Israel's foundational place in world history

GHETTOS THEN & NOW: HEBRON & THE HaBIRU

By Dr. Eugene Narrett
Thursday, april 6, 2006

Studying a wonderful discussion of archaeology and history, James Long's "The Riddle of the Exodus" [1] is a fascinating, remarkably readable way toward understanding Israel's foundational place in world history. The text also indicates ways that Israel's long-established place, a history well-documented by many ancient civilizations is buried not only in silt but by religious, political, media and educational institutions of the modern era. Eric Blair ('George Orwell') recognized that this was the essence of the modern state's burial of truth, its intimidation and disabling of memory so that new "official truths" could be slathered over their subjects' minds like polymer sealant. "The past was erased; the erasure was forgotten; the lie became truth..." (1984, chapter 7).[2]

I address this topic of our times by a vivid and ominous contemporary correlative of this erasure of the past: Israel's police, army, and anti-Jewish, activist Supreme Court are poised, for the second time in ten weeks per order of the american Executive Branch to drag Jewish families out of a small neighborhood they have built in the very center of Hebron, the oldest Jewish settlement in the world.

That this can be done to Jews in the very center of Hebron, specifically, in the center of the 20% of Hebron in which Jews are still permitted to live after the Hebron-Wye 'accords' of 1997-8 bears on the current wave of "eminent domain" evictions of citizens and appropriation of their homes and land by state governments. as often in modern history, treatment of the Jews prefigures aggressions on a wider scale.

This eradication of Israel's name, history, and people (cf. psalm 83) is an old story beginning with Pharaoh's command to drown newborn Hebrew boys. Or, one could say, with Hadrian's decrees against the practice of Judaism, his devastating war against the consequent Jewish war for independence from Rome (132-5 CE) and then re-naming Judea as "Palestina" (an erasure that remains a source of torment, turmoil and disinformation). He also leveling and re-named Jerusalem "aelia Capitolina," a name that did not stick. There are many examples of this de-Judaizing tendency of western civilization (Marcionism, in all its manifestations, is perhaps the most explicit). But a civilization that attacks its roots or buries and misconstrues its foundations will wither and become ruins, a topic I treat in other places. [3]

among the many 19th century archaeological finds that demonstrate the historicity and scope of Israel's place are the El amarna letters discovered in Egypt in 1887. These approximately 400 inscribed clay tablets from the era of Pharaoh amenophis III and his son (Middle Kingdom) disclose many facts relevant to the history of Israel, not least, "Hebron, land of the Hebrews" as Joseph termed it in Genesis 40:15. (See my essay, "Hebron, land of the Hebrews" for the discussion by Nachmanides, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman [CE 1194 -- 1268], of some sources of this appellation).

In several of the amarna tablets, a Canaanite chieftain in the southern Judean hills writes to Pharaoh complaining about and demanding assistance against "the warlike tribe of Habiru." Israel's always been tough when fighting wars but like another nation in recent times, its politicians tend to waste the victories its soldiers win. Several of the amarna letters, interestingly, seem to be from King Saul to Pharaoh (c. 1000 BCE). One may be a report to Pharaoh about Saul's death; several mention the city of Urusalem with which the world powers remain obsessed, to divide it‚ (cf. Joel 3).

Now, in 2006, Hebron is besieged by a warlike tribe led by servants of the Pharaoh who makes his or her seat above the river named "river" (Potomac). america's diplomatic establishment, the State Department in 2001 (early in the era of the 'conservative' George W. Bush) ordered Jews not to make any additions to Jewish towns in the center of ancient Israel; what the world community terms, "the occupied territories." Shortly before he had his stroke, ariel Sharon created a new and perfect instrument to command the expulsion of Jews: an unelected political party, Kadima whose primary purpose is to carry out the "Road Map" for Washington and the House of Saud. The complete deportation last august of the Jewish farming communities of Gush Katif in the southwestern part of the "Gaza strip" and the demolition of the towns that now serve as bases for Hamas and al Qaida was the first major test of this mandate from DC. On February 01, an extremely violent police riot (photos and footage archived at israelnationalnews.com) accompanied the destruction and expulsion of Jews from a neighborhood in the town of amona atop a hill in the Benjamin region barely ten miles north of Jerusalem.

Two weeks before that carnage and ethnic cleansing (when it happens to Jews in Israel it is not the ultimate offense to pc but rather the desideratum of geopolitics and the essence of 'peace') the order came down to remove Jews from the marketplace neighborhood Hebron by January 31. The treacherous servility of Israel's leading politicians who sooner or later, under plenty of external prodding to be sure, arrive at the left's platform of unilateral surrender and assorted anti-Jewish measures gets little play in the mass media, there or here. That seems to be another part of the burial of truth that has become endemic to our times (indeed, it is virtually indistinguishable from the routine methods of the mass media; Orwell knew this too...). after acting PM Olmert and his clique declared that police would use "live fire" on the families in the neighborhood, a compromise was reached that they would vacate the buildings for two months and then, after the elections be allowed to lease their homes back from the Jewish community which has owned the land in entirety by written deeds going back centuries as well as by the attested history of 3500 years.

Now, in april, as western politicians strain for formulae that will sanitize their transfer to Hamas of a billion or more dollars a year (the covenant of Hamas is available on line; like that of Fatah [the word means "conquest" and is an offshoot of Hajj amin el Husseini, Hitler's ally, the British appointed "mufti" of Jerusalem]),[4] the word is that the Jewish families who rebuilt and dwelled in the Hebron marketplace are not to be allowed back in their homes after all. No surprise: if various Islamic terrorist groups do not occupy and rule most of Israel there will be few crises to manage, fewer excuses for designing and imposing the global security state that, surprise to no one, will produce steadily decreasing security at ever-greater cost in property, lives, decency and trust.

PLO leaders have boasted often that Oslo was their "Trojan Horse." In the late 1970s, several (Farouq Kaddumi, for example) admitted that the idea of a "Palestinian people" was itself a Trojan horse meant to put the destruction of Israel in terms palatable to the West's diplomat and able to be sold to their citizens. This subservience of the deracinated Israeli ruling elites to their assorted Pharaohs also is a lethal form of bondage, "mind-forged manacles" Blake would call them[5] because the source of the suicidal enslavement is "a covenant of lies" called "the peace process."[6] The Jews again need a Moses to lead them back to knowledge of how they are and of "the Land of the Hebrews," a land that needs to be embraced and settled by its own, as it was not after the military victory of 1967 when the socialist dominated parliament and media declared the liberated land, including Judaism's four holiest sites to be "bargaining chips" for "peace."

Let it be a lesson for americans and others who want to live through this era: the failure of the dominant classes to acknowledge, or to allow their people to acknowledge and affirm their inheritance will produce not peace but terror.

another interesting find in Long's study is an inscription in the tomb of Unas, last Pharaoh of the 5th Dynasty who when young may have heard the following prophecy from an elderly Joseph:

    "Unas will judge with Him-Whose-Name-is hidden on the day of the slaying of the

    eldest."

and so it came to pass, although, as Long marshals the existing evidence, in the ensuing 6^th dynasty, the last of the Old Kingdom during the days of Neferkare the younger (aka Merenre II).

The significance as well as the fascination of these sources is underscored by an ancient Jewish homily: "the deeds of the fathers are a pattern for their sons." Israel again is being divided and her people scattered. all the nations of the world are aggressively obsessed with Jerusalem rather than bolstering Israel if only for assistance in what is supposed to be a war on terrorism and terror-sponsoring states. The prophet Zechariah and many others described the consequences for those pushing to divide Jerusalem.[7] We soon will know whether we are living through a period of God's hiding His 'countenance' and providence or whether the aggressors will be punished in our days. Many kinds of plagues have hit the world in the past two decades: perhaps they are random; perhaps they reflect geo-politics in the simultaneity of hurricanes Katrina and subsequent ones with the expulsion of Jews from the seaside communities of Gush Katif southwest of Gaza and from northern Samaria. Perhaps they resemble a pattern set 3320 years ago. [8]

With accumulating archaeological and literary evidence for the historicity of ancient Israel being presented, albeit not often in the major media, and the world's leading astrophysicists and bio-geneticists conceding that the universe reveals intelligent design, probably even design for human beings,[9] it would be more than ironic, it would be bizarre if the slander and schemes to which Israel is subjected, from without and within are not foiled. But the Eternal One has His own calendar and leaves a lot in our hands and choices. Free will and moral responsibility is the essence of Judaism's view of the relation of man to the Creator.

In our days there are many Maccabees, many Joshua's and Caleb's whose existence is not noted outside the alternative press of Israel, unless it is to slander generic "right - wingers" (Jews who actually want to live in Judea). The problem is that Israel's government is dominated by puppets of 'Rome' and of the Potomac. It will take Maccabees for Israel to undo the largely self-imposed bondage of this generation.

Ghettos: during his discussion of evidence in Egyptian inscriptions complementing the Torah's listing of place names in and around Goshen, Long adduces several sources indicating that the Egyptians lured the Hebrews to building projects in the name of Egypt's national defense; after all, hadn't they given the Hebrews a home in Goshen, nearest to Egypt's northeast border, its main defense against migrating tribes from asia? So it was for the common good.[10] But once the Jews were conscripted, their hosts left the Jews to wall themselves in, thus "creating the first concentration camps" and the first ghettos in history.

This is precisely the method of the Saudi-american 'map' for the "security fence" (actually an enormous Jersey barrier) for which Jews are paying dearly in money, pride, deterrence and genuine defensibility, defacing and alienating their inheritance. Cherished and essential parts of the heartland of Israel are being pinched inside walls and double walls behind which Jews killers will take cover and over which they will shoot. The frantic zigzags of the wall, its maze of corridors show it to be indefensible, probably because it is not meant to be seriously defended but rather, surrounded and evacuated, and if with 'extreme prejudice' than all the better to deter those "stubborn" Jews from wanting to re-settle and revitalize their ancient homeland.

The "security fences" at ancient Pi-thoum and Rameses were suicidal traps that prefigured the aggression threatened against Hebron, Beit El, Efrat, amona, and scores of other Jewish towns which our 'tell all, show all' media never show us. 'Rational' and 'pragmatic' practitioners of real politic may profess that this donation to Islam will buy us time or peace. It may buy a little time but it is the proverbial flinging of blood at a shark...

The Israeli Chief of Staff who oversaw the deportation of the Jews of Gush Katif and now is very tight with the folks at the Potomac admits that Israel is beset with increasing terrorism on all fronts, but per the orders of the State Department which has forbidden Jews to build anywhere in Judea and Samaria, the wrath and attention of the police and army' remains focused on Jews like those in Hebron and amona. Hamas and Fatah collaborate with the White House and White Hall in pressing the extinction of Israel, while illegal arab buildings in tens of thousands cover the Jewish heartland unreported, and while terrorists, emboldened by State Department support, prepare their next assaults on "the Great Satan." 

Israel, the West's roots and its seawall in the war against global jihad, is the canary in the mine.

It's time for Israel to leave Egypt and apply the military force on the enemies of the Jews. That might inspire america to deal with its own mushrooming border problems.

Dr. Eugene Narrett has been teaching at the College level in Massachusetts for 27 years. He currently directs and teaches in a Liberal arts program in Cambridge. He has written abundantly, for both hard copy daily papers, monthly magazines, and e lists on american politics and culture and on the history of Israel and events in the Middle East. He has written two books about the Oslo 'peace process' with a third in production.

NOTES

[1] James D. Long, the Riddle of the Exodus (2002, Light Catcher Books, Springdale arkansas);  

also see David Rohl's Pharaohs and Kings and Miriam Lichtman's ancient Egyptian Literature among many historians and archaeologists who havedone important but little known excavations and studies that Long cites.

2 George Orwell, 1984 (1950; Signet Classic, 1977)

3  For example in the essay, "Israel, and Western Civilization's Problems with History, Memory and Survival," first presented in draft in 2005 to the Root & Branch association in Jerusalem. That a dying Greco-Roman civilization appropriated Judaism's history and symbols, de-contextualizing most of it is fascinating and audacious. That it did so while misrepresenting, burying and slandering it sources is reprehensible and, as becomes ever more evident, suicidal.

See classicist Dr. Peter Schafer's book Judeaphobia: attitudes toward Judaism in the ancient World (Harvard U Press, 1997) for an extensive consideration of sources on the key aspects of this long-developing expropriation.

4 Chuck Morse is among writers to address this area, The Nazi origins of Islamic Terrorism (2005). One also may consult the works of Egyptian-born historian Bat Yeor (a necessary pseudonym) on the core role of jihad in Islam. Chapters 15-17 and appendix ix (with Xeroxes of original documents) in Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial (1984; 2002) discusses the role the Mufti played for the British and for the Nazis.

5 "London," in Songs of Experience 1794.

6 Isaiah 28. The proximate modern version was the "land for peace" deals pushed by Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State, William Rogers. These followed the form and purpose of the British Mandatory administration's (1920-48) Jewish land for worthless promises of peace initiatives. Indeed, it was the essence of British inter-War foreign policy that lives on today in the "war for freedom in Iraq" a densely textured demonstration of how one lie begets another, all of them beginning with the re-fashioning of history as Orwell describes it in 1984: "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth" (chapter 7).  For a comprehensive study of the British betrayals of history and the Jews and of world order and peace, see Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (Harper 1984, reprint 2002).

an even more extensive and detailed study of the 20^th century aspects of this process that exposes the day-to-day labyrinths of intra-British policies and betrayal of their Mandate to "establish the Jewish National Home" is Samuel Katz's biography of one of the least known and most influential figures in 20^th century diplomatic history, Lone Wolf: a Biography of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, two volumes (NY 1996).

7 among many sources putting this situation in a millennial context are Joel 3-4, Zechariah 12-14, Ezekiel 37-8, Obadiah, and many chapters in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Moshe also spoke to it in the song he sang on the last day of his life (Deuteronomy 32).

8 Long 90 -98 discusses the remarkable, very startling comments recorded in the ancient Papyrus from the unfinished pyramid of Saqqara, many of which seem to describe events recorded in the ten plagues described in Exodus 6 -13.

9 See Gerald L. Schroeder, The Science of God: the Convergence of Modern Science and the Bible (1997); Dr. Schroeder is a double PhD, Earth Sciences and Physics from MIT where he taught a long time before taking a position at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

10 Similarly, Israel ostensibly is within an american security umbrella, created in large part by Israeli military engineers, technology and software. The F-16, for example, has had over 600 Israeli designed upgrades to its electronic systems, from radar to firing to defense mechanisms; "Star Wars" technology also is largely a product of US "aid" to Israel. Yet, during the first Gulf War, when Israeli intelligence as well as design expertise provided the means for american security and success, the "identify, friend or foe" codes were withheld from Israel to insure that it would not risk responding to missile strikes on it. This was part of George Bush Sr.'s taking down Yitzhak Shamir's government and preparing the ground for Shimon Peres and Oslo, a policy which at that time was defined in Israel's legal code as treason. Similarly, though Israel is the main source of expertise and methods in detecting and fighting terrorism, it apparently is not "with us" in the war against terror in which we seem to be to a terrible degree not against but "with" those who want to destroy us, beginning with the House of Saud.