Levitt Letter Extra News

By Michael Valpy, www.GlobeandMail.com

The six-month exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls closed January 3 in Toronto, with scholars baffled by the Jordanian government’s last-minute request to Canada to stop the ancient manuscripts from going back to Israel.

The request, delivered to the Canadian chargé d’affaires in the Jordanian capital of Amman, underscores the tortuous history of the region, where custody of the 2,000he 2,000
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Štetje svetopisemskih vrstic se začne z ¹! Vrstica ⁰ ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin-year-old fragments of Jewish spiritual writings has become entangled in the politics and warfare of perhaps the world’s most fought over piece of geography.

Since the opening of the exhibit last June – at the Royal Ontario Museum in partnership with the Israeli Antiquities Authority – the huge lineups and laudatory reviews of the display have received extensive coverage in news media both inside and outside Canada.

However, Jordan waited until two weeks ago to ask Canada to take custody of the scrolls in keeping with requirements of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, an international protocol to which Canada is a signatory.

Jordan claims Israel seized the scrolls from a Jerusalem museum under Jordanian control in the Six-Day War of 1967.

The Canadian government has replied by saying Jordan, Israel, and the Palestine Authority should sort out who owns the scrolls and Ottawa will not intervene – a response which, legally, the Canadian government likely had no choice but to make, said Prof. Lawrence Schiffman, chair of New York University’s department of Hebrew and Judaic studies and a Dead Sea Scrolls specialist.

Ottawa, he said, was likely party to an indemnification agreement signed before the scrolls left Israel to come to Canada. The agreement – a conventional document protecting cultural property – would guarantee that Israel would get the scrolls back.

What has puzzled scrolls experts is not just Jordan’s timing but Jordan’s intervention. Why did it wait until just before the exhibit closed? And why did it make the request when 20 years ago it declared that its previous interests in the area, such as the museum in east Jerusalem that once housed some of the scrolls that came to Canada, were now in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.

Eibert Tigchelaar, professor of religion at both Florida State University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and a world-renowned scholar on the scrolls, said: “All I can say is that I am amazed that now not the Palestinian Authority but Jordan has entered the scene.”

In fact, Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in April, saying that the Israelis had no authority to let the scrolls come to Canada, although it doesn’t appear that the Palestinians asked Ottawa to keep the scrolls now that they’re here.

In any event, the application to the scrolls of the 1954 Hague Convention is not clear-cut.

In 1947 – the year the scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy around the Qumran wadi (desert) northwest of the Dead Sea – the United Nations voted in favor of the partition of the former British Palestine Mandate into separate Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem to be placed under international supervision.

The Palestinian Jewish leadership accepted the plan, but Palestinian Arabs didn’t, and the British refused to implement it because there wasn’t agreement on both sides. Jewish inhabitants of Palestine then unilaterally proclaimed the state of Israel in 1948. Troops from Jordan invaded and occupied Jerusalem, and Jordan annexed the West Bank where the scrolls had been found.

Thus the legal custodianship of the scrolls appears murky.

Moreover, Prof. Schiffman said the scrolls have been exhibited in several cities in Britain and the United States without any action taken by Jordan.

Hindy Najman, director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at University of Toronto, said, “The main principle here should be the proper conservation and exhibition of artifacts that were a part of Jewish history and that, as a result of the survival of Judaism and its influence on both Christianity and Islam, have become part of universal history.”

By Anav Silverman, www.FrontPageMag.com

Sderot New Year gathering

Sderot, Israel:  Hours before the new year, as hundreds of pro-Palestinian and -Arab demonstrators gathered at the Erez Crossing chanting “Katyushas on Ma’alot, Qassams on Sderot,” Israeli demonstrators at another Gaza viewpoint a few meters away gathered together to communicate a very different message.

“A New Decade for Hope and Peace,” was the theme behind the Sderot Rally for Hope, initiated by Sderot Media Center, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the international community. Over 300 supporters, including Israeli youth and international students from France, Australia, South Africa, United States and Canada, were led by the Sderot mayor, David Buskila, and the Israeli Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, Yuli Edelstein.

The marchers, carrying Israeli and international flags, along with signs that read “Children for Hope, Not for War,” trekked up a muddy hill to release white balloons with peace messages that children from a local Sderot Elementary School had written to Gaza children a day before.

Edelstein noted that the there has been a year of relative quiet following Operation Cast Lead, “with only 286 rockets fired at Israel.”

Sderot mayor, David Buskila, stated on the hilltop that “we want the leaders of Hamas to know, who  are unfortunately are still continuing to prepare for war, that Sderot residents come today in peace. And we will never leave this part of Israel.”

Earlier in the day, Hamas leader, Ismail Al-Haniyeh spoke to Gaza supporters gathered on both sides of the Erez Crossing via Israeli Arab MK Tal A-Sana’s mobile phone. Haniyeh stated that Palestinians would never stop fighting for a state and that Hamas had become even stronger thanks to international support. On the Gaza side, 100 participants in the Gaza Freedom March, mobilized by Jewish activist, Medea Benjamin, gathered together to show solidarity exclusively with Gazans.

Other anti-Israel rhetoric that came out of the Gaza solidarity demonstrations were directed from Israeli-Arab MK Jamal Zahalka, who stated in front of international press that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak “enjoys classical music and killing children in Gaza.”

Back in Sderot, marchers convened together in the only rocket-proof theater in the western Negev, to hear 22-year old Sderot resident, Moshe Amar perform John Lennon’s song, Imagine. Amar also shared his family’s harrowing experience following a direct Qassam explosion on their home two years on December 13, 2007r 13, 2007
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WP-Bible plugin, which destroyed their home. Both US President Barack Obama and US Senator John McCain visited the site of the Amars’ home during their US presidential campaign in 2008.

“Try to imagine that everything you love, the things that are supposed to be the most secure in your life– your home and your family—are directly terrorized,” said Amar to the audience. “For almost a year, we were left homeless. To this day, that Qassam attack still traumatizes my family—we will never be the same.”

The Sderot Rally for Hope also featured a former member of the Zambian Parliament, the Hon. Dr. Saviour Chishimba, who is also the 2011 Presidential candidate for Zambia’s United Progressive People’s Party.

Mr. Chishimba told the Sderot rally supporters that ” There is no single nation in the world that would allow a single rocket to be fired onto her soils and just watch without retaliation. Israel has a right to defend her territorial integrity and the right to exist. Hamas is a terrorist group, which should not be given power to govern anywhere in the world.”

“It is time that Africa stand up with Israel,” Mr. Chishimba concluded.

Range of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel