ROBERT FISK’S WORLD: YOU WON’T FIND ANY LESSONS IN UNITY IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

Independent
Saturday, 11 July 2009
UK

At last, I have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. There they were, under their
protective, cool-heated screens, the very words penned on to leather
and papyrus 2,000 years ago, the world’s most significant record
of the Old Testament. I guess you’ve got to see it to believe it. I
can’t read Hebrew – let alone ancient Hebrew (or Greek or Aramaic,
the other languages of the scrolls) – but some of the letters are
familiar to me from Arabic.

The "seen" (s) of Arabic, and the "meem" (m) are almost the same as
Hebrew and there they were, set down by some ancient who knew, as
we do, only the past and nothing of the future. Most of the texts
are in the Bible; several are not. "May God most high bless you,
may he show you his face and may he open for you," it is written on
the parchments. "For he will honour the pious upon the throne of an
eternal kingdom."

The story of the discovery of the scrolls is, of course, well known. An
Arab Bedouin boy, Mohamed el-Dib, found them at Khirbet Qumran in
a cave in what is now the occupied West Bank of Palestine in 1947,
and handed them over to a cobbler turned antiquities dealer called
Khalil Eskander Shahin in Jerusalem; they eventually ended up in
the hands of scholars – mostly American – i n the Jordanian side of
Jerusalem. Then came the 1967 war and the arrival of the Israeli army
in East Jerusalem and… well, you can imagine the rest.

Now, I have to say that I looked at these original texts in the Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto, a tale that was bound to engender a whole
series of questions, not least of which is Canada’s softly-softly
approach to anything approaching controversy. At no point in the
exhibition, jointly arranged with the professional (and brilliant)
assistance of the Israel Antiquities Authority, is there any mention,
hem hem, of the West Bank or occupation. Or how the documents found
there came to be in the hands of the Israelis.

So cautious are the dear old Canadians – who should by now have
learned that concealing unhappy truths will only create fire and pain
– that they do not even mention that "Kando", the first recipient of
the scrolls, was Armenian. Of course not. Because then they would
have to explain why an Armenian was in Jerusalem, not in western
Turkey. Which would mean that they would have to mention the Armenian
Holocaust of 1915 (one and a half million Armenian civilians murdered
by Ottoman Turks).

This would anger Canada’s Turkish community, who are holocaust
deniers. And in turn, it would anger the Israel Antiquities Authority,
who do not acknowledge that the Armenian Holocaust ever happened,
there being only one True Holocaust, which i s that of the Jews of
Europe. The Jewish Holocaust is a fact, but the Armenian variety –
a trial run for Hitler’s destruction of six million Jews – cannot
be discussed in Canada. Nor indeed in America, where Obama gutlessly
failed even to use the word "genocide" last April.

Then we come down to the exhibition itself. Poor old Canadians, they
had to publicise the whole fandango as a form of "unity" – there being
three monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, geddit? –
but alas, the scrolls are not written in Arabic and the sole gesture
to the Islamic faith is a single 200-year-old illuminated Koran. The
museum bookshop also devotes a small heap of books on Islam to bolster
their claim to "unity". The exhibition, according to the museum’s
director, William Thorsell – in a lamentable piece of pseudo prose –
"will launch provocative enlightening inter-faith discussions". Here
I reach for my sick bag.

Because the message of most of the videos showing around the exhibition
(this being the age of multitechnical as well as multicultural
wellbeing) make it clear that Judea and Samaria (the West Bank to the
rest of us) is originally Jewish. And so it was, by God. The poor old
Philistines lived on the sea coast. But when I suggested a swap to a
bunch of Israeli settlers some years ago – to be fair, they roared in
good-humoured laughter at my horrible sugg estion that Israel might
be given to the Palestinians in return for the occupied West Bank –
the idea did not commend itself to them. They wanted Tel Aviv and all
of internationally recognised Israel plus the West Bank. (At the time,
they also wanted to keep Gaza, partly on the grounds – according to
one of them – that this was where Jonah was puked up by the whale.)

No such claims soil the Ontario exhibition. "Words that Changed
the World" is how the organisers coyly entitle their exhibition, "a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these historical treasures". But
up come the spoilsports, namely the Canadian "Coalition Against Israeli
Apartheid", to suggest that the scrolls, originally in the hands of the
Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the Ecole Biblique Francaise,
were "confiscated and illegally removed by Israel" in 1967. The Royal
Ontario Museum, the protesters say, is showing "looted" property
which it has no right to exhibit. The Palestinian Authority itself
has intervened, arguing that the museum is "displaying artefacts
removed from the Palestinian territories".

(Let us not, O Reader, mention the Elgin marbles, albeit that the
Brits don’t occupy Greece.)

So the museum has started to clam up. "We’re not granting any
interviews," according to a snotty spokeswoman for this esteemed
institution. I can well see why. The museum claims it has documents
to prove the legality of the exhibiti on. But it won’t show them. Nor
will it consult Unesco for its opinion.

Plenty of unity there, of course.

Needless to say, if the Saudi government were to exhibit its Islamic
treasures in Toronto, I doubt very much if it would mention the large
Jewish community that once lived in Arabia. Any more than a recent
Turkish cultural exhibition at the Royal Academy mentioned the – ahem,
ahem again – contribution of the Armenians to Turkish history. Mind
you, given the fact that the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls are
infinitely clearer and more decipherable than the originals stared
at by The Independent’s Middle East correspondent, I do wonder if
these precious documents really need to be flown around the world.

But I guess it’s the same old story: seeing is believing. Providing
you’re not a Palestinian or an Armenian or anyone interested in
property rights.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress