In Revue Biblique, I have an article on the provenance of the "Nazareth Inscription", an Early Roman-period text that has been often linked over the last century with the earliest Christians. What can we actually say about it? 🧵

just to be clear in case there’s still any confusion “114 Palestinian children with single gunshot wounds to head/chest—injuries forensic experts say are consistent with aimed fire” is what “Israel has a right to defend itself” is a euphemism for

If you want to know how IOF soldiers have interpreted references to Amalek, here is the genocidal sniper Daniel Raab in his own words.

Cartoon by Jesse Duquette

How it started How it ended Holocaust Museum LA gave in to the Zionists pressure Never again is only for them

The facts about Israel's attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 June War are beyond dispute. Israel knew it was attacking a US ship, which was flying the US flag in excellent weather conditions. Israel attacked the USS Liberty not only deliberately but repeatedly, targeting

How fitting that Commentary chose to illustrate this nasty, fraudulent piece of work with a notorious fake, the Jehoash Inscription. What a way to show you care about Jewish history.

Instead of this fairytale that Mandel ends with, we might note that Israel, like every other actor in this story, uses the idea of "preserving world history" for political ends -- and this includes Mandel and Commentary.

So, Mandel and Commentary care so much about Jewish history that they recycled a stock image of a fake inscription to illustrate this nasty piece of crap.

As far as I can tell, this illustration first appeared in a 2005 Nature article on this and other forgeries causing a scandal in Israel in beyond. Apparently it has since become a stock image available from Getty Images & used in different articles. https://t.co/eATW8tjvnX

There is a silver lining to this nasty piece of work, though: the choice of illustration. What we have here is something that has nothing to do with the article itself -- it's a detail of the so-called "Jehoash Inscription," a notorious forgery.

Mandel then dismisses the idea that the bill is opposed because it is a way of officially annexing (he uses the common euphemism "sovereignty expansion") the West Bank -- even though, in the very TOI article he starts with, the MK who introduced the bill admits this openly.

It's probably very telling that Mandel uses the word "expert" here and not "archaeologist", so that this is not a literal lie, just highly misleading.

In fact, Regavim is the settler organization co-founded by Bezalel Smotrich -- an organization whose untrustworthiness is reflected in the fact that they admitted to a literal false-flag operation to scare Israeli settlers. https://t.co/NiUsSdJNz8

Mandel continues by quoting an "Israeli expert" on the nature and scale of the destruction. The reader will naturally infer that the expert is an archaeologist -- but when you follow the link you see the "expert" is actually a senior figure at a settler organization.

And, if we were actually trying to understand looting, we would note (as experts in the study of the antiquities trade regularly do) that trafficking is driven by the demand side. In this case, a significant percentage of the collectors and dealers driving the trade are Israelis

He also conveniently omits any mention of Israeli culpability -- even though, just below the passage Mandel quotes, a settler organization admits to the fact that Israelis, too, are looting sites.

In the process, of course, he continues the longstanding, absurd Israeli obsession (from long before 2023) of comparing Palestinians -- and not just Hamas, but Palestinians in general -- to ISIS

He dismisses any discussion of *why* the looting might be happening -- something vital to understand if you want to actually counteract it -- to keep laser-focused on blaming Palestinians.

Mandel ignores all of this, to focus on the issue apparently of greatest concern to him: blaming Palestinians for the problem.

While there are some problems with this article, you can at least learn something about what is going on, the viewpoints of the different actors involved, and how international law relates. https://t.co/x7mEwOAEbk