The subtitle of Doron Spielman’s When the Stones Speak reveals the dual purposes he had in mind when he wrote the book. It reads: The remarkable discovery of the City of David, and what Israel’s enemies don’t want you to know. In fact, he goes somewhat further and reveals why those enemies have expended so much time and effort in attempting to suppress the details of that remarkable archaeological achievement.
Spielman, a spokesperson for the IDF, has been involved with the City of David for more than 20 years. In association with the founders and leaders of the City of David National Park, he has played a leading role in the site’s excavation and development. As vice president of the City of David Foundation, he has worked closely with archaeologists to uncover and promote the site’s historical significance. When the Stones Speak is his personal account of how the City of David has become, in his words, “one of the most active excavations in the world.”
One compelling reason for writing his book was to recount the story of the astonishing discoveries made, and the formidable obstacles overcome, in converting the City of David area from a neglected hilltop just south of the Old City of Jerusalem to the actual palace of King David and his son King Solomon, what the author terms “the cradle of Jewish civilization.”
Another reason for putting pen to paper was to refute the outrageous denials by religious and political rejectionists of any historic association of the Jewish people with the Land of Israel or even with Jerusalem. Spielman dates this process to when Jews began returning to their historic homeland in the mid-19th century, when philanthropists such as Moses Montefiore and Lord Rothschild began purchasing land for Jewish immigrants to cultivate. Arab opposition began to develop after the First Aliyah (1882–1903).
One strand of the Arab attack was to claim that the Jews were outsiders intent on colonizing Palestine and subjugating or replacing the native population. The Arab leadership rejected the League of Nations’ unanimous acceptance in 1922 of the right of the Jewish people to have a national home in Palestine, as well as the mandate it gave to the British government to establish it.
Spielman traces how the process of eventually denying all Jewish connection to the land or the city of Jerusalem was developed by Palestinian leaders.
“They tried to eliminate all Jewish claims to the land,” he writes, “by eliminating the 3,800-year history of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. They did this despite historical and archaeological evidence to the contrary… They attempted to convince the world that the Palestinians are the only true indigenous people in the region.”
He quotes Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, the mufti of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem: “There is not the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish temple on this place in the past.”
Walid Awad, in charge of publications for the Palestinian Information Ministry, said: “Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, despite the biblical myth implanted in some minds.”
And Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shortly after signing the Camp David Accords, is reported to have declared that the Western Wall was a “Muslim shrine,” and that a Jewish temple in Jerusalem had never existed.
It was inevitable, therefore, that when the excavations at the City of David site began to reveal the undeniable reality of the Jewish presence in the land thousands of years before the emergence of Christianity or Islam, every effort would be made to suppress the archaeological findings, and every possible obstacle would be put in the way of continuing the work.
UNESCO declaration on Jerusalem
On October 11, 2016, UNESCO held a preliminary vote on a declaration calling on Israel, which it termed the “occupying power,” to “immediately cease the persistent excavations in and around the Old City” of Jerusalem.
The declaration, Spielman writes, totally erased the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The Temple Mount was referred to solely by its Arabic name: Al-Haram al-Sharif (“the noble sanctuary”); the Western Wall was referred to only as “Al-Buraq plaza,” a name based on the Islamic tradition that this was where the Prophet Mohammed tied his steed, al-Buraq, on his night journey to Jerusalem before ascending to paradise.
On October 12, 2016, writes Spielman, “in what will forever be a stain on what was once hailed as an organization encouraging science and culture throughout the world, UNESCO voted in favor of the resolution 24 to 6, thereby discrediting three thousand years of Jewish history.”
Following the vote, Israel immediately stopped cooperating with UNESCO.
Spielman had, and still has, another formidable opponent to his assertion that the City of David excavations provide “incontrovertible archaeological evidence” that Jews are indigenous to the city of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. There is a body of academic archaeologists and historians, known generically as “minimalists,” who are skeptical of associating archaeological findings with the biblical narrative. He calls their approach “historical denialism.”
Correlations between archaeology and the Bible
These academics are cautious about accepting the work of archaeologists such as Eilat Mazar when she claimed to have found King David’s palace; and Eli Shukron, who identified a citadel that matches the biblical description of David’s conquest of Jerusalem. In fact Mazar, whom Spielman describes as “a bold firebrand of an archaeologist,” refused to conform to the view that the Bible could not be relied on as a valuable historical reference.
Mazar was convinced that extensive evidence proved that archaeology often correlated with the Bible.
“Whenever challenged by the minimalists,” Spielman writes, “Dr. Eilat Mazar had a straightforward and compelling response: ‘Let the stones speak for themselves.’” It was this remark that he chose to adapt as the title of his book. It was also a tribute to the colleague who discovered King David’s palace in the City of David but who died in 2021 at age 64.
In an interview four years later, Spielman was able to say that since Mazar’s passing, the archaeological pendulum had swung to reveal that the area was much larger than previously thought, and the evidence of a monarch residing there is stronger than ever before.
In writing When the Stones Speak, Spielman said: “My job was to share what I saw from the unfolding excavations. My goal was to give people the feeling that they were living history. That is what the City of David is; it is somewhere that you can go back [to] in time.”
His book is prefaced by four maps of the City of David site, showing the results of the archaeological excavation over time. The first dates back to the late 1800s. It was in 1867 that Britain’s Queen Victoria sponsored the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Spielman writes: “They recruited 2nd Lt. Charles Warren, of the British Royal Engineers to conduct their first archaeological expedition to the Holy Land.” Warren, the author says, went on to discover “the original site of Jerusalem, known in the Bible as the City of David.”
The other maps move the archaeological story along, from 1920 to the start of the 21st century, and then to the present day.
When the Stones Speak not only tells the fascinating story of how archaeology has slowly, discovery by discovery, revealed the true nature and extent of the City of David. It is also an account of how archaeology is thwarting the attempts by what Spielman refers to as “Israel’s enemies” to deny the age-old connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem. This book is highly recommended.
The reviewer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com
WHEN THE STONES SPEAK:THE REMARKABLE DISCOVERY OF THE CITY OF DAVIDAND WHAT ISRAEL’S ENEMIES DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOWBy Doron SpielmanCenter Street304 pages; $28
