Shuka Bars BAR
BAR has been charged, tried and convicted. The question is for what? No one has been able to find out.
It doesn’t matter. The sentence is about to be carried out. The director of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Shuka Dorfman, has decided to bar BAR. Dorfman, a retired general in the Israeli army who was appointed to head the agency despite the fact that he had no archaeological training, has not forgotten his military ways; he is accustomed to issuing orders—and having them obeyed. Our Jerusalem correspondent reports that Shuka has decreed that IAA archaeologists may not give interviews to BAR, nor will they be permitted to comment about any IAA excavation or find.
Is this because Dorfman thinks BAR is part of a conspiracy to forge objects that are then placed on the antiquities market (see First Person)? Or is he angry because we have been critical of the IAA committee that declared the James ossuary a fake (see our Web site: www.biblicalarchaeology.org)?
BAR offers a $100 reward to anyone who can find out what lies behind Dorfman’s diktat.