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.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Zionists are almost universally full of shit, so you probably shouldn't expect a breakthrough but...

    Gaza was home to some of oldest churches and gravesites in the world - many from all religions, not just Muslim ones. Israel has destroyed them all in their bombing.

    When IDF troops discovered a perfectly taken care of cemetery, with many graves of WW1 deceased including many Jewish graves featuring stars of David and other religious iconography they were shocked. Shocked enough it spawned dozens of articles in Israel and the West which are easily searchable.

    Meanwhile, Israel has been systematically desecrating dozens of cemeteries in Gaza, including bulldozing them, removing bodies so their relatives can't visit them, and allegations of desecrating bodies. Again, all of this has been reported in the Western press uncluding the likes of CNN.

    So if you're really so inclined, ask him who in this conflict seems to be respecting culture, history, and the dead.