The Destruction of History

Just to protect what everyone knows is a lie.

Oct 11, 2025

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This is a riff on a Commentary Magazine piece from May 2025 by Seth Mandel

I’ve talked about this before, and it’s not getting any better. The War on History has always been around, but the war on archaeological sites is getting worse, and in this case has an ideological/political basis.

History: interpretation of the evidence of the past.

No one makes the past; only the present. We (should) write history based on our interpretation of the evidence we have—the records, the artifacts. As we live, we create artifacts, records, and, yes, bodies that future historians will use to create their interpretations of us. For Jewish historical sites in the Middle East, academics with agendas have become a destructive force seeking a new and permanent Dark Age regarding the past of the Jewish people. Because academic archaeological journals aren’t the stuff of ratings, we don’t hear about it very much unless we go looking for it. It’s well known that many academic historians want to claim—sans evidence—that the “Palestinians” were in the southeastern Mediterranean before the Hebrews. Some even claim they were there before the Egyptians, that the “Palestinians” are the antecedents of the Pharaohs, and that Moses was the first true Muslim; it says so in the Koran.

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who prevent history from being remembered plan to repeat it.
Anonymous

In late April 2025, the Press Service of Israel (TPS) covered the blacklisting of Israeli researchers who study ancient sites in Judea and Samaria, because the area is over the “green line:” “occupied” territory in UN-speak. Now, one might suggest that, occupied or not, the preservation and exploration of history is pretty important. Which is why those who undertake it get blacklisted if their areas of study encompass Jewish historical sites because it might upset the “Palestinians” or even—gasp—contradict their versions. The story is full of examples of academics and researchers losing their standing, access, and career paths for the crime of taking part in studies of ancient Israel. Even if a few archaeologists defy the ban, they’ll have nowhere to publish their findings.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
George Orwell

The culprits aren’t shy about the coordination. A few days after TPS’s first report, the service got on-the-record confirmation from the top editor of a leading archaeological journal based in London that covers the Middle East.

Publication in [Palestine Exploration Quarterly] is guided by the PEF’s ethical policy…The crucial aspect of this is international law, by which many academic institutions and publications, including PEQ, are bound.

The only way to publish results from Judea and Samaria in this journal is if the researchers get permission from the “Palestinian” bureaucrats destroying and denying evidence of the Jewish past. It’s not that the Israelis don’t want to do the work; it’s just that any “Palestinian” who cooperates would be regarded by his peers as a traitor…or worse.

History does not describe the past; it debates it.
Lucy Wooding

The United Nations and other international forums play a key role in the denial of this past because they have “automatic anti-Israel majorities” for any votes. Those same authorities disregard the violation of Jewish sites like Jericho.

The burial grounds of Hasmonean kings—the largest necropolis in the Middle East from the Second Temple period—have been plowed and used for farming and construction…In one case, we found human bones scattered in the fields. The Israeli Civil Administration had to collect and rebury them.

The world knows that Jews are indigenous to the land, and that this history is a well-established fact. That includes “Palestinians” and their advocates. No academic or government leader in the world argues in good faith for the “colonialist” interpretation of Zionism.

If you trust your government for all things at all times, you had a lousy history teacher.

This is the anti-Semite version of flat-earth theory. It exists outside the very idea of knowledge. Their defensive posture, a tacit admission that the “Palestinian”-fueled anti-Zionist narrative concerning the land, is a universally dismissed fiction that threatens the academic world. Those Dark Ages that some in the academic world work so hard to bring about? Years of historical research before the screamers and scolds of the 21st Century stand in their way.

Sergeant’s Business and Other Stories

Writing about the past is a fraught business because the scribe often finds evidence that contradicts the accepted narratives. In “Big Gun,” a guy talks about what people expect to see and what they actually see, and then get it wrong, even in real time.

And Finally...

On 11 October:

1797: In and around the Scheldt Estuary, Netherlands, the naval battle known as Camperdown takes place. The Royal Navy, which defeats the Dutch fleet, just weeks before recovered from a large-scale “work stoppage” called the Spithead Mutiny, over pay (the sailors hadn’t seen a raise in over a century) and food (some meat they received was put up in their father’s time).

1939: Albert Einstein’s signed letter to President Roosevelt is delivered in Washington, DC. Written by two of FDR’s trusted scientific minds, not Einstein, the letter declares that the state of German physics was such that they might create a weapon of unprecedented power.

And today is GENERAL PULASKI MEMORIAL DAY, commemorating the death of General Casimir Pulaski from wounds he suffered during the siege of Savanna, Georgia, on 9 October 1779, and to honor the heritage of Polish-Americans. Several states and cities commemorate his 4 March birthday.