In an academic journal, Revista d’Arqueologia de Ponent 34, 2024, Bijan Rouhani of the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford and Bill Finlayson, also of that same School of Archaeology, published "Constructing, Deconstructing, and Reconstructing Heritage Values Amidst Conflicts".
Israel is mentioned, of course, mostly in the connection with Iran and the heritage legacy of Cyrus the Great. They note, in another reference, that "in April 2024, UNESCO confirmed the destruction of at least 43 historical sites in Gaza, including a museum." They could have mentioned the synagogue there that was not properly preserved.
They quote from a 2000 work by Meron Benvenisti which "details how over 9,000 Palestinian natural features, villages, and ruins were systematically renamed with Jewish names, reshaping the physical and human landscape into a Jewish state, reflecting profound changes and cultural erasure." There is no counter-source to that and so the readers must assume that Benevinisti's claims are absolute truth, an incorrect assumption. Neither is there any mentionof Jewish communities destroyed, whether during the lack of Jewish sovereignty under successive foreign rulers or during the period of reconstruction of the Jewish national home, from the late 18th century and especially during the British Mandate period.
In another mention they further press this point:
The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian war transformed Palestine’s cultural landscape, with the systematic destruction of village landscapes as a key Israeli military strategy. The surviving ruins, representing a lost cultural topography for Palestinians, challenge claims denying their historical ties to the land (Falah 1996).
What is not mentioned is the 7th century conquest and occupation of Judea, then ruled by the Byzantine Empire which it had assumed from the Roman Empire which applied to the territory the name "Palastina". That conquest was done by Arab tribes from the Saudi Peninsula who then applied Arabic names causing the loss of a 'cultural topography' not to note the various prohibitons by subsequent Muslim rulers on Jewish residency, immigration, property ownership and other elements of suppression, All this, especially the denial, until this very day, which obliterates the historical claims of Jews to this land.
It never occurs to them to see the other side of the picture.
They do quote from a speech delivered by Prime Minister Biyamin Netanyahu at the United Nations in 2013 in which he described the proclamation of Cyrus:
"he proclaimed the right of the Jews to return to the land of Israel and rebuild the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. That’s a Persian decree. And thus began an historic friendship between the Jews and the Persians that lasted until modern times."
A temple. A temple? Could a temple or a place where a temple, or even two, were located be part of all this culutral topography?
Could a cultural site, a heritage and legacy location be added to their study? After all, they do deal with the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India.
I am referring to Jerusalem's Temple Mount. But they do not relate to it.
A response there does not mention the Temple Mount either. In the response to that response, "temple" is mentioned. An Aztec one.
The Temple Mount's Jewish character is adamantly denied by Muslims and, in particular, the Palestinian Authority (Ramallah) and Hamas (Gaza). Under the supervision of the Islamic Waqf Trust, with Jordan's oversight, much archaeological destruction has been done. That, it appears, does not concern them although I would guess they have no idea of this issue at all. Their "of no concern" translates into their willful ignorance.
Moreover, it probably just isn't part of their agenda, their political interest, that is.
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