Books, not relics, to be transferred from the Rockefeller

POLITICS: Antiquities Authority refutes NGO’s Rockefeller Museum transfer accusations. The IAA also denied Emek Shaveh’s claims that it also intended to transfer other historic relics to the new West Jerusalem facility (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post).

The Antiquities Authority on Thursday refuted claims by left-wing NGO Emek Shaveh that it plans to transfer east Jerusalem’s Rockefeller Museum’s library and rare relics to the western portion of the capital.

The response comes one day after Emek Shaveh, a consortium of European-funded archeologists and activists, filed a petition to the High Court of Justice in an attempt to prevent the alleged transfer.

According to the authority, the move has nothing to do with politics, but rather protecting the ancient books in a new state-of-the-art facility being built by the authority near the Israel Museum.

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This is a development from a story that broke yesterday, but about which I didn't get around to blogging. To say "ancient books" is a bit misleading. These are just old books from the modern library which require special climate control to be conserved properly. They are not antiquities.