PA daily op-ed denies Jewish history in Israel
Excerpt of an op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “The lie of antiquities for the sake of expropriating lands”
“Once again, the Israeli colonialist state’s leaders are repeating the false game of hide-and-seek that is connected to the claim that there are ‘archaeological relics’ of Jews in Palestine – something that has been completely ruled out by Israeli, British, and other experts who tried to find any kind of relic in the Palestinian land matching the stories of the Old Testament and the fabricated history, which the Zionist colonialists wrote (sic., an abundance of archaeological evidence has been found proving the ancient Jewish connection to the Land of Israel). But all their investigations and excavations since the beginning of the 20th century and until this very day have failed. For this reason, Shlomo Sand wrote his book about the lie of ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ (refers to a Tel Aviv University professor whose theories have been debunked by genetic and archaeological research -Ed.), in addition to that which has been written by [Israeli archaeologists] Ze’ev Herzog, Israel Finkelstein, [American archaeologist] William Foxwell Albright (sic., Albright held that the biblical accounts of history in Israel were largely accurate), and others.
One of the lies and false claims of the various Zionist leaders is the claim of former [Israeli] Minister of Construction and Housing [Uri] Ariel, according to which ‘The altar of Joshua bin Nun has been discovered’ on Mt. Ebal in Nablus. He… visited the site in April 2015, and the place was fenced off. This lie was invented by [Israeli archaeologist] Professor Adam Zertal 41 years ago.
And despite this, what they call ‘the altar of Joshua bin Nun’ is not connected to him in any way.
According to archaeologists, the altar is from the Late Bronze Age, from 1,300 BCE, and it is a Canaanite altar that was established to
make sacrifices to the Canaanite gods (sic., the Late Bronze Age timeframe fits the biblical narrative, and finds at the site indicate it was Jewish and not Canaanite). In addition, there were no monotheistic religions at that historical period, and to put it more precisely: Judaism did not exist then (sic., according to the biblical account Judaism began with Abraham roughly 1,800 BCE, while the Torah was given before 1,300 BCE). This is confirmed by priest Hosni Al-Sameri, one of the priests of the Samaritan community, the true descendants of the Children of Israel (sic., the Samaritan community broke off from the Jewish people in ancient times; see note below)…
Last Friday [Feb. 12, 2021], corrupt [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu severely threatened those who harmed the altar, and Israeli President [Reuven] Rivlin asked [Israeli] Minister of War (sic., Defense) [Benny] Gantz to pursue the Palestinians who paved a road near the altar, which affected the external wall surrounding it (refers to PA construction workers who destroyed approximately 55 meters of ancient wall surrounding the site -Ed.)…
The goal of all these colonialist lies and forgeries is as follows:
A. To enable the lies and forgeries in order to deceive themselves and local and world opinion that they have ‘rights’ and ‘archaeological relics.’
B. To turn the historical facts upside down.
C. To expropriate and Judaize Palestinian lands on the pretext that they have ‘archaeological relics’ of Jews.
D. To harm the image of the Palestinian people, [and present them] as those who do not care about archaeological relics and cultural heritage. These are all lies lacking a basis in the given reality or the historical facts, because despite the Israeli violations and obstacles, the senior Palestinian officials and particularly those with authority in the field of antiquities are making every effort to protect every archaeological finding from every historical period, because it is an authentic part of the Palestinian people’s cultural heritage.
Therefore, the Zionist colonialist state’s leaders must stop their games and false claims… because Judaism has no archaeological relics of any kind in Palestine.”