Nino: "Tendency towards Historical Revisonism.": Nino please humor me and explain how I am a revisonist.
IT is very, very simple and for brevity's sake I willl make it especially so:
What time frame saw the first Jewish settlment of the lands now alternatively called Israel and "Palestine?" The first of the gradual waves, that happened in two phases, began roughly 4500 years ago, with the People now know as Jews emanating from Mespotamia, more sepcifically between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers in what is today Iraq, made their way to the southwest as the marched with their grazing flocks and herds. Semi-nomadic traditionally, it wass a natural migration. It was on these gradual migrations that Ethical Monotheism was born to the world so that by the time we first settled the land our faith had well defined our Peoplehood far beyond our traditional clan relationships.
By 2800 years ago we had assimilated or otherwise cast off any remaning inhabitants who saw us first arrive (all were Proto-Greeks of the Mycaenean Culture commonly found on Crete. They were not Semites, and certainly were not Arabs.
In fact, Arabs did not even exist, as far history is concerned until about 7000 BCE/BC when they first appear as vanquished clients of the Assyrian Army on list detailing the battle and tribute collected.
So, by the time the very first Arab pops into history we Jews have been in the land in question forroughly 1700 years. Hmmmm.
The name "Palestine" is due to Roman colonisers who sought to conquer us although they never really did. Pompey DID manage to take Ma'sah'dah in 73 CE/AD but never managed to deaden my People's spririt nor their longing for their very ancient homeland.
To put this in perspective, we were there as Egyptians began copping Pyramid techniques off of the Nubians. We were there as empires developed out of paltry robber bands, grew immense in power and wealth and then disappered from history with nary a trace.
Take for example the Arab and Islamic Conquest of my homeland that leaves us in our current dissenting viewpoints.
Muhammed dies in 632 CE/AD and has already begun utilising Outer Jihad as a means to an end. War immediately left Arabia and began branching out in different directions to conqueor anything and everything that was un-Islamic.
At first al Ummah, the community, as Muhammed's early followers called themselves believed that a quorum of Muslim elders should vote in democratic fashion as to the person who would now lead al Ummah, a position to be known as al Khalifa (the Caliph). Unlike a Pope, or Chief Rabbi, he would be religious AND civil ruler.
The 4th Calipha, 'Umar I (AKA Omar I) is the one who conquered what is alterantively known as Israel and "Palestine" along with alot of here to fore non-Arab and certainly non-Islamic nations.
Regressing just a bit, and trying to be as brief as possible, after the Romans strode into Jeruslalem, under the Roman General Pompeii, he entered the 2nd Temple, a sacrilege in of itself and then proceeded to murder the competitor for the Jewish Throne (Hasmonean Dynasty, founded by the famed Macabii Clan of Judean Hill Country who fought Syrian descendants of the Alexandrian Generals - in this case Seleucid, hence their People's name, "Seleucids") .
Two branches of the family were contending for the throne and is almost always the case with weak rulkership, both members curried Roman favour in restoring what they felt was their rightful inheritance. Rome unconcerned with right or wrong but with military and geopolitical objectives (as any smart tactician should be) cast his lot in with the family member named Hyrcanus II (born circa: 103 BCE/BC, died 30 BCE/BC) who actually had his men open the Main City Gates of Jerusalem while it was in the midst of the Roman Siege Machine.
General Pompeii strided forcefully threw narrow cobblestoned lanes that were beginning to deepen in torrernts of blood as the Legionariies moved forcefully through the ancient city.
Arriving at Mt. Moriah, the site on which the Jewish Temple sits, and where the other faction led by Aristobulus II was well ensconced, Popmeii,et all entered all the gates and made their way into the Inner Sactuary, reportedly killing anyone who even came within their site, as they sought out Aristobulus II, who was within the Sanctuary of Sactuaries where Jews believe that G-D, on one day a year (Yom Kipoor, The Day of Atonement) G-D makes a brief judgementary appearance in the guise of a pillar of someless fire that descende from the Heavens, and ascends almost as quickly. Its appearance signifies another year of existend for the Jewish World.
Pompeii and his henchmen entered this moist holy place and slew Aristobulus in a case of almost unimaginable sacrilege. He ended up stripping that First Temple, AKA Solomons Temple (in Ennglish) but left it standing has he razed the entire city of Jerusalem.
Hyrcanus became the High Priest but in a case of poetic justice this Jew who sougght to slay his kinsman over the seat of power was then denied this power...and since they were the only 2 contenders, the Hasmonean Dynasty effectively came to an end.
To rule the land, Popeii picked a a convert to the Jrewish faith, Antipater II (died in 43 BCE/BC, onme day after his hero Julius Gaius Ceaser, the leader of rome, murdered on the Ides of March, in the Senate, for the blaphemy of declarubg himself a living G-D.
After Antipater II's demie, his son Herod I, or as he more commonly known, "Herod the Great" assumed the throne, and ruled from 37 to 4 BCE/BC. Seeking to sement his family's claim to the throne despite a total lack of connection with the Davidic like given his roots in Nabatea and Idumea, he married politically, to Mariamne HaHasmonean (died in 29 BCE/BC, by orders of her husband but that is not having to do with my outline of the regional geopolitical dynamic.
Their two oldest sons were aslos murdered by Herod I (Alexander and Aristobulus who both were murdered in 7 BCE, the latter named after his uncle , murder by his fater, in the Holy of the Holies).
Herod I rebuilt the Jewish Temple and while historians have much debate on the subject contemporos accounts offer a picture of unmitigated joy, and why not? Yes, a convert who had no right to sit on the throne was there, and he built this, but the edifice was grand and it was fully restored which in manys minds offered hope that their former glory would be restored as well.
War broke out over the corrupt and inept, not ot mention illegal monarchy of the Herodian Dynasty and its Roman overl-rds.
I think most of the pursuant facts would bore people wo I will speed it up by sayting, in March of 70 Ce/AD 4 Roman Legions and Auxiliaries totalling about 80,000 men laid seige to Jerusalem, by now in full rebellion.By May, 2 and half months later the city's walls had been breached the bloodletting had begun...again.
Still, the whole city had not fallen. The Fortress of Antonia which adjoined the Temple Mount held out but had fallen by mid-July.In late August, a date on our calendar known as the 9th of Av, Romans finally took the Temple Mount (coincidently the very same date that Babylon had taken and destroyed Solomon's Temple).
The operation was under ultimate control of Vespasian, later to become Emperor, and to adopt the turncoat Josephus, but the Siege of Jerusalem was under control of his son Titus as the father was consumed with a hasty call back to Rome to deal with the ill Nero's suicide and and Empire now without an Emperor.
It took a month of Mop Up Ops for Titus to defeat all Jewish rebels hidden in the crevices of the city, afterwhich he jously entred out Temple and sacked its treasures (but not all ) and razed it to the ground, plowed it under in salt, and then forbade a single Jew from enterting Jerusalem under pain of death.110,000 Jews sied in Titus' great Siege of Jeruelam.97,000 more were sold into slavery.
This event left the last pocket of resistance high up in the hills , at a former Herodian Summer Palace named "Ma'sa'dah." Led by a man named Eliezer Ben Yair, almost 1000 Zealot and Sicarii, along with thier familes, slaves, and supplies ensconsced themsleves in the palace and had enough food tuff and medicine to outlast a siege lasting more than a decade.
Last they did until one day, in 73 CE/AD Ben Yair knew that there was not much time before the latest siege machine would breech their defences and they would be out of options. Knowing that the best that awaited them would be crucifixtion, and that their women folk would be made whores and young sons slaves, or also whores being that Rome engaged in this as a pregular practice. Yai made a short speech if we are to believe Josephus and conviced his followers quite eloquently that the time was near when they should deny that final victory to Rome and take their own lives, as well as the lives of their children.
All supplies were to be burned save for foodstuffs because Ben Yair wanted the Romans to realise it was not because of the siege, but their rejection of the Roman System.
That day in 73 marks the end of Jewish sovereignity for the most part (only very scattered and ineffectual movements followed after that).
In Titus' push to Jerusalem, and the back and forth between that city and Ma'sah'dah" more than 900 Jewish villages in just the Judean portion of the so called "West Bank" were erased from history with every single Jew found taken as war booty and sold into slavery.
PT II TO FOLLOW
