The "Mileikowsky" Seal:The Netenyahu Seal, NOT!!!!!!!!!

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has announced the discovery of an Iron Age seal from the excavations in the Western Wall plaza.  This is the second of two seals previously reported and it reads "[belonging] to Netanyahu ben Yaush."  Both names are known from the Bible, but this particular person is not mentioned.  This seal was found a debris layer dating to the end of the Iron Age (c. 586 B.C.) underneath the "Eastern/Valley Cardo."  The area of the excavations is shown in the photo below.  More information about the discovery and a photo of the seal is available in the IAA press release (and repeated by Arutz-7).
http://blog.bibleplaces.com/2008/03/iron-age-seal-found-in-jerusalem.html

Another impressive artifact that was found in the salvage excavations is a personal Hebrew seal made of a semi-precious stone that was apparently inlaid in a ring. The scarab-like seal is elliptical and measures c. 1.1 cm x 1.4 cm. The surface of the seal is divided into three strips separated by a double line: in the upper strip is a chain decoration in which there are four pomegranates and in the two bottom strips is the name of the owner of the seal, engraved in ancient Hebrew script. It reads: לנתניהו בן יאש ([belonging] to Netanyahu ben Yaush).
The two names are known in the treasury of biblical names: the name נתניהו (Netanyahu) is mentioned a number of times in the Bible (in the Book of Jeremiah and in Chronicles) and the name יאש (Yaush) appears in the Lachish letters. The name Yaush, like the name יאשיהו (Yoshiyahu) is, in the opinion of Professor Shmuel Ahituv, derived from the root או"ש which means “he gave a present” (based on Arabic and Ugaritic). It is customary to assume that the owners of personal seals were people that held senior governmental positions. It should nevertheless be emphasized that this combination of names - נתניהו בן יאוש (Netanyahu ben Yaush) – was unknown until now.
http://www.archaeology.org.il/news46.html

Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in his office what might charitably be described as a relic and uncharitably as a kind of political fetish. It is a 2000-year-old seal in ancient Hebrew bearing the name “Netanyahu.” Here's how Mr. Netanyahu described its political significance to the European Friends of Israel in February of this year:
Now people say, well, you don't really have an attachment to this land. We are new interlopers. We are neo-crusaders. If I could I would invite each of you into my office. You would see a display of antiquities from the Department of Antiquities. It's in a little stand like this. And from the place next to the Temple wall, the Western Wall, from around the time of the Jewish kings, they found a signet ring, a seal of a Jewish official from 2700 years ago, and it has a name on it in Hebrew. You know what that name is? Netanyahu. Now, that's my last name.

What he didn't mention is how, precisely, Netanyahu came to be his last name. His father was not born with it, nor were any other of his identifiable ancestors. His father was born Benzion Mileikowsky in Warsaw in 1910. The Prime Minister's grandfather, Nathan Mileikowsky, was an ardent Zionist who used the name "Netanyahu" as a pen name for political writing. Sometime after moving to British mandatory Palestine, Benzion abandoned the name Mileikowsky altogether in favor of Netanyahu. It was common practice among early Zionists to dispense with European and especially Yiddish names in favor of Hebrew ones.

(It's probably worth mentioning that Benzion X is not a run-of-the-mill Zionist, but one of the most extreme in the history of the movement. He has many times expressed the view that Arabs are by nature and by definition virtually subhuman, and can and should only be dealt with through extreme forms of force. He also adheres to a greater Israel movement which holds the present borders, including occupied territories, to be entirely unsatisfactory. He was unable to establish a viable political career in Israel because his views were considered beyond the limits of respectability even by the extreme right. So, the specific version of the nationalist political agenda actually being expressed in that act of changing the name Mileikowsky to Netanyahu isn't a normal form of nationalism or a normal form of Zionism, but a program of institutionalized racism and regional aggression of a particularly vicious variety. But, of course, the son is not the father.)
In the first stage, we are presented with the seal bearing the name Netanyahu, from 2000 years ago which confirms what no one denies: there was an ancient Hebrew culture, among many other communities, in this land. But it implicitly foregrounds and privileges that historical moment and that particular culture and community as opposed to all others that existed before, during and after that time.

In the second stage, it is pointed out that this name “Netanyahu” uncannily links some ancient official with the current prime minister. But the prime minister only bears that name because his father adopted it as a 20th-century political act based on 20th-century ideology and nationalism in what can only be described as an appropriation of the past. One could hardly posit a direct connection between a Mr. Mileikowsky of Warsaw and an ancient official called “Netanyahu” based on those two names
http://www.ibishblog.com/blog/hibish/2011/08/17/mr_mileikowsky_and_seal_netanyahu_perilous_encounter_between_modern_nationali

One has to wonder about the sanity of Mileikowsky and the honesty of the media and other assorted sycophants, who encourage him in this delusional obsession.