Rice University Prof. Craig Considine denying the historical Jewish connection to Israel. |
Rice University Prof. Craig Considine recently appeared on a Twitter video wearing a kufiyah and touting the organization PaliRoots, which claims to promote Palestinian culture and identity. He could barely contain his enthusiasm about Palestine’s “beautiful culture,” which he will have “the lovely opportunity of experiencing and witnessing in the last two months of Ramadan 2020.”
Toward the end of the video, Considine said of PaliRoots, “it’s not politically charged, it’s not anti-Israel, it’s not anti-Jewish, it’s not any of that stuff.”
Rubbish. PaliRoots is in fact everything Considine claims it’s not. Some examples:
The next tweet in PaliRoots’ Twitter timeline asserts: “Dome of the Rock is the oldest extant Islamic monument located in Jerusalem, Palestine.” Wrong: it’s in Israel.
Checking out 15 Quick Facts About Palestine on the PaliRoots blog, one is told that “Palestine’s government is a Parliamentary democracy with a bicameral legislature. The President is elected every four years and is currently Mahmoud Abbas.” Nonsense: Abbas’s only election was in 2005.
Even worse is the denial of Jewish history and Israel’s existence. Another PaliRoots “fact": “Based on numerous hieroglyphs in Egyptian documents, Palestine’s original name has been transliterated as ‘Peleset.’” Yet “Peleshet,” the land of the Philistines, is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible — a fact PaliRoots ignores.
More revisionism: “‘Palestine’ has its origins from the word ‘Philista’, created by Greek writers to the region of the Philistines.” Wrong again, as the source for the name is Hebrew, not Greek. Also ignored is Rome’s attempt to erase any Jewish connection to the land by calling Judea “Syria Palaestina” following the Bar Kochba revolt.
Such ahistorical claims show PaliRoots to be a purveyor of false, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish propaganda. Considine’s proclamation of its trustworthiness further exposes him as a hack who would be shunned by his peers if they were capable of shame.
