The Indiana Jones Temple of Douche Award

A doff of the hat to workingclass artist for bringing this bucket of crazy to my attention.

It's been a while since I've handed out one of my coveted awards, but thanks to workingclass artist I am struck by the muse. The Indiana Jones Temple of Douche Award goes to:

THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY!!!! YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!

If you're a regular reader of OMV you know there's no love lost between myself and the racist, genocidal, inhumane extortionist douche fucks at the PA, but this time they've sunk to a new level of stupid so amazing, so stupendous...well...you just have to stand in awe of it.

Apparently in April the PA petitioned the Prime Minister of Canada, to cancel an exhibition at the Ontario Royal Museum featuring fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls...because...this is priceless...you should sit and swallow any beverages you might be drinking so you don't snarf all over your computer...because...Israel STOLE the Dead Sea Scrolls from them!

Buwhahahahahahahah!!!!

They base the premise of this ludicrous demand on the fact that a collection of the Qumran artifacts were stored in East Jerusalem in 1967, when Israel unified the city after driving out the Jordanian Army. There are international conventions that make it illegal for an occupying government to take artifacts from the occupied territory.

Let's unwind this big ball of stupid.

The first discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls occurred in 1947, prior to partition, which the Arabs rejected anyway. The Bedouin sold the scrolls discovered in cave I. The Palestinians have no claim to them. After the ceasefire was declared in 1949, more caves were found...in land occupied by Jordan. The Temple scroll was purchased by Yigal Yadin from a dealer in Bethlehem in 1967. The copper scroll is in Jordan, who controlled the territory where Qumran is located, from 1949 to 1967.

The Palestine Archeological Museum in East Jerusalem, where the disputed part of the collection was located, opened in 1938 while the British still controlled the territory known as British Mandate Palestine. Upon the ending of the Mandate, an international board took control of the museum, and operated it until it was nationalized by Jordan in 1966, assuming control of the building and everything in it. When Israel unified Jerusalem in 1967 Israel took control of the museum, considering it captured Jordanian state property. There was no Palestinian state since the Arabs rejected its creation.

From before partition to now there has never been a Palestinian state. How can a quasi government of a country that doesn't exist make any claim to anything? How can the Palestinians say these scrolls were seized from their territory when statehood was rejected and Palestine never created? If anyone other than the Israelis had claim to the scrolls based on territorial provenance it would be the Bedouin that were living in the area around Qumran, and who found the scrolls in the first place. And why isn't the PA attempting to claim the Copper Scroll that is in Jordan?

This is a perfect illustration of rejectionism biting Arabs on the ass. If they had accepted resolution 181, all the scrolls found after partition would be under their control, but they fell for the "never claim policy," which is great if you never claim, but they had to claim and well, there it is. You douche fucks can't have it both ways. You didn't accept statehood in '47 and you reject it now, along with legal rights that a legitimate government would normally possess, you dummies.

President of the Virginia-based Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation and director of the Center for Art, Museum, and Cultural Heritage Law Program of Chicago’s DePaul University, Patty Gerstenblith, puts it rather succinctly:

“The Palestinian Authority’s lack of status as a recognized state would undermine any potential claim based on national ownership or rights to cultural property under international legal instruments.”

Oops. Guess y'all were too filled with Jew hate to think about those little details.

Despite the lack of status to make any legal claims, Canadians for Justice and Peace (according to them) in the Middle East President, Thomas Woodley said:

...there are principles that need to be respected. UNESCO conventions and protocols are clear that it’s illegal for a country to take artifacts of a territory it is occupying... The rightful caretakers of these scrolls would be the Palestinian Authority."

Hate to break it to ya Tommy Boy, but you are 100% wrong, and so is the PA.

Apart from the legalities mentioned by Gerstenblith, there's the whole matter regarding the fact that the UNESCO convention addresses the issue of cultural provenance as well as territorial provenance. The irony here is that the PA is laying claim to what are clearly Jewish artifacts.

The PA stance has always been that there were never any Jews living in the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. In fact the Waqf has gone to such great lengths to hide or erase the Jewish archeological record from the Temple Mount that the Al-Aqsa mosque has been said to be in danger of collapse (which the Arabs conveniently blame on the Jews). By making a claim to Jewish artifacts found in the Judean Hills, they are in fact recognizing and legitimating that Judea and Samaria are the ancestral lands of the Jewish people.

I suppose that the PA could argue that the scrolls are fakes, but their historical provenance is unimpeachable. I would suggest, for the sake of consistency, the Palestinian Authority argue that the Dead Sea Scrolls in fact do not exist; that they are perhaps an optical illusion caused by sunspots.

Unless the PA is going to now claim they are Jews, it's time for Woodley to hang it up, along with his bleeding heart. And it's time for the PA to drop this. If they're going to continue to press this issue, about which there has been no mention by the Palestinian leadership since they invented themselves as the PLO in 1964, until now, then I would suggest that every member of the Palestinian Authority "government" wear a lapel pin that says, "Set On Stupid."

There was no Palestinian country when the scrolls were discovered. The Jordanian Antiquities Authority controlled the scrolls that were in East Jerusalem at the time of the Six Day War. If the provenance of the scrolls was to be disputed, wouldn't the Treaty of Peace between Jordan and Israel be cited as the means through which the Israeli Antiquities Authority acquired final control of the disputed parts of the collection?

Once again the world community has an opportunity to watch the Palestinian Authority demonstrate that it's raison d'etre is eradicating not only the physical presence of the Jewish people, but our historical record as well. But thanks to their inability to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and their lack of desire to claim their own state, despite it being offered to them several times, a perfectly good attempt to subsume Jewish history in Eretz Yisrael is shot to hell.

Whoops!

Congratulations on your award Palestinian Authority. You've earned it!