Simon Schama on Shlomo Sand

Excellent review by Simon Schama of Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People, which has now been translated into English.

Modern Trade Routes and Ancient Gazan Artifacts

I was disappointed to find no word of the whereabouts of a huge hoard of early (?) Hellenistic coins found near Rafah in January in this recent article on Gazan antiquities from the Christian Science Monitor. I tried to investigate the issue earlier this year. I asked a friend at the American Numismatic Society who works in the region, and on contemporary coinage from the Arabian peninsula, but he hadn't heard anything.

But what caught my eye in this article was the assertion by Abu Ahmed, a black market antiquities dealer from Gaza, that in his view the biggest market for these artifacts is in Israel. There is huge money in "Biblical" antiquities, and so many different people profit from it. Of course many of the people who profit most from off-the-record sales of these objects live in Israel. It is disconcerting to the say the least that despite tight border controls Gaza is still a major exporter of this stuff to Israel. The Israeli Antiquities Authority and the IDF can do better.

Hasmoneans in the News

The (descendants of the) guys who gave you Hanukah apparently ruled over a larger area of the Land of Israel than historians have long assumed. New finds in southern Israel seem to confirm the claim of Josephus that the Hasmonean king Alexander Yannai conquered large areas in the south. According to archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority, a fortress inside a former Nabatean caravanserai (a kind of inn for traders) in the Negev was actually built and controlled by Hasmonean forces. Archaeologists had previously thought that the fortress was built by the Romans. The Hasmoneans held the structure and effective control over the Nabateans' primary trade route, from 99 until 66 BCE.

Sad Comment on Israeli Archaeology

Construction in Maaleh Hazeitim (Photo: cnn.com)

BY NOAH K.

This may seem like utter trivia, pure kishkushim just one day after Bibi met Obama, but excuse me, this is important: a ceramic vessel with a Hebrew inscription was found in East Jerusalem. Excavations in the Ras al-Amud section of the city uncovered a "water pitcher" bearing the name "Menachem," according to Ha'aretz, "marking the first time such a handle bearing this name has been found in Jerusalem." Never mind that the Israeli Antiquities Authority people who put out this information to the press don't/can't date the vessel anymore precisely than "somewhere between the Canaanite era (2200 - 1900 B.C.E.) and the end of the first Temple period (the 7th - 8th centuries B.C.E.) [sic]," which I suppose means either that they haven't looked at it very closely in their haste, or that it's the kind of household ware that sometimes doesn't change significantly for centuries, even for a millenium. Never mind the gross hazards of trying to identify this particular Menachem, with, say, some pharaonic official in the region. The point is if course that the IAA found an Israelite in East J-lem.

So what's the big deal? As I have noted before on this blog, the legal status of excavations and of antiquities uncovered in East Jerusalem (and perhaps elsewhere in the territories), both under Israeli law and under international agreements on cultural heritage, is at best murky. What drives archaeology in East Jerusalem is settler money. And the IAA and other relevant authorities tend to look the other way when enforcement of the law conflicts with the objectives of organizations like the Ir David Foundation. Here, we have something slightly different -- a salvage excavation. Construction of a "girl's school" uncovered some ancient remains that, presumably, were then taken out scientifically. Just like nearby Siwan, another hotspot neighborhood, Ras al-Amud has attracted both controversial settlement building, at Maaleh Hazeitim, and archaeological interest. As Nadav Shragai wrote last year in Ha'aretz:

"Right-wing activists ascribe great significance to widening Jewish construction in Ras al-Amud, and to realizing ownership of lots and buildings that it has managed to acquire in recent years in that vicinity.

According to their thinking, Maaleh Hazeitim makes it harder to create a Palestinian territorial corridor, a sort of "safe passage" between the West Bank to the east, and the Temple Mount."

For me, this is very disconcerting; obviously a combustible situation . The best way to avoid another outbreak of violence like the one we saw surrounding the Dung Gate controversy is to depoliticize archaeology as much as possible in greater Jerusalem.

Piracy

I have recently waded into the murky waters of the history of piracy in the Greco-Roman world. As a participant in a graduate seminar here at Berkeley on ancient Greek economic history, I prepared a presentation on a dossier of Greek inscriptions to do with attacks by sea and on the seas, and to do with local efforts to recoup losses, secure captives, and honor the benefactors who bailed the victims out in their time of need. All this amidst the first direct confrontation between the US military and Somali pirates, and more prolific bloggers weighing in on possible connections between the ancient Mediterranean and the contemporary Gulf of Aden.

It is often said that one man's pirate is another man's...well, you get the idea.  There is quite a debate in ancient history about whether piracy should be understood as just another form of economic activity. The Greeks of "Homeric Society," at least were somewhat ambivalent; as Nestor asks Telemachus in the third book of the Odyssey, "Are you a pirate (leistês) or a trader?" And, as Thucydides later noticed, Nestor was basically fine with the visitor being either. The term peiratês, when it appears in the Hellenistic period, is certainly one of abuse. No one self-identifies in our sources as one. Some then would argue that what distinguishes "piracy," which fed into markets for slaves and produced new ones for "protection," from any other normal, albeit violent, economic activity, was merely its lack of a state-issued grant of legitimacy, unlike Sir Walter Raleigh with his "letters of marque," or national armies when they engage in plunder under the cover of their uniforms. 

That isn't my position, but it got me thinking: what if the pirate draws his legitimacy -- and more than enough, at that -- from his immediate societal context? That the reaction of the Somali pirates to the ultimately lethal Navy Seal operation was to retaliate against non-US vessels, one Lebanese, I believe, was another hint that these people are playing by different rules. In other words, they have their own sources of legitimacy.

This is certainly one of the lessons to draw from this BBC interview with an active pirate, twenty-five years old and living in "the notorious den of Harardhere in central Somalia." Somehow, I don't think this is an unedited transcript.

"So it is no surprise to see us in the same water [as migrants], pirating in search of money - there is no difference. We have local support; most of the people here depend on pirates directly or indirectly. Because if there is a lot of money in the town they can get some through friendship, relatives or business. Also our work is seen by many in the coastal villages as legal and we are viewed as heroes."

Speaking of the economics of piracy, how about the significant Israeli presence in the security industry for both cruise and commercial ships in the region? Yet another high-value, specialized security export. On Saturday, a private Israeli security detail beat back pirates from a large German-Italian cruise ship. As it turns out, the Defense Ministry doesn't keep any statistics on the numbers of ex-IDF, many of them with specialized nautical training, working in that sector, though they do for arms dealing. It seems kind of unwise to me. Could we see a situation in the near future where an Israeli national gets more involved out there than the government would prefer?

Shared Problems

Coin of Herod the Great as seen tonight on Ebay going for $9.95 before tax and shipping.

The current issue of National Geographic spotlights the trade in illegal antiquities that is flourishing in the West Bank. The piece is worth checking out for the photos, but also for the explanation of the process by which the cultural loot makes it to market. As it turns out, the Persian Gulf isn't only to blame for purchasing a large part of the ancient treasure on the black market, it also provides a kind of laundry service for Israeli dealers. The objects are smuggled out of the West Bank to the Gulf, whence they return to Israel with official export licenses -- in other words, ready for legitimate sale.

The disastrous state of the Palestinian economy and the patchwork legal and security framework, we're told, render this state of affairs all but inevitable. The PA's official and the Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist attached to the IDF in "Judaea and Samaria" seem resigned. Political and military imperatives weigh against enforcement of the the 1978 Antiquities Law or the PA's own rules -- which are what exactly? And what is the status of the Israeli Antiquities Law in the territories? Apparently, you need an export license to transfer antiquities from Hebron to East Jerusalem; so said the Israeli courts in Ruidi and Maches v. Military Court of Hebron.

Indeed the situation seems chaotic. But I would argue that traffic in illegal antiquities in the territories isn't only a product of the breakdown of the peace process and the dearth of the Palestinian economy. It's also related to the curious, confusing Israeli stance on the entire issue of antiquities. Today Israel countenances an enormous amount of illegal excavation and sale within its 1967 borders. By one count, 11,000 of the 14,000 sites within the Green Line have been looted. The root cause is often related to a simple contradiction in policy. The Antiquities Law effectively nationalizes any artifact that surfaces. They're all state property. And yet, the antiquities trade is legal -- whereas in many neighboring nations, it's not. With strong demand from museums (some internal) and collectors large, small, and sometimes powerful (see Moshe Dayan, Yigal Yadin, and Teddy Kollek), pressure to increase supply is constant. You might get the idea that the anarchic West Bank is the perfect playground for rich collectors. Ironically, the dubious legitimacy of an Israeli export license may attract more of them.

The Benevolent Empire Strikes Back

What makes an empire great? What makes it really great – more durable and expansive than its rivals? What makes an empire a “hyper power,” the center of things in a unipolar world? Yale law professor Amy Chua wanted to know, and so she studied world history’s “hyper powers.” The label owes its origin to a Frenchman, who in 1999 uttered it in an anti-imperial – or at least, anti-American, tirade. But in Chua’s new book, Day of Empire, it’s drained of any prejudice. Her definition, which to me, sitting in on her lecture today on the campus of UC Berkeley, seemed a bit loose, focuses on scale – these empires aren’t on the Aztec scale, but on the Roman, Persian, or Mongol – and, on economic and military preeminence. She argues that radical tolerance or pluralism is the foundation upon which any hyper power stands, bearing in mind that what was progressive in early modern Holland won’t pass muster with liberals today.

From her public comments, and from what one can read in this LA Times review, Chua’s attempt to analyze ancient and modern empires comprehensively, while admirable and ambitious, appears to miss the mark. I asked her whether her notion of “strategic tolerance” could indeed be applied equally well to a decentralized ancient empire, which bows to local custom and rule as a matter of practicality – say, the Achaemenid Persians in a place like Upper Egypt – as to a modern empire, like the American, which might, in the interest of gaining a competitive advantage over the Chinese, selectively offer visas to highly skilled foreign nationals to keep them from setting up shop in Hong Kong. She answered that colleagues had warned her of the brutality of pedants and specialists, had charged that she wouldn’t be comparing apples and oranges, but apples and nuclear power plants, and still, alas, she had carried on, secure in the notion that “tolerance” is a flexible yet coherent concept, the “glue” of each of these societies, and, ultimately, what for us should paste them all together. I’m jealous. Would that I were a lawyer and not an ancient historian.

Defunct are the empires of the past; a simple fact, perhaps a justification for shallow study, but also the source of an unmistakable fear of the future that animated Chua’s talk and spread to the crowd. In the western tradition, one finds the idea that empires rise and fall cyclically as far back as Herodotus. Chua faces off with a more difficult problem, encountered by a later Greek historian, Polybius, who took for granted that empires rise and fall, but somehow sensed that Rome was different, that the empire under which he lived was both born of time’s perennial cycle and transcended it. Chua wanted today to look to the future, and in her lawyerly way, to imply that the United States can escape the fate of past empires that failed to negotiate between the extremes of excessive tolerance, whereby internal cohesion suffers, and the backlash of intolerance that, she argues, often seems to follow an externally produced catastrophe on the scale of 9/11.

Chua is a Chinese-American, the daughter of a Berkeley computer science professor. And so it seemed fitting that her comments looked forward to an American clash with China, and also seemed to juxtapose the absorption of Asian immigrants here on the Pacific Rim in California with a failed approach to immigration and integration for Hispanics here and across the country. She tempered optimism on China by pointing to Chinese ethnic chauvinism. But she also fastened upon Jews, repeatedly, as the quintessential beneficiary of imperial tolerance, arguing that hyper powers that took in Jews invariably profited big time. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was driving at the conclusion that what some have called market-oriented ethnic minorities are better positioned than others to profit from the tolerance of hyper powers, and, in turn, fuel the growth of their hosts. In fact, in response to my question, Chua almost seemed to bemoan the ideological restraints that prevent modern, liberal, democratic empires from more effectively cherry picking the kinds of immigrants they desire.

The Middle East had to fit in somewhere. Chua elicited chuckles by pointing out that Coca-Cola and American blockbusters won’t turn a Palestinian into an American – or a pro-American; or that the US isn’t about to draw an army of civil servants from the Iraqi population, à la the British in India. Her more serious point, and, I think, one of the major arguments of her book, is that the US had better not impose its values and culture on Middle Eastern nations. That wouldn’t be tolerant. Instead, it would spell the beginning of the end of America’s reign as hyper power. Given that she very much left open the question of whether or not American hegemony, or even hyper power per se, is a good thing, I couldn’t help feeling that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too. Tolerance and pluralism, no doubt, are by Chua’s reckoning, good things. And the powers that practice them, get rewarded. (Here, Stanford’s Josiah Ober, the preeminent historian and theorist of classical Athenian democracy, would wholeheartedly agree). Then why, one wonders, shouldn’t the West be intolerant about intolerance in the Middle East? To protect our competitive advantage? In other words, is hyper power a zero-sum game; we keep tolerance and pluralism to ourselves and thereby retain our dominance? If instead, tolerance is a universal good, an engine of economic growth, the fons et origo of happiness, why shouldn’t we be pushing with Thomas Friedman for the pope to visit Saudi Arabia? Liberal values may prove just as much a casualty of the neocon putsch as the tragic loss of human life in Iraq.

Jesus in the Talmud

Something new to quarrel about. (Image: Princeton Univ. Press)

Princeton University Prof. Peter Schaefer has written a new book called "Jesus in the Talmud," which seeks to move beyond mere positivistic compilation of the meager rabbinic sources for the "historical Jesus," and to instead make sense of these cameos as a kind of "counter-narrative" to the Gospels. Who knew that the authors of the Babylonian Talmud knew the Gospels so well? I'm surprised to learn as well that, as the J-Post review points out, Jesus' Sanhedrin trial (not dealt with explicitly in the Talmud) lacked so much in the way of adherence to Jewish law. As it turns out, it's in the Babylonian Talmud that Jesus tends to show up, in what some zealots are calling, "pornographic" detail, whereas, in the Palestinian Talmud, Jesus appears less often, mostly as a target of an attack on magic. Schaefer's historical explanation here is compelling: in post-Constantinian Palestine, more and more the site of inspired imperial patronage, bashing Jesus was risky. But in Sassanian Babylonia, where an attack on Christianity could be construed as an attack on Rome, it was cool. The J-Post review is a little suspect, but Antiquitopia has read the book and provides interesting analysis. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, Schaefer's seen Amos in diapers, so we have to tread carefully here.

UNESCO Ambiguates on Old City Dig

UNESCO's HQ in Paris

The report of UNESCO's investigation of Israeli excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem was published Wednesday. I can't find the full text on UNESCO's website. Only a press release. In any case, the gist of the matter seems clear. First of all, the report clears the Israelis of the accusation that their work is in any way deleterious to the Muslim holy site. But second, it criticizes the Israeli's for not communicating with the Waqf, the Jordanians, etc., in advance of the project. it would be interesting to see the full text of the report in order to gauge the relative emphasis placed on these two points.

I was somewhat dismayed to read a BBC story in which the now officially discredited accusations of some Muslim leaders were presented as banal -- as potentially truthful. As the BBC puts it,"Palestinian critics and Muslim figures internationally say the work could damage the mosque foundations." Thanks to the report summarized in this very BBC story, we now know this not to be the case.

The other issue, namely, Israel's prerogative in undertaking activities of this nature in land occupied in 1967, is much more complicated. According to Haaretz, Israeli diplomats fear that coordination with the Waqf and Jordanians would be tantamount to renouncing Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount. For my part, I don't understand why the excavations should be stopped immediately if they are deemed harmless. UNESCO says that the Israelis have seen enough, but that is almost never the case in archaeology. Still, I can imagine that, perhaps, in hindsight, a more multilateral approach might have been taken to this sensitive problem.

One Last Pass Through the Dung Gate

For the past few days, the authors of this blog have been involved in a low-intensity dispute over one of the Old City of Jerusalem's many gates. In yesterday’s post, N asserted that the “Dung Gate” (שער האשפות) should be distinguished from the the Mughrabi ("Moors'") Gate (שער המוגרבים). As N pointed out, the “Dung Gate” – a name which originally appears in the Bible – is the southern entrance to the Old City and the Western Wall plaza. For those familiar with the area, it’s the gate that is usually used by buses and vehicles to enter and leave the area. Here's a good photograph taken from a Russian-language site for anyone wishing to refresh their memory:

The "Dung Gate"

What has so far eluded me and others involved in this blog is the distinction between the “Dung Gate” and the “Mughrabi Gate”. I am accustomed to hearing both names used interchangeably for the above gate. An Arab friend of mine who works as a lawyer in Jerusalem always referred to the “Dung Gate” as the “Mughrabi Gate”. Numerous websites, including the Wikipedia entry cited above, indicate that both names are used for the gate. The origin of the name שער האשפות (“Dung Gate”) is biblical. The Arabs of the area, however, refer to it as Bab al-Magharbe (Gate of the Maghrebins). An old map that my father retrieved for me from his Jerusalem-related mini-library attests to the fact that the “Dung Gate” was in fact referred to as the Mughrabi Gate:


The above map was scanned from a book originally published 1876 by the German travel writer Karl Baedeker. The original appears to have been published in English, rather than German, in London, under the name Jerusalem and its Surroundings. In the bottom left of the above map, the "Dung Gate" is labeled "Bab al-Mogharibe". The term "Dung Gate" is also included in brackets with the prefix "vulgar".

What is missing from Baedeker map is a label indicating the location of the other Mughrabi Gate, the entrance to the Temple Mount, that N mentioned. This gate is very clearly designated in an Israeli map first drawn in 1936 by P.G. Salmon and updated and printed in 1970 by the Israeli Land Survey Department in 1970:



Those who know Hebrew will note that the "Dung Gate" is identified as such in the bottom left of the above map. Only the Hebrew term שער האשפות is used. If we trace the curved earthworks or ramp that leads from this gate upwards, we reach the entrance to the Temple Mount, which the map identifies as the שער המערביים, which essentially means "Gate of the Maghrebis" [Westerners, i.e. those coming from the West - the Maghreb]. [An interesting linguistic aside that I cannot help but insert here is that the Arabic letter غ, transcribed into English as gh and properly pronounced like a Parisian "R", is transformed into an ע (ayn) in Hebrew. Thus al-Maghrib - المغرب ("the West" in Arabic) is ha-Ma'arav - המערב in Hebrew.]

The fuss that is currently being made is, of course, about the ramp that connects the "Dung Gate" (or Mughrabi Gate or whatever) to the other Mughrabi Gate that leads up to the Temple Mount. The wooden ramp that has been in use for this purpose in the past, has now been torn up and the mound on which it rests is being leveled. Currently, excavations are underway to locate any artifacts before a new walkway is constructed. Here are several pictures taken by Amos last summer of the old wooden ramp that is now being torn down:

This shows the ramp pretty clearly; Kotel to the left, al-Aqsa to the right

Here you can see just a small part of the ramp but maybe also the gate that leads directly to the mount

Another view of the ramp

What we need now is another post summarizing the history of both gates - when they were built, when they were re-opened and when they were modified.

Monitoring the Jerusalem Excavations

The course of politically sensitive excavations in the City of David.

I think that I have finally arrived at a clear picture of the politico-archaeological situation in Jerusalem. Who could riot if everyone were forced to pick this story apart on a Friday night? We must distinguish between two archaeological projects currently active in Jerusalem.

The first is the construction of a bridge that links the Dung Gate (שער האשפות), off the south side of the Western Wall plaza, to the Mughrabi ("Moors'") Gate (שער מוגרבים), which leads to the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount). There was some confusion in the press, and indeed on this blog, about the topography. The Dung Gate is not the Mughrabi Gate. Regarding this first project, I wholeheartedly agree with John: this is 100% kosher. As Haaretz put it in an editorial, this project is in line with the post-1967 status quo. The Israelis control the Mughrabi Gate, the only point of Jewish access to the Temple Mount holy site, just as they control, of course, the Western Wall plaza. This bridge connects those two points and simply replaces a condemned ramp. The excavations that accompany the construction of the bridge are salvage excavations, which as Gideon Avni of the Israel Antiquities Authority nicely explains, are "no different than any other salvage excavation conducted by the Antiquities Authority throughout the country." A perhaps more eloquent testament to the innocence of these excavations than the Authority's live web cam are the comments of Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, from the French Ecole Biblique in East Jerusalem. He told the BBC that the work was "completely routine."

"This work is not inside the Haram. It is outside, leading to the Moors' Gate. The earth ramp fell down and has to be replaced. I do not know why the Palestinians have chosen to make an issue out of this. It is a recognised Jewish area under the arrangements that prevail in the Old City. One can contrast this to the extensive excavations just round the corner in a Muslim area where huge pilgrim hostels from the 8th Century were revealed, with no protest. There has also been no protest over digs at the City of David nearby. There is absolutely no danger to the foundations of the al-Aqsa mosque since that is built on the huge Herodian blocks that are still there."

Interestingly, Murphy-O'Connor brings up a second excavation, one which he claims has not elicited a particularly ferocious reaction, that which is underway in the "City of David," south of the Western Wall plaza and Temple Mount, to the east of the Green Line. The distinction between this excavation, which Haaretz termed "illegal," and the Mughrabi bridge project was pointed out in an earlier post by Amos. To my mind, this City of David excavation is, by contrast, morally, ideologically, and perhaps politically dubious. I hasten to add that what it has uncovered so far, part of a Second Temple era road that likely connected the ritual bathing pools of Silwan to the Temple Mount promises archaeologist a significant advance in our knowledge of the ancient city under Roman authority. Still, the project seems deeply flawed. It began under the direction of Professors Gabi Reich and Eli Shukrun a few months ago near the Arab village of Silwan. The same Antiquities Authority's Gideon Avni has called it "unlicensed." Yet the AIA has sanctioned an "exploratory" continuation phase rather than impose the customary restrictions on excavators who break the rules. From Haaretz, it seems, one can't get a clear idea of just "how" illegal this excavation is. To me, it doesn't seem kosher, though. First of all, the excavators are reported to be digging under the local Arabs' homes without any coordination with the owners of those homes. I can't imagine how this can be ethically justified. Second of all, one only needs to glance at the sources of funding for this project to see that the political guidance - or lack thereof - that looms behind the Mughrabi work simply isn't there in this case. One source is an organization called Elad [which promotes the acquisition of East Jerusalem properties by Jews - Amos], and another is the "City of David Foundation" [they seem to be the same organization - Amos]. Its founder, David Be'eri

"first visited the City of David in the mid-1980s, the city was in such a state of disrepair and neglect that the former excavations that had once been conducted were once again concealed beneath garbage and waste. The site was almost completely off-limits to tourists for security reasons, and in fact the first visit David'le made to the site was as an undercover commander of an elite military unit. Inspired by the historical record of archaeological discoveries made in the City of David in prior years, and by the longing of the Jewish People to return to Zion, David'le left the army to establish the Ir David Foundation in 1986 ('Ir David Foundation).

For those inciting Muslims in Israel, the territories, and the world to riot, the Mughrabi Gate work clearly provided enough of a pretext. It would be wise not to add more fuel to the fire with excavations such as this second one, which are not only illegal under Israeli law but also being promoted by organizations with explicit political agendas.

More facts on the Excavations near the Temple Mount

The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa (July 2006)

The Israel Antiquities Authority now has a live web camera on its website which broadcasts views of the excavation site from different angles. The webcam is actually not terribly enlightening for viewers not familiar with the area, but it is useful as a symbolic demonstration of openness and transparency. Unfortunately, the site seems to designed only for Internet Explorer. There are also two articles by senior archaeologists from the Antiquities Authority. One article, by Dr. Gideon Avni, seeks to explain why the excavations are being carried out now. He argues quite convincingly that the excavations are part of a salvage operation aimed at locating, documenting and preserving any artifacts at the site where the planned bridge is supposed to be constructed. Another source worth looking at is a Question and Answer session hosted by the Jerusalem Post with Dr. Eilat Mazar, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University.

Inciting the Faithful: Construction near the Temple Mount

Al Aqsa from behind the wall (Summer 2006)

ADDENDUM: I wrote the post below before the riots that erupted on the Temple Mount on Friday. Protesters in Nazareth, meanwhile, carried signs calling on the Muslim world to react to the "Jewish assault on [al-Aqsa]."

There has been a great deal of commotion about Israeli construction and excavation projects near the Temple Mount in recent days. Accusations by the waqf and by various Palestinian groups that Israel is damaging the al-Aqsa mosque in particular or the Haram al-Sharif more generally are longstanding. In several instances in the past, Muslim leaders have complained about the "desecration" of these areas by the State of Israel or by Jews. All too often, these accusations have been utterly spurious, serving to incite Arabs in Israel and abroad.

This time around, there is controversy about two different projects. The first is the excavation of a tunnel under the City of David by two Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists. Archaeologists recently discovered what they believe to be a road used by pilgrims during the Second Temple era that led through Jerusalem and to the temple. They are planning to lay bare the whole road, from the village of Silwan to the Bab al-Mughrabi [Mughrabi Gate or Gate of the North Africans, also known as the "Dung Gate"] and perhaps even to the Temple Mount. It turns out that the excavations that have been going on recently are actually illegal under Israeli law, as it is proceeding without a license (Ha'aretz).

A different project is the construction of a new bridge to replace the old ramp to the Bab al-Mughrabi, which collapsed. It is important to point out that this gate, which in Hebrew is called the שער האשפות (Garbage or Dung Gate) is also the only one by which Jews and other non-Muslims can currently access the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif, whichever you prefer. All the other gates are open to Muslims only. It was to be expected that the inflammatory leader of the Islamist Movement's Northern Branch in Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, would protest any construction by Israel. But now even the Egyptian Foreign Ministry is weighing in. In a statement to the Israeli ambassador, the Egyptians declared that

the sacredness of the site makes any movement inside or around it a very sensitive issue for Arab and Muslim peoples, in a way that could cause the situation to explode (Ha'aretz).

Never mind that it is also Judaism's holiest site.

Interestingly enough, the waqf itself has not yet launched protests against this construction, which is taking place entirely outside the Temple Mount. The Islamist Movement seems to have taken the opportunity to incite its followers once again. This is in line with previous statements by the Sheikh to the effect that Israel was preparing to seize the al-Aqsa mosque.