About a month ago, part of Caesarea's ancient aqueduct collapsed. Several articles dealt with the subject, none of them accused Israel of erasing history. Ariel Bolstein, who wrote an opinion after the declaration of Tel Jericho as a Palestinian World Heritage Site ("Jericho Antiquities is next to us"), did not write any article at the time. Israel's attitude toward its antiquities is not interesting when the event takes place within the Green Line.
About five years ago, the Binyamin Regional Council built a tourist site on Palestinian land at a declared antiquities site. In real time, Emek Shaveh warned that antiquities had been damaged. Construction continued. The High Court of Justice recently ruled that the site must be evacuated, and then the state submitted an opinion that dismantling the pools built by the regional council would harm the ecosystem and antiquities.
Every once in a while, all kinds of writers are reminded of how important antiquities are. This usually happens after a political event related to one site or another, false news that is taken out of context, and sometimes also a truly unfortunate event when antiquities that tell a Jewish story are damaged in the West Bank. But on the day when right-wingers care about antiquities in themselves, and not as a tool for proving ownership of the land, a new world will open up for them.
They will discover that Israel is responsible for the destruction of institutionalized antiquities on a massive scale. They will learn that in Tel Moza a 9,000-year-old Neolithic city was destroyed, which the Antiquities Authority explained was changing everything we knew about the period, in favor of Highway 16. They will hear that at Tel Essaouir what the Israel Antiquities Authority called "New York of the Early Bronze Age" was destroyed, this time in favor of an interchange. Even Tel Beit Shemesh, a site from Hezekiah's time that amazed archaeologists when they discovered a large settlement that existed even after Sennacherib's destruction campaigns, was dramatically damaged for the widening of Highway 38. Who knows, after all this, they might even ask what happened in the Western Wall plaza until 1967. If they do so, they will discover that within a week the State of Israel shaved off an entire 800-year-old neighborhood.
If they dig further, they will find that Israel even has museums named after antiquities criminals such as Michael Steinhardt, and that the chairman of the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Shelby White, has also found antiquities originating from robbery in recent years
Those interested in antiquities per se can also look at the collapsing maqams in the West Bank – ancient prayer structures that served as local centers in the rural areas of the country during Muslim times. The vast majority have been cut off from the communities, and there is no one to protect them. Those who do not collapse are those dedicated by Muslim communities to biblical figures, underwent processes of Judaization and became a place of pilgrimage for Jews.
Most of all, they will be surprised by the fact that the State of Israel is the only one in our region that allows an industry called "robbery and trade in antiquities" to flourish. Such a permissive law does not exist in Syria, Jordan and Egypt, and in fact turns Israel into a laundering power for the antiquities robbery of the entire Middle East.
In this industry, alongside the black workers, the robbers, who are really mostly Palestinians, Jewish middlemen and merchants work and quite a few Jewish buyers all over the world. Really a paragon of coexistence. If they dig further, they will find that Israel even has museums named after antiquities criminals such as Michael Steinhardt, and that the chairman of the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Shelby White, has also found antiquities originating from robbery in recent years. They perpetuate prejudice in order to erase the country's diverse history, instead of building the bridge over which all its inhabitants can be connected.
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