There was the tall tale told in front of the UN last month about how the last name Netanyahu is inscribed on a 2,700 year-old ring found next to the Western Wall in Jerusalem–despite the fact that the Israeli prime minister’s family immigrated to historic Palestine and changed their last name from the original Milikovsky. Netanyahu clearly needs a history tutor, and a revealing anecdote published over the weekend in the New York Times magazine shows that need more.
In a dispatch about the opening of a new Islamic art gallery at the Met, Robert Worth, a NY Times Mideast correspondent, reports:
Last month, [Navina] Haidar [the curator of the exhibit] got a taste of public reaction when dignitaries in town for the United Nations General Assembly asked to see the new galleries. One of them was Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who was a model guest, admiring the art and chuckling at a wooden panel from Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. But he stopped short when Haidar showed him a 10th-century Muslim prayer mat that was found on the shores of Lake Tiberias. The date suggested a very early Muslim presence in what is now Israel. Netanyahu asked if it was really that old, Haidar recalled, and she assured him that the carpet had been scientifically dated. But he kept staring at it quizzically. “ ‘I don’t know,’ he finally said, ‘it just doesn’t look that old to me.’ ”
Here we have Netanyahu refusing to acknowledge the well-established fact that there has been an Arab and Islamic presence in Palestine for thousands of years. This comes as no surprise–of course Netanyahu has no interest in acknowledging that fact. It doesn’t jive well with the Zionist narrative of “making the desert bloom” in Palestine– effectively erasing a Muslim and Arab presence there. It’s also an expected response from the leader of a country who is physically erasing historic Muslim sites. But these explanations don’t absolve Netanyahu of the need to get some history right.
So before Israel halts cooperation with UNESCO as a consequence of the cultural body recognizing Palestine, perhaps Netanyahu should sit down with a UNESCO expert to receive some Mideast history tutoring.
Alex Kane is a freelance journalist and blogger based in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.
The US Congress is in a bind with its legislation that would cut off US funding of UNESCO; part of UNESCO’s budget is spent on educating people about the holocaust. So what will Congress do?
I got a thrill from Alex’ article that decribed the incident with the prayer rug.
Keep digging for King David’s tent city, Bibi
Don’t teach this old dog any new tricks. Get a new dog.
I think my comment may be called “out of context” but it’s been bothering me.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were held in secret for decades by Israeli scholars…. rediculous of itself..with no explanation offered. Was it because the scholars wanted to censor the scrolls by erasing references to Palestinians…or is there another explanation?
Bibi said: “In my office in Jerusalem, there’s an ancient seal. It’s a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there’s a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That’s my last name. My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin – Binyamin – the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago, and there’s been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.”
So what? What’s Mr. Kane’s point?
Bibi said that the Moslem prayer rug, “‘it just doesn’t look that old to me.’
Well. Maybe the rug didn’t appear as old as it’s claimed.
It’s a leap to impute to Netanyahu, “..refusing to acknowledge the well-established fact that there has been an Arab and Islamic presence in Palestine for thousands of years”.
BTW. Bibi’s father is a world reknown Jewish historian.
Baseless projection by Mr. Kane and shame on Mr. Weiss.