How an Israeli Academic Accuses Israel of Judaizing Israel - by Sheri Oz

...It is one thing to see Israel maligned in professional journals when authors are clearly antisemitic (based on other things I discover about them on the internet) or do not live here and therefore are not fully immersed in the context of the Middle East (weak excuse, I know, but I am feeling generous at the moment). But when an Israeli, born and bred in Jerusalem, working in an Israeli research institute does this, I sincerely do not understand it.

Meet Professor Doron Bar

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
20 August '18..

I think some people are quite thrilled that there are Jewish vandals who can be trotted out for display when they want to demonize the Jews. How else to explain the fact that, in a paper arguing that Israel was busy “Judaizing” Muslim holy places in 1948-1967, the very first sentence is about the 2013 destruction of Ottoman wall tiles in what is purported to be David’s Tomb? The author argues that:

This event is part of a broader process — which began in 1948 and received institutional support from the Israeli state — of expropriating Muslim holy places and turning them into active sites of Jewish prayer. [page 68]

Could it have been an editorial error that he omitted the word, back: i.e., turning them “back” into active sites of Jewish prayer?

Furthermore, we can find nothing in his paper about the broader process — which began whenever Muslim conquerors would land in a new place and that continues to this day — of expropriating holy places of every other people and turning them into active sites of Muslim prayer. Or just engaging in wanton destruction of said sites. An example of the former could be the transformation of the Hagia Sophia Church to a mosque in Turkey; and an example of the latter the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan. In Israel, of course, we can point to building of the mosque on top of the the Temple ruins, or the destruction of synagogues and the Jewish cemetery during the 19 years of Jordanian occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Let me be clear about this: I hate it when Jews desecrate property of other religions. I feel shame, but I expect intellectual honesty from academics. I know, I should be inured by now, after having reviewed a number of academic papers from various disciplines in which I found glaring errors.

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