Jonathan Pulik and I, reporting for BAR, were among the first to arrive in the tiny courtroom in the large courthouse on Salah e-Din Street in East Jerusalem. By the time the wheelchair-bound judge, Aharon Farkash, entered at about 9:10, the place was packed, however. Standing room only.
I had introduced myself to defendant Oded Golan in the lobby. It was he who had been charged with forging the ossuary inscription, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” I had met him before, but this time there was no conversation. This was before the verdict was announced, and he was visibly and understandably concentrated. He was wearing a jacket and cheerful tie with what appeared to be little animals, as if he were confident of what the verdict would be.
Just before the judge came in, the television cameramen and still photographers were required to leave. Journalists, from AP, Jerusalem Report, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, were there and remained. While we were waiting for the judge to arrive, I asked the man next to me if he had been following the case closely. No, he replied, he was there because the judge was his big brother and told him he should come.
As I write, the news is fresh. By the time you read this in BAR, however, surely nearly everyone knows that the defendants (Golan and antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch) were acquitted on all counts of forgery. To learn more, just go to our Web site for detailed up-to-the-minute reports, as well as BAR editor Hershel Shanks’s analysis of the evidence.
The court session lasted more than an hour and a half and consisted only of the judge’s reading of a summary of his 475-page decision. Both the decision and the summary are in Hebrew. Whether they will be translated is not known at this time.
The defendants were obviously pleased with the decision. Deutsch made no comment to the press, however. When I spoke with him, he was more furious with the Israel Antiquities Authority than elated with the verdict. He said the case was “a malicious assault on me by the IAA. For 12 years I dug at Megiddo. Seven years I taught at Haifa [University]. I was fired from both.” He intends to sue the IAA.
Golan, who received the bulk of press attention because it was he who had been accused of forging the inscription mentioning James, the brother of Jesus, had a wider point to make to the press. Golan maintains that by purchasing items that come from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), he and others like him have saved these often important artifacts for Israel. Otherwise, they would have been scurried out of the country, never to be heard from again.
Jonathan and I left the courthouse feeling that we had been present at the conclusion of a case that had rippled around the world for years and sometimes seemed as though it would never end. Now it was over.
Jonathan Pulik and I, reporting for BAR, were among the first to arrive in the tiny courtroom in the large courthouse on Salah e-Din Street in East Jerusalem. By the time the wheelchair-bound judge, Aharon Farkash, entered at about 9:10, the place was packed, however. Standing room only.
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