Tuesday, February 4

Google and the Curious Censorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls

After the alteration of history is accomplished, the historical record is thrown into the memory holeGeorge Orwell, 1984
On February 4, 2014, Israel Antiquity Authority inaugurated an upgraded Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library showing the Dead Sea Scrolls. The site contains ten thousand high-resolution images and technical explanations about the items and the handwriting. These new images are multi-spectral, allowing to see many details hidden to the naked eye.
The original site had been inaugurated on December 2012 with 5,000 images and 3,500 scanned negatives from the 1950s, following two years of work. One of the companies involved in the project is Google, through its R&D center in Israel, directed by Yosef Mattias. In 2012, he said this was "part of Google's efforts to turn information existing in archives, collections and warehouses available to everybody." Unluckily, he never searched for the Marganit Building, the Ministry of Defense, on his company's map.
Google Censorship
Google Maps and Google Earth allow seeing much of this planet. Most places can be seen in excruciating detail, with buildings easily identifiable. Don't you recognize the landmark? No Problem! They are clearly marked.
Eguino Square, La Paz, Bolivia
Eguino Square, La Paz, Bolivia
The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation
One such exemption is Israeli cities. Certain sites appear in low resolution, some buildings are erased. The pictures attached show two sites. The clear one is the Eguino Plaza in La Paz, Bolivia. These words are being written a few meters away from the right edge of the image. If further enlarging, in the adjacent Witches Market one can almost see the dehydrated llama fetuses being sold.
The second one shows the Ministry of Defense area in Tel Aviv. The Dutch-built needle is not a secret building. I have featured images of it in several articles (like in Israel Plans Artificial Islands), and it appears also at the bottom of this page. Yet, Google erased the building almost completely.
Israel MoD
Israel MoD is at the scrambled spot

Stalin did the same. This couple of pictures is famous. The crowded one shows Nikolai Yezhov+ to the left of Joseph Stalin. Yezhov was executed in 1940; Russian censors corrected the image afterwards. Quite a feat considering the technologies of the era; they spent time, efforts and many rubles.
In his book 1984, George Orwell coined the term Memory Holes* for this type of censorship which aims to rewrite history. "Israel's Ministry of Defense? It was never in Tel Aviv! It has always been in the settlement of Holy Cows. Here, see the picture."
YezhovNiet Yezhov
Before and After Stalin style
The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation
State Secret
Some may question the dates of these events. They have a good reason. The scrolls were discovered in various caves in Qumran, near the Dead Sea in 1947. Despite a few of them being displayed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, only in 2003 they were made public.
To put this in proportion, even Israel's nuclear secrets lasted less. What was the justification for this secrecy? The few people with direct access to the scrolls face more security checks that Mordechai Vanunu did while joining Dimona.
Imagine that the scrolls, the oldest known copies of the books forming the Bible, shown that the rabbinical Bible is a fake. The State of Israel will lose overnight its narrative. Will then PM Netanyahu say "Mister Secretary General of the UN, we are sorry, we were wrong, God loves all people, not just Jews."
Even at the most basic level of analysis the scrolls contain cultural dynamite.
Rabbinical Forgery
Roughly one thousand manuscripts form the collection. They were written between 408 BC and 318 BC, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean. The latter is an offspring of Aramaic. Its cursive scripture became the basis to the Arabic alphabet.
They contain parts of all the books in the Hebrew bible except one. They contain also several books that were never canonized. In other words, the odd Book of Enoch appears there, while the Book of Esther does not.
One could justify this omission in a variety of ways, but the most probable one is that the genocidal book of Esther$ is a later addition by the rabbis. No other book failing to mention God and preaching genocide has ever been defined as sacred. Not even by the Nazis.
Two researchers from Tel Aviv University have documented at least 6,000 variations in the Hebrew Bible. As stated in this website, some of them were politically motivated, with prophecies that were not to the liking of the rabbis rephrased.+
One can understand the horror of Israel Chief Rabbinate when they understood that texts predating the rabbinical editing of the Bible were found.
A veil of secrecy covered the scrolls for over half a century. The only people accessing them were Jewish-Israelis or people trusted by them. Finally, a whitewashed version of the scrolls was made public and thanks to Google, the Leon Levy Foundation and the Arcadia Fund it has made public. Now, the entire worlds can witness a kosher prototype of the forged rabbinical Bible.
Which texts were carefully destroyed? Probably, we, the people, will ever now.
Google's Board
A principle commonly attributed to Google is "Don't do evil." Yet, in the name of making data accessible it has not only deleted buildings, but also is helping to one of the largest forgery events in human history.
Yet, they are correct. "Don't do evil" does not mean "Do good." It also doesn't mean "Don't help evil." They are reasonably good humanist logicians.
I tried to find the location of Google's board using their Maps application, but I failed. I am not very good with computers. Yet, after pondering on the issue for a while, I came to the conclusion that their office probably is next to Marganit 5, Israel's Minister of Defense office. Am I right?
Marganit Building
Marganit Building. Now Google can update its maps
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