TORONTO — A posh downtown restaurant inserted itself into Middle East politics last month when it advised its clientele to avoid the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). The restaurant later removed the Internet posting.
On June 18, Le Sélect Bistro told visitors to the “What’s Up” section of its website that it wished “to warn against a show whose artifacts were obtained by force and looting.”
The exhibit “showcases artifacts seized by Israel in its 1967 surprise war which it waged against its neighbours,” the site stated. “The war led to the seizure and the ongoing military occupation of many lands, including the West Bank, from where the scrolls were taken.”
The one-paragraph summary goes on to accuse the ROM of “violating Canada’s responsibilities under the UNESCO Conventions and Protocols relating to cultural object seized by arms.”
That posting, which included a graphic red “X” over a ROM poster publicizing the exhibit, was changed to a more neutral description that omitted allegations Israel looted the scrolls, but maintains that a “controversy” concerning the scrolls still exists.
Before it was changed, the Select posting was being circulated on the Internet by individuals angry at the restaurant’s views.
Mel Fogel, a semi-retired teacher, said, “I read it. It was outrageous. They described the 1967 war as if Israel engaged in a surprise war.
“If the owner of the restaurant is prepared to engage in that kind of behaviour and misrepresent the facts, especially the ’67 war, obviously he’s anti-Israel.”
Fogel suggested that anyone upset by Le Select’s inaccurate description of the scroll’s provenance should consider doing to the restaurant what it suggested doing to the ROM exhibit – stay away.
Frédéric Geisweiller, owner of Le Sélect, said he wrote the original web posting, which ran for three weeks until it was removed on June 19. The site was changed in part because “the ROM was willing to acknowledge some of the things we were acknowledging about the exhibit,” he said.
Geisweiller said the original description of the exhibit warned the restaurant customers to be “cautious” about the exhibit, but it didn’t explicitly call for a boycott. “I want the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls told,” he said, adding that Palestinians, the Jordanian Antiquities Department and the École Biblique in Jerusalem excavated them.
Those scrolls were placed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem and Israel removed them after its victory in the 1967 war, Geisweiller said.
These are the scrolls on display at the ROM, he continued, adding that the ones purchased by Israelis from antiquities dealers were likely now in private collections. (In fact, they are part of the collection at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.)
However, in a letter to Geisweiller (which was circulated on the Internet), Howard Adelman, a York University professor emeritus in philosophy, addressed point by point the assertions contained on le Select’s website.
After criticizing Geisweiller’s use of the website “to propagate clearly political views and propaganda,” Adelman noted that the site of Qumran was a site settled by Jewish Zionists under the British Mandate who were forced out when Jordan occupied the West Bank in 1948; that Jordan, which itself “seized and annexed” the West Bank, did not make the export of antiquities illegal until 1974; that international protocols on protecting cultural property during war only apply to contracting states, and the Palestinian Authority does not qualify as such; that the 1967 war was not a surprise attack by Israel but only followed Egyptian closure of an international waterway. Adelman added that Jordan entered the conflict after Israel had asked it to stay out, and that the Rockefeller Museum was a private institution that Jordan expropriated and which Israel, as a successor authority, took possession of in 1967.
Adelman also noted that the scrolls are “clearly the cultural property of Jews 2,000 years ago. Given many precedents on cultural property, would you not think the Jews of today should be the inheritors of that property, even if ownership of the property is in dispute?”
The ROM exhibition, which runs until Jan 3, 2010, will take place despite the protests of Palestinian officials, who argue the scrolls were acquired illegally from the Jordanian-owned Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. In Mississauga, Palestine House called on the ROM to cancel the exhibit, saying they “were looted from a museum in East Jerusalem after it was occupied in 1967.”
Museum officials and Canadian government officials have rejected that contention.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, authored by Jewish scribes from 250 BCE to 68 CE, were found in 1947 in a cave by a Bedouin shepherd near the ancient village of Qumran. They were turned over to an antiquities dealer, as were other scrolls located in caves near the ancient Essene settlement. Many of the scrolls were purchased by Israeli scholars at various times before 1954.