopi climbed out of the sipapu into this world. And Israel is our tribal homeland.

4. If Jews in the US are “white,” this hasn’t always been the case [for example, see Karen Brodkin’s _How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America_ 1999]. Besides, if this is “the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa” since when has the Klan let Jews in? I’ve read the Klan has been making some strange bedfellows to combat the “immigration threat,” but Jews!?

Sure, some of us are wealthy and powerful, by dint of talent, hard work, and just plain dumb luck. But to suggest as you do that Jews deserve hostility and prejudice because some of us are rich and powerful is anti-Semitism plain and simple. To imply that “the Jews” are semi-secretly controlling the government and not-so-secretly controlling finance is classic anti-Semitic rhetoric. What happened that you missed poisoning the wells?

5. Your analysis of 19th and 20th century Zionism provides an insight to the meaning of _ignorance_: do you really not know, or do you choose to ignore? Certainly Britain and other European powers were playing their imperial games in the Middle East. [For that matter, the Ottoman Turks were outsiders to the Levant and the Arab Revolt ca WWI was just as much aimed at the Ottoman Empire.] But to throw Zionism in with European imperialism is a shallow and self-deluded view of history. Of course the Zionist enterprise was presented as a bulwark against “Eastern barbarism.” It would’ve hardly advanced the Zionist case to the British if they promoted settlement by oriental Jews from Muslim lands, and caftan wearing Jews from the Russian Empire.

The "suppression" of the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt [at this time there was no Palestinian national identity] was hardly a joint Zionist-British enterprise. As the British were putting down the revolt, they were also restricting Jewish immigration to the yishuv. The “stockade and watchtower” architecture of this period was as much defense against the British as the Palestinian Arabs.

Comparison of maps generated by the British and by Zionists contradict any suggestion that Zionism was a British-Jewish imperial machination, The Jewish National Home described by the 1917 Balfour Declaration extended well into the Transjordan. In 1919, the Zionist Executive Committee claimed a territory that was bounded on the east by the Hejaz Railway and extended northward to a line between Damascus and Tyre, somewhat less than half of the Jewish National Home. In 1922, the British divide the previous Jewish National Home into the Transjordan Emirate in the east, and Mandatory Palestine, roughly equivalent to post-1967 Israel including Gaza and the West Bank. From the 1937 Peel Commission to the 1946 Morison-Grady plan, the British partitioned the Mandate into any ever smaller Jewish territory along the north coast to Lake Kinneret and exanding British territory. Jews and Arabs both lost land to the British, Jews lost much of the area bordering Lebanon to the Arabs. In 1947 the Jewish Agency proposes a partition that transfers the entire Mediterranean coastal plain, Galilee and the west bank of the Kinneret to Jewish control, but leaves a large, contiguous territory including Hebron and Nablus to the Palestinian Arabs, and makes greater Jerusalem an international territory. This is hardly the record of coordination between the British and the Zionists. In 1947 the British gave their Palestinian problem to the UN, resulting in the November 1947 UNSCOP partition, a crazy quilt that suggests Zionism’s new Soviet and American patrons prob’ly were not considering the presence of a Jewish state in the Levant as a bulwark to their territorial interests.

Wow you guys really go on at each other.By the time I scrolled and read your comments, I had completely forgotten about the Scrolls. We only go on like that in England when we are playing Scotland at football, or the convicts at cricket!! oops! Getting back to the scrolls, I'm sure you would all love your grandchildren to see those wonderful scrolls, even if it turns out they were written by John Lennon. They should be kept in a safe country that has little chance of being nuked. Having read some translations of the scrolls I can say with certainty that JOHN LENNON did not write them because he was not Jewish or Greek ect. ect. ect. JUST KEEP THEM SAFE. PLEASE.

Convicts... heh, heh.

As for John Lennon z"l, some of the stuff in the scrolls is pretty weird. If John used the Tibetan Book of the Dead as inspiration for “Tomorrow Never Knows,” I’m reasonably certain if he had lived to see the publication of _A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls_ he would have incorporated the Scrolls into his lyrics. Now that I think of it, “Mind Games” suggests John was dipping into Kabbalah long before Madonna.

Safe curation of the Scrolls is a must, of course. I hear the central deserts of Australia are unlikely to be nuked. ; )

The real Joachim Martillo comments.

While the British might not have worked with the Zionists to suppress Palestinians in the 30s, the Zionists did their part. Just look up Special Night Squads via google.

Targeted assassinations by the 30s were already a sort of tradition among E. European Jews. Just read Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington. He discusses the role that Jews (and very often Jewish women) played in carrying out assassinations.

You can find some references in http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2009/05/jewish-peril-1933-versus-2009.html .

From Scrolls to early Arab terrorism? Nice switch, Joachim. Tell your wife it was great to see her acknowledge the inherent right of the Jewish people to Israel.

Also, thanks for bringing up 1938. That was the year the British founded the Special Night Squads which were led by a Briton (Wingate) and manned primarily by British soldiers. The reason they were formed was not some fun desire to beat up on the Arabs. It was the effectiveness of the Arab Terror and Murder Campaign of 1936 that accelerated in 1937 (after the British suggested dividing the little that was left of Palestine after they gave most of it to the Hashemites as TransJordan). As for the Jewish soldiers in the SNS, there were some who participated, but they were there at the invitation of the British, not as driving forces or key participants.

Anyway, back to the Arab Murder and Terror Campaign of 1936-1939. 1938 was a special year because the Arabs also attacked each other at times. That year, they decided that the Druze were "others" and attacked and murdered Druze. This act was never forgiven and formed the basis of Druze partnership with Israel. In fact, thanks to these Palestinian murders of Druze in 1938, the Druze joined the Jews in some of the 1948 fighting.

Also, since you bring up the use of Jewish women in the fighting of the 1930s caused by the Arab Revolt and Murder and Terror Campaign of 1936-1939, it should be understood that it was actually Arab women who were used extensively in those years because they could and did hide everything from weapons to money to food against their well-covered bodies.

1938 is important for other reasons. It is another example of the historical propensity of the Palestinians to attack every time compromise is proposed. The 1938 attacks follow the 1937 Peel Commission offer of a divided Palestine. Then the Palestinians attacked again in 1947 after the Partition Plan was proposed. Again in 2000 after the Camp David offer. During 2001 as Taba was hosting peace talks and more Israeli compromise. Even in 2008, it appears in hindsight that Hamas broke the cease fire in Gaza because they knew that Olmert had made extensive compromises on a peace offer made to Abbas.

Of course, there is one other noticeable pattern. It is that after every war the Arabs launch they tend to suffer setbacks for which they blame the victims of their aggression and after which they seek to return to the status quo which they violated. 1948 is a prime example of this.

Let us know if you and your wife want to continue to talk about how Jews aren't really Jews and the Palestinians really are Jews, or if you'd like to discuss 1938 some more.

From Scrolls to early Arab terrorism? Nice switch, Joachim. Tell your wife it was great to see her acknowledge the inherent right of the Jewish people to Israel.

Also, thanks for bringing up 1938. That was the year the British founded the Special Night Squads which were led by a Briton (Wingate) and manned primarily by British soldiers. The reason they were formed was not some fun desire to beat up on the Arabs. It was the effectiveness of the Arab Terror and Murder Campaign of 1936 that accelerated in 1937 (after the British suggested dividing the little that was left of Palestine after they gave most of it to the Hashemites as TransJordan). As for the Jewish soldiers in the SNS, there were some who participated, but they were there at the invitation of the British, not as driving forces or key participants.

Anyway, back to the Arab Murder and Terror Campaign of 1936-1939. 1938 was a special year because the Arabs also attacked each other at times. That year, they decided that the Druze were "others" and attacked and murdered Druze. This act was never forgiven and formed the basis of Druze partnership with Israel. In fact, thanks to these Palestinian murders of Druze in 1938, the Druze joined the Jews in some of the 1948 fighting.

Also, since you bring up the use of Jewish women in the fighting of the 1930s caused by the Arab Revolt and Murder and Terror Campaign of 1936-1939, it should be understood that it was actually Arab women who were used extensively in those years because they could and did hide everything from weapons to money to food against their well-covered bodies.

1938 is important for other reasons. It is another example of the historical propensity of the Palestinians to attack every time compromise is proposed. The 1938 attacks follow the 1937 Peel Commission offer of a divided Palestine. Then the Palestinians attacked again in 1947 after the Partition Plan was proposed. Again in 2000 after the Camp David offer. During 2001 as Taba was hosting peace talks and more Israeli compromise. Even in 2008, it appears in hindsight that Hamas broke the cease fire in Gaza because they knew that Olmert had made extensive compromises on a peace offer made to Abbas.

Of course, there is one other noticeable pattern. It is that after every war the Arabs launch they tend to suffer setbacks for which they blame the victims of their aggression and after which they seek to return to the status quo which they violated. 1948 is a prime example of this.

Let us know if you and your wife want to continue to talk about how Jews aren't really Jews and the Palestinians really are Jews, or if you'd like to discuss 1938 some more.

Char: "Even in 2008, it appears in hindsight that Hamas broke the cease fire in Gaza because they knew that Olmert had made extensive compromises on a peace offer made to Abbas."

As for the allegation that "Hamas broke the cease fire in Gaza", please note:

1) Israel never honored the cease fire in that it never stopped its blockade of Gaza, which is in itself an act of war.

2) Israel sent commandos into Gaza on November 4, while the world was distracted by the U.S. presidential election on that day, killing 6 Gazans and kidnapping 6 more. It was only after that attack that Hamas resumed shelling of land conquered by the Zionists before 1967.

My first attempt at responding seems to have been lost. I'll try again.

Aaron,

That's conventional wisdom mixed in with justification for terrorism and it won't wash. Your justification for the unjustifiable attacks on Israeli civilians essentially means that there will never be peace and that Israel should not remove itself from any more territory. Sadly, that is the view expressed by many Palestinian supporters who seem to prefer endless war to peace.

To adjust your line of thinking I will point out that the Hamas attacks which violated the cease fire followed a Hamas attempt to violate the border with a tunnel similar to the one used to kidnap Gilad Schalit, a soldier who after more than 2 years in captivity has yet to be seen by a Red Cross worker or any non-captor. Talk about war crimes. That tunneling attempt resulted in the Israeli attack on those 6 Hamas men.

Of course, shelling civilian centers indiscriminately is also a war crime. Hamas is expert at that war criminal activity. They had the chance to stop the shooting when Israel left Gaza but they continued and built up their arsenal further. When the cease fire ended, the range of their rockets had more than doubled. The lessons learned are: if you leave territory to the Palestinians, they will not build schools and parks but will build up their military capability; cease fires strengthen the enemy, especially if there is no IDF in their midst.

Hamas is trying to torpedo any chance for peace and people like you help them by acting as mouthpieces in the West. Olmert proposed a deal to Abbas just around the time the Hamas shelling started up again in earnest. Sure, you could blame the IDF attack on the 6 Hamas men, but they were in the midst of a plan of attack as well. Why would they be preparing an attack? Because Hamas decided to use violence to kill any peace deal the Israelis offered. You can try to deny it, but all you have to do is check the history following every peace offer made to the Palestinians and your refutation loses any credibility.