Jewish Defence League of Canada
will lead a Counter-Protest
at the Royal Ontario Museum
Friday July 10th
6:00 pm.
The Jewish Defence League of Canada regularly monitors many of the anti Israel organizations in Canada and their links to Terror Groups from the Middle East.
Please review below the planned actions from two anti-Israel groups.
Distributed by Not In Our Name (NION) Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism
Dead Sea Scrolls Illegally Removed from Occupied Palestinian Territories
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
Date: Friday July 10
Time: 6:00 pm
Place: Royal Ontario Museum
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
Join the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) and Women in Solidarity with Palestine for a picket of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) this coming Friday July 10. Help us protest the ROM’s failure to comply with international law and its ethical obligations by:
- Demanding the ROM recognize the Scrolls are looted Palestinian artifacts – Demanding the ROM dissociate itself from the Israeli Antiquities Authority which has systematically looted millions of Palestinian artifacts.
We have tried every avenue to avoid a picket — representatives from the Palestinian community and other organizations have attempted dialogue with the ROM — but none of the concerns have been addressed. We are left no choice but to publicly protest, as the ROM has refused to make public the documents it claims prove the legality of the exhibit. It has also refused to seek a UNESCO opinion on the matter. Please join us for this important picket! Bring noise makers!
These groups have participated in an anti Israel Conference in Cairo, sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood Organization,
Canadian antiwar activists sat down with terror groups
§ Toronto Coalition to Stop the War,
§ Canadian Arab Federation,
§ Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid,
§ Artists Against War,
§ Venezuela We Are With You Coalition,
§ Toronto-Haiti Action Committee,
§ Toronto-Egypt Solidarity Campaign
§ Not In Our Name — Jews Against Israel’s Wars.
It is the intention of the Jewish Defence League of Canada to expose and confront all groups that threaten the well being of the Jewish People.
*Please attend and bring Israeli and Canadian Flags. *
Please forward this message.
Date: Friday July 10
Time: 6:00 pm
Place: Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park
The Dead Sea Scrolls is another authentic proof of the Jewish People’s historic connection to the Land of Israel. (Please see below for more information about the Dead Sea Scrolls)
For additional information
416 – 736 – 7000
jdlcanada@jdl.ca
* * *
At the ROM, on June 27 a crane removed a huge banner advertising the Scrolls from the outside wall of ROM and replaced it with another banner.
The first banner extended just above the pavement and reached the top of the building. In large letters is printed “The Dead Sea Scrolls”, a picture of fragment script, the names of 3 patrons and at the bottom, “Israel Antiquities Authority” in smaller print.
The 2nd banner was of equal huge size. It omitted all the text of the first banner– there is no mention of the Dead Sea scrolls!!! Along with the fragment picture there is just this cryptic statement in large print,`That which unites is greater than that which divides.`
Why would ROM go to this expense and trouble?
– by D.G.
* * *
….“Dead Sea Scrolls Illegally Removed from Occupied Palestinian Territories”….
FACTS
1. You assert that the artifacts “were obtained by force and looting”.
The original seven scrolls was found by a Bedouin in 1947 and sold in 1948, 3 to Hebrew University Professor Sukenik and 4 to the Dominican Archbishop at the St. Mark Monastery who sold them in the USA five years later to Sukenk’s son, the famous Yigal Yadin, for $250 Hardly theft!. Numerous other fragments and manuscripts – more than 800 – found in another ten nearby caves were subsequently found by Bedouin, archeologists and even amateurs. Most went to the American School of Oriental Research at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem since De Vaux began sponsoring excavations in 1951.
2. The site of Qmram was a site settled by Jewish Zionists under the British Mandate who were forced out when Jordan occupied the West Bank in 1948.
3. If you look at the website of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan , you will see that Jordan did not make the sale of antiquities or their export illegal until 1974, seven years after Jordan lost control of the West Bank that it seized and annexed in 1948. This was the same year that Jordan ratified the UNESCO “Convention On The Means Of Prohibiting And Preventing The Illicit Import, Export And Transfer Of Ownership Of Cultural Property” on the same date, June 15th, that the Convention came into force. The Convention was explicitly not retroactive.
4. The West bank lacked an independent Palestinian Archeological Institute until 1975 when one was established at Bir Zeit University.
5. The earlier 1954 Hague Protocol on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict only applied to contracting states to the Protocol and, in any case, allowed the state in control of territory to keep such property in safe keeping until the termination of hostilities. Further, the Palestinian Authority was not nor could it have been a Contracting Party to the Protocol in 1967 and Jordan abrogated any claims to the West Bank.
6. You assert that the artifacts were “seized by in its 1967 surprise war it waged against its neighbours”. The war was not a surprise though the initial attack against Egypt was, but a casus belli was already in place when Egypt closed the straits to prevent ship traffic to Eilat.
The war with Jordan that had occupied the site where the scrolls were originally found started half way through the six days after Jordan – then Transjordan – decided to enter the war against Israel’s urging to stay out of the war.
Israel never seized the manuscripts; they remained in the possession of the Rockefeller Museum . Jordan expropriated the museum which up to 1966 had been a private foundation and Israel as the successor political authority took possession of the museum in 1967.
7. The Dominicans at the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, only initiated excavations in 1951 but are most famous for their role in the translation and interpretation of the contents – as well as for allegedly sitting on the documents for 40 years.
8. The Palestine Archaeological Museum, is the Rockefeller Museum and has been for almost seventy years except for one year, 1966-67, when it was renamed the Palestine Archaeological Museum .
9. Since the scrolls were clearly the cultural property of Jews 2000 years ago, given many precedents on cultural property, would you not think the Jews of today should be the inheritors of that property even if the ownership of the property was in dispute?.
10. It is interesting that the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum in 2007 included Dead Sea Scrolls owned by both the Israel Antiquity Authority and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan , the latter making available the famous Copper scroll. The two authorities cooperated in providing the material.
11. In light of the latter, why did Palestinians not accuse Jordan of looting and theft?
12. Archeological artefacts are owned by states that enact laws regulating cultural heritage. Palestine is not yet a state that can enact such laws and, therefore, is in no position to accuse another state of theft.
– by H.A.
