First, Robert Fisk has an essay in the Independent ("You won't find any lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls"), chiefly mocking the efforts of the exhibit to emphasize religious "unity" and expressing disappointment that certain political issues, including the Palestinian protests, were not mentioned. Also the Armenian genocide of 1915:
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).Actually, the sources I can find which discuss Kando's background report that he was a member of the Syrian Orthodox Church (e.g., here, here, etc.). There seems also to have been an Armenian antiquities dealer involved in the early negotiations over the Cave One scrolls (see, e.g., here), so perhaps Fisk is conflating the two (and maybe he could have done his research more carefully). In any case, were Kando Armenian, I don't see why that would obligate the exhibition to bring up the Armenian genocide.
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 is that of the Jews of Europe.It's not clear to me what this is about. Is he really saying that the IAA has denied the historical reality of the Armenian genocide of 1915? That seems, first, unlikely, and, second, rather beyond its remit. Or is the issue that the IAA has not used the specific language "holocaust" or "genocide?" Or that the Israeli Government doesn't and the IAA is guilty by association? The ADL got into some trouble over this issue a while ago and, more recently, so has President Obama. I'm not going to go into that debate except to say that the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition would have no reason either to get involved in it.
He summarizes the Palestinian case as follows:
... 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 Française, 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.)Second, The Ottawa Citizen has an editorial about the Palestinian protests ("The old bait-and-switch"). Excerpt:
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.Background here.
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.”
