Subject: RE: Israel question Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 12:57:55 -0500 From: "Forstater, Mathew" <ForstaterM at umkc.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Haven't read all the replies top this yet, so I apologize if I am repeating anything already said. There is a very good piece by G. W. Bowersock, 1984, Journal of Palestine Studies, "Palestine: Ancient History and Modern Politics." The relative paucity of available archeological research concerning the pre-Islamic Arab presence in Palestine can be attributed to three major causes. The first is the western obession with "biblical" archeology. Second, among adherents to Islam, the time before the prophet Muhammad is traditionally referred to by the Arabic term _jahiliyya_, emaning "age of ignorance". The prime cause, however, is that in Israel, archaeology is politics. Zionist ideology propagates the belief that Jewish-Arab conflict has been continuous throughout history, and that Arab presence in Palestine has been recent and minimal. Therefore, any evidence to the contrary is seen to threaten the basic premises upon which the necessity of a "Jewish," rather than a democratic, state is founded. Two pieces of evidence of this type are noted by Bowersock. The first is a set of personal doscuments found by Israeli archaeologist (and politician) Yigael Yadin in the early 1960s in a desert cave in the area which in the Roman period was known as Judea. The documents concern a Jewish woman named Babatha who went into hiding during a Jewish uprising against the Romans:
"As we can tell from the few tantalizing excerpts and summaries that have been published, these documents concern the legal affairs of this woman over a period of some forty years. She and her family not only observed the transtion from Arab kingdom to Roman province in the territory known as Arabia: she and her family actually lived there at the time. It is clear that the relationship between Jews and Arabs in the territory south of the Dead Sea was a harmonious one. It is amply apparent that in the archive of Babatha we have precious documentation for a social coherence in Palestine that mirrored the administrative and geographic unity. It scarcely matters whether it is by accident or by desogn that neither Yadin or any other Israeli scholar has seen fit to publish this extraodinary material. In a society in which archeological studies are often extensively reported, the fact that it to this day remains unpublished is eloquent enough." (pp. 52-53).
More recently, a stone bearing the writing of Nabataean Arabs was discovered in the Negev desert. Written in a "single script" in both Nabataean and Arabic languages, the text has been estimated to date from the middle of the second century A.D., which would make it the earliest known example of the Arabic language:
"It is obviously significant that the inscription was lying in the Negev desert. The stone is weathered and brittle. Its signifiance for pre-Islamic scholarship could be enormous. In any other country with a serious interest in archeology, this object would have been removed to a protected place for safekeeping. More than that, one might have expected some publicity for so important a discovery. But there has been no publicatrion of the inscription, and it still lies today under the desert sun." (p. 57)
-----Original Message----- From: Marta Russell Sent: Sun 9/16/2001 8:22 PM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Cc:=09 Subject: Israel question
The below was posted on another listserve and I am wondering if it is a valid claim. My knowledge of history is limited in this department.
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BTW in over 4000 years there has never been an Arab ruled state in the Area of Isreali while there has been atleast 4 Jewish ruled states in that time period and the word Palestine comes from Philistine who are no relations to any existing people in the area while Jews have had a 3000 or more history of living in the area without interuption --=20 ************************** Marta