Looted Antiquities, Billionaire Collectors, and the Politics of Return: "...This is ongoing. Since the genocide in Gaza began, over 20,000 rare artifacts spanning the prehistoric to the Ottoman periods, housed in Gaza City's Pasha's Palace museum, have gone missing or been looted. Israeli forces have fully or partially destroyed more than 316 archaeological sites and buildings in Gaza. Meanwhile, a 2025 study by Palestinian researchers found that, as the war in Gaza continued, archaeological theft in the West Bank skyrocketed...."

Syro-Hittite Female Idol. Source: New York District Attorney’s Office, press release.

The Institute for Palestine Studies: The IPS blog, Palestine Square, is a lively forum for the dissemination of ideas by opinion makers on the latest developments concerning Palestine. It hosts analysis and commentary by IPS researchers as well as by contributors to its books, journals, and conferences.  https://www.palestine-studies.org/

https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1659622#

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Date:  October 06 2026

Author: Laila AlQaddumi

 

".... Of the 180 objects seized, 40 came from Palestine. 

The Palestinian-origin objects included a stele, Bronze Age ivory figurines, incense burners, a red carnelian sunfish amulet that is still missing, and five Neolithic stone masks worth more than $2 million. Dating to around 7000 BCE, the masks are among the oldest known in the world. About 15 such masks are known, all found in the West Bank and near the Dead Sea. One of the oldest, the al-Ram mask, was reportedly taken from a Palestinian villager at al-Ram by Thomas Chaplin, a British missionary doctor and scientist who wrote for the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Today, these masks are scattered across museums in New York, London, Paris, and Jerusalem — largely inaccessible to West Bank Palestinians, who need a permit to enter Israel. Steinhardt alone held eight, which he displayed in his New York home beside his Picassos.

Death mask dating from 6000 to 7000 B.C. Source: New York District Attorney’s Office, press release.

Two of the five masks remain at the Israel Museum, where a plaque crediting Steinhardt's collection was recently removed due to its contested provenance. One of the masks at the museum was taken from the West Bank in 1970 by then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who inscribed his own name inside it. Dayan illegally amassed a large archeological collection routinely using military resources to collect artifacts across the West Bank and Gaza, intimidating Palestinians into selling artifacts at a fraction of their value. 

Although Steinhardt was ordered to repatriate his Palestinian-origin items, New York prosecutors argued that the looting had occurred either inside Israel or in areas Israel exercises authority over, and slated the objects to be returned only to Israel, including pieces from areas under Palestinian Authority control such as the West Bank.

 

 Ivory cosmetic spoon dating from Assyrian civilization 700-800 BC, looted from Hebron. Source: New York District Attorney’s Office, press release.

In January 2023, a small Assyrian "cosmetic spoon” dating to between 700 and 800 B.C.E. was handed to the PA's Tourism and Antiquities Minister Rula Maayah by George Noll, head of the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs, in the first U.S. repatriation of a cultural object to the Palestinian Authority. 

Israeli antiquities dealer Gil Chaya sold the spoon, originally from the small Palestinian village of Khirbet al-Koum in Hebron in the Occupied West Bank, to Steinhardt in January of 2003. 

According to a report filed by prosecutors with a New York court, many of Steinhardt's purchases from Chaya, who was licensed by the Israel Antiquities Authority, were artifacts sourced from looters across the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Emails obtained during the investigation show Chaya pressuring hired "peasants" to continue searching for a missing artifact fragment. The Manhattan DA's office says Chaya remains under investigation for trafficking illegal antiquities. 

Gold Masks dating back to roughly 5000 B.C.E. Source: New York District Attorney's Office, press release.

The same Israel Antiquities Authority that licensed dealers like Chaya also appears as a beneficiary of American collector philanthropy. Shelby White, widow of Wall Street pioneer Leon Levy, chairs the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority, a U.S. charity funneling tax-exempt donations directly to the Israeli government agency. The Shelby White & Leon Levy Lod Mosaic Archaeological Center was built around a Roman mosaic in the ethnically cleansed town of Lydda.

In 2023, a Manhattan DA investigation that had begun years earlier culminated in the seizure of 89 antiquities valued at $69 million from White's collection. The U.S. returned two looted sculptures worth $275,000 to Iraq and seized 17 more objects on loan from her at the Met, including a Chinese funerary piece that had sat in storage, still dirt-caked, for over 20 years.

The Ivory Plaque, depicting a human headed winged sphinx, from the period of King Sargon I (721-725 BCE) in Nimrud. Likely looted from Northern Iraq in the 1990's. Source: New York District Attorney's Office, press release.

In 2010, the arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby, whose president, Steve Green, had inspected objects in the UAE, purchased more than 5,500 ancient artifacts smuggled out of Iraq, worth more than $1 million. The artifacts were sold by an antiquities dealer from the UAE and two other dealers from Israel who claimed the artifacts belonged to a dealer from Israel who was not present. One Israeli dealer provided a statement of provenance claiming that the objects had been “legally acquired in the late 1960s by [the third Israeli dealer's] father, from local markets.” 

The cuneiform tablets and objects were destined for the Green family's Museum of the Bible in Washington before the artifacts were seized.

Hobby Lobby's ties to Israel extended beyond antiquities acquisitions. The company donated $25,000 to organizations based in illegal Israeli settlements, including archaeological groups active in Palestinian territory, while the Green family's Museum of the Bible gave $15,000 to the University of the Holy Land, a Christian graduate school whose late co-founder pioneered in Qumran studies — the West Bank site of the Dead Sea Scrolls, often invoked to support Israeli claims to Palestinian land on biblical grounds. 

Green also co-sponsors the “Covenant Journey,” which brings young Evangelicals — among Israel's strongest U.S. political allies — to Israel to turn them into pro-Israel advocates. The program was modeled directly on Birthright Israel, which Steinhardt co-founded. The Green family has also funded a Bible-centered public-school curriculum that an Oklahoma school district shelved in 2014 after civil liberties groups challenged it; a version adapted for secular Jewish public schools was later used in Israel.

The same structure repeats: objects of cultural value are removed from their regional contexts during periods of war and political upheaval, and circulated through a small network of dealers and collectors for profit or political, ideological, and religious purposes. Many of the objects found in the homes of wealthy collectors and in prestigious museums were removed during periods of conflict and occupation, whether during the Lebanese Civil War, the Syrian war, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, or Israel's Occupation of Palestine.

Israel stands alone in the region with a legally sanctioned private antiquities trade, and it has never ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention against illicit trafficking. Scholars have estimated that approximately 8.4 million archaeological objects were looted or trafficked from the Palestinian territories between May 1967 and June 2019. 

This is ongoing. Since the genocide in Gaza began, over 20,000 rare artifacts spanning the prehistoric to the Ottoman periods, housed in Gaza City's Pasha's Palace museum, have gone missing or been looted. Israeli forces have fully or partially destroyed more than 316 archaeological sites and buildings in Gaza. Meanwhile, a 2025 study by Palestinian researchers found that, as the war in Gaza continued, archaeological theft in the West Bank skyrocketed...."  READ MORE https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1659622

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]