When Jerusalem Becomes Regional

What is regional about Jerusalem's Temple Mount?

PM Netanyahu and Jordanian King Abdullah II Meet Today in Amman

(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

The King and the Prime Minister discussed regional developments, advancing the peace process and bilateral relations. Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated Israel's commitment to maintaining the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem.

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Another "Palestine is Southern Syria" Reference

From this book, p. 139:

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Week Three at Tel Shiloh

The short version of what happened and was discovered at Tel Shiloh by Dr. Scott Stripling of ARB, his team and volunteers:-


In Squares AH29-30, Tim Lopez identified two more walls to add to his wall list – Roman, Iron Age (Israelite) and Middle Bronze Age (Canaanite)...on Friday...the dirt they dug was then sent to our new wet sifting station. There, Richard from my square, wet sifted the dirt and recognized an ancient Egyptian scarab. It had a cartouche with an Egyptian pharaoh’s name – but we’re not certain what it said. I thought I could read it, but wasn’t sure. We’ve sent it to an expert…and I’ll let you know how good my knowledge of hieroglyphics really is!

opened new Square AG29...finding a wall-line on Friday afternoon. Still, in all that dirt, his team uncovered a large number of wonderful finds – including seven coins, fragments of nine oil lamps, two slingstones and one stone mortar. Then on Friday his team discovered a ceramic object which no one knew for sure what it was- even our conservator said she had never seen one before! Best guess at the moment…an inkwell.

In Square AF29, we were able to find two more stones in the interior face of the Canaanite perimeter wall that runs the full width of our square. In the bulk take-down, we did find a number of interesting pottery sherds and small objects, including one coin, which were kept for further study. 

in AC28-89 and AD29, have been excavating a long stretch of the outer face of the 5m-wide Canaanite perimeter wall – and by the end of the week, they found a hole in the wall! Well, not exactly a hole, the wall was just stopped – from top to bottom! Yet it does not appear to be a gateway and neither does it appear to be part of the original Canaanite wall construction. 

In AF27 and AG27, Ruth Vanderford supervised the final clearing of the glacis – a 35-degree sloping earthen rampart constructed around the outside of the ancient perimeter wall. It was designed in antiquity to hinder attacking armies from reaching the wall and to protect the wall’s foundation from being undermined. Directly above the glacis, they found a large amount of disintegrated red mudbrick, apparently the fallen mudbrick superstructure of the perimeter wall’s stone foundation.

In Square AG30, Kevin Larsen and his team have four walls from a Roman house. It includes what looks like a circular stone column drum deliberately set in the corner of one room. In the next room was a restorable whole New Testament era storage jar along with an unusual stone mortar found in situ within the same room. While the base was flat, the bowl of the mortar sat at a 30-degree angle, seemingly tilted especially for someone’s convenience while sitting on the floor. Finally, one of the corners in this house is created with well-cut stones – maybe the finest Roman room corner in all Israel – probably not…but it was still really well-constructed!

Suzanne Lattimer’s team, in AE29, sits next to mine and she has also uncovered the inner face of the city wall – giving us about 10m of continuous exposure. They have also cleared the wall’s top – almost to the outer face. And, in the process, they found a large dump of Roman pottery – the largest pile of broken pottery we’ve found on the site.

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When the Temple Mount Was Occupied British Territory

Prince William is not the first member of the Royal Family to visit Jerusalem.  Among others was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn.

He was the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Among other positions, he acted as the King's representative through the first years of the First World War.

One of those duties was a visit to Jerusalem to General Edmund Allenby and his itinerary included the barracks at the David Tower courtyard where he awarded medals and ranks:

and the Temple Mount on May 22, 1918:

The Duke is between a Muslim official to his right and General Allenby to his left.  And the two Christians are wearing cloth over their boots (the other soldiers are Muslim from the Egyptian army).

I presume that the area was defined as "Occupied British Territory"?

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A Prince and A Tale of "Palestinian Territories"

As Caroline Glick notes, Yediot Ahronot reported (in Hebrew) that Kensington Palace has insisted that William’s visit to Jerusalem is part of his official visit not to "Israel" but to the Palestinian Authority (and what it calls the “Occupied Palestinian Territories”)*. That is, rather than finesse Britain’s position on the most explosive issue in the Arab conflict with Israel, Britain decided to use Prince William’s "non-political" visit to do what no government, other than Pakistan, ever did: claim, in an official act, that these sections of Jerusalem belong to the Arabs, not the Jews.

Kensington Palace is presenting William’s visit as nonpolitical. But the opposite is the case.

As Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Malki announced to the press after the UNGA vote this week:

“After 51 years of occupation and 70 years since Al-Nakba, the State of Palestine will not relent in its efforts to uphold international law and protect our people towards the realization of justice, the fulfillment of their inalienable rights and legitimate national aspirations, including to independence in a State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital."

As Eugene V. Rostow, then of the National Defense University in Washington, D. C. wrote to Commentary Magazine in a Letter To the Editor published on February 1, 1989 the territorial provisions of Resolution 242 do not demand a total withdrawal from lands Israel administered since June 1967.  Moreover,

As the occupying power, Israel could take such steps [according to the Camp David Accords] unilaterally if no Arab interlocutors are willing to come forward. Actions of this kind, both in Israel’s military dispositions and in its arrangements for civil autonomy in parts of the West Bank, could lay the foundations for an eventual peace with Jordan and the people of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip when the political atmosphere becomes more propitious. Until those parties make peace, however, Israel has no real choice but to stand on its right under Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 to continue to govern the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which it occupied in 1967.

And he continued:

[as to] the question of whether Jordan is Palestine...Transjordan was part of the Mandate not “for a few months” in 1921, as [some claim], but for twenty-five years until 1946, when it became independent and was recognized as a state. During that period, the State Department referred to Transjordan as “the Transjordanian province of the Palestine Mandate.” Defense, foreign relations, and other functions were in British hands, and the inhabitants carried British Mandatory passports. Most revealing of all, the Jewish right of settlement under the Mandate in Transjordan was not abolished in 1921, but only suspended.

In 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations, whose substantive resolutions can never be more than recommendations, recommended to the Security Council that the parts of the Mandated territory west of the Jordan River be partitioned between the Arabs and the Jews, with a special regime for Jerusalem. The Arab states rejected that proposal and went to war. The Security Council never acted on the partition resolution directly, but turned its attention to stopping the war...In 1950, Jordan attempted to annex the West Bank, but its decree of annexation was not widely recognized (and was recently repudiated by King Hussein)...Thus there is no basis for claiming Jordanian or “Arab” sovereignty in the West Bank. The proposition that Jordan was part of the territory of the Palestine Mandate, and is the Palestinian Arab state intended to divide the remainder of the Mandate territory with Israel, is not an “eccentric” view or simply a matter of partisan politics in Israel. It is an indisputable fact, and a fact, moreover, which has consequences in international law and politics.

It follows that the Arabs who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not the only “Palestinians.” The Jordanians and the Israelis should be called Palestinians also, because the only conceivable definition of the word must be drawn from the territorial boundaries of the Mandate...

William certainly has read The Canterbury Tales.  Let's recall some of the Wife of Bath's words therein:

 15 Biside a welle, Jhesus, God and man,

                Beside a well, Jesus, God and man,

16  Spak in repreeve of the Samaritan:

                Spoke in reproof of the Samaritan:

Does Prince William not think that the Samaritan came from Samaria?  And Samaria preceded the "Palestinian Territories" by almost three millenia, did it not?

The towns conquered by Shishak indicate a territory that was not restricted to a narrow sliver along the sea but on both banks of the Jordan River for that was the Land of Israel:

William, sir, those "territories" you'll be visiting are all part of Eretz-Yisrael, the Land of Israel. The British Government in 1917 knew that, the San Remo Conference participants knew that in 1920 and the ambassadors at the League of Nations knew that in 1922.

The High Commissioner and Lord Peel knew that in 1937 when a partition was proffered and even Ernest Bevin knew that at the time of the UN Partition of 1947.

Don't be fooled, Prince William, in 2018.

* UPDATE:

"...the British prince’s tour of the Western Wall and sites holy to the region’s three religions will be included in his visit to the Palestinian Authority rather than in his visit to Israel."

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Hamas, NYT's Mark Thompson and Twitter

The New York Times' CEO Mark Thompson (who, incidentally, was a guest at my home in Shiloh for a long discussion) spoke at a June 12 event sponsored by New America’s Open Markets Institute and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and addressed a new development in the media which is tech companies closely trusting algorithms to help determine which news stories are fraudulent or misleading. 

One example he provided was indicative.

As he said:

But with some examples of apparent censorship, it’s not clear if the removal or restriction of content is due to human moderators or the automated algorithms.Twitter recently blocked a user who posted harsh criticism of Hamas, the militant and political Islamist organization regarded by much of the international community as a terrorist group. The social media company told The Daily Caller News Foundation it was an “error,” but wouldn’t clarify if the mistake was directly human, or indirectly human-induced through the way of the “hateful conduct” detection algorithm.

What the real problem in this instance, I hope, is not that the person who tweeted the criticism was reinstated, or even the original blockage even though Thompson makes the false case that Hamas is rally two organizational entities, one non-terror and the other a social welfare agency.

The real problem is that, well, Hamas itself is on Twitter, openly.

Its TV station AlQuds. 

A second TV station.

Its newspaper.

A front news agency.

Izzat Risheq is on Twitter and he's a senior Hamas leader.

Mosa Abumarzook has a Twitter account and he is a senior member of Hamas.

I could on and on.  They recruit through social media outlets.  And they punish independent-thinking Gaza social media activists.

The AlQassam Brigades had their account suspended, though.

So the real problem is why does a terror group and its members get a Twitter account?

It's not a new question.

Twitter?

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Confirming Jewish National History in Eretz-Yisrael

Found here:

The importance of Shishak’s campaign (campaigns?) that appears both in the Bible (1 Kings 14 25-26; 2 Chronicles 12 2-12 see also 1 Kings 11 40) and in the famous relief in the temple of Amun at Karnak that contains the names of about 180 places that he captured

...is the earliest event in the Bible to be referred to in an extra Biblical source...

However the phrase:-”and he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord — and he took away the shields of gold which Solomon had made, and King Rehoboam made in their stead bronze shields”...could almost certainly only have derived from the archives of the temple and if that is so it shows that in the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign there was a temple in Jerusalem with an archive.

This not only confirms that Solomon built the temple but shows that this temple was significant enough to have an archive and that there was a royal regime in Jerusalem important enough and strong enough to build such a temple.

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Arabic Caricatures Employing Anti-Semitic Tropes, Themes and Stereotypes

From Al-Arabi / TV21's (seemingly an Egyptian regime opposition group based in London) caricature section:-

That's US Ambassador David Friedman

On Shimon Peres' death

And commenting on Temple Mount matters:

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On A Name Change: Judea and Samaria

I, along with many others, refer to areas of the historic Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael), that region which the international legal and diplomatic community in 1920 (San Remo) and 1922 (League of Nations) recognized should be reconstituted as the Jewish National Home, which lie outside the borders of sovereign Israel, as Judea and Samaria.

They were termed that even in the United Nations' partition plan.

Historical geography experts attest to the use of Judea and Samaria throughout the ages.

We all know that Palestine as the name for the country began in 135 CE by Roman occupiers.

Filastin is not even an Arabic word.

But for many, the area is either the West Bank or Palestinian Territories (see the itinerary of Prince William's upcoming visit).

The West Bank was coined only in April 1950 when Jordan, the illegal occupier, annexed the region and so called it.

Is there hope that the original genuine terms will return?

Perhaps.

Read on:

Ever since the Republic of Macedonia declared its independence in 1991, Greece has been fighting the country over its name. Today the 27-year impasse ended as two nations finally came to a resolution: The former Yugoslav republic is getting a new name, the Republic of North Macedonia.

"There is no way back," Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said in a press conference, Reuters reports, after he spoke with his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras. "Our bid in the compromise is a defined and precise name, the name that is honorable and geographically precise — Republic of Northern Macedonia."

And the US State Department reacts:

The United States congratulates Prime Ministers Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev and welcomes the historic agreement to resolve the name dispute. This resolution will benefit both countries and bolster regional security and prosperity. Prime Ministers Zaev and Tsipras demonstrated vision, courage, and persistence in their pursuit of a mutually acceptable solution. We also commend the commitment of UN mediator Matthew Nimetz for his steadfast efforts over more than two decades to end this dispute.We stand ready to support this agreement, as requested by the two countries.

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When Two Banks Became But One

Found:

"The Palestine Mandate originally incorporated the territory of Trans-Jordan within the scope of ‘Palestine.’ Article 25 of the Mandate accorded Britain the power, “with consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as… may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions.” 

Subsequently, on 16 September 1922, the Council of the League of Nations passed a resolution by which it approved a proposal submitted by Britain to exclude Trans-Jordan from the scope of Palestine’s territory.9 Ultimately, the border between Palestine and Trans-Jordan was fixed as suggested by Britain.10 This resolution merely confirmed the previous practice as Trans-Jordan was earlier excluded from Palestine by Article 86 of the Palestine Order in Council (constitution) of 1922,11 which stated: “This Order in Council shall not apply to such parts of the territory comprised in Palestine to the east of the [River of] Jordan and the Dead Sea.”

9  League of Nations, Official Journal, Geneva, November 1922, p. 1188. The purpose of this resolution was to exclude Trans-Jordan from the scope of the Jewish national home.

10  See Memorandum by Lord Balfour, League of Nations Doc. No. C.66.M.396.1922.VI, 16 September 1922 – League of Nations, Official Journal, November 1922, pp. 1390-1.

11  Robert Harry Drayton,ed., The Laws of Palestine in Force on the 31st Day of December 1933 (London: Waterlow and Sons, 1934), p. 3303."

Source

He also writes

Under the Turkish rule, according to the Ottoman Nationality Law of 19 January 1869, Palestine’s inhabitants were Ottoman citizens. At that time, legally speaking, there was nothing called Palestine, Palestinian nationality, or Palestinians, neither was there anything called Israel, Israeli nationality, or Israelis.

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What Has Been Found at Tel Shiloh Recently?

From Week Two of Dr. Scott Stripling's excavations:


an intact Iron Age saucer oil lamp

a mendable bag jar from the Roman era

a bronze arrow head

a decorative ceramic pomegranate

hundreds of sherds related to several Middle Bronze Age storage jars and pitho

a number of small kitchen vessels such as grinding stones

sling stones

multiple rows of a MB III wall

the remnants of two MBII storage jars

a scarab (this is now the third scarab found to date)

a fully intact glacis/rampart to the city in Square AG27 as well as the remnants of the fallen mud brick wall just east of Smith’s square. A number of MB pottery sherds embedded in the glacis helped date the wall to that period.

30 coins, which included 10 coins from the Danish/Finkelstein dump. Our grand total for two weeks is 53. Other metal finds include a bronze chisel, a sword or dagger point, an iron ring, and an assortment of sandal tacks.

the wet sifting work yielded a number of small finds such as Roman glass, beads, and stone vessel fragments

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Discussing Zionism...in 1945

The following dialogue is from Arthur Koestler's "Thieves in the Night", 

published in 1946 (and which every serious Betari has read).

Arthur Koestler, who was a follower of Jabotinsky in the 1920s, has the character Kamel Effendi represeting the local Arabs of Palestine engaged in conversation and debate with Dick Matthews, an American journalist.

From pages 213-215:

They all refused except Matthews, who took a balloon-glass of brandy. “What was wrong with old Balfour?” he asked, thrusting his big untidy head towards Kamel Effendi.

“He gave our house away,” said Kamel Effendi, who liked to stick to the same metaphor.

“More boloney,” said Matthews, tasting the brandy and finding that it was good. "There never was a house here. There was a desert and a stinking swamp and pox-ridden fellaheen. You were the pariahs of the Levant and to-day you are the richest of the Arab countries. Your population was on the decrease for centuries because half your babes were dying from filth in their cradles, and since the Jews came it has doubled. They haven’t robbed you of an inch of your land, but they have robbed you of your malaria and your trachoma and your septic childbeds and your poverty. . ."

“Come, come, Mr. Matthews," the A.Ch.C. said, putting on his harassed air, though secretly he was enjoying himself. “This is rather strong language, and a bit unfair too.”

Kamel Effendi had jumped up from his seat. He was gasping for words.

"Bbah!” he brought out at last. "Now we know where we are. You come here as our guest, saying you are a journalist from America — but you are just one of those people whom they ...” He made a frantic gesture of rubbing his index against his thumb, and his face underwent a rather unpleasant change.

"Yeah,” Matthews said calmly. "I am one of the Elders of Zion — huh?”

“I think it is time we joined the ladies,” said the A.Ch.C. [Hon. Patrick Gordon-Smith, the
Assistant Chief Commissioner], and the Professor [Shenkin of the Hebrew University] obediently got to his feet, but Kamel paid no attention to him.

"I care not who you are,” he shouted. "You come here as our guest and then you abuse us. That is what we receive for our hospitality. . . .”

"Come off it, Mr. Kamel,” said Matthews. "I am not your guest, I am paying my keep, and I haven’t asked your permission.”

"I care not whether you pay,” cried Kamel Effendi. "And I care not for their hospitals and their schools. This is our country, you understand? We want no foreign benefactors. We want not to be patronised. We want to be left alone, you understand! We want to live our own way and we want no foreign teachers and no foreign money and no foreign habits and no smiles of condescension and no pat on the shoulder and no arrogance and no shameless women with wriggling buttocks in our holy places. We want not their honey and we want not their sting, you understand ? Neither their honey nor their sting. This you can tell them in your America. If they are thrown out in other countries — very bad, very sorry. Very, very sorry — but not our business. If they want to come here — a few of them, maybe thousand, maybe two thousand — t'faddal , welcome. But then know you are guests and know how to behave. Otherwise — to the devil. Into the sea — and hallass, finished. This is plain
language. You tell them.”

There was a painful silence while Kamel Effendi wiped his forehead and the A.Ch.C. stood hovering over the group like an unhappy flamingo. Then Matthews said unexpectedly:

“Yeah — I see your point, Mr. Kamel. I guess you are wrong, but wrong in your own right.”

The A.Ch.C. gave him a curious little stare with his two-coloured eyes ; he seemed on the point of making a remark, and on second thoughts didn’t. But Kamel Effendi laughed stertorously and without transition.

“Ho ! — ho!” he shouted. “Wrong within your own rights. It is a profound saying, my friend — very profound.”

He appreciatively clicked his tongue, and spontaneously grasped Matthews’ hand, pumping it. “No offence, Mr. Matthews,” he said. “Here we all get a little heated sometimes. It is our climate, you know — the khamsin.”


Nothing new under the sun.

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The Threat of A 'War Crime'

The Kenyon Institute hosted an event 

It was even publicized here.  And I attended.

Emek Shaveh, co-sponsor, has quite radical opinions on Jerusalem. With funds from the EU, they can afford it.

The event was largely uneventful, at the beginning.

of Save Lifta was not outlandish and made an almost academic presentation.

After the first speaker, Yonatan Mizrachi made a presentation of a general nature, actually:

And then the third speaker began and it became clearer that the real underlying theme was Lifta.

And Patzrizi Riganti really became shrill

and intimated that Israel was guilty of a "war crime" in its dealing with Lifta.

I wonder if she had any idea of the war crimes of Lifta's residents?

Here are some clippings I collected:

All murderous attacks targeting civilians.

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Greenslade's Slide into Non-Truth

In an opinion piece criticizing a proposed legislative move regarding media coverage, Roy Greenslade opens so:

On the day the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers opened fire on unarmed Palestinian protesters who gathered at the border fence on the Gaza Strip.

Sorry. That requires a rewrite to reflect “the truth” as promulgated by the Israeli government.

On the day the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers opened fire to prevent an invasion of their country by Arabs living in the Gaza Strip.

This is a typical instance of the divergence in reporting that has become a hallmark of recording the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

Whatever the merits of the law or those of Greenslade's critique, that example is exactly what causes legislators to lose a bit of calmness.

His mocking of what was indeed the reality, attempts by terrorists, using the cover of demonstrators who were not all peaceful: trying to rip the fence down so they could invade, and several, symbolically, did do that, not to mention infiltrations and the terror tunnels,; flying incendiary kites over to burn down fields; shooting and planting of IDEs; burning of tires to pollute the atmosphere and environment; exploit civilians as human shields; and more.

If the press did its job professionally, neutrally and ethically, we would not be witnessing such initiatives.

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Collective Responsibility, Collective Punishment

Between 1936 and 1939, with a short pre-sequel in late 1935 until the wiping-out of the Al-Qassam Gang

the Arabs of Mandate Palestine waged in three main periods an intermittent terror campaign against the British regime and the Jews residing in the country.

One element that has been argued is whether the support the gangs received from the populace warrants the thinking that that assistance indicated an identification of the non-combatant section as also part of the terrorist network.

The large amount of participants at his funeral was one indication:

Most studies point to the oppressive and cruel nature of the gangs who, in mid-1937, moved the struggle out of the cities and into the hills.

I just read an article by Na'ama Ben-Zeev, "The Arab Revolt from the Viewpoint of A Young Attorney", which is mainly a translation of a section of the memoirs of a young lawyer, Hanna Naqara, a Christian Arab, who met with gang leaders and provided legal aid.

Here is a snippet:

...the active element in this period were those of the villages. Some became involved in guerrilla activity as part of the gangs and many others extended assistance of a logistical nature: providing hiding places, food, money, weapons and ammunition, medical aid, intelligence and if not for all this assistance provided by the non-combatant populace the revolt could maintain itself for so long...

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And Down at Tel Shiloh

My veteran followers know my awe of the archaeological work that has been done at Tel Shiloh.

I have studied the Danish excavation report.

with Era Rappaport I went down to visit with Israel Finkelstein during his 1981-84 dig to see the sometimes daily progress then, followed the digs of the basilicas of Yitzchak Magen and on to Reut Ben-Arie who also worked on the City of David excavations (her Shiloh report is here)

Of course, while trying to locate the Tabernacle is a central aspect

Photo by Barry Kramer and graphics by Jerry Taylor

there is much much more about the Tel. Well the good news now is that Dr. Scott Stripling's ABR second season has begun. His introduction/overview to the Tel is a must read. The first season's reports are here. Here is his grid:

 

There I am at last year's visit.

I went down to the Tel get reacquainted with the work being done last Friday and Scott was as courteous as ever:

There were animal teeth:

and flat-bottomed pottery and shards

and walls and rooms and and coins and such:

See the pottery shards?

From what Scott explained to me, this is going to be a great season. The Danish and Finkelstein teams' discarded soil will be resifted, thoroughly.  Bedrock has been reached in more places 

and the Canaanite (or Emorite) Wall is becoming more exposed and more defined. Interesting possibilities of the wall's elements are becoming apparent.

You can listen to Eve Harow's interview with Scott

That yellow-marked area is a pit with some great finds.

Looking forward to more.

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P.S. Try this clip.