Romney arrives in Israel to pledge support for the Holy Land and meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu

Presidential candidate is putting his gaffe-filled visit to London behind him as he arrives for the main event of his international trip: Israel.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: SATURDAY, JULY 28, 2012

BY JONATHAN LEMIRE AND MATTHEW KALMAN IN JERUSALEM / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

CHARLES DHARAPAK/AP

Romney and wife Ann arrive in Tel Aviv, Israel on Saturday.

Mitt Romney will pledge his support for Israel - and make his pitch for Jewish voters back home in America - during a closely-watched visit to the Holy Land Sunday.

Romney, likely grateful to put his gaffe-filled stop in London behind him, arrived in Tel Aviv late Saturday a day before he is set to meet with President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A day full of meetings will also include a sitdown with Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as Romney attempts to bolster his thin foreign policy credentials.

His situation is reminiscent of another presidential candidate who made a similar trip to Israel four years ago: Barack Obama.

Obama, then an Illinois Senator with little international experience, was lauded for voicing unwavering support for Israel as it was pummeled by Palestinian rocket attacks.

But Obama, who has not visited Israel since, has experienced somewhat frosty relations with Netanyahu - and Romney is trying to take advantage of a possible opening with Jewish voters, particularly those in the swing state of Florida.

In a move likely timed to Romney’s trip, Obama pledged more military aid to Israel during a bill signing Friday.

And while it would be difficult for Romney to suffer as many flubs in Israel as he did in the United Kingdom, his scheduling team did make one embarrassing error.

A $50,000 a plate fundraiser with Americans living in Israel was originally scheduled for Sunday, which is Ninth of Av, the solemn day of mourning and fasting that marks the destruction of both Temples in ancient Jerusalem.

After Romney’s advisors realized the conflict, the fundraiser was switched to a breakfast Monday morning.

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A GOLDEN AGE OF JEWISH MEDIA

HONEST REPORTING, JUNE 20, 2012

By MATTHEW KALMAN, editor in chief of The Jerusalem Report

When I was invited to become editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report last January, I didn’t realize the challenges would be quite so intense.

The Jerusalem Report was founded in 1990, only the second major English-language news publication from Israel after the Jerusalem Post. Its proud boast to cover “Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World” made it just about unique. At the time, there was almost nothing published in English from the Middle East, and The Report was almost alone in trying to bridge the gap between Israel and Jews around the world.

It was also launched in the days before cable television, let alone the internet. CNN only took off the following spring, with the 1991 Gulf War. The Web was still several years away. YouTube was a pipe dream.

More than 20 years on, the magazine that began as a lively upstart challenger to the crusty Jerusalem Post had itself become something of an old-timer, outpaced by the web-savvy offerings from Israel and around the Jewish world. Is there really a future for classic long-form print reporting on Israel-centered subjects in this mobile, cloud-based era?

We seem to have entered a golden age of Israel and Jewish-interest journalism. Just after I took over at The Report, a former editor of the magazine, David Horovitz, launched The Times of Israel, an exclusively web-based news site that seems to point the way forward for Israel news.

Horovitz’s site poses direct competition to the website of theJerusalem Post, which he edited until last summer. The Post was Israel’s first English website, and one of the first global internet news sites, and remains one of the most popular in the world, with millions of hits each month. Haaretz went online a decade later, after the launch of the English-language print edition, followed by Ynet News, the English version of the online edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s near-monopoly Hebrew daily. A similar move by Maariv, Yedioth’s closest competitor, failed miserably – probably because the publishers branded the site as “NRG” instead of Maariv, rendering it meaningless to readers abroad.

Arutz 7, the mouthpiece of the national religious and pro-settler movement, also provides news and analysis online in English, completing the political sweep from Israeli left to right.

In 2011, the free daily giveaway Israel Hayom came up with a slightly different concept with the launch of a daily English-language newsletter emailed to subscribers. In May, The Times of Israel announced its own daily newsletter – adding to a growing arsenal of social media that includes a Facebook page linked to readers’ comments and a blog-hosting service modelled on the Guardian’s “Comment is Free.”

But my challenge in positioning The Jerusalem Report is not limited to Israeli publications. Readers around the world can now access high quality reporting from and about Israel via the websites of diaspora publications. The Forward and The Jewish Week are just two of the excellent news sites operating from the US. From Britain, the Jewish Chronicle has also developed a strong web presence.

In addition to these traditional newspapers, there are several new Jewish websites like Tablet,Jewish Ideas Daily and Algemeiner that only exist online – following the model of Slate and Salon – offering excellent coverage, quality writing and expert commentary.

Then there is the whole new world of blogs unattached to any broader publication.

On the left, the Israeli site +972 offers penetrating and sometimes censorship-busting commentary that takes readers far beyond the kind of material available from mainstream Israeli and Jewish sites. It often breaks stories that are then picked up by the established press and provide important examples of “citizen journalism” in action that must be rattling the establishment.

Another totally new phenomenon is Peter Beinhart’s “Open Zion” Blog on the Daily Beast – an online forum in a mainstream digital publication devoted entirely to discussion of issues around Israel.

Amid this flood of exciting new, instantly accessible material, it has been interesting to work out where an old-fashioned print publication like The Jerusalem Report fits in. Gone are the days when we could claim to be the only English-language publication from Israel, let alone the Middle East. And why would someone wait to receive the print edition of The Report when the same stories are instantly accessible online from a dozen different sources?

We are launching a raft of social media access points from Twitter to Facebook, as well as a blog and a new website.

But we don’t intend to compete with the breaking news sites. Instead, we will set our own journalistic agenda rather than following the news. While other sites rush to post stories online and beat the competition, we take a step back and deploy experienced and talented writers to research issues and carefully collect exclusive information.

Readers of The Report in the past few months have enjoyed a series of exclusive interviews with major figures – from Amos Oz to Moshe Feiglin to Salam Fayyad to Lord Jacob Rothschild – that simply are not available anywhere else. Our coverage of Israeli business and high tech is unparalleled in both its depth and range. Allowing writers a week or two to work on a single story has allowed us to set the pace in reporting such diverse issues as the revival of the Kibbutz, the plight of the Falash Mura in Ethiopia, the launch of a new Palestinian women’s police unit, and the harassment of women reporters covering the Arab Spring. These are just some of the stories that have been covered in depth in recent months only in our pages.

Our strength is in our style: long-form, well-written, well-informed journalism accompanied by excellent photography and graphics that provides readers with an informative and entertaining experience that allows them to relax – far away from the insistent demands of the computer screen.

For more about The Jerusalem Report, see its blog site or Like the magazine’s Facebook page.

ARCHAEOLOGY IN A HOLE

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR / MATTHEW KALMAN
From The Jerusalem Report, issue dated July 2, 2012

Nearly 10 years have passed since the world learned of the discovery of a 1st century burial box bearing the words “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” and a black stone tablet with an inscription that brought to life a passage from the Second Book of Kings describing repairs to Solomon’s Temple by King Jehoash around 800 BCE.

Both items, if authentic, would be the first physical artifacts ever found from the family of Jesus and the First Temple. It’s no wonder they caused a worldwide sensation, and that their subsequent exposure as fakes and the arrest of Oded Golan, a Tel Aviv antiquities collector accused of forging them, sparked international interest, even outrage.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), with the Israel Police, gathered testimony around the world and seized hundreds of suspect artifacts. The treasure trove included ancient stone lamps, engraved jugs, pottery shards inscribed in ink, seals and seal impressions known as bulae. Golan, we were told when he was indicted with four others in December 2004 and accused of masterminding an international forgery ring, was falsifying history for personal gain.

UNDER SUSPICION: Oded Golan at home with his treasures

“I believe we have revealed only the tip of the iceberg. This industry circles the world, involving millions of dollars,” said IAA director Shuka Dorfman. “Beside this, Indiana Jones looks small.”

But it wasn’t true. No one else was arrested. The zealotry of the IAA came unstuck when the case against Golan and his remaining co-defendant, antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch, collapsed in spectacular fashion at the Jerusalem District Court in March. Judge Aharon Farkash cleared them of all forgery charges and had some harsh words for the police, prosecution and the IAA.

The Israel Antiquities Authority came unstuck with the collapse of the case against Oded Golan and Robert Deutsch

Farkash said the police forensics laboratory had contaminated the ossuary by blundering through tests that proved nothing and left the inscription scientifically useless for future research. He said the prosecution had failed to prove a single one of the forgery or conspiracy charges brought with such fanfare against Golan and Deutsch. His jaw dropped in disbelief when prosecutor Dan Bahat refused to return the items to Golan, Deutsch and two more collectors. Now the prosecution and the IAA must present a detailed case for confiscating each item.

But Farkash was careful to say that the not guilty verdict did not mean the items were authentic.

The IAA continues to hold by its theory that they were forged by an Egyptian craftsman, Marco Ghatas, who worked with Golan in Tel Aviv. The IAA blamed their failure on the refusal of Ghatas to testify, but the judge said the prosecution evidence simply did not stand up to scrutiny.

The updated story is told in this issue for the first time. I was the only reporter in the courtroom throughout the 120 sessions of the seven-year trial. I heard most of the 12,000 pages of testimony, listened to most of the 126 witnesses and saw most of the 200 exhibits. But I still can not say for certain whether the items are genuine or not.

Even those who are convinced that the items are fake are distressed at the increasingly bizarre actions of the IAA and its publicity-seeking director Dorfman.

I was the only reporter in the courtroom throughout the seven-year trial. I heard most of the 12,000 pages of testimony and listened to most of the 126 witnesses. But I still can not say whether the items are genuine

The IAA’s most egregious mistake was the arrest in 2005 of Hanan Eshel, a Bar-Ilan University archaeology professor who rescued several parchment scroll fragments from the Bar Kochba era that he bought from a Bedouin trader. The IAA charged him with criminal conduct.

“Hanan discovered pieces of biblical Judean scrolls, acquired them, looked after their restoration in the Israel Museum, published them and presented them to the IAA,” says David Jeselsohn, a prominent collector and leading donor to Bar-Ilan who provided the purchase money. “It was the first and only time that the State of Israel was given such a gift. Instead of thanking Hanan, he was detained by the IAA, was presented to the media as a criminal and Shuka Dorfman even had the audacity to bring charges against Hanan at court.” Jeselsohn tells me he thought it was “a bad joke” when he heard that Bar-Ilan was giving its prestigious Guardian of Zion Award to the IAA and that Dorfman would be accepting the prize.

Jeselsohn believes that the Jehoash tablet is a fake, but he describes the prosecution as “a bizarre and hallucinatory trial” against “an imaginary ring of antiquities forgers.” He says the IAA “acted imprudently, senselessly, foolishly and regrettably, with malice.” He called on the IAA to compensate and apologize to Robert Deutsch, Golan’s co-defendant who was acquitted on all charges.

With the IAA still refusing to hand back the artifacts, the case could drag on for some time. I will continue to follow it in the pages of The Jerusalem Report and in a special blog: http://www.jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.co.il/

The Turin Shroud is a fake

Eminent historian claims it was one of 40 similar cloths which originated 1,300 years AFTER the crucifixion

By Matthew Kalman

DAILY MAIL ONLINE
10 June 2012

It has been venerated for centuries as the burial shroud of Jesus and has attracted thousands to the chapel where it lies.
But an eminent Church historian says the Turin Shroud is probably a medieval fake and just one of 40 similar cloths circulating in Europe until the 18th century.
In a new study, Antonio Lombatti, a Church historian at the Universita Popolare in Parma, Italy, says the shroud appears to have originated in Turkey some 1,300 years after the crucifixion of Jesus in the Holy Land.
The shroud is a linen cloth about 14ft by 4ft bearing a front and back view of the negative image of a bearded, naked man who appears to have been stabbed or tortured.

The Turin Shroud was believed to have covered Jesus, but a leading Church historian says it is one of many produced over a thousand years after his death

It has attracted thousands of pilgrims to the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin, Italy since the remarkable detail on the cloth was revealed by negative photography in the late 19th century.
In a research paper to be published later this month in the scholarly journal 'Studi Medievali,' Lombatti says the shroud was most likely given to a French knight as a memento from a crusade to Smyrna, Turkey in the 14th century.
'The Turin Shroud is only one of the many burial cloths which were circulating in the Christian world during the Middle Ages. There were at least 40,' said Lombatti, citing research by the 19th-century French historian Francois de Mely, who had studied surviving medieval documents.
'Most of them were destroyed during the French revolution. Some had images, others had blood-like stains, and others were completely white,' Lombatti told the Daily Mail.
Based on unpublished manuscripts at the National Library of Paris, Lombatti reveals that the shroud was obtained by the French knight, Geoffroy de Charny, during a crusade to liberate the Turkish city of Smyrna from Muslim rule in 1346.
The de Charny family are known to be the first recorded owners of the shroud.

The image has bewitched believers and sceptics alike since the negative image, right, was revealed in the late 19th century

Lombatti discovered that Geoffroy was unable to join a pilgrimage to Jerusalem after liberating Smyrna, so he was given the shroud as a symbol of his participation in the crusade to Turkey.
'The relic has nothing in common with real Second Temple burial shrouds,' he said. Lombatti, author of six books and a leading authority on the history of the shroud, will present his evidence at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Amsterdam in July.
The shroud has divided scholars for more than a century. The Catholic Church has never officially commented on its authenticity, but it has made tiny samples of the relic available to scientists for testing.
Earlier this year, Cambridge art historian Thomas de Wesselow argued in his book The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection, that the image on the shroud, which he said was authentic, triggered the birth of the Christian religion.
In 2011, researchers at the Italian government National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development said the image could not be the work of mediaeval forgers but was instead caused by a supernatural 'flash of light'.
In 2009, Vatican researcher Barbara Frale said she had found the words 'Jesus Nazarene' on the linen cloth in a computer analysis of photographs of the shroud that revealed faint words written in Greek, Aramaic and Latin, attesting to its authenticity.
But carbon tests carried out in Oxford in 1988 firmly dated the material to 1260–1390 AD.
The only burial shroud ever recovered from Jerusalem, by archaeologist Shimon Gibson, was very different.
It was made with a simple two-way weave - not the twill weave used on the Turin Shroud. Instead of a single sheet, it was in several sections, with a separate piece for the head.
'The Turin shroud is a single sheet made with a twill weave. The twill weave is known from this part of the world only from the mediaeval period, so we’re talking about something that’s from the Middle Ages,' said Gibson.

Bloomsday in Dublin

DUBLIN’S IMAGINARY JEW ARIEH O’SULLIVAN visits Dublin for Bloomsday and discovers how literature, history, Guinness and Judaism converge in the mystical Emerald Isle From The Jerusalem Report, issue dated June 4, 2012 The church has יהוה, the holy name of God in Hebrew, painted on the ceiling. But that isn’t what I find incredulous. The fact that the crypt, the final resting-place of generations of priests and notables, has been turned into a dance floor – well now, that was sacrilege to the extreme. This is the moment when I truly fall in love with Dublin. Again. We are on a Guinness diet, my son and I, and we have already lost four days. I have dragged him along to the ancestral homeland in search of Leprechauns and Jewish lore and perhaps the most famous Jewish character in English literature. But arriving to partake in the annual Bloomsday I am reluctant to check my mythical images of the Emerald Isle at the door. And I’m glad I didn’t. Ireland, once the Celtic tiger, is a shadow of its recent self. There is still swank Grafton Street with shops rivaling Paris and London and the country has greatly shed its pious Catholicism. But Ireland today is $135 billion in debt, bailed out mostly by the Germans. Ireland is the only country in the world which celebrates the wanderings of a Jew who never existed “We’re all guilty,” says Peter Graves at the Sinn Fein shop, pushing IRA bumper stickers and t-shirts. “Everyone took advantage of the bubble. Now ‘de whole country’s broke. Berlin’s our new capital.” But that doesn’t put a dent in the annual celebration of Bloomsday, the annual celebration in memory of Leopold Bloom, the Jewish protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which describes his wanderings through the city, thinking like mad. Joyce’s audacious version of the Homeric legend takes place over a single day, on June 16, 1904, making summertime Dublin a Mecca for English literature fans. Every year thousands of Joyce diehards flock to the city to reenact Bloom’s journey. Bloom never existed, except in Joyce’s extraordinary imagination, but in a marketing masterpiece, the Irish have turned Bloomsday, a totally fictional event where Jew and Ireland meet, into something approaching a national holiday. CROSSTALK: Leopold Bloom as imagined by one of Bloomsday's many cross-dressers Ulysses is considered one of the most significant literary works of the 20th Century – though few have attempted to grapple with its dense and cerebral text, and fewer still have made it through to the end. That hasn’t stopped the Irish. They have highlighted the passages about food and booze and sex and set them up as a template for a perfect mid-summer holiday. It’s a hedonists’ paradise where live music seems to burst out of every doorway and liquor consumption keeps the mammoth Guinness brewery struggling to produce two million pints of its trademark black stout a day. Ulysses is an outrageously funny and bawdy book. Peppered with Latin and Hebrew, it pioneered stream-of-consciousness narrative. Joyce crammed everything about life – sex, bodily functions, longing and mourning – into that single June day. Joyce’s masterpiece has been consistently voted as one of English literature’s most influential book of all time. Not bad for a piece of fiction that very few have actually read. On Bloomsday itself, I drag my boy Yarden, just out of high school, onto the streets and join an international crowd armed with tattered, dog-eared copies of Ulysses and maps of Dublin in 1904, as we begin our Odyssey just as Bloom did from his home at 7, Eccles Street. The atmosphere as we retrace Bloom’s mythical steps is literary Via Dolorosa meets licentious, Guinness-fueled Mardi Gras Everyone has entered into the holiday spirit. Straw hats and jaunty bowlers for men, and lacy, bosom-revealing frocks for women are de rigueur. I wear a white linen suit with Panama hat. There are also no small number of cross-gender dressers, which helps transform the atmosphere as we retrace Bloom’s mythical steps from literary Via Dolorosa to licentious, Guinness-fueled Mardi Gras. Most of the landmarks Joyce described in Ulysses are still there and the increasingly inebriated procession flows like a human wave across the city. At stops along the way, enthusiasts who can still read and not yet splayed out across the nearest bar, recite passages from the book. Outside Davy Byrne’s pub at 21, Duke Street, Gorgonzola cheese sandwiches and a glass of Burgundy just like Mr. Bloom tasted are going fast for 10 euros. Across the River Liffey at the Ormond Hotel, there is little oxygen left in the lounge: everyone has sucked it out singing ballads and reciting poetry. In any other country it would seem pretentious. A pack of children dressed in Edwardian-era costumes stroll by in celebration. For a novel banned from American shelves as obscene until 1933, the scene raises the interesting question of just how much of the book can be read to the children. EDWARDIANS: Costumed children join in the fun, though it's unclear whether they have read a book long banned for obscenity In his depiction of sex, as in much else, Joyce was ahead of his time. In the final chapter, Leopold’s unfaithful wife Molly Bloom brings herself to an unfiltered, unforgettable orgasm (“Yes, I said, Yes I will, Yes”) nearly a century before Meg Ryan’s signature restaurant scene in When Harry met Sally. “Oh forget the fugghan text. Ulysses is best exposed by listening to it,” says Irishman James Scully in a pinstripe suit. “Dis is me 25th year!” The diehards continue toward Barney Kiernan’s pub. My prodigal son drops out, but I soldier on, recalling my Irish grandfather who used to say, “I only drink when I’m alone or with somebody.” The pub itself no longer exists, so the pack darkens the doors of  The Green Street Pub to re-enact the famous “Cyclops” scene where a “broadshouldered, deepchested, stronglimbed, frankeyed, redhaired, freely freckled, shaggy bearded, widemouthed, largenosed, longheaded, deepvoiced, barekneed, brawnyhanded, hairlylegged, ruddyfaced, sinewyarmed” bigot confronts our Jewish hero. “What is your nation?” he asks Bloom, threatening later to “brain that bloody jewman.” “I belong to a race too,” says Bloom, “that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very moment.” Earlier in the novel a Mr. Deasy says Ireland has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews – “Because she never let them in.” “One of the central reasons for giving Bloom a Jewish identity was because it allowed Bloom to be both within and without Irish society,” says Mark Traynor, manager of the James Joyce Center. “Joyce was extremely attracted to the idea of Bloom the Jew and to Jewishness in general, the idea of a wandering race and of course, he as an Irishman in exile, could identify with that.” The odyssey begins just as Bloom did, from his home at 7 Eccles Street (Arieh O'Sullivan) According to Traynor, Bloomsday 2012 is expected to be an even bigger event since the copyright of the book is due to expire, allowing for a new wave of artistic interpretations of the 800-page novel. Senator David Norris, the on-off Irish presidential candidate and Ireland’s most flamboyant politician, is a leading Joyce scholar and a fair-weather friend of Israel. “This was Joyce striking out for diversity and supporting the underdog,” says Norris. “Both the Irish and the Jews have tragic history. The Jews had the awful unparalleled tragedy of the Holocaust and we also lost half our population during the famine. There’s the Jewish mother and the Irish mammy, the sense of humor and the curiosity about everything that happens in the world and just as the Jewish people have their Diaspora, the Irish people have a diaspora and even President Barack Obama is delighted to trace his Irish roots.” “And you know,” adds Norris with a wink, “the Irish people were the lost tribe of Israel.” The Irish have turned Bloomsday, a totally fictional event where Jew and Ireland meet, into something approaching a national holiday That may explain the plethora of Cohan and Levi families in Ireland. But what about Murphy, the most common family name here? The story goes that many of the ship surgeons from the wrecked Armada that washed up on Irish shores after the defeat by Sir Francis Drake were Jews. They likely went by the name Mar’peh (“healer” in Hebrew), that later became Murphy. Could the common Irish name Hennessey be derived from the Hebrew Hanasi (“president”). Was McCabe originally Maccabi? Was Brennan originally Ben-Nun? Perhaps I should change my own name back to the original O’Solomon. Dublin’s Jewish community today is minuscule, numbering only about 1,000 people. The bulk trace their roots to ancestors arriving at the turn of the 19th century from Eastern Europe, most of them from Lithuania. Some were disembarked by shady ship captains who told them they had already reached New York. Joyce was generally correct that the Irish did not persecute their Jews, notwithstanding bubbles of general folk, Catholic Church type of anti-Semitism that permeated European society. An infamous “pogrom” in Limerick in 1904 was considered a blip in the otherwise cordial relationship with the Jews. The Jewish population peaked shortly after World War II at about 5,500 and has been on the decline ever since, a process hastened by a combination of emigration, intermarriage and a low birthrate. In contrast, Islam is Dublin’s fastest-growing community. Ireland looks like it might be the first Western European country to lose its Jewish community altogether. This year, for the first time, Judaism wasn’t listed in the religion category on the annual census, says Traynor. “I’m proud of the fact that I am an Irish Jew,” says Joe Briscoe, whose father and brother both served as lord mayor of Dublin. “Now that the Jewish population is shrinking, the Irish people suddenly realize that they had a wonderful exotic people among them whom they have totally ignored,” says Briscoe. “I find it ironic that Ireland is the only country in the world which celebrates the wanderings of a Jew who never existed. TRAVELING IN IRELAND The Irish love to drink and sing and seem perpetually happy and want nothing more than for us to be happy too. Ireland loves tourists. Four times the size of Israel with roughly half the population (4.5 million), Ireland is expecting a strong rebound in tourism in 2012 to help it out of a deep recession that has seen its economy shrink by 25 percent in the past four years. Tourism peaked at 8 million in 2007, then slumped to 6 million in 2011. All this means cheaper holidays with luxury hotel rooms at B&B rates. By far the best way to see Ireland is to avoid the awful coach trips and get off the beaten path. Adventure tourism companies are cropping up to answer the growing interest. “Ireland is like a donut, all the sweet bits are around the edge and nothing in the middle,” says Mark Doherty, guide, minstrel and jeep driver for Vagabound Tours Ireland, one of the premier adventure tour groups operating modified Land Rover 4x4 vehicles. Joining the tour for four days, we headed straight for the west coast and kayaked with the seals in Bantry Bay, befriended the local fishermen in far off villages, kissed the Blarney Stone, visited the O’Sullivan castle (of course), spotted whales, climbed mountains, explored abandoned villages and mines and felt privileged to see the real Ireland. WHERE TO STAY Isaac’s Hostel 2 Frenchman’s Lane (353-1-855-6215) A good budget option. Free WiFi, lockers, clean co-ed rooms with bunk beds, (one homeless guy sneaked in to the room across the hall and was found warming someone’s bed) excellent rates, friendly world travelers of all ages. www.isaacs.ie/isaacs_hostel/Home.aspx Luxurious Fitzwilliam Hotel St. Stephens Green (353-1-478-7000) Definitely lives up to its “hottest hotel in the world” reputation. Located right off swank Grafton Street and main green, a 5 star contemporary hotel with best location in town. The concierge has an endless supply of umbrellas for guests. http://www.fitzwilliamhotel.com RECOMMENDED Vagabound Tours Ireland award-winning company running expeditions of a dozen or less international travelers in jeeps, staying in boutique hotels and pups and visiting the real Ireland. www.vagabondtoursofireland.ie/ The James Joyce Center 35 Great North Georges Street, Dublin (353-1-878-8547) Where all things Joyce are concentrated and Bloomsday is celebrated every day. http://www.jamesjoyce.ie Dublin Writers Museum 18 Parnell Sq. N, (353-1872- 2077) Offers a great overview of Ireland’s literary history. www.writersmuseum.com The Old Jameson Distillery Bow Street (353-1807-2235) Great tour culminating with whiskey tasting Dublin Tourism (353-1-605-7700) www.visitdublin.com

A MODEST MILLIONAIRE

From The Jerusalem Report, issue dated June 18, 2012

FROM THE EDITOR / MATTHEW KALMAN

WHEN ISRAELIS SING “IF I WERE A rich man” in Hebrew, they sing “If I were a Rothschild.” It’s not often you get to meet someone whose very name is a legend, so I tagged along when Robert Slater went to interview Lord Jacob Rothschild for our cover story.
It was the first time that Lord Rothschild has spoken publicly in any detail about the work of Yad Hanadiv, the foundation established by his cousin Baron Edmond de Rothschild a century ago, and a rare chance to encounter one of the leading financiers of the age.
It was an extraordinary, wide-ranging conversation in which the fourth baron parried a barrage of queries about his family, his fortune and his philanthropy with patient good humor. He had some candid comments about the shortcomings of the world banking system and spoke with feeling about the future of his storied family.
But what surprised me most about the good lord was his modesty.
In stark contrast to many other super-rich visitors to Jerusalem, he arrived almost incognito, without a retinue of gatekeepers and entirely devoid of the flashing lights, outriders and chase cars that have become de rigueur for many modern millionaires visiting the country. In keeping with a deep commitment to the environment, Lord Rothschild eschews private jets, that symbol of modern success, and flies by scheduled airline.
Nor do the riches simply mount. Lord Rothschild said it had been “hard work” to take the 94 million pounds bequeathed to him by his cousin Dorothy de Rothschild and multiply it as he has done to finance the foundation’s growing activities.
Lord Jacob is joined in this issue by another legend, Philip Roth, whose era-defining Portnoy’s Complaint is the subject of a thorough, and thoroughly entertaining, literary and historical analysis by the Jerusalem-based historian and essayist Bernard Avishai. The Report is proud to bring you this exclusive extract from Avishai’s book Promiscuous, published by Yale University Press.
Elsewhere, Bernard Dichek traveled to Addis Ababa to unravel the mystery of the 3,000 so-called Falash Mura stranded in dreadful conditions awaiting permission to emigrate to Israel. Linda Gradstein visited Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli charity that provides life-saving operations to infant patients from all over the world. Jeff Moskowitz hung out with the drag queens of Jerusalem, while Ziv Hellman met the scientists helping to digitize modern farming and Shlomo Maital met the Israeli inventor who enabled the paraplegic hero Claire Lomas to complete this year’s London Marathon.
As we continue to develop The Jerusalem Report as Israel’s premier English-language magazine, we welcome your comments and suggestions by post, email, or our new Facebook page.

James ossuary collector sentenced to month in jail

Tel Aviv antiquities collector fined NIS 30,000 for three minor charges of illegal trading in antiquities and handling goods suspected of being stolen.
JERUSALEM POST
May 31, 2012

By MATTHEW KALMAN

The Tel Aviv antiquities collector acquitted in March after a seven-year trial for allegedly faking the burial box of Jesus’s brother, an inscribed tablet that may have adorned the First Temple, and dozens of other valuable antiquities was sentenced on Wednesday to a month in jail and fined NIS 30,000 for three minor charges of illegal trading in antiquities and handling goods suspected of being stolen.

Judge Aharon Farkash, vice president of the Jerusalem District Court, ruled that Oded Golanwill not have to serve a custodial sentence because he was held by police for more than a month after his arrest in 2003.

Farkash, who had earlier threatened to order the destruction of the burial box, or ossuary, inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” a black stone tablet supposedly recording repairs to the Temple by King Jehoash in 800 BCE and other items seized from Golan, delayed a decision on the final ownership of the items, which could be worth millions of dollars.

Farkash rejected prosecution arguments that all the items connected to the 41 forgery charges on which Golan was acquitted should be confiscated, but he did not order their immediate return as requested by the defense.

Instead, Farkash ordered the prosecution to present detailed arguments by July 1 justifying the confiscation of each item, including dozens of seals and seal impressions, inscribed pottery, lamps, decanters and other artifacts seized on suspicion of being fakes.

Farkash also revealed that he had been petitioned by two other collectors – Shlomo Moussaieff and George Weill – for the return of items belonging to them.

“Antiquities theft in the Land of Israel has become a national plague,” Farkash said in an eight-page decision that he read out to an almost empty courtroom.

“Antiquities theft damages various sites spread out across the Land of Israel, sites which are an inseparable part of the history and culture of this land and its inhabitants, who lived here from thousands of years ago until the present day. Antiquities theft also damages the ability of experts to document the history of the people of Israel in its land.”

Farkash said the work of the Antiquities Authority in stopping the theft and forgery of historical items was essential in protecting the heritage of the holy land. He said the only way to cut down on illegal excavations and the robbery of historic sites was to discourage the illegal antiquities trade.

The judge also called for a reform of the antiquities laws and suggested that collectors, as well as dealers, should have to periodically provide the authorities with lists of the items in their collection.

Golan said he was studying the ruling and had not yet decided whether to appeal the sentence.

“I respect the decision of the court,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

“However, the decision may be based on a mistaken interpretation of Israeli law. All three minor charges on which I was convicted, and to which I freely confessed in my first interview with the police in 2003, relate to antiquities found outside the borders of the State of Israel. Under Israeli law, the Israel Antiquities Authority has no jurisdiction over them and no authority in matters related to them.

“My interest is to save, keep and document important antiquities found in Israel and the West Bank. Unfortunately, the Israel Antiquities Authority has failed to prevent he loss of some 1.5 million pieces discovered in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, which have left the country,”Golan said.

He added that the remarks by the judge had “implications for any antiquities collector, most of whom save valuable items for posterity and donate them to museums so the wider public can benefit from them.

“The reforms suggested by the judge may even further harm the protection of antiquities found in Israel and encourage people to take them out of the country,” Golan said.

Judge to decide fate of ossuary, Jehoash tablet

Scholars say items should be preserved; J'lem judge could order items destroyed under "ruling of Solomon."

JERUSALEM POST
May 29, 2012

By MATTHEW KALMAN

A Jerusalem judge will announce on Wednesday whether he has decided to order the destruction of a burial box that could have held the bones of the brother of Jesus and an inscribed tablet that could have come from the First Temple.

At a Jerusalem District Court hearing in April, Judge Aharon Farkash said he might exercise “the judgement of Solomon” and order both items to be destroyed.

The stone burial box, or ossuary, dates to the first century CE and has an Aramaic inscription that reads "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." The black tablet is inscribed with a passage recording repairs by King Jehoash around 800 BCE. Its surface is spattered with sub-microscopic globules of gold that suggest it might have survived a fire in which golden items melted into tiny airborne particles.

If genuine, the items are the only artifacts yet recovered that can be linked directly to the family of Jesus and the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and could be of considerable historical significance.

Last March, at the end of a trial lasting nearly seven years, a Tel Aviv collector was acquitted of faking the two artifacts and other antiquities by Judge Farkash, vice president of the Jerusalem District Court.

But Judge Farkash reserved judgment on whether the ossuary or the stone tablet were authentic because of disagreements between the world’s leading experts.

On Wednesday, Judge Farkash will pass sentence on the defendant, Oded Golan, who was acquitted on 41 charges of forgery, fraud and other serious crimes, but found guilty of three minor misdemeanors of trading in antiquities without a license and handling goods suspected of being stolen.

At a hearing in April, the prosecution demanded a tough sentence including jail time and said that the ossuary, the tablet and many other items should be confiscated by the court, even though Golan had been acquitted of all charges related to them.

“Maybe I’ll order them to be destroyed and neither side will have them,” said Judge Farkash in comments that were not recorded in the official court transcript.

It would be “the judgement of Solomon,” said Judge Farkash.

“Neither of you will have the ossuary or the Jehoash tablet. They broke once already, they can be broken again. Just destroy them,” he said.

The ossuary cracked into two pieces 2002 while it was being shipped to an exhibition in Canada and was repaired by restorers at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The Jehoash tablet broke along an existing crack in 2003 while it was being handled by investigators at the Israel Police forensic laboratory.

The judge also suggested that the items might be put on display for the public.

“Maybe they should be exhibited at the Israel Museum as items from this trial suspected of being fakes,” he said.

Experts who gave evidence for both sides last night urged Judge Farkash not to destroy the items.

Andre Lemaire, the Sorbonne scholar who published the first analysis of the ossuary in 2002 and has stood by its authenticity, said its destruction would be “scandalous” and “a manipulation of historical evidence.”

“It would be necessary from a scientific point of view to start a new suit, on a real basis this time, for voluntary destruction of historical evidence and tentative manipulation of history,” Professor Lemaire told The Jerusalem Post.

Christopher Rollston, professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Emmanuel Christian Seminary who appeared as a prosecution witness, said “it is never prudent to destroy antiquities, regardless of the controversy surrounding them.”

“I would certainly not wish to see the Ya'akov ("James") Ossuary destroyed. Indeed, to destroy the ossuary would only fuel the controversy, effectively turning this ossuary into an archaeological martyr of sorts. I wish to see it returned to its legal owner,” he said.

Prosecution witness Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, agreed that the ossuary should not be destroyed, but said it should not be returned to Golan. “The Israel Antiquities Authority has a place for alleged forgeries in their storehouses – why not put this item there too for posterity?” Finkelstein suggested.

Defence counsel Lior Bringer said the items should be returned immediately to Golan, who said he has not yet decided what to do with them.

“The prosecution is asking the court to punish the defendant for crimes for which he was acquitted,” said Bringer. “Golan admitted to the three minor charges he was convicted of in the first police interview. On these charges there was no need for a trial at all.”

“He spent more than two years under house arrest and was in prison twice. He has suffered enough,” said Bringer.

Israeli protestors call for controls to stop migrants

Tensions are rising in Israel

SUNDAY EXPRESS
Sunday May 27,2012

By Matthew Kalman

ISRAELI leaders are under pressure to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Africa after tensions between migrants and poor neighbourhoods of Tel Aviv erupted in violence.

One demonstration against the wave of immigration deteriorated into attacks on Africans in cars and on the street, with police arresting 17 Israelis.

Yair Lapid, a prominent commentator, labelled it a “pogrom”.

But Right-wing politicians called on the government to seal the border with Egypt and to start deporting those without refugee status.

Likud MP Miri Regev told protesters: “The infiltrators are a cancer in our society. We will not let them thwart our attempt to protect ourselves, our children, our women and our work places.

“We’ll protest every day until the last of the Sudanese infiltrators returns to his country.”

But Yael Weisbach, who volunteers in a south Tel Aviv soup kitchen for refugees, denounced the speeches as “incitement”. She added: “People are fed misinformation about the refugees. They are lovely people. I’ve never encountered an act of violence or sexual harassment on their part.

“The violent protest could have been taken out of a Holocaust movie. Hatred based on the colour of one’s skin. We are losing our values.”

The protests followed two high-profile incidents in the past month in which illegal migrants were arrested on suspicion of the rapes of young Israeli women. Even before the attacks, a kindergarten and an apartment which was used by migrants were firebombed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has sanctioned a multi-million-pound boundary fence with Egypt to slow the illegal traffic, said: “The problem of the infiltrators must be solved and we will solve it. If we don’t, 60,000 infiltrators are liable to become 600,000 and cause the negation of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

“However, there is no place for either the expressions or the actions that we witnessed.”

President Shimon Peres said “hatred of foreigners contradicts the foundations of Judaism”.

More than 60,000 migrants have entered Israel from Egypt in recent years.

Many have settled in a run-down neighbourhood of south Tel Aviv, which locals say has transformed the area.

Court says 'not guilty,' Antiquities Authority demands punishment

Antiquities Authority determined not to return dozens of items to Israeli collector accused of faking burial box of Jesus's brother.

By MATTHEW KALMAN

JERUSALEM POST
May 12, 2012

 
(Reuters)
The Antiquities Authority, backed by State Attorney Moshe Lador, has launched a desperate rearguard action to reverse its humiliating defeat in a seven-year trial that ended with the acquittal of an Israeli collector accused of faking the burial box of the brother of Jesus and an inscribed stone tablet that may have hung on the wall of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

The latest twist came during a routine sentencing hearing at the Jerusalem District Court last Tuesday, two months after the stunning collapse of the high-profile prosecution.

Prosecutor Dan Bahat revealed that the Antiquities Authority was determined not to return dozens of items, including the burial box and the stone tablet to their owner, despite his acquittal on all the relevant charges.

Bahat compared it to returning drugs to a dealer acquitted on a technicality.

Oded Golan, 60, was cleared in March on 41 counts of forgery, fraud and other serious crimes related to what antiquities officials and police had described as a worldwide, multi-million-dollar network designed to falsify history and dupe museums and collectors into buying worthless fakes. Golan was convicted on three minor counts of handling goods suspected of being stolen and dealing in antiquities without a license.

The case attracted worldwide attention because of a stone burial box, or ossuary, inscribed with the Aramaic legend “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus.”

The prosecution was unable to prove its assertion that the words “brother of Jesus” were a modern addition and Golan was cleared of faking them.

If genuine, the ossuary is the only known artifact that could be directly connected to the family of the historical Jesus.

Golan was also acquitted on all charges relating to a black stone tablet inscribed in ancient Hebrew recording repairs to the Temple carried out by King Jehoash around 800 BCE. If genuine, it is the only item yet discovered that may have adorned the First Temple.

In December 2007, Amir Ganor, head of the antiquities authority anti-theft unit and the architect of the fraud trial, said the Antiquities Authority would return return more than 200 artifacts seized from Golan.

“I am holding the exhibits under a court order,” Ganor told the court. “When the trial is over, I imagine I will be happy to get rid of everything I have in the storeroom and return it to Oded Golan, including the ossuary.”

The trial has now ended, but even though Golan was acquitted on all charges related to the most important artifacts in the case, the prosecutor demanded the permanent confiscation of all the items. He also urged the judge to impose a maximum sentence for the three minor misdemeanors even though it was Golan’s first offense.

“I do not agree that there is an absence of a criminal history. There were illegal activities,” Bahat charged, prompting a sharp rebuke from Judge Aharon Farkash.

“You are trying to mount a new trial,” said the judge, who even referred to a “witchhunt” against Golan.

The Antiquities Authority has shown no sign that it accepts the not guilty verdict. Its spokesmen continue to describe the items in the trial as fakes and the authority appears to be determined to punish Golan despite losing the case.

Bahat said the decision to seek confiscation of the property and a harsh sentence had been taken personally by the state attorney.

GOLAN, WHO was imprisoned twice by police for short periods during the investigation and then held under house arrest for more than 700 days, as well as losing untold income over the 10-year investigation and trial, said he had expected the court to order the immediate return of the hundreds of items and documents taken by the police and hoped the judge would not impose further punishment.

Bahat presented two apparently contradictory arguments to the court. First, he said that since the judge had ruled the items were not fakes as charged in the indictment, they were in fact real antiquities and Golan was therefore not a collector but a dealer and so had an obligation to maintain a full inventory of his stock.

Judge Farkash pointedly reminded him that this accusation had not even been hinted at in any of the 44 crimes listed in the indictment.

“I don’t recall that in any of the charges you accused him of this crime of being an unlicensed dealer. How can you now ask me to consider this when deciding on the sentence?” asked the judge. “You are now asking me to take into consideration that he didn’t maintain an inventory. I don’t recall that was included in any of the 18 counts, either as a specific charge or within any of the charges on the indictment.”

Bahat then performed an abrupt about-turn, arguing that, despite Golan’s acquittal, the “likelihood” is that the items were fakes.

“In my opinion, it is inconceivable that the items should be returned to the accused,” said Bahat. “I say there is no choice.”

Bahat said it would be unacceptable for Golan to benefit from the ossuary or other artifacts.

“He can sell it, exhibit it. I cannot countenance that if the item is fake that he should get it back,” said Bahat, suggesting the items be given to the Israel Police forensics laboratory for educational purposes.

But Judge Farkash seemed unimpressed, particularly as he had singled out the forensics laboratory in his verdict for severe criticism for contaminating the ossuary inscription during testing, rendering it scientifically worthless.

“If the ossuary is a fake, it’s not an antiquity. How can I not return it to the accused?” he asked.

The judge suggested, only half-joking, that the items be put on display at the Israel Museum in special exhibition of artifacts from the trial. Golan himself says he has not yet decided what to do with them.

But Golan’s attorney Lior Bringer was scathing about the prosecution tactics.

“The prosecution is asking the court to punish the defendant for crimes for which he was acquitted,” said Bringer. “Golan admitted to the three minor charges he was convicted of in the first police interview. On these charges there was no need for a trial at all.”

“He spent more than two years under house arrest and was in prison twice. He has suffered enough,” said Bringer.

But the Antiquities Authority seems determined to enforce its will through the courts rather than academic discussion – and to pursue legal action against anyone who dares to challenge its diktat. The authority ordered the unprecedented prosecution of the late Prof. Hanan Eshel of Bar-Ilan University for buying important artifacts and studying them before handing them over to the state. Last week, the authority was back in court in Nazareth, prosecuting a resident of Zipori for “damaging” an ancient tomb that he discovered and was trying to preserve.

The writer is editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report. His dispatches from the trial are atwww.jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.com/

WHY I BELIEVE THIS BOX CONTAINS JESUS'S BROTHER

SUNDAY EXPRESS, April 8, 2012

Oded Golan was acquitted of forgery charges

By MATTHEW KALMAN

ODED Golan was just 10 when he stumbled across a small clay tablet inscribed with ancient lettering while walking with his parents near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. It proved to be the oldest dictionary yet unearthed, seven lines of a phrase book for merchants in two ancient languages, Akkadian and Sumerian, and nearly 4,000 years old.

Within days, Professor Yigael Yadin, the father of modern Israeli archaeology, came knocking at the door of the family home in Tel Aviv, asking to see “Mr Golan”, not realising that the learned scholar who had sent him a postcard describing the find was a schoolboy.

Golan escorted the professor to his bedroom to show him the artefact and agreed to let Yadin take it back to Jerusalem for analysis. His mother served tea and biscuits.

By the age of 50, after a lifetime of collecting antiquities, Golan was renowned among scholars for owning one of the finest archaeological collections in the world. His Tel Aviv apartment, lined with glass-fronted display cases crammed with ancient pots, weapons, cultic vessels and altars became a place of pilgrimage for academics and dealers. Thousands more pieces were stored in warehouses. However, his hobby was about to land him in jail and make him an object of international ridicule.

"It will remain part of my collection. I don’t intend to sell it"
Oded Golan

In 2002, Andre Lemaire, a visiting professor of ancient languages from the Sorbonne, was leafing through the albums of Golan’s collection when he came across a photograph of a Roman-era burial box, or ossuary, made of limestone with the eye-popping inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” in ancient Aramaic.

Lemaire published the sensational find in the Biblical Archaeology Review. It made headlines around the world. Thousands of people flocked to the first public exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Golan was hailed as the owner of the only item ever discovered that might be connected with the family of Jesus Christ. Academic articles, books and documentaries debating the significance of the ossuary, whose value was conservatively placed at £1.2million, followed.

The celebrations were shortlived. The Israel Antiquities Authority seized the ossuary and subjected it to tests by two panels of experts. It also seized a black stone tablet with an inscription from King Jehoash in the 9th century BC that might be the only item recovered from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

In June 2003 the experts declared both items fake. Golan was arrested and held in jail for a month. Police raided his home, office and warehouses around Tel Aviv, seizing hundreds of items along with tools, computer files and half-finished artefacts that led them to believe Golan was the mastermind behind an antiquities forgery ring that was milking museums and collectors around the world of millions of dollars.

Golan said he had bought the ossuary 25 years earlier from an Arab dealer in the Old City of Jerusalem. “I never faked an antiquity in my life,” he insisted.

In December 2004, he and four others were indicted on 18 counts of forgery, fraud and obtaining money by deception. Golan was placed under house arrest for two years, more than a year of which he had to spend at the home of his elderly parents.

When the trial opened in the Jerusalem District Court in September 2005, Golan faced 44 charges. His reputation was in ruins.

The Israel Antiquities Authority staked its reputation on the trial, recruiting experts from around the world who testified the items were fake. By the time Judge Aharon Farkash retired to consider his verdict in October 2010, he had presided over 120 sessions, examined 200 exhibits (some of them entire books) and heard more than 12,000 pages of testimony from 126 witnesses.

The case revealed furtive encounters with Arab tomb robbers, high finance, skulduggery, smuggling and transactions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars based on a handshake and paid in cash behind the apparently cultured facade of collecting priceless antiquities.

“This was the first time that a court was asked to rule on a question of antiquities forgery,” Judge Farkash said last month, summarising testimony from experts in archaeology, the Bible, chemistry and geochemistry, geology, paleography and more. The list of witnesses read like a who’s who of the world’s leading scholars but as the judge wryly noted in his verdict, even the professors appearing for the same side disagreed with one another and sometimes even with themselves, changing their minds as time passed.

“If you, the world’s leading experts in this field, cannot agree with each other on the authenticity or otherwise of these items, how do you expect me, a mere judge, to reach a conclusion?” he said, before delivering his 475-page verdict on March 14.

Golan was exonerated of forgery, acquitted on 41 of the charges and found guilty on just three minor counts of unlicensed antiquities trading and holding items suspected of being stolen.

Judge Farkash warned that the verdict did not mean the items were necessarily genuine or that the “Jesus” on the ossuary was Jesus Christ but his ruling rescued Golan’s treasures from the dustbin of history. “I was never worried about the ossuary or the Jehoash Tablet,” Golan said after the verdict, “I cannot guarantee that it belonged to the brother of Jesus Christ but it is definitely ancient. I have no doubt about it.”

Born into a wealthy Tel Aviv family, Golan studied engineering and became a serial entrepreneur with successful businesses in travel, architectural seminars, property development and educational software.

Back in his apartment, Golan said he last saw the ossuary two years ago in court. “It will remain part of my collection. I don’t intend to sell it. I will have to consider over the coming months about whether to lend it to a museum or other institution for public exhibition.”

He said he was surprised at the explosion of interest in the ossuary because he knew little about Christian history and had never connected the inscription to Christ. “I purchased it in the mid or late-Seventies in East Jerusalem from one of the dealers in the Old City,” he said. “I didn’t recognise either its importance or its value for a long time. I didn’t even know that Jesus had siblings.

“No one can say for certain it is connected to the family of Jesus but there is a very high likelihood it is. If it really is the burial box of Jesus’s brother, it is a very exciting artefact. It is truly a historic item with a strong emotional importance.”

Antiquities collector acquitted of forgery charges in ‘James ossuary’ case

The media are given a preview of The James Ossuary on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Nov.14.2002 (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)

MATTHEW KALMAN

Jerusalem— Special to Globe and Mail Update

Published Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2012

A Roman-era burial box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was reprieved from the scrapheap of history on Wednesday when a Jerusalem judge completely exonerated an Israeli antiquities collector who had been accused of forging it.
The verdict, delivered by Judge Aharon Farkash in a tiny, crowded courtroom in the Jerusalem District Courthouse, ended a seven-year ordeal for the accused, Oded Golan, 60, but it will do little to extinguish the decade-long scientific controversy over the authenticity of the limestone box which has raged since it was first displayed to the public at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002.
If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, is the first physical artifact yet discovered that might be connected with the family of the historical Jesus Christ.
Mr. Golan had been accused of adding the second half of the inscription linking it to Jesus, and then fabricating the patina, the bio-organic coating that adheres to ancient objects, to pass it off as genuine.
But Judge Farkash said the prosecution had failed to prove any of the serious charges against Mr. Golan and acquitted him on all but three minor charges of illegal antiquities dealing and possession of stolen antiquities. Robert Deutsch, a co-defendant, was acquitted on all charges.
“The prosecution failed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt what was stated in the indictment: that the ossuary is a forgery and that Mr. Golan or someone acting on his behalf forged it,” Judge Farkash told the court, summarizing his 475-page verdict.
He noted that it was the first time a criminal court had been asked to rule in a case of antiquities forgery.
The spectacular collapse of the trial, nine years after Mr. Golan was arrested and thousands of items were seized from his home, office and warehouses in Tel Aviv, was a severe blow to the Israeli police and Israel Antiquities Authority, who claimed they had exposed “the tip of the iceberg” of an international conspiracy selling fake artifacts to collectors and museums worldwide.
The verdict will be welcomed by those who hope that the ossuary will finally provide a physical connection to the historical Jesus.
But Judge Farkash, who said he had heard from 126 witnesses and sat through 120 sessions that produced more than 12,000 pages of testimony, acknowledged that the collapse of the criminal trial did not signal the end of the scientific debate over the authenticity of the ossuary.
“This is not to say that the inscription on the ossuary is true and authentic and was written 2,000 years ago,” he said. “We can expect this matter to continue to be researched in the archaeological and scientific worlds and only the future will tell. Moreover, it has not been proved in any way that the words ‘brother of Jesus’ definitely refer to the Jesus who appears in Christian writings.’
Judge Farkash was particularly scathing about tests carried out by the Israel police forensics laboratory that he said had probably contaminated the ossuary, making it impossible to carry out further scientific tests on the inscription.
Mr. Golan, who was accompanied to court by his elderly parents, said he was “delighted at the complete and total acquittal I have received here today.”
“We brought experts from all over the world who testified that the inscriptions on the items that were suspected of being fakes are completely authentic, following research work by dozens of experts,” he said.
Prosecutor Dan Bahat said the case had been complicated by the refusal of a key witness, who was suspected of helping to forge many of the items, to come from Egypt to testify.
“What we tried to do here has set an international precedent,” said Mr. Bahat. “This is the first time someone has brought the issue of antiquities forgery before a court. Regarding at least one object, a decanter, the court found it was fake.”

CHANNEL 4 NEWS: JESUS BOX - REAL OR FORGERY?

MK production for Channel 4 News: The 'Jesus' box: clever forgery or genuine article?

Monday, 12 March 2012

Channel 4 News interview: Jesus Tomb claims