Now they go after Israeli archaeology...

Of course, Israel is not invited to a world congress....

The Israel Antiquities Authority condemned the World Archeological Congress on Wednesday for holding an international conference in Ramallah dedicated to "overcoming structural violence" and the negative impact of politics on archeology.

In a fiercely worded letter to the congress's president, IAA deputy director Dr. Uzi Dahari accused the organization of excluding Israelis, not informing the IAA of the event in advance, and allowing an academic forum to be used for political propaganda against Israel.

"We remind you that this is a conference organized by the World Archeological Congress, and not a Palestinian archeological organization," Dahari wrote. "This requires you to make it universal. The omission to include or invite Israeli speakers to address issues that directly affect their daily work shows that this conference is certainly not that."

He continued, "We need not remind you that one of the principles governing the WAC is the promotion of dialogue between archeologists, but this conference is a monologue that fails to live up to these basic ideals."

Dahari said the conference's program was full of condemnations of Israeli archeology, with "huge numbers of inaccuracies" and accusations of "insidious past-mastering" that made the conference into "little more than a political demonstration."

He also condemned the congress for visiting the Temple Mount and City of David Archeological Park in Jerusalem on Wednesday without coordinating with the IAA, even though the cultural heritage of Jerusalem is under Israeli auspices according to international law.

He said it was unethical and unprofessional to visit active archeological sites without informing the archeologists charged with the excavation.