Link Ra'Ad Vol44 Issue5 2011

7/27/2019 Link Ra'Ad Vol44 Issue5 2011

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December, 2011

The LinkPublished by Americans for

Middle East Understanding, Inc.

Volume 44, Issue 5 LinkArchives: www.ameu.org


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AMEU Boardof Directors

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Edward Dillon

Rod Driver

John Goelet

David Grimland

Richard Hobson (Treasurer)

Anne R. Joyce

Hon. Robert V. Keeley

Kendall Landis

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James M. Wall

AMEU NationalCouncil

Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr.

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Miriam Ward, RSM

Executive Director

John F. Mahoney

n the steps to Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem, Isee an elderly Palestinian woman wearing a hand-embroidered dress, likely of her own making, sit-

ting on the stone pavement, baskets of fruit infront of her. She has carried her load from her village pastcheckpoints, or perhaps around them, to sell her harvest. To ad-vertise her tiny pears, she calls out, Pears, Pears, Bal Pears.The people walking by understand: the pears are small, notmass-produced in irrigated orchards, but picked from the wild.Most people today prefer plump, perfect looking fruits andvegetables, though less tasty. Bal fruits and vegetables grow onrain moisture: imperfect and blemished, smaller in size, but the

flavor is concentrated and specialone can smell the aromafrom a distance. I buy a kilo, then ask: What does it mean thatyour pears are bal? She explains their special quality, withoutarticulating what the term represents in the ancient memory of aCanaanite god and his attributes.

We are pleased to welcome threenew members to our National Coun-cil: Kathleen Christison, former CIAanalys t an d curre nt auth or/columnist; Nancy Lapp, curator emeri-tus of American Schools of OrientalResearch; and George Mendenhall,professor emeritus of ancient and bib-lical studies at the University of Michi-gan. We are honored by their publicsupport.

Also on page 16, we acknowledgewith profound gratitude the bequestreceived from the estate of RitaMcGaughey, a steadfast friend ofAMEU, whose remembrance insuresthe continuation of our work.

John F. MahoneyExecutive Director

About This Issue

Basem L. Raad, a professor at Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, is theauthor of Hidden Histories: Pales-tine and the Eastern Mediterranean.For readers wishing further docu-mentation on the authors research,his book, reviewed on page 14, isavailable through AMEU. (See page16 to order by check, or go to our re-designed website www.ameu.org, toorder online.)

The embroidery design runningthroughout the article is fromTraditional Palestinian Costume byHanan Munayyer. It shows the backpanel of a dress from Emmuas, thebiblical village on the road to Jerusa-lem that was destroyed by Israel in1967.

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I am satisfied. For her, as for others in the region,this word and many such expressions, place names,and customs have retained thousands-of-years-oldassociationsnot fossilized remnants but subaltern,

functional folk traditions, conveying a host of pastinventories that merit rediscovery. They show thepeoples ancientness, a continuity they dont have topretend or fabricate, though they may not always beaware of it.

To explicate some of this hidden history, I tracehere Canaan/Canaanite as a metaphor, as amodel, as a theme. My purpose is to expose underly-ing preconceptions in common thinking, and to ap-proximate a more accurate picture of regional his-tory, culture and religion, based on crucial discover-ies.

The notional Canaan is different from the realCanaana land of long-lasting cultural contribu-tions that radiated across the Mediterranean.Canaan, along with Mesopotamia and Egypt, pro-duced impressive cultural materials, invented thealphabet, even the mythological system which laterreligions both condemned and adapted. Today, ex-ploring imaginary and real Canaan leads us to es-sential recognitions about Palestine as well, the

claims surrounding it, and its potential as a centerfor new knowledgeIdealized Constructionshe region of Palestine and the East-ern Mediterranean has been like apalimpsest, much paved over, re-siding below the surface or veiledby invention. This region (I preferEastern Mediterranean instead

of the colonial Middle East) is often called "the

cradle of civilization." Yet that world of civilizationis not at all the same as the conceived biblicalworldthe latter image having shadowed under-standings both in the public mind and in scholarlywork.

History is partial and problematic, often biased,written by those who are victorious or have the toolsto write and preserve it. Distortions, however, havebecome strangely more acute in our region. It is a

severe irony that the region has now become em-broiled in the very question of what is true and whatis false, and what is knowledge. Today vested inter-ests and political investments, by design, are keep-ing alive what was earlier formulated by ignorance.

How might we unravel this history, unlearnwhat is dominant, and search for alternatives to re-claim hidden truths and deepen awareness? Ourunderstanding of the past bears on our perceptionsand actions. To neglect this history leaves a vacuumto be filled with distortion and appropriation. Un-wary "Palestine" (otherwise called Holy Land orCanaan) is not just the site where fabricationshave materialized; it is where we should retrievetruths.

For example, in disinheriting the Palestinians,Zionists argue that Jews have an entitlement to an-cient ancestry (and monotheism). What new discov-eries refute this claim?

Others argue that Palestinians are Arabs and(neglecting Christian Palestinians) Muslims andtherefore can go elsewhere. How accurate is thiscontention?

In controlling sacred sites like the mosque inHebron or the Western Wall in east Jerusalem, Is-raelis claim their authenticity and connection to

them. How valid is that?

By re-examining religious origins, cultural prac-tices, languages, place names, identity construction,and other subjects, the logics of incendiary justifica-tions and monopolies become even more demon-strably bizarre.

What political, cultural and religious biases andmisconceptions have become embedded over mil-lennia? Western perceptions have been formed bycomplex factors: 1,700 years of idealized construc-

tions about a Holy Land; enmity between Europeand Muslim empires (first Arab, then Ottoman);various kinds of crusades (starting in the 11th cen-tury); assumptions in a paradigm called Westerncivilization that evolved during the 16th and 17thcenturies; employment of biblical models in further-ing colonizing projects; sacred geography of 19th-century fundamentalists; writings by travelers, pil-grims, orientalists; colonization by Western powers;

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the regions division into countries; and now theZionist project and its colonizing activities.

Profitable for such complex constructs is havinga demonizing model for perceiving other people andtheir land. Most famousor infamousis that of

Canaan, the ideal place, whose peoplevariousCanaanites are unworthy demonic pagans to bedispossessed, even exterminated.

To remind readers of the biblical story,Canaanites are arbitrarily supposed to descendfrom Canaan, son of Ham, one of the sons ofNoah. (I place scare quotes around these namesbecause their transcription is erroneous, missinggutturals and accurate vowels, best preserved in theArabic.) Because Ham happened to see Noahsnakedness, Canaan was cursed by Noah to be

a slave of slaves to his brothers (Gen. 9, 25).What does this mean for the descendants of

Canaan? Listen to Deuteronomy 20: 16-17: Inthe cities of these people the Lord your God givesyou for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothingthat breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, theHittite and the Amorites, the Canaanites and thePerzzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lordyour God has commanded.

This cursing prepares for the conquest of Ca-naan and continues down to our own day, as seen

in the North American colonies and their neighborto the north. According to D.V. Lucas in his Canaanand Canada (1904), what Gods providence hasgiven to Canadians is nearly five hundred timesgreater than was bestowed upon His chosen peo-ple. Indeed, of the inhabitants killed in Canada,exults Lucas . . . the early taking off of these chil-dren [of the wicked Canaanites] reveal[s] the mercyof God rather than His unrighteous wrath . . . [it] leftthem eternally innocent. Their removal before theywere able to perpetuate the sins of their fathers, sinsthe most beastly or the most devilish, was a blessingfor us who came after.

Some fundamentalist travelers and missionarywriters in the 19th century applied similar senti-ments to the Palestinians. A notable example wasthe millennialist wife of the British consul, Mrs. E. A.Finn, who wrote Palestinian Peasantry in order todemonstrate that the villagers have the customs andmanners of the pagan Canaanites, and so (as herdaughter argued in an introduction in 1923) deserve

to be controlled rather than get the independencethey were demanding. It is not far-fetched to imag-ine how such preconceptions infuse present ideolo-gies and political actions.National Myths

n The Bible and Colonial-ism (1997) Michael Prior, a BritishCatholic priest, exposes the de-ployment of biblical accounts(particularly Exodus and theConquest of Canaan) to justifycolonial conquests and the con-

struct of national myths in the Americas, apartheidSouth Africa and Israel. While the model camou-flages itself as religion and belief in god-given sto-ries, it has many investments and self-interests thatmake it profitable. It is a useful civil theology, animperialistic one.

This apparently potent model began the creationof the United States and has ended in what is nowthe State of Israel. State creation by dispossession ofnative populations lies deep in the heart of mutualidentification, realized concretization of the samenarratives.

The U.S. identifies with Old Testament narra-tives and covenants, details of which are copied intoa national story about the ordeals of the pilgrimfathers (as many have pointed out from PerryMiller to John Davis). Puritan colonists overlaidtheir sacred topography on the land. Their errandinto the wilderness became a national story fulfill-ing Americas colonizing project, seeing it as a newIsrael destined to establish a commonwealth in anew Canaan. Their condition in Europe becamethe imagined enslavement in Egypt, the oceanvoyage a desert exodus, the land of Canaan, fatand desirable, whose natives, or Indians, were pa-gan idolatersCanaanites, Philistines, Hittites

and other enemies of God.In a story that prepared for Thanksgiving, in

1620, Bradford likened the corn taken from Indianstores by scouts to the grapes carried back fromother peoples property by two spies in the biblicalstory (Numbers 1314; Deuteronomy 1: 1946;

Joshua 2).

In delivering a sermon on charity, John Win-throp spoke of the city upon a hill (ironically from

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Jesuss sermon to the meek, used since in politicalspeeches), while calling those to be excludedCanaanites.

In Harriet Beecher Stowes 1852 attack on slav-ery in Uncle Toms Cabin, slave owners and

clergy employ the curse against Canaan to justifyslavery, while Eliza runs across the Ohio River (likeJordan) to the Canaan of her liberty (chapters 7,12).

Conquest of Canaan is not about Joshua, theJordan River crossing and walls of Jericho (whichlack archaeological corroboration), but the title of anepic poem written in the eighteenth century and anovel published in the U.S. in 1905. An early colo-nial town is named Salem (Ur-Salem/Jerusalem,ironically named after a pagan god). Other biblical

place names dot the U.S. landscape: Bethlehem, Jeri-cho, Jordan, Joshuas Path, Mount Sinai, Canaan,East Canaan, New Canaan, Babylon, Palestine,among others. According to Burke O. LongsImagining the Holy Land, U.S. religious imagina-tion later transferred its cultural myth to fanta-sized reality in exhibits and parks reproducing Pal-estine and Bible lands, whereas travel, texts, Biblemaps, and research eventually led this geopiety toestablish dedicated institutions in Palestine.

Mark Twain in Innocents Abroad wants us to

unlearn this typological bunch of grapesa Sun-day-school image he sees as sentimentalizing entitle-ment. It is a large target of Twains irony, along withsacred geographers and Joshua, whom he dubs theGenius of Destruction. Even before archaeologicaldiscoveries debunked biblical historicity, Twain hadoutgrown earlier colonial justifications, and saw thedangers in a national story based on biblical prece-dents to justify illegal and immoral actions.

Yet, today, the two spies carrying grapes illus-trate the Israeli Ministry of Tourism logo. Palestine

is fundamentally a colonial cauldron for Zionism, adispossession of an indigenous people as otherswere dispossessed in the Americas, in Polynesia, inAustralia and New Zealand. In this case, the dispos-session is camouflaged as a religious entitlementplus some different claims of nativity.

Earlier Western sacred geography and its imagesare, as U.S. writer Hilton Obenzinger says inAmerican Palestine, a prehistory for present

Zionism. The Zionist movement exploits this travel-ing mythology, reprinting old travel narratives,from John Mandevilles hoax account to obscure19th-century sacred geographers. One project isAmerica-Holy Land Studies and another is a col-lection of anti-Arab sentiments entitled FamousTravellers to the Holy Land (compiled by LindaOsband). The Zionist system, pretending to Westerndemocratic values (and to religious authority too),employs old demonizing appellations such asPhilistines, even Canaanites, while appealing tocomparative terminology like frontier andpioneer to mimic the U.S. experience.Demonologies

ilification and demonization of

Canaanite is traversable andtransferrable. During the cru-sades, for example, Canaanitesw er e r ep l a c ed b y Sa r a -cens (Muslims/Arabs), whilein colonial America, the imagined

Canaanites were Native Americans and then Afri-can slavesthe former to be destroyed, the latter towork the land.

Biases against Canaanites are multi-directionaland multi-sourced. Genesis and other Old Testa-

ment books (similarly the Quran) condemn them asidolaters. Somewhat inconsistently, in Matthew,Christ initially dismisses and belittles a Canaanitewoman (15: 2128)though the woman is Greekof local birth in Mark (7: 26).

Despite their formative influence on Greek civili-zation, the Canaanites (Phoenicians in Greek) suf-fer animosity in later periods of ancient Greek na-tionalism. Since the Carthaginians were economiccompetitors and so enemies of the expanding Ro-man Empire, they were portrayed as dishonest trad-

ers and decadent child killers.Similarly, other ancient civilizations receive

stereotypical labels implicated in biblical stories:Babylonian (money-oriented keepers of temple pros-titutes); Assyrian and Hittite (brutal empires);Phoenician (cheap commercialists). The wordPhilistine still implies crudity and lack of culture,in dictionaries, in general speech, and famously inMatthew Arnolds Culture and Anarchy. Present-

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day dictionaries have yet to designate such words asoffensive. Tower of Babel throws up many allu-sions associated with a curse and confusion oftongues. An educated writer ventures to call rivalpedantic critics whores of Babylon or art work orfood taste Philistine.

Hollywood films exploit such notions, pittingthese ancient cultures against presumed Old Testa-ment virtues. The problem runs deeper than is docu-mented in Jack G. Shaheens Reel Bad Arabs: HowHollywood Vilifies a People. Often, messages aresubliminal, as in Magnolia where biblical frogsrain down and Eyes Wide Shut where the secretsociety recalls temple prostitution. Hannibal is thename of Dr. Lecter, a modern cannibal. SpielbergsPrince of Egypt is a Zionist example of how bibli-cal notions are popularized in films for children,

making the Exodus story milder by comparison.Are the Palestinians Arabs, since they speak

Arabic? This allows dismissing their entitlement byassuming they are nomads who migrated from theArabian Peninsula or Arab countries to which theyshould return.

Or are they the Philistines who fought with theancient Israelites, thus acquiring a bad reputation inbiblical and Western imaginings?

Or are Palestinians the cursed and pagan Ca-naanites, who cannot be trusted to rule themselves,and whose lands and lives Yahweh decreed could betaken by ancient Israelites who presumably are con-nected to present-day Jews.

In a speech, Israeli ex-prime minister YitzhakShamir referred to the Palestinians as Canaanites,as did Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of Is-rael, and others. This association, however, nowcauses anxiety for some Israelis, since it can lead theless biased to conclude that Palestinians have prioroccupancy rights.

Real Canaan and Its Regionhe real Canaan is far differentfrom what is generally portrayed.Rather than the imaginary entitythat derives its meaning from bibli-cal stories, Canaan was a real re-gion in what is now Greater Syriawhere a culture thrived for several

millennia and radiated influence across the Mediter-

ranean basin and beyond. The name probably de-rives from the word kanaa, referring to regional peo-ple who were partly known for their trademark pur-ple cloth, for which they used a dye extracted fromseashells.

Perhaps the people in the larger Canaan did notalways identify as a nation or unified entity, being agrouping of city-states and communities where im-perial power was not indigenous (a positive qualityin many respects), though not different in culture orlanguage. In Carthage, now Tunis, peasants identi-fied themselves as Canaanites as late as the fourthcentury CE, as mentioned by Augustine, centuriesafter Romans destroyed the city.

Canaan produced remarkable material remainswe still see today, as illustrated in a volume entitledThe Phoenicians (ed. Sabatino Moscati). Its my

thology influenced the Greek pantheon and the threemonotheistic religions. Recent discoveries, such asthose in 1928 at the ancient and renowned Canaanitecity-state of Ugarit, shatter many old notions andturn biblical studies upside down, revealing multipleantecedents for biblical myths and stories.

In Canaan the first alphabet was invented, arevolutionary writing system that evolved into althe scripts in the West and East. For its inception, thealphabet benefited from its intermediary position byadapting the idea of pictographs.

The alphabet took form by using pictures ocommon objects and their initial sounds for 28 letterssufficient to represent language in writing. The signswere derived from aspects fundamental in civiliza-tion, natural forces, and parts of the human body.

The first letter reproduced the head of a bull, as-sociated with godly power. Thus aleph, whichcomes from alf meaning a tamed animal, denoteddomestication. This first sign stood for three longvowels --. A in Greek and Latin scripts is an evo-lution from that first shape, rotated sideways thenupside down.

B (beit), meaning house in Canaanite (it andother signs still mean the same in Arabic), took theshape of a square, then acquired stylization withtime, dictated by medium and direction of writing.

L has not really changed much, except in direc-tion of writing, and it, too, is similar to the currenlam in Arabic.

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K (from kf, palm) had four fingers, later stylizedinto a three-fingered palm, further simplified androtated to produce the K of today.

M started by using a sign typifying sea waves(related to ym, meaning sea), while R originally had

the shape of a human head in profile (from ras,head), evidenced by the fact that Greek rho is shapedlike a .

From Canaan much has been taken, much ofwhich still needs to be recognized. To continue todemonize the Canaanites (or the Philistines or Baby-lonians), as religious books do, while appropriatingfundamental aspects of their creativity and materialculture without recognition, is an act of utmost in-

gratitude. As you read this very sentence you arereading in Canaanite.Religious Sources Unraveled

he monotheistic religions that bil-lions believe in today are direct de-scendants of the Canaanite mytho-logical system. A mythology re-flects its region, wrote the U.S.poet Wallace Stevens.

It originates in naturethe mountains, desertsand seas, weather and seasons, stars, moon, sunrocks, animals, and vegetationa landscape that human beings faced in the primitive state and tried tounderstand and tame. The original mythologies werecreated to help human beings feel more protected

and explain mysteries in a strange, unpredictableoften hostile environment. In todays artificial land-scape, from which it is not as possible to extracmythic sustenance, it is tempting to hang on to oldmyths.

Fabulous ancient mythologies evolved in settledareas around the globein Mesopotamia, the NileValley, the Indus Valley, and in the Americas.

A particularly central mythology evolved inwhat is called Greater Syria, which is made up today

of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine (the last isnow Israel and the other occupied territories, Gazaand the West Bank).

This is the Greater Canaan: green and barrenareas, the solid desert and the sown terraces, smalrivers, hills and a few mountains, well-treed, caves,springs, coastal plains, the Mediterranean, mildweather, various fruits, olives, and grain agricultureThese and other peculiarities and distinctions weremore conducive to the development of city statescontiguous with tribal and nomadic groups, as op-

posed to monolithic entities and imperial systemelsewhere.

In Palestine, in particular, partially barren hillsdescend eastward to a depression where the JordanRiver runs into the Dead Sea. This is an iconographiclandscape that has everything except greenorrather is everything because it lacks green. In thehills and plains toward the coast, the land is morefertile and green, and in pockets around villages andtowns agriculture is prolific. To the south lies the de-

sert.The mythology that grew out of this large

Canaan has elements the other two mythologicasystems in Egypt and Mesopotamia could not de-velop, though there is interdependence among them.

The sun is more powerful in Egypt. The sun godRe, source of all light, warmth and growth, is thecreator of the great Nile River that floods Egypt andmakes it fruitful. In rain-dependent Greater Syria

Evolution of thealphabet signs:ABKLMORTFrom the originalsigns to theGreek and Roman.

Source: HiddenHistories.

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the sun is more of an enemy that burns the ground insummer and so is represented as the death god Mt,powerful and threatening but to be overcome by thefertility god Bal (bl), who becomes a most impor-tant deity.

This regional pantheon eventually developed,more definitely by the second millennium BCE, intoabout seventy gods. Importantly, it had at its head afather god l (written El in scholarship) and amother goddess (Asherah). Often, just as l/El isused in personal names (Isma-l/Ishmael, meaningl/El hears; Isra-el,or rather Yisral, a name for

Jacob which probably means l/El rules; Dani-el;Micha-el; and so on), other names and cities derivefrom other patron gods, as in Hannibal (reallyHani-bal, one who pleases Bal), Baalbek, Ur-Salem/

Jerusalem, Anata, or Beit-Lahem/Bethlehem.Not only did landscape features produce mytho-

logical elements, in their unique combination ofseparateness and connection they also resulted inmonolatry, or one god being worshipped more thanothers without denying other gods. Where seasonalrain was essential for agriculture in hilly regions,people worshipped Bal and his sister Ant orAshtr, whereas in dryer or desert areas to the souththe preference may have been Yaw/Yau/Yahweh, orother gods or goddesses.

The Bible is a late reflection of these accumulatedmythologies in a region that featured earlier one-godreligions, as suggested in the work of Karen Arm-strong and David Leeming, among others.

It is possible that Jesus called on l/El ratherthan Yahweh in the sentence rendered in Aramaic onthe cross, and Islam seems to have returned to Abra-hams god l/ El in the name Allah.

It is ironic that the Bible, the Old Testament andthe New Testament, reached a Western audience un-aware of such cultural antecedents and in whose en-vironment such a mythology could not haveemerged, and who yet developed an ingrained at-traction to it, along with a belief that Yahweh wasthe one true god.

Throughout the 19th-century, however, discover-ies of antecedents came to light. These were oldernarratives or events that occurred more or less in thesame way as later ones.

Among the greatest finds was that by GeorgeSmith, an assistant in the British Museums Depart-ment of Oriental Antiquities who, in 1872, announced that he had translated a flood account froma tablet from Nineveh that was an almost exact du-plicate of the Flood storywritten 2,000 years ear-lier! This tablet turned out to be part of the Epic oGilgamesh. Other antecedents followed, such as

creation stories, and even most recently acovenant. Nevertheless, biblical scholars still at-tempt to privilege the Bible as unique.

The composition of the pantheon was not veryclear until relatively recently. The most importanfindings were the second millennium BCE city ofUgarit, discovered in 1928, and the Dead Sea Scrollsuncovered accidentally in 1947 by a Syrian farmerand a Palestinian shepherd boy.

Stele of king paying homage to l (EL), Ugarit, 13th-century

BCE., displayed at the Louvre in Paris, France.

Source: Hidden Histories.


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Further, inscriptions such as those from KuntiletAjrd and Khirbet el-Qm (about the eighth centuryBCE) leave no doubt as to the existence of syncretis-tic cults which incorporated various beliefs in south-ern Palestine, where Yahweh was worshipped alongwith l, Bal, and Asherah. The Kuntilet Ajrd dis-

covery unmoors traditional narratives so much thatsome Zionist-inclined scholars have attempted toremove the name of Asherah from the inscriptions.Ancient editors as well had, according to Judith M.Hadley, attempted to eliminate the evidence of her[Asherahs] worship among the Israelites.

The obvious and unavoidable reference to sonsof God (Genesis 6: 14) is present in old and newtranslations. Other crucial passages are Exodus 6: 23(where the gods name changes), and Psalm 82(which indicates a council of gods: Yahweh takeshis stand in the Council of El to deliver judgmentamong the gods). The implications of these are di-luted by evasive commentaries, biblical scholarship,and various translations. E. C. B MacLaurin of theDepartment of Semitic Studies at the University ofSydney remarks on the attempt in official religionto conceal the fact that El and YAHWEH were onceworshipped as separate deities. Yahweh is only oneof ls several sons in a pantheon.

This has come to certain light since discovery of

the Qumran or Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to the secondcentury BCE. Until then, the major manuscript au-thority for the Hebrew Bible was the Masoretic text(Leningrad Codex, about 1000 years old). The onlyolder tradition was the Septuagint, a translation intoGreek in the second century BCE. The Masoretic and,in English, variations or revisions of the King JamesVersion (KJV) are still the main source for most ver-sions, except the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB).

One crucial passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Deu-teronomy 32: 89, demonstrates that a scribe or

scribal committee fabricated a change in order tosuppress polytheism. Contrary to other versions, theNJB and Qumran-based translations make it clearthat l/El, the Most High, is the father god who dis-tributes the world and its peoples among his sonsone of whom is Yahweh, who gets as his followersthe Israelites descended from Jacob/Yaqb.

As reflected in the KJV and later revisions, how-ever, the fabricated alteration had replaced sons (or

children) of God/El with sons of Israel, thus ap-propriating God (both l and Yahweh) to the Israel-ites, disinheriting other sons of l/El, and erasingpolytheistic suggestions. (See commentary by JulieA. Duncan, The Book of Deuteronomy, inEncyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls.)

What further dilutes the effect of this passage isinsistence in most versions to keep Lord (adonai,meaning lord or master) instead of the accuratename Yahweh, even to re-instate sons of Israel,thus making distinctions between l and Yahweh im-possible to see.

Ugaritic cycles a thousand years earlier speak ofyw (Yahweh) as one of ls sons. The Greek pantheonis, with natural modifications, largely derived fromthe Canaanite pantheon (l/ El=Kronos, Bal=Zeus

and so on; see fragments from Philo of Byblos and BC. Dietrichs The Origins of Greek Religion).

The quranic Allah is most likely a return toAbrahamic l (El), a link emphasized in the Quranitself. Ugaritic texts (at the northwestern edge oCanaan, a thousand years before the Bible and morethan 2000 years before the Quran) give l titles likear rahmn (beneficent) and al latf (kind), someof Allahs 99 names. Scholars like Manfried Dietrichand Oswald Loretz conclude Ugaritic is essentiallyCanaanite in idiom and more like Arabic in pho-

nology. An early fifteenth-century Arabic dictionaryAl Fayrz Abdis al qams al mu, incrediblydefines l, under the letter lam, as Allah [God]the Almighty.Appropriation Psychology

t Sataf, a Palestinian village jusoutside Jerusalem, one of hundredswhose farming population wasevicted in the ethnic cleansing im-

plemented by Zionist forces in 1948Israelis are invited to pay a fee tofarm their own terrace as their ancestors did beforethem. What a way to concretize an ideology. Eveninvention of terrace agriculture is claimed by thecolonizers, though it developed several millenniaprior to any possible Israelites.

Paradoxically, denial of Palestinian labor and thecultural appropriations by Zionism take on the

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unique nature of wanting to assume native status, acallous attitude inherited from Western sacred geog-raphers who maintained the land was theirs.

This Canaan has been confiscated more thanany other part of the worldits heritage, its history,

its very existence. Palestinian and regional foods, aswell as the intricate and colorful embroidery bywomen of dresses, shawls and cushions are takenover by Israelis as their own.

The wife of the Zionist military leader MosheDayan opened a shop in London where she sold Pal-estinians dresses as examples of Israels heritagean appropriation perpetuated in books likeArabesque: Decorative Needlework from the HolyLand by Ziva Amir.

In 1980, flight attendants on Israels national air-line, El Al, wore as their official uniform the Pales-tinian dress from Ramallah.

And, in 2007, in volume four of World Book En-cyclopedia, Israel registered the bridal dress fromBethlehem as part of its cultural inheritance. (Later,under pressure from Palestinian groups, the Encyclo-pedia expunged the claim.)

The whole of Palestine has been subjected to Zi-onist ownership. All its flora and fauna are biblicaland thus Israeli inheritance, with west Jerusalem

flaunting a biblical zoo. A Jewish-American jour-nalist can say she enjoys figs as fruit of her ances-tors. Flax is made, anachronistically, to date back to5000 BC in the Land of Israel. Israeli contractorspull out old stones from Palestinian areas to use inbuilding, or employ Palestinian stonemasons, to lendlocal authenticity or age to their presence. They livein old (and desirable) Arab houses, with no appar-ent sense of guilt. Many books written by Israelis orWestern Jews have pictures on the cover and insideof Palestinians, their houses, towns and landscapes,

without noting the builders or original inhabitants.Here, the invisibility is complete.

Meanwhile, Israeli colonists on the West Bankcontinue to attack Palestinian farmers and regularlyuproot Palestinian olive trees. They want to be nativeso much they take over resources and land to whichthey are not natural. In areas around colonies andthe Separation Wall, the army protects and partici-pates with those engaged in uprooting both people

and trees.

In Zionist scholarship, ancient languages are rifewith takeovers. Despite demonization of ancientpeoples, languages are useful for confiscationtocreate false connections and exaggerated antiquity.

Square Hebrew script is the late square Aramaicthat did not develop until many centuries after theimagined periods of a Moses or David. It becomesthus necessary to try to backdate the existence of He-brew by assuming inscriptions are ancient He-brewwhereas in fact the scripts are Phoenicianor early Aramaic.

It is an intended confusion of scripts. One suchinscription is the Gezer calendar, from the 11thcentury BCE. Zionist scholars, now some standardencyclopedias, classify this text as ancient Hebrew,

whereas impartial observers note it is Phoenician,with letters showing affinities to Moabite. One Jew-ish writer, Leonard Shlain, provides an ingenioustheory of how Yahweh gave the alphabet to his cho-sen males first, bypassing Ugarit and demeaningPhoenicians as incapable of this invention.

An article (Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan, andJoseph Naveh, A Royal Dedicatory Inscription fromEkron) on a Philistine inscription appropriates eventhe enemy by speaking of Hebreo-Philistine. Togive ascendancy to Hebrew, it seems a rule to place

Hebrew first in appropriative hyphenations (e.g.,Hebrew-Aramaic). Ugaritic words from 3,400years ago are said to be similar to Hebrew, whereasbalanced scholarship (including The Worlds Writ-ing Systems) concludes that Ugaritic, in phonology(and, according to my count, vocabulary), is exactlylike present Arabic.

A blatant confusion of scripts to promote somepolitical or religious agenda can be seen in a specialstone plaque erected in 1985 within the premises ofPater Noster Church on the Mount of Olives, in east

Jerusalem. It places Aramaic and Hebrew next toeach other and makes them look the same. Israelitour guides then declare to visitors: Look, Hebrewand Aramaic are exactly the same, and so there is nodifference if it is said that Christ spoke Aramaic.

Such appropriations extend to other enemylanguages and peoples as well. The Israeli currency,the shekel, was widely known to be a Babylonian


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invention. Yet, some standard dictionaries and ency-clopedias define the word as Hebrew orJewish (e.g., Oxford Advanced Learners), thusdepriving Babylon of the privilege of inventing suchfinancial trappings of civilizationeven as it is sub-

jected to other prejudices. Stripping the region of its

accomplishments continues in Western scholarshiptoo: some scholars maintain that the true alphabet isGreco-Roman; others have baldly claimed theSumerian/Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh as the firstwork of Western literature (e.g., X. J. Kennedy andDana Gioia, An Introduction to Poetry).Place Names: Which Original?

f Ugaritic and Canaanite lan-guages are, in phonology and vo-

cabulary, most similar to presentArabic, with thousands-of-yearsplace names in the region retained,why should ancient toponyms in

Palestine be any different?

Arabic city and other names assumed to be morerecent, like Asqaln and Akka, are much closer tothe original Canaanite found in Egyptian hiero-glyphic dating back 4000 years, and even later in Talel Amarneh cuneiform correspondence. Arabic con-sonants and stipulated vowels are much closer to the

original than any other renderings. Similarly, thePhilistine city rendered in Western scholarship asEkron can only be transcribed from the inscrip-tions as Aqrn.

To explain the discrepancy in these and othernames involves a number of linguistic issues con-cerning Arabic and Hebrew, including vowel shiftsin Hebrew guessing (such as o, aa, ae, etc.)and consonant sounds (such as q/k, b/v and p/f).

With b/v and p/f, the confusion in Hebrew was

caused by the letters looking the same, later distin-guished by diacritical marks. According to EdwardLipinski, vowels such as o/ and e/ in Hebrew donot belong to the common Semitic phonemes. Incontrast , , and are the proto-Semitic long vowels,available in Arabic.

That applies even more to consonants, especiallygutturals. Alan S. Kaye (in The Worlds Major Lan-guages) and other scholars confirm the importance

of Arabic: Arabic preserves the Proto-Semitic pho-nology almost perfectly. Arabic not only preservesolder languages; it is their natural and continuousdescendant and storehouse, which makes it a trav-esty to try to shrink its importance.

Arabic names are continuous and natural formsas they evolved on the ground, as even Zionist schol-ars have to admit. One Zionist writer, Shmuel Ahiv-tuv, entitles his book Canaanite Toponyms in An-cient Egyptian Documents. And Yael Elitzur, a re-cent Israeli writer on toponymy, concedes the role ofthe autochthonous inhabitants in continuing thepreservation of names, though who these undefinedindigenous people are remains too sensitive forElitzur to name directlyviz. the Palestinians.

This is why Zionist scholars are somewhat criti-

cal of the German orientalist Georg Kampffmeyer forascribing influence to the Syrian tongue.

Some foreign names (such as Neopolis,Arabized to Nablus) were indeed adapted to theArab tongue. On the other hand, the Arabic-Canaanite correspondence is almost exact. Thiswould be natural because proto-Canaanite, Ugariticand Arabic have the same basic sound system(reflected in 28 alphabet signs in Arabic andCanaanite and 30 signs in Ugaritic, which distin-guishes the three alefs). In contrast, Hebrew is largely

the result of a transmission process through traditionwhen the language was dead or fossilized, used onlyin scholarly and rabbinical practices.

What is unusual about Zionist place-naming inPalestine is that people who were not natives of Pal-estine assumed nativity for themselves while deny-ing native status to the indigenous inhabitants, thevery ones who coined the names or continued them,and from whom Zionists often take place-names inorder to translate them. Thus colonial imposition ismade to look like legitimate national recovery.

Take the cities of Asqaln and Akka which theZionists renamed Ashkelon and Acco.

This was purported to be a return to the oldestnames reaching back to bible times. In fact, theycame about in Jewish and Western usage through atranscription tradition that distorted many of theirsounds. Today they are placed on the colonizersmap for the purpose of erasing, scraping or chipping

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away at the birthright of the indigenous people.

Zionists claim that the Arabic forms are of morerecent coinage, coming after the Arab/Muslimconquest in 638CE, which changed or distortedthe original namesas if Arabic were a totally for-

eign language alien to its region.Ironically, however, Asqaln and Akka, the

Arabic names said to be more recent, are much closerto the original names found in hieroglyphic that dateback some 4,000 years, as recorded in Egyptiansources, and a few hundred years later in cuneiformin the Tal el Amarnah correspondence.

They both represent a better preservation of theoriginal than the biblical writings or Western render-ings.

Yet, despite a few alternative voices, official Zi-onist renaming goes on at a frenetic pace, most re-cently intensified by Knesset legislation. In any peacenegotiation or reconciliation program, however,such practices of disinheritance cannot be allowed tocontinue. Hidden Histories

ow could one search for what isleft of indigenous Palestinian cul-ture, its ancientness and genuine-ness, in an environment contami-nated by savagery and distractionin the present?

Palestinian native life as perceived by outsiderobservers is characterized by invisibility. Many trav-elers, obsessed by the topomania of Bible-thinking,could not avoid the presence of Palestinian villagersand farmers. But instead of giving them credit fortheir labor, they merely used them as illustrations ofancient life in biblical times in travel descriptions

or today on book covers and postcards. Unable toidentify with them as continuous inhabitants, theyobserved, used, and denied them at the same time.

Still, whether through villagers or Bedouins, thePalestinian population remains the only reflectionand reminder of the way things were in the past.This is the conclusion of recent DNA studies, old eth-nography by various observers, even by early Zion-ists, and objective historians; it is also evidenced in

what remains of fast-disappearing customs.

These connections to the ancient past are mud-dled by present politics and identity construction,while invented or false links acquire an obsessivereality. In creating a particular Jewish identity, the

Zionists invent the past and make misleading linkswith religious narratives they believe in (or not)about the idealized Hebrews and Israelites. AsShlomo Sand, professor of history at Tel Aviv Uni-versity, recently re-affirmed in Invention of the Jew-ish People, there were too many conversions in thelast two millennia to warrant making such connec-tions or thinking of Diaspora. In the 1940s, 50s and60s a Canaanite Movement (now largely defunct)tried to distance itself from Jewish religious heritageand exilic history by identifying with a cultural

past instead.On the other hand, while Palestinian and other

regional populations are obviously descended fromancient peoples, they associate their own presencewith Christian or Muslim conquestsacceptingdominant discourse and unknowingly abbreviatingtheir own cultural history.

I want to end my essay by affirming the genuineancient culture of Palestine, which has continued de-spite changes in peoples religious affiliation frompagan, Jewish or Christian, and Muslim.

In the 1920s, Tawfik Canaan and other Palestin-ian scholars produced a few studies of Palestiniancustoms. His conclusion (in a somewhat improperlytitled Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Pal-estine) is as follows: Even the great revolutionsproduced by the three monotheistic religions, whosecradle lay in or near Palestine, were not able to sup-press all primitive beliefs.

Palestinian anthropologists have since notedremnants of sacred trees associated with walis or

holy men and the barely surviving practice of humanburial in caves, as well as evidence of how the veneerof a Christian calendar and Muslim practices (oftenconflated, with Muslims adopting Christian symbol-ism and vice versa) are overlaid on Canaanite andother ancient symbols, rituals, and seasonal prac-tices.

Rituals and amulets still survive to protect chil-dren and oneself against the evil eye. People still

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engage in popular medicine with prescriptions byherbalists. There may be close similarities betweenwomens traditional dresses and what ancients arewearing in Egyptian wall paintings. How manythousands of years old are such regional habits andcustoms? How does one find more corroborationbefore they disappear?

Such conflation of ancient and modern beliefsapplies more formally to sites now deemed sacred toChristianity, Islam and Judaism. All were inventedin the fourth century by the Byzantine emperor Con-stantine, his mother Helena and his bishops, ormuch later. As I document in my book, Constantinespecifically ordered his bishops to build basilicas atvarious pagan sites, including the one in Hebronclaimed to be Ibrahms/Abrahams burial place.

(Later a mosque was built there, more than half ofwhich has now been converted to a synagogue bythe Israelis.) His purpose, as is Israels today, was toappropriate the older traditions to the new religionand to enforce imperial control. The Western(Wailing) Wall was not a place of Jewish worshipuntil the Ottoman conquest of 1518 CE, as admittedeven by the 1971 edition of The Encyclopedia Ju-daica. Further, the Wall is not any remnant of atemple, but stones from a Roman fortress.

Another memory of the ancient

past came to me inadvertently as Iwas traveling from the AllenbyBridge to Jerusalem. I was sitting inthe back seat with a man and his wife.The man was working his prayerbeadsmade up of 33 beads which,when repeated three times, completethe 99 names of Allah.

Suddenly, he exclaims, yalatf (literally Oh, kind and pleasantone).

I assumed he meant somethinglike May God protect us! or Oh,what a terrible situation. Not sure,though, I turned and asked, What doyou mean by ya latf?

His answer was simple: I amcalling out one of the names of Al-lah.

It was then I recalled the myths from Ugarit, thecity in northwest Syria now Ras Shamra dating to3,2003,800 years ago, where this very adjective de-scribes the quality of the chief god l (El)

If I seem to have focused much on ancient peo-

ple in our region, or their gods and remains, it is notbecause I think all Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians,

Jordanians, and Iraqis today are descendants of theCanaanites, Philistines, Arameans, Assyrians, Baby-lonians, Moabites, or other ancient peoples whateverthey may have called themselves or are called byothersthough most surely are.

Rather, it is because in both West and East, rec-ognition of the regions contributions is inadequate,and in some cases wholly absent. Incorporating thatpast again into our consciousness and understand-

ing is therefore an act of historical and present-dayjustice. As tenacious inhabitants of the land and car-riers of its knowledge, todays Palestinians are, inmany senses, the ancestral Canaanites.

As such, I offer Canaanite as a metaphor. In aworld where too many peoples have been devalued,demonized and dispossessed, these ancient peoplecould possibly show us, with their rich history andour recognition of it, the ways of restoring fairnessand understanding.

Basem Raad may be reached at [email protected]


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BOOK REVIEWHidden Histories

Palestine and the Eastern Mediterraneanby Basem L. Raad

Reviewed by Jane Adas

Prof. Basem L. Raad of Al-Quds University inJerusalem has written a book guaranteed to chal-lenge what we in the West think we know. Becauseof Judeo-Christian assumptions and the politics ofZionism, the West has resisted dealing with the im-plications of archeological and textual discoveriesover the last century and a half that call into questionthe Bible as a historical document.

Clay tablets discovered in the 19th century bear-ing the Epic of Gilgamesh contain the story of a floodalmost identical to the one in Genesis, but written2,000 years before the Bible was put together. Theruins of Ugarit, uncovered by a Syrian farmer in1928, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, found by a shepherdboy in 1947, reveal that Yahweh (usually translatedas Lord in the Old Testament) was one of manysons of the chief god Il/El (translated as God orMost High). In the Dead Sea Scrolls Deuteron-omy (32: 8-9), the Most High divides the people into

nations according to the number of the sons of Godand assigns one of them, Yahweh, to the Israelites.Canaanite mythology includes prototypes of theChrist figure, such as virgin birth and resurrectionafter death.

The Ugaritic writing system is very close to an-cient Canaanite and to present-day Arabic, suggest-ing that the latter, rather than being a foreign importto the region with the Muslim conquest, is the liv-ing storehouse and present reincarnation of all the

other ancient languages in a now Arabized re-gion (p. 96). On the other hand, Raad claims thereis no evidence for ancient Hebrew, only an appro-priation of square Aramaic which developed in laterperiods (p. 43). Nor is there archeological evidenceof Joshuas conquest of the promised land nor of

Israelites sojourning in Egypt.

Canaanite civilization flourished for several mil-lennia in the region that is today greater Syria. Itgave the world its first phonetic alphabet and its mythology influenced the Greek pantheon, where Baabecame Zeus, as well as the three monotheistic relig-ions. In the Old Testament, however, Canaan is anidealized place where people favored by God aregiven the right to take the land from its unworthypagan inhabitants by any means possible. Suchthinking underlies many colonizing projects, as in

the Americas and South Africa.What makes Zionist colonization unique is its

claim of nativity and return to a promised landbased on a supposed identity stretching continuously over 4000 years. Raad, however, argues thatdistinctions must be made between Hebrews (an an-cient designation from abiru people who lived nomadic lives), Israelites (tribes presumably descendedfrom Jacob), Jews of 2000 years ago (from Judea), and

Jews of today. For present-day Jews to claim thesesorts of connections would be like Muslims from In-

donesia, 2000 years from now, saying they descendfrom the prophets line and claiming Mecca and Me-dina as their ancestral homeland (114).

Zionism appropriates what is useful or conven-ient from Palestinian culture, such as food, embroi-dery, and sacred sites, and even claims that Israelitesinvented the terrace farming so typical of the land-scape, while trying to make the Palestinians themselves invisible. Zionism aims to dispossess and up-root the native Palestinians completely and to instalitself as the native culture (142). They are abetted inthis by western belief, especially the fundamentalist

brand, in Biblical history.

Raad carries his impressive erudition lightly. Heeven has a chapter on the Cats of Jerusalem. Heintroduces his Epilogue with, This is not my lastchapter. It is the beginning of another book. Let ushope so, and as soon as possible, please.

Jane Adas covers the tri-state area forThe WashingtonReport on Middle East Affairs, and is on the Board ofDirectors of Americans for Middle East Understanding.

Paper, 2010, 272 pp.

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