Broken glass ruins Palestinian cause

Ordinarily, a piece broken glass lying on the ground is unsightly litter at best, a danger to bare feet and pets at worst. But not in the Middle East; there a piece of broken glass has the power to ruin decades of political propaganda. Pro-Palestinian propaganda, that is.

Case in point: This week’s discovery of the world’s oldest glass kilns, alongside a railroad track at the foot of Mount Carmel, near Haifa.

Dr. Yael Gorin-Rosen, the head curator of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Glass Department, announced that the Mount Carmel diggers had come across pieces of broken glass, which in turn revealed full-fledged glass kilns — “a very important discovery with implications regarding the history of the glass industry both in Israel and in the entire ancient world.” Professor Ian Freestone, of London’s University College, a specialist in the identification of the chemical composition of glass, declared the Mount Carmel glass “a sensational discovery.” Glass researchers from around the world are flying to Israel to view it firsthand.

Why all the fuss? Well, it turns out that years ago, the glass-history experts carried out chemical analysis of glass objects that were found in Roman-era shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. The tests showed that the glass originated in the Acre (Akko) valley, in the northern part of the Land of Israel. But nobody had ever located the actual kills where the raw materials were processed to create that glass. Until now!

This might seem like pretty boring stuff to anybody outside a handful of archaeologists and their fellow travelers. But in fact, it’s a vivid and powerful affirmation of Zionism and deals a devastating blow to the Palestinian Arab cause.

To begin with, the kilns reveal, according to Prof. Freestone, that “Israel constituted a production center on an international scale — hence its glassware was widely distributed throughout the Mediterranean and Europe.”

Why is that such a big deal? Because the archaeologists have determined that the kilns are about 1,600 years old. That means they were in use around the year 400 CE, in the late Roman period.