Who’s telling you the truth about Israel?

On November 4, Isabel Kershner had a long story in the New York Times titled, “Who’d Import Pigs to Israel? Ancient Europeans, Researchers Say.” Excerpts:

Israel may not be the most obvious place to study pigs, given that religious strictures in both Judaism and Islam forbid their consumption. But Israeli researchers involved in a lengthy project whose goal is to reconstruct ancient Israel have now established that the pigs here are of European stock, unlike their Middle Eastern counterparts elsewhere in the region, and that they probably arrived with the non-kosher Philistines about 3,000 years ago… Understanding human and animal movement is crucial to that process, said Israel Finkelstein, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, who directs the project. “We archaeologists know that pigs and pork consumption are two very good markers of ethnicity and identity,” he said, given the pig taboo in ancient Israel…. “Here, there’s an island of pigs with European ancestry,” said Steve Weiner, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, who is a partner in the project, which is funded by a grant from the European Research Council. “We don’t know if Napoleon brought pigs, or the Crusaders, or if they all did.” “Archaeologists,” he concluded, “take pigs very seriously.”

The same day, November 4, Juan Cole had a piece up on his site about all Israel’s human rights violations that week. Some excerpts:

Who’s telling the real story, Juan Cole or Isabel Kershner?