As is well-known, Palestinian leaders like to backdate – using their vivid oriental imaginations – the presence of the “Palestinian people” in “Palestine.” Mahmoud Abbas has frequently declared that the Palestinians are direct descendants of the Canaanites, who lived in the Middle East some 4000 years ago. He has made even more extravagant claims recently at the U.N., where he said in late September that the Palestinians had been living in “Palestine” — the “land of their ancestors” — for the past 6000 years. At the kangaroo court of the U.N., any absurdity offered by the Arabs will find a willing audience. But the evidence provided by archaeologists keeps undermining this narrative of an ancient “Palestinian” presence in the land. That story is here.
Pundits will tell you that the most dangerous enemies of the Palestinian Arab cause are the Gulf kingdoms that have decided to recognize Israel, or the European countries that are moving their embassies to Jerusalem, or the American politicians who refuse to keep underwriting the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s debts.
I disagree. I say that the Palestinians’ most formidable foe is … archaeology.
A 2,000-year-old mikvah (ritual bath) was recently uncovered in the Lower Galilee. Most people probably would never have heard about the discovery if not for the dramatic photos of the entire structure being carried by truck to a nearby kibbutz for preservation….
Those Galileans, in other words, were Jews. They weren’t “Palestinians.” The word “Palestine” had not yet been invented. They weren’t Arabs or Muslims — the invasion of the Land of Israel by Muslim fundamentalists from the Arabian Peninsula was still 600 years in the future….
As all educated people know, the Muslim Arabs arrived in the Land of Israel – which had been known originally as Judea to the Romans, who then renamed it as “Syria Palaestina” and then “Palestine” for short – in the 7th century. They could not have arrived earlier, as Islam itself did not exist until the early 7th century. It was in 610 A.D. that Muhammad claimed to have first received the message delivered by Gabriel; in 613 A.D., Muhammad began to preach that message. It was only after the triumph of Islam in Medina and Mecca that the Arabs swept northward out of Arabia.
How then do the Palestinian propagandists explain away this latest find of a the 2,000-year old mikvah? Do they describe it as a water trough for horses or camels? Or an early swimming pool? No, they don’t bother to comment. As always when a new archaeological discovery of a Jewish site is made, the Palestinians remain silent, hoping that new find will simply pass without notice in the outside world. The PA only regrets that the site was not in Area A of the West Bank, where the PA could simply have destroyed the evidence of an ancient Jewish presence, as they have been doing, whenever they can. How much evidence of that continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel (now also known as “Palestine”) for the last 3500 years has been destroyed or covered up by the Palestinians or, before them, the Jordanians, is any one’s guess.
To make matters worse for Abbas, the directors of the excavation were Walid Atrash and Abd Elghani Ibrahim. You can tell by their names that they are not exactly Orthodox Jews. The PA will have a hard time getting anybody to believe that Atrash and Ibrahim are agents of a Zionist conspiracy.
Two Israeli Arab archaeologists directed the excavation of the mikvah. Their devotion to archaeology proved stronger than any desire they might have had to support the “Palestinian” narrative of living in the land for thousands of years by destroying this contradictory evidence. How embarrassing for Mahmoud Abbas and his fellow re-writers of history.
The mikvah discovery was just the latest in a series of archaeological finds in Israel during the past year, each of which contradicted the Palestinian Arab propaganda narrative.
In the Givati Parking Lot excavation in Jerusalem, archaeologists discovered Hebrew-language inscriptions dating back 2,600 years. One was a stone seal with the words “belonging to Ikkar son of Matanyahu.” The other was a clay seal impression that read “belonging to Nathan-Melech, servant of the king.” They weren’t in Arabic. And the names weren’t Yasser or Mahmoud….
Meanwhile, excavators from the University of North Carolina discovered two stunning mosaics at the site of a 1,600-year-old synagogue near Huqoq in northern Israel. One depicts a scene from the exodus of the Jews from ancient Egypt. The other shows images based on verses in the Torah’s book of Daniel. Note that the mosaics do not show scenes from the Koran. There is nothing Arabic or Islamic or “Palestinian” about them. They are Jewish, they are situated in Israel, and they are 1,600 years old….
And, the author Stephen Flatow might have added, it would be another 200 years before a single Arab or Muslim would arrive in Judea (a/k/a “Palestine), long after either those striking mosaics, or the synagogue near Huqoq that housed them, were constructed.
The Muslim Arabs have done their best to destroy ancient Jewish sites. From 1949 to 1967, when the Jordanians still held the Old City, they destroyed or desecrated all but one of the 35 synagogues, some very ancient, within the Old City. Those synagogues not completely devastated were used by the Jordanians as hen houses and stables filled with dung-heaps, garbage and carcasses. The venerable Jewish graveyard on the Mount of Olives, the oldest Jewish cemetery in existence, was in complete disarray, with tens of thousands of tombstones broken into pieces to be used as building materials, for walls, staircases, and to line the floors of Jordanian army latrines. Large areas of the cemetery were leveled to provide a short-cut to a new hotel. Hundreds of Torah scrolls and thousands of holy books had been plundered and burned to ashes.
Wherever the Jordanians ran across ancient Jewish sites, including archaeological digs, they damaged or destroyed them. Why respect or maintain the artifacts of the “most vile of created beings”? And why keep the evidence of an ancient Jewish presence in the land if you can get rid of it without being noticed?
Now that Israel has been in control of the West Bank ever since the Six Day War, it not only has prevented further damage being done to known Jewish sites, but Israeli archaeologists, in some cases working with Israeli Arab archaeologists– such as Walid Atrash and Abd Elghani Ibrahim, who were in charge of excavating the 2,000-year old mikvah recently found in the Lower Galilee — have managed since the Six Day War to discover many more Jewish sites. And each site or artifact that is discovered – synagogues, mikvahs, mosaics, oil-lamps, pottery, coins — provides yet another bit of evidence, contributing to our understanding of the 3000 years of that uninterrupted Jewish presence in the land. And all this undermines the narrative of those imaginary 4000, or 5000, or even 6000 years of “Palestinian” history, complete with those Canaanite ancestors of the “Palestinian people,” that Mahmoud Abbas continues to flog, and wants so much that everyone believe.
It would be useful if, at one of those interminable debates about Arabs and Israelis at the U.N. General Assembly, the Israeli ambassador were to come armed with the visual evidence, that is, what Othello, that famous smiter of Muslims (collectively personified as “a malignant and a turbaned Turk”) called “the ocular proof.” Photographs of the most ancient synagogues in Israel, of mikvehs, mosaics, oil-lamps, eating and drinking vessels, pottery, coins, weapons –that is, all the multifarious evidence of Jewish life, clearly labelled with their approximate dates from c. 1500 B.C. on – could then be displayed on a big screen in the General Assembly Hall, as well as on-line. Still better would be if actual artifacts could be brought from Israel for display in the U.N. building. The Israeli ambassador should invite the ambassador of “Palestine” to bring to the U.N. his own material evidence of the presence of the “Palestinian people” during those “thousands of years” when they “lived in Palestine.” The Palestinian ambassador’s response should be most instructive.
Buraq says
When the Romans invaded, there are records of Jewish tribes putting up stiff resistance. But, strangely, not a syllable about ‘Palestinian’ tribes joining in the defense of …. ahem ……. cough, cough ……. Palestine. I wonder why?
Sabri S. says
Yes, those black and brown hebrews of udea and samaria put up one hell of a fight, before their society was wiped out by the romans in 70 AD. They did not become white all of a sudden and return. The occupiers of Israel today are indeed the “thirteen tribe”.
LB says
Hey Sabri, I heard that the amoebae in the primordial soup were muslim, is this true?
Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question; of course they were.
James Lincoln says
Sabri S,
Lest we all forget…
Back in May 2020, you posted that the father did the right thing by beheading his 13-year-old daughter…
gravenimage says
So true, James–and since then, he has lauded Farrakhan threatening Jews, his coreligionists beating a woman for wearing a skirt, said that Muslims have the right to tale over and impose Shari’ah law on us, and said that Hitler is a “great man”.
Doesn’t Sabri S. realize that his “defense of Islam” here just reveals how ugly it really is?
john smith says
We wont forget James, but he is unashamedly proud of it.
Just more proof, how truly evil islam is.
gravenimage says
Sabri S. keeps claiming that the natives of the Levant were Black–but this is ridiculous. The only Black Jews (save for a few converts) are the “Falasha” of Ethiopia, not Mizrahi Jews.
So what is Sabri S.’s game here? Just that he pretends that Jews are not really Jewish, and so (as he sees it) Israel can be destroyed and her people murdered. The idea that Jews do not exist today is absurd.
maria says
He is a muslim liar and racist. It is a waste of time bother about him
juleonly says
Actually no one was wiped out but just moved and continued until there was no place left to go but Home.
The Istanbulian says
Ancient egyptian art disagrees with you…but that’s ok. Funny how now you don’t have an argument about arabs, you turn now to race…
juleonly says
I have been told by Muslims that Adam, Abraham, Moses were actually the real Muslims and that Judaism is not even a legit Religion of Abraham. Their lying story is very Supremacist/apartheid, & tight, like a straight jacket. Once in you have be Houdini to get out of the tangled web or even discuss anything with one.
gravenimage says
Yep.
andrew mckendrick says
How about calling it, let me think a moment ,….Jewish History Month!
mortimer says
2,000 years ago was the time of Jesus. The words Israel, Israelite or Israel’s are mentioned in the Bible over 2,000 times.
In the New Testament, Jesus often referred to Israel and ‘Israelite’ was one of his highest compliments. The New Testament never mentions ‘Palestine’, because the term was not used until the expulsion of Jewish from Israel by the Romans.
curious george says
mortimer,
+1
The book, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine by the late Joan Peters thoroughly investigates the History of the Nation of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to be in the land.
Ms. Peters clearly details the fact, one that is rarely, if ever reported, that for every so-called Palestinian who left the Nation of Israel, either voluntarily or involuntarily (mainly forced to leave by Muslim authorities) an equal number of Jews were displaced from various countries in the Middle East.
Even though the number of displaced people (refuges) were almost equal, the wealth that was lost was not. The Jewish people were far more industrious and prosperous than their Muslim counterparts and they were forced, in many cases, to leave everything behind.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Their numbers were not “almost equal.” 600,000 Arabs left Mandatory Palestine (and Israel); 900,000 Jews fled from Arab lands. You are right about the property loss: the Jews left behind many billions of dollars worth of property; the Arabs left millions.
curious george says
Thanks Hugh,
My bad, I just decided to “wing” it. Haste makes waste.
gravenimage says
Yes–in fact, Jews in Muslim countries were forced to leave their wealth behind.
LEL says
Mahmoud Abbas has frequently declared that the Palestinians are direct descendants of the Canaanites, who lived in the Middle East some 4000 years ago.
(The Book of Joshua) Joshua was commanded to drive out the Canaanites but didn’t finish the task. The Palestinian area was one of the unfinished areas within Israel.
mortimer says
The Arabs had no real archeology until the Nabateans of Petra. Petra was the political and religious capital of the Arabs before Islam.
maria says
Of course not, they are idiots, they can only lie. They have always been stupid animals who could only murder other people and because of intermarriages they have low IQ and many mental and physical disease
gravenimage says
Arab Christians are not like this. Islam is the real problem.
Zimriel says
Your summary is certainly better than the linked article, which is ranty and ignorant.
This one hurts my head: “the invasion of the Land of Israel by Muslim fundamentalists from the Arabian Peninsula was still 600 years in the future.” – the Arabs who invaded weren’t fundamentalists on account the Koran was not written yet; probably wasn’t even fully composed yet. Also it wasn’t Israel, it was Byzantine Palaestina.
As to “Note that the mosaics do not show scenes from the Koran”, among them the Exodus. This event absolutely is described in the Koran – many many times. Suras 7, 20, 43. Although we can put this down to imprecision.
Ade Fegan says
“among then” ? .. your very weak points “hurt” my head !
gravenimage says
The implication that mosaics from a 1600-year-old Synagogue are Islamic is just absurd.
Ade Fegan says
Quite ! .. Then let’s find evidence from all the countries conquered by islam ..
That non of “their” countries really belong to muslims
and indeed, there are no muslim countries .. NOT ONE
David says
From what I can see, nearly all the trouble in the World involves muslims, one way or another. Latest flare up: Armenia. Turkey and Iran are stirring things.
gravenimage says
There are non-Islamic problems in a few places, David–North Korea, the Congo, etc.
But Islam is probably involved in over 90% of the world’s conflicts. How much more peaceful would the world be without the savagery of Islam?
gravenimage says
Archeological Finds In Israel Undermine the ‘Palestinian’ Narrative
……….
Good article.
Donald Trump President says
Terrorists are champions playing victim cards thanks to the idiots who trust them!
It is incredible how this Psycho-Terrorist named Muhammad Abbas with the support of other Terrorist leaders has managed to fool the naive European leaders very easily.
There was NEVER a “Palestinian state”. The settlements are not colonialist outposts, but rather express a Jewish “right of return” to ancestral lands. Israel put three large-scale peace proposals on the table over the past 15 years involving “Palestinian” independence and near-total domination of the West Bank, but Abbas rejected all offers, preferring to keep fighting…Few cares much about this story, but it is necessary to repeat it because it is not known and it goes to the heart of the case of Israel.
Third, it must emphasize, over and over again, that Israel seeks conflict resolution, not jihad; that Israel wants to resolve conflicts by compromise, not end conflicts by annihilating the enemy. Let’s say Israel wishes to live in peace and cooperate with its neighbors, not to conquer Arab and Islamic nations from Tunisia to Indonesia…No matter how ridiculously obvious this may seem, the repetition of this truth is extraordinarily important. It is not obvious to many naive Europeans.
Fourth, it is simply not enough to explain Israel’s security dilemmas or to review Israel’s diplomatic largesse toward the “Palestinians.”
What is needed is a much more basic reaffirmation of Israel’s cause and purpose: Israel as a great historical gathering of people and lands, and as a just and moral actor in the medieval and violent Arab Middle East. Israel wins when it comes to justice and the Jewish nation…All the archeological evidence supports us…Every time there is a dig in Israel, it does nothing but support the fact that Israelis have had a presence there for 3,000 years. The coins, the cities, the pottery, the culture — there are other people, groups that are there, but there is no mistaking the fact that Israelis have been present in that land for 3,000 years. It predates any claims that other peoples in the region may have.
David says
To put it simply: Who appeared first? Jews or muslims? We all know the answer to that. It is indisputable. What evidence do ‘palestinians’ have? None. I rest my case
Linde Barrera says
To David-I stand with Israel and the Jewish people even though I profess belief in Jesus Christ, who was a Jewish person.
It is also very possible that modern day “Palestinians” were descended from the Hittites, Canaanites, Amorites, etc. as mentioned in many of the books of the Old Testament, but those tribes worshipped various deities and gods, not the One True God, “Yahweh” or “I Am Who I Am”.
So it makes sense to me that
these non-Jewish tribes were the ancestors of modern day Palestinians (who are Muslims) because Muslims worship a false god too,
“Allah”. And it is just so sorrowful to me that Muslims do not see the falseness of their god.
FYI says
Jews and Christians have a number of things in common.
I imagine Jews think YHWH is their God alone but Christians believe YHWH to be the SAME God.
{Both the God of the OT and the God of the NT have the SAME law foundation for example}
In any case,the ‘law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets’ is the SAME in both religions and is codified in Law as..
1]2 Chief Laws{Law #1 Deut 6:4-9,Law #2 Lev 19:18}
“The Whole law of Moses and the teachings of all the prophets depend on these two commandments”
Matthew 22 v 40
2]The Decalogue {Exodus 20}The ten commandments.
So the WHOLE of the Law depends on the 2 Chief Commandments{Matthew 22 v 40}
The PURPOSE of the Law given is to obey it{John 14:15}and
The MEANING of the Law is the Golden Rule{Matthew 7 v 12}
Judaism and Christianity are authentic Abrahamic and Biblical religions that come from Israel,the Holy Land.
islam is a false Arab cult with a false god,a false prophet and a false scripture that came from the Arabian peninsula:it cannot be a Biblical religion as allah does not conform to the Law given to Moses!
allah{‘the BEST of deceivers’ {koran 3:54} MISSED the Golden Rule,the Chief laws,the point of the Decalogue,the key role given to the Jews,the concept that people are made in the Spiritual image of God{Genesis 1:27} instead of being classified as ‘the WORST of created beings’ {koran 98:6}etc
Note that allah MISSED{and contradicts or denies} the Whole of the Law,its Purpose and its Meaning in his koran
It is not just what is IN the koran:it is what is MISSING from the koran.
Giacomo Latta says
”The PA will have a hard time getting anybody to believe that Atrash and Ibrahim are agents of a Zionist conspiracy.”
I’m not so sure. They’ve had such a lot of practice at locating and indoctrinating gullible Western university ”intellectuals.”
Jeff R says
I was listening to the BBC some time ago and the British were attempting dialogue with the Palestinians. Then in their own language I heard the Palestinians term themselves as “Philistines,” which of course sounds nearly identical to “Palestinians.” So to my understanding the Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines. They have also been in that general area for a long time, but if course lived in separate communities in different areas than the Hebrews inhabited. And, at least from the David v Goliath saga in the OT, we know that at least at that point in history and again now, they were in conflict with the Hebrews.
Jeff says
But the situation is now exacerbated by the fact that the Palestinians (Philistines) have become Muslims.