On October 15, CBN-owned Faithwire headlined that biblical archaeology “Disproves” a claim about modern Israel. The only voice is Dinesh D’Souza, two days into promoting his new book, and the claim is that Jews are colonizers. Read the headline as a sentence and its subject is “Biblical Archaeology”, its verb “Disproves”. The speaker appears only at the end: Dinesh D’Souza, talking to CBN News, the parent of the outlet quoting him. The story quotes no archaeologist. Its proof is D’Souza saying archaeology “irrefutably shows the presence of the Jews in their ancient homeland”, plus one mikveh, a ritual bath, in paragraph 14. The title does the proving: a field’s name stands where one man’s opinion stands. What the archaeologists said is narrower. The Israel Antiquities Authority found the 25-ton bath in salvage digs ahead of construction in Kiryat Gat, in a Jewish settlement scholars had not known. It appears abandoned during the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the second century CE and settled again about 500 years later, “apparently by a different population”. That is a record of one village. The headline steps from it to “Modern Israel”, a state with a war and a land dispute, and “Biblical” rides along as the warrant. The claim being disproved never appears in the headline. The quotation marks around ‘Very Odd’ laugh at it for you, and the page names no one who holds it. The tell: a rebuttal with no opponent in it. In paragraph 11 the story, in its own voice, calls the charge that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians “a leftist talking point becoming less defensible”. Its picture shows no dig, only an Israeli flag at a street protest.
