They sent me links to these two English Wikipedia articles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khirbet_el-%27Ormeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryat_Arbaya

And the Hebrew Wikipedia article

https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/הרס_אתרי_מורשת_ישראלית

My gut tells me that since the only sources that any of these Wikipedia articles use regarding the sites' supposed destruction by "Palestinians", come from Zionist publications, over-representing specifically religious right-wing publications — that this is in all likelihood propaganda which is used to promote Zionist settlement of the West Bank under the pretext that these ancient sites need to be "protected" from the "barbarous" Palestinians that are apparently going around bulldozing them for no reason, because they're apparently Just That Evil™ or something... Despite one of these sites also being designated as a Palestinian Heritage Site. Uh-huh. OK.

The Zionist even acknowledged that talk about Palestinians destroying archaeological sites "is commonly used in right-wing rhetoric", but claims from interactions with supposedly liberal Zionist archaeologists on social media to have "confirmed that it's Actually that bad, it's Not Just Propaganda".

The context of this is that I had pointed out that the Barzilai Medical Center was built on top of the former Shrine of Husayn's Head, which was built in the 10th century and was blown up by the IOF in 1950 on the order of old Moshe in a deliberate attempt to erase Palestinian history and further the displacement of the Palestinian people. This Zionist was, prior to my pointing this out, apparently completely unaware of this having ever happened, despite being Very Concerned about how Hamas had launched rockets at the medical center as a very pathetic sort of "gotcha" to the people pointing out how the Zionist Entity has very thoroughly destroyed the medical infrastructure of Ghazza.

So I think this Zionist wants me to acknowledge this supposed "too" because they want me to say "both sides bad", distracting from the acts of the Zionist Entity — or in other words that Zionists make sense of their own horrific acts by saying "well, They do it Too, in fact They're Worse Actually™" — and this Zionist simply cannot stand the thought that their government is deliberately trying to erase their country's actual history in order to trick them, and so they end up using Palestinians as a scapegoat.

But Hey, whoop-whoopity-whoop, what if there is some tiny corn-piece of truth in this giant pile of horseshit? I can't find a page on decolonizepalestine.com about archaeological sites, but this is clearly a talking point that a lot of Zionist settlers are exposed to, even though it's clearly not often discussed outside of the Zionist Entity itself.

  • AnarchoAnarchist [none/use name]
    ·
    4 days ago

    You've been successfully derailed. You're arguing about something that doesn't matter because the Zionist scum you're talking to wants to avoid the fact that Israel's committing a genocide.

    How many dead children is each "desecrated archeological site" worth? How many tortured doctors and children are adequate compensation for a "desecrated archaeological site"?

    Is one "desecrated archaeological site" enough to justify the collective punishment of 2 million people, the deliberate starvation of hundreds of thousands of children? Or are Israel's actions justified because they "desecrated" multiple "archaeological sites"?

    Do not let Zionist scum set the conditions for a debate.

    • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      This.

      Had some crypto Zionist come to a meeting once where we were discussing Palestine (some years ago). They kept trying to bring up irrelevant talking points (how many states should there be? Do we want Islamists to win elections? What about Jewish persecution in x? Lebanon is persecuting christians! Jews aren't allowed in Palestine! Etc.)

      The simple fact was and is that the US, our government, supports an ongoing settler colonial project including genocide.

      This is typical wrecker behavior: get people arguing about shit that's irrelevant to the goal you're organizing around. Fortunately, we didn't fall for it much, wasted maybe half an hour on them. But we shouldn't have waste any time.