Archaeology Targeted As Lynchpin for Israeli Demand for All of Jerusalem

Love|Peace Archaeologists in Jersusalem are part of a major religious money machine determined to prove the artifiacts of Jerusalem’s past will prove its right to all of Jerusalem.

“Archaeologists have given up many of their best practices in order to answer the continuing demands of mainly political actors,” says Raphael Greenberg, an Israeli archaeologist from Tel Aviv University, who has worked in Jerusalem. via ABC News

In New York, visitors to the World Trade Center site are met by fake sellers of designer handbags and sunglasses. In Jerusalem, visitors are pummeled with Biblical readings, not whispers to buy cheap goods.

“This is where archaeologists found a clay seal with the name Gedaliah Ben Paschur, mentioned in verse 38:1 in the Book of Jeremiah,” whispers the volunteer, who gives his as Mordechai. “I can’t tell you what to think. But what else could this place be, if not the ancient Biblical city?”

Not only is the digging upsetting the 250,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem. Many fear that Israel’s attempts to justify its political claims are putting ancient sites at risk. Read on in ABC News Researchers Dig Up Controversy in Jerusalem.