Yisrael Medad is an American-born Israeli journalist, author and former director of educational programming at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. A graduate of Yeshiva University, he made aliyah in 1970 and has since held key roles in Israeli politics, media and education. A member of Israel’s Media Watch executive board, he has contributed to publications such as The Los Angeles Times, The Jerusalem Post and International Herald Tribune. He and his wife, who have five children, live in Shilo.
(Oct. 13, 2026 / JNS)
The Voynich Manuscript has remained a mystery for scholars. Its text is a yet-unidentified language that could be gibberish, a hoax or forgery, or simply encoded. Composed in the 15th century, it has proven an inscrutable puzzle that has frustrated linguists, cryptologists and bibliographers for centuries.
The manuscript is illustrated, handwritten on vellum in a script that linguistic analysis studies agree is natural. It may have been composed in Italy or France.
Despite some 20 of its pages displaying drawings—many showing small nude women who are bathing in pools or tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes—no evidence of any connection to the Jewish custom of using a ritual bath, or mikvah, has been discovered.
A very recent opinion authored by two academics is that the manuscript of thousands of mysterious words, hundreds of puzzling illustrations and a language no one can understand may have been just misbound. They suggest that the inability to make sense of the text is that a book whose pages are out of order is confounding, confusing and only results in extreme complication of its meaning.
I found that conclusion a fit and proper framework when considering all the books, articles, essays and dialogues, as well as films, podcasts and broadcasts, devoted to solving the Middle East conflict.
One major problem is that on too many occasions, the texts have been purposefully clouded and muddled, and too many times, corrupted and even falsified. That is not only a matter of being misbound and misrepresented, but also fabricated.
To insist that the pro-Palestine camp acts like Israel regarding suggestions for compromise and coexistence expresses an unintelligible claim.
A very minor but telling example is a recent report in the London-based Guardian. On Oct. 7, correspondents William Christou and Sufian Taha published a piece about the closing of Britain’s Consulate in eastern Jerusalem.
Tracing its history, they noted that the British government first bought the plot that would become its consulate in 1963, when the area was still under Jordanian control, meant to be a direct liaison between the British government and the Jordanian-administered West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
They later wrote that by 1967, when it was to be officially opened, eastern Jerusalem was no longer under the control of the Jordanians.
The Jordanians were in control? Or were they illegal occupiers? As we should know, only the United Kingdom recognized the Hashemite rule over that territory.
In fact, not one Arab country recognized that Saudi Arabian family’s stewardship over a territory that England in 1921 ripped out of the area of historic Palestine and intended to be part of the Jewish national homeland.
What isn’t very minor is the statement issued by Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband in reaction to the consulate’s closure. On Oct. 8, he released to the press: “We have been clear that we do not accept that the Government of Israel has the legal right to close the British Consulate General in Jerusalem. … The U.K. government reiterates its long-standing view that East Jerusalem is occupied territory.”
Human-rights attorney Arsen Ostrovsky, head of the Sydney office of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, responded to the legal claim. It is my educated guess that no one will take Miliband up on his semantic differentiation between Israeli administration and that of Jordan, as if Jordan has a natural right to control and even annex that area, whereas Israel is an “occupier.”
A second example of a Voynich-like complexity—that is, getting things out of order and thus making them incomprehensible—is the demand that only a two-state solution can resolve the lack of peace between Israel and the group of Arabs called Palestinians.
Never mind that that plan has failed repeatedly over the last century. Its proponents may be buoyed by a news item that “Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution” and that a new majority, even in Gaza, supports compromise with Israel. If one desperately wants to believe something, then anything can become believable, no matter how unsupported it is.
How unsupported?
Palestinian Media Watch has been documenting for years that the Palestinian Authority openly denies Israel’s right to exist and anticipates its destruction. And in case there were any doubts, Fatah—the political party and founding faction of the P.A.—has now said it outright. Its spokesman, Jamal Nazzal, recently announced that the party has never recognized the State of Israel.
On its website, one can read how Fatah educates the children. This includes themes like Israel is the thieving entity and an artificial state of Jewish invaders, the period of Zionism will eventually pass, and the Jewish settlers in Palestine will disappear in the end.
Palestinian propaganda, as well as official statements from the P.A., rejects formulas such as land for peace while countering that Jews are not a nation, and that Zionism is colonialism. All of this and more appears in plain English. It is no Voynich Manuscript text. It is in clear English.
To insist that the pro-Palestine camp acts in an equivalency posture to Israel regarding suggestions for compromise and coexistence, so that a secure peace is rooted on firm ground, is expressing an unintelligible claim. The Arabs have shown that they keep to their own terminology, which is overlooked and many times simply ignored.
Jewish peace-pushers, diplomats from the European Union, American Democrats, human-rights NGOs—and all the rest from right to left—have been reading, as it were, a Voynich Manuscript called “Middle East Peace” and misunderstanding what’s being said.
And yet, reading comprehension and the deciphering of what Arabs really mean are the primary requirements for Middle East peace.