The Old Bait-and-Switch
July 10, 2009 – 2:50 pmThe following editorial appears in today’s Ottawa Citizen:
THE OLD BAIT-AND-SWITCH
When confronted with a political protest, it’s useful to look carefully at who exactly the protesters are. Sometimes people are not what they seem.
Anti-Israel campaigns are most notorious for bait-and-switch. Protests that are supposed to be about the legitimate rights of Palestinians are often, in reality, vehicles to attack Jews and promote Islamic extremism. Earlier this year, “anti-Israel” demonstrations in several Canadian cities featured people giving the Nazi salute and circulating the medieval anti-Semitic libel that Jews drink blood.
Of course, not all critics of Israel have sinister and radical agendas, but you really have to wonder why those who advocate on behalf of Palestinians don’t work harder to keep their cause from being hijacked by people of ill will.
So it’s important to cast a skeptical eye on the strange campaign now underway in Toronto to disrupt an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Scrolls are mostly ancient Hebrew manuscripts and are the State of Israel’s greatest treasure. The Israel Antiquities Authority is allowing them to be shown at the Royal Ontario Museum.
An odd assortment of groups are protesting the exhibit on the grounds that the scrolls are stolen artifacts and really belong to Arabs, not Jews. Yes, you read that correctly. Hebrew manuscripts of the Jewish Bible that were written centuries before Muhammad was born are, apparently, Muslim property.
It’s easy to see what’s going on here. Just as Holocaust denial circulates in some corners of the anti-Israel movement, there is a parallel effort to deny the Jewish people’s ancestral connection to the Holy Land. The idea is to delegitimize Israel by denying the indigenous rights of Jews. Some Israel-haters have even taken to arguing that Palestinian Arabs are the real descendants of “ancient Hebrews.”
It was interesting, for example, to see an online magazine called the Canadian Charger go after the Royal Ontario Museum for declining an “interview” with one of its correspondents. The Canadian Charger just a few days earlier published a strong defence of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, praising his “social justice policies.”
So the point remains: When you see a campaign like the one against the Dead Sea Scrolls, take a look at who — and what — is behind it.
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3 Responses to “The Old Bait-and-Switch”
When the Israeli government, in an effort to maintain the structure of the tunnels and substrata beneath the Temple Mount, began work to insure the integrity of the ancient site, Palestinian arabs reacted by protesting and rioting stating that this was a violation. At the same time permits were given by the Israeli government to enhance the pipes beneath the Dome ) Al Aqsa; As a result ancient materials from the Second Temple were discarded and destroyed . Is there any surprise that revisionist history is being applied?
In Texas history school texts supplied by the Wahabi government of Saudi Arabia describe Jesus as a young Palestinian. It is all the Big Lie.
By Marshall B on Jul 11, 2009
“Cry and Spin” I call it. As the Romans used “Divide and Conquer”, the Palestinians first whine about (whatever) and then spin every historical fact necessary to support their cause. This is the way they operate.
By Sally on Jul 12, 2009
Turned out there really were official Jew-haters at the ROM. No bait-and-switch. Pretty sad.
The dead sea scrolls are some of the most well-known and most portable original artifacts that show the Jewish people are from the Middle East before Muslims even existed.
This, you already mentioned.
The whole civilized world knows that the Jewish people are from Israel originally – recorded in history thousands of years ago by the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and so on, but the Arabs nations actually teach their people that this is false and expect the Western world to deny what is fact.
What the Western world doesn’t know anymore due to Arab protests is that Jews continued to live in the Middle East including what is now Israel in both old and modern times.
The Arabs seem to be doing an unintentional bait-and-switch against themselves by showing just how ignorant they force themselves to be. Maybe the Western world will start to understand that the Arabs don’t fight the Jews for land, but in order to destroy the competing religion since the time of Mohamed who personally made it a mission to slaughter Jews where they lived – in Saudi Arabia – as is recorded in the Koran.
By AB on Jul 13, 2009