Reports of damage by Palestinian road work to Mt. Ebal -- in Area B of the West Bank.
What's actually going on here? Let's take a look . . .
jpost.com/archaeology/jo…
The only English reports I've seen are from right-wing Israeli media, which emphasize the outrage among conservative members of the Knesset and settler organizations.
The best report is from Haaretz, in Hebrew only so far.
(Typically Haaretz publishes these reports in Hebrew first & then translates them into English, so we may see an English version soon.)
haaretz.co.il/news/local/.pr…
Haaretz reports that the roadwork was carried out by the municipality of Asira ash-Shamaliya, which is next to Mt. Ebal, and they spoke with the town's mayor.
In the passage above, Haaretz paraphrases the mayor as blaming the damage on a contractor and saying that the municipality wasn't aware of what was going on.
However, later in the article Haaretz paraphrases the mayor saying that they weren't aware that the stone wall they damaged was part of the site (they thought its bounds were narrower), & that he's met with the Civil Administration and agreed to replace the wall.
This is a very different picture than that painted by the right-wing outlets, w/ their dire warnings of Palestinian threats to Israeli heritage and sovereignty:
"There are relentless attempts to weaken our hold on our homeland" (referring to Palestinian land occupied by Israel)
The reporting of those conservative outlets is based on an announcement from Shomrim Al HaNetzach ("Preserving the Eternal"), who are also responsible for informing the conservative legislators.

They include no independent reporting on what actually happened.
Who exactly is Shomrim Al HaNetzach?
They're a settler project that has been scaremongering about Palestinian damage to cultural heritage for a few years, in order to influence the political situation & tighten Israel's grip on the West Bank.
Shomrim Al HaNetzach is in fact a project of the settler group Regavim, who are known to resort to publicity stunts and are an entirely unreliable source.
Despite this unreliability, conservative Israeli media have been reporting their claims about Palestinian threats to archaeology & heritage in the West Bank *for years* w/o any independent reporting to try to confirm.
As we see in this case, & I think in many of the others, the reality appears to be quite different from the hysterical picture Shomrim Al HaNetzach/Regavim is painting.

Moral: Next time you see warnings about Palestinian threats to cultural heritage, read and think critically!
Brief thread from Nir Hasson (who co-authored the Haaretz story, so no surprise it's the best one on the subject).
Key point: "There is no Palestinian campaign to destroy antiquities"
Haaretz now has an English-language version of its article up. Despite the fact that the text is almost identical, it is credited to Nir Hasson alone. (Hagar Shezaf, Haaretz's West Bank correspondent, is still listed as co-author on the Hebrew version.)
haaretz.com/middle-east-ne…
Meanwhile, settler youth from the Shomron Regional Council (ie, regional council for settlers in northern West Bank) restored part of the wall on Thursday.

Note this is a file photo (of Palestinian security planting trees!) w/no connection to the story
i24news.tv/en/news/cultur…
The i24 story is otherwise poorly reported, confusing basic facts, and misleadingly suggesting that the Palestinians weren't aware that Mt. Ebal wasn't a heritage site (when as Haaretz reports it's that they didn't know the boundaries of the site were quite so expansive).
The Jerusalem Post weighs in with the news that Israel's president has asked the Defense Ministry to investigate the incident.
jpost.com/arab-israeli-c…
The president's letter invokes the idea that the site is both "universal" and "national" heritage.
That sites in the occupied West Bank are part of Israeli national heritage and simply part of "the country" is a standard view -- these are "our heritage sites"

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More from @MichaelDPress

12 Feb
Happy to say that my review of Veritas, and the saga of the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” forgery, is now published at @TheTLS.
the-tls.co.uk/articles/verit…
(Note: As usual, the author was not responsible for the title or the lead photo.)
Thanks to @arsteinjustnes @LivLied @papyrologyatman @dana_lande and the rest of the Lying Pen of Scribes project for discussing this book with me.
(But be sure not to blame them for anything in the review itself!)
Read 35 tweets
4 Oct 20
I have a research project on the antiquities market in Jerusalem in the late 19th century and am now seriously regretting not starting in the mid-20th century instead.

Amazing thread (& folder posted by the IAA), may be of interest @arsteinjustnes
Anyone know what happened to the Zion Research Library ("a nonsectarian Protestant library for the study of the Bible and the history of the Christian Church") of Brookline Massachusetts & its Dead Sea Scroll jar? @MaterializingB
Also thanks to @DrTermagant for pointing out how the Order of St. John in Belfast wanted a copy of Godfrey of Bouillon's sword from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And that they got it.
Read 5 tweets
2 Oct 20
"After seeing the pyramid, all other architecture seems but pastry."
Herman Melville at Giza (Journal Of A Visit To Europe And The Levant 1856-1857) Image
"The tearing away of the casing, though it removed enough stone to build a walled-town, has not subtracted from its apparent magnitude. It has had the contrary effect." Image
In January 1857 Melville makes it to Palestine.
"A delightful ride across Plain of Sharon [really plain of Philistia] to Jaffa. Quantities of red poppies." Image
Read 11 tweets
14 Jul 20
An interesting article on a 14th-century waqf oath by the heads of the village of Zakariyya (in the foothills southwest of Jerusalem), and the fate of the village.

Zakariyya has an interesting story, including its name . . .
972mag.com/palestinian-vi…
As the article notes, there is an apparent connection with the site of Azekah.
Near Zakariya is the mound of Tell Zakariya, identified by scholars since the 19th century as biblical Azekah.

(Mandate Survey of Palestine map via palopenmaps.org) Image
Azekah appears a number of times in the Bible -- for example, as part of the setting for the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17)

(JPS 1917 translation via mechon-mamre.org) Image
Read 14 tweets
22 Jun 20
Not sure the world needs yet another rehash of the debate about David and Solomon in Israeli archaeology, but if you're interested this one is well-written at least.

Some observations . . .
newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…
David may be an important figure, but for what religious or cultural group is he "the most central thing in the Bible"? (maybe for earlier Zionists?)
Moses, Jesus, clearly not important. Image
We literally have better evidence (from Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions) for the existence of a dozen kings of Israel and Judah, so I'm not sure where this comes from.
(Not to mention the switching between "Bible" and "Old Testament" without comment.) Image
Read 24 tweets
29 May 20
We love to share these striking painted portraits from Roman Egypt, but we usually don't pay attention to some really important things about them -- like how museums got hold of them (the Louvre doesn't either!)

A thread on the darker side of these Egyptian painted portraits.
These are often called "Faiyum portraits", because many of them come from the area of the Faiyum oasis south of the Delta.
But they've been also found at other sites throughout Egypt.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Faiy…
So scholars often refer to them as "mummy portraits".
Why? Because most if not all of them originally came from mummies.
Left: British Museum
britishmuseum.org/collection/obj…
Right: Met
metmuseum.org/art/collection…
Read 25 tweets

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