As If Emotions Behave Like Viruses In The Land: Case in Point: GAZA

 Nadene Goldfoot                                        

       Gaza City, before Jerusalem Day 2021 and the War to Destroy Israel 

Gaza was an ancient Palestinian city  2 miles from the sea on the southern coastal strip.  It served as a base for Egyptians expeditions to the North.  The Philistines captured it in the 12th century BCE and remained the most important of their 5 coastal cities.  

It was allotted to the tribe of Judah by Joshua at the end of the Exodus, when the land was being dispersed among the 12 tribes of Jacob.  It remained in Philistine hands and was the place of the imprisonment and death of Samson. 

 In 720 BCE, it was annexed by Sargon of Assyria and in 521, by Cambyses of Persia.  Alexander the Great recolonized it as a hellenistic city in 332.  After his death, it was disputed between the Egyptian Ptolemics and the Syrian Seleucids until annexed by Antiochus III of Syria in 198.  It became independent in 110, was captured by Alexander Yannai in 96, but declared a free city by Pompey in 61.  All this happened in the "Before the Common Era (BCE)."                        

   Gaza now after lobbing 17,000 rockets into Israel and Israel hitting their origins

A Jewish population lived in Gaza throughout the Middle Ages, as did a Samaritan community until its capture by Napoleon in 1799.  Gaza was a center of Sabbetaism in the 17th century.  Its Jewish inhabitants left in 1917 at the end of World War I.  The few subsequently returning departed during the 1929 Arab disturbances and attacks.  It became the main city in the Gaza Strip, its 1949 population of 30,000  being swollen by many refugees.  Gaza was captured in November 1956 by Israel forces who remained there until March 1957.  It again passed under Israel rule during the Six Day War in 1967.  A census taken later that year gave its population as 119,000.  The present population is 590,481.  Gaza has a very young population, with roughly 75% under the age of 25. The city is currently administered by a 14-member municipal council of Hamas terrorists.This is a population where men may have 4 wives and many children.  There is no birth control.  

 Egypt and Israel consequently imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip due to events that were disruptive and dangerous.  Israel eased the blockade allowing consumer goods in June 2010, and Egypt reopened the Rafah Border Crossing in 2011 to pedestrians.                                                              

David fighting the Philistines at Keilah (I Samuel 23: 1-13)

Gaza has been the city of the Philistines, the worse enemy the ancient Israel had, and now it holds Arabs who voted in terrorists as their government.  I don't really think they had a choice as this first voting experience plus the pressure they were put upon brought this about, and now it's here to stay, evidently.  The worst of vibes lie in the soil and the atmosphere for at least over 4,000 years.  As Hinduism might say, the place has bad karma.  

Gaza itself is way, way overcrowded for the land.  It is 41 kilometers (25 mi) long, and from 6 to 12 kilometers (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of 365 square kilometers (141 sq mi). With around 1.85 million Palestinians on some 362 square kilometers, Gaza ranks as the 3rd most densely populated polity in the world. An extensive Israeli buffer zone within the Strip renders much land off-limits to Gaza's Palestinians. 

Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 2.91% (2014 est.), the 13th highest in the world, and is often referred to as overcrowded. The population is expected to increase to 2.1 million in 2020. In 2012, the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) in the occupied Palestinian territory warned that the Gaza Strip might not be a "liveable place" by 2020 and as of 2020, Gaza suffered shortages of water, medicine and power, a situation exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis.  Now it has exploded, erupted on the Temple Mount over a real-estate problem to be solved in court and on Jerusalem Day's celebration into all-scale war against Israel.  No wonder !  

To this moment, over 16,000 rockets have been shot into all of Israel.  People have been in bomb shelters for over 5 days with 15 seconds to get there after the siren wails.  The sound of rockets is the worst part of it all as they come dropping down out of the sky.  

Note that instead of suggesting to Palestinians that they could move to any other Muslim country and get out of such crowded circumstances, they are not.  They have been encouraged to stay, used as ammunition against Israel, both physically and as propaganda to hold over Israel's heads, especially at the UN.  

Hamas knew exactly where this surprise attack on Israel would lead to.  It's happened before in 2014.  What were they ever thinking of? The attack itself was well planned.  The reasoning for it is for one thing only:  to wipe out Israel.  

Despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, when Jews moved out. according to their own government order in the name of peace,  the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators consider the territory to be still "occupied" by Israel, supported by additional restrictions placed on Gaza by Egypt.

 Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. The system of control imposed by Israel is described as an "indirect occupation".

 Some other legal scholars have disputed the idea that Israel still occupies Gaza. The extent of self-rule exercised in the Gaza Strip has led some to describe the territory as a de facto independent state.

                                                

They rarely pay their utility bills.  They're mostly in arrears.  They're too busy digging tunnels to get things like ammunition to use against Israel.  They are not a self-sufficient country that is constantly expanding its population.  

Jimmy Carter's Forked Tongue Slicing Away at Israel with BBC Reporter

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

Could be Gaza after Operation Protective Edge or Syria after Assad's soldiers attack rebel communities.: Palestinian leaders kept civilians in harm's way though Israel gave plenty of warning-Israel went into Gaza to take out the sites where rockets, mortars, missiles were shot at them after months of pleading to stop the shooting.  This time Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were hit and all the 7.7 million Israeli population were hunkering down in bomb shelters.  

This was a comment on live television. " BBC reporter Tim Willcox expressed regret after saying on television during the Paris unity rally that Palestinians “suffer hugely at Jewish hands,” 
the Jerusalem Post reported.  

While this BBC reporter apologized for linking anti-Semitic attacks in France to Palestinian ‘suffering’ at Israeli hands, Jimmy Carter, blames the Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket attacks in France squarely on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  In doing so, he always blames Israel in the fracas.  He is well-known for blaming Israel and never the Arabs as he has written several books doing so.  

I can't go back very far to tell you how Palestinians were treated  by Jews as there has never been a country of Palestine.  You know that it was the name used by the Romans after 135 CE for Israel and Judea.  So, calling Arabs "Palestinians" is a misnomer.  Jews were also referred to as Palestinians at the same time since they both lived on the land referred to as Palestine.  In 1948 with the pronouncement of Israel, the Jews and Arabs who remained and hadn't run away became Israelis.  
                                                              

Roman Arch of Titus, 70 CE, carrying off Temple goods 

In the 1st century, 70 CE to be exact, the Roman Empire defeated the nation of Judea who had been a nation for over 1,000 years.  For 2,000 years it had never been a state for anyone while Jews kept on living there.  Then it became property of the Ottoman Empire who lost WWI along with Germany and the land was ceded to the Allies.  Iraq, Lebanon and Syria were then created.  It was then recognized as the Jewish national home once again.
                                                              

Theodore Herzl, newspaper reporter (1860-1904)

Theodore Herzl had a dream.  He had dreamt of the perfect state for Jews where they would live by their neighbors  in peace.  This was in 1896 when Jews were returning to build homes in their old homeland.  Then he published his book about it, called Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State).  What is more logical than people to want to return to their own ancient homeland where all their history lay?  Herzl had started the Zionist movement with this book.  "The common denominator among all Zionists is the claim to Eretz Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for the Jewish national self-determination."  

The Arabs living there sold out and moved to more exciting places such as Paris, Beirut, Cairo, England.  A few remained.  Arabs from Syria roamed there and called themselves Syrian Palestinians. Arab and Jews who lived in the Palestine Mandate all had Palestine Mandate passports, but Arab residents were generally referred to as Arabs, not Palestinians.     Jews returning to their homeland from Russia escaping terrible pogroms entered in the 1880's and lived among the Arabs in their own camps, also trying to figure out how to make a living there.  Then end of the most terrible war of all times was 1917, and the Balfour Declaration was written.  The British were told to facilitate Jewish immigration and settlement of Palestine, so they made up their own rules and did such things as to let great numbers of Arabs into the land while they kept the Jews out.  

While Emir Feisal, THE spokesman for all the Arabs, was in favor of the Jews' return, his nemesis, the Sharif of Jerusalem, the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini was very much against it as he'd lose his coveted position.  He instigated pogroms and riots against the Jews at a time when Hitler was becoming powerful.  The two got together in Germany and plotted and schemed the death of Jews.  
                                                          

The Exodus of 1947, carried 4,554 Jewish refugees to Palestine,  seized by the British who killed 3 Jews in a battle.  The refugees were returned forcibly to Port de Bouc, France and refused to land there, disembarked at Hamburg, Germany by British soldiers. All were slaughtered in the Holocaust, of course.  

The Jews bought the land from the Arab owners and paid the highest of prices for it, even when they were not legally bound to pay, according to the Hope Simpson Report in 1930.  The Jews bought 418,000 dunums (quarter acres) between 1878 and 1914, 58% was sold by non-Palestinian Arab absentee landlords and 36% by Palestinian absentee landlords, for a total of 94%.  This is recorded by the Palestinians-American historian, Rashid Khalidi.   It was found that much of the land bearing orange groves had been sand dunes or swamps and uncultivated land when it was bought.  Only Jews would buy such ugly land.  This comes from the Peel commission Report of 1937.  Jews took land nobody had wanted since they had to leave it, and they brought it back to life again.  It responded to their loving and respectful hands.

These Jewish pioneers went through all sorts of hardships, sickness and wretchedness.  They went without water for days and lived in cramped tents where various reptiles managed to find shelter also,  Their wives, children and mothers suffered as they fought off Bedouin raiders who were fancy free and enjoyed robbing for a living.  The Jews put in backbreaking labor by clearing the wasteland and draining the malarial swamps.  They planted trees in the hillsides and then built towns and villages.  

They established agricultural colonies, men who had been kept from owning land and were kept from feeling soil in their fingers did it.  They had come in with the background of merchants, traders, silk road businessmen, loaners of money, but never farming and somehow they studied the situation and hit on the best methods.  Every traveler in Palestine was impressed by the beautiful stretches of prosperous cultivation abut them, and this was from the Jews, not the Arabs who had not done a thing for the land.  This is from the Interim Report on the civil Administration of Palestine to the League of Nations in June 1921.  

Arabs came into the land to find work with the Jews.  The Grand Mufti turned them against Jews.  They attacked and were attacking at the time when the Jewish leaders were about to declare their state through the UN vote, and they kept on attacking immediately after the announcement. 

 Tell me, Jimmy Carter, how they suffered hugely in Jewish hands?  Any suffering they suffered was brought on by their own actions.  They greeted Jews on their birth not with bread and salt  but with spilling their blood with their hands.   It was less that 24 hours later after the announcement when Israelis were invaded by the armies of 5 Arab nations; Egypt, Syria, TransJordan, Lebanon and Iraq.  The IDF was created by the wave of the cane of Moses, just about,  and somehow they managed to defeat the invasion in 15 months of war where 6,000 lost their lives, which was 1% of their new nation of 650,000.  This was Israel's War of Independence from 1948 to 1949.  

Ever since then the Arabs have not been friendly, to say the least.  Israel has been attacked, suicide bombers have blown up places with people, and there has been very little peace given to Israel by them.  And you dare to say that "Palestinians “suffer hugely at Jewish hands?” 

Let me tell you something, Mr. former President.  For 66 years Jews have not had any peace and have had people try for force them into the sea so that they could take over their native land that they have built.  But after being forced to wander themselves for 2,000 years in Christian countries as well as Muslim ones, are not about to leave again.  If Palestinian Arabs don't want to suffer, then tell them it's simple;  treat the Jews like they would want to be treated.  It's the Golden Rule which we try to follow.  All they have to do is love their own children more than they have learned to hate Jews.  Quit pelting Israel with their rockets, mortars and missiles and popping up in their tunnels with intent to kill and steal our children.  But if they harm us, they will get harmed in return.  Get it?  When you attack Jews,  they will fight back.  
                                                

What did Isaiah say about the Philistines?  "Do not rejoice, O Philistia, all of you, because the staff that beat you has been broken;  for from the root of the snake will emerge a viper, and his progeny will be a flying fiery serpent.  The foremost of the poor will then graze, and the destitute will lie down in security;  and I will kill your root with famine, and he will slay your remnant.  Wail, O gate!  Cry out, O city!  Melt in fear, O Phillistia, all of you!  For smoke comes from the North, and no one is isolated among his appointed troops  What will the messengers of the nation say?  That G-d has established Zion and in it the poor of His people take shelter."  

The Philistines acted somewhat like the Palestinians in that when one of the Jews dies, they celebrate and pass out candy.  The Philistines were told not to rejoice over the death of the Davidic dynasty in this case, which had defeated them all along from David to Uzziah because Hezekiah was to emerge and would deal them a severe blow.  He would swoop down from the North onto the Philistine capital, GAZA, every one of his troops in full formation.  


Resource: http://www.israelandstuff.com/once-again-jimmy-carter-blames-israeli-palestinian-conflict-for-radical-islamic-terror
Israel 101 by StandWithUs.  
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Gaza in the Days of Samson and Moses; Land of Philistines

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    
                                                                           

Samson, a man remembered for having fallen in love with Delilah, a woman of the Valley of Sorek.  Samson  was an Israelite judge, son of Manoah of the tribe of Dan.  He was a Nazirite from birth, which meant that he didn't do certain things out of respect for G-d, and one was to cut his hair.  From his hair G-d in turn had given him strength and courage.  His feats against the Philistines expressed the Israelites' desire for freedom from the Philistine suzerainty.  He did fall into the  Philistine hands because of Delilah who betrayed the secret of his strength. She handed him over to the Philistines.   His eyes were put out and he was made to turn the prison mill with his body.  There was a festival in Gaza, a Philistine stronghold and was brought to it as someone to mock.  This made him so mad that he destroyed the building and killed the entire group of people there,  including himself, when the building fell down.
                                                                             

Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan because Moses had just died at age 120.    He directed the division of the land as planned by Moses among the 12 sons of Jacob who had each become a tribe after 400 years of living in Egypt.
                                                                       

The tribe of Judah was allotted the area which included Gaza.  "Judah conquered Gaza and its territory, Ashkelon and its territory, and Ekron and it's territory.  Jews come from the tribe of Judah.
                                                                             

                                          King David (1010 BCE to 970 BCE)

The Philistines coming from Crete after being repulsed from Egypt by Rameses III in 1194 BCE, seized the southern coastal area of Canaan where they  founded 5 principalities:  Gaza, Askalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath.  They were by nature a fighting people so they dominated parts of Judah in the period of the Judges.  Saul at first repelled the danger but was defeated.  David, who became King David, ended the era of Philistine domination and overran Philistia.  when the Isreaelite kingdom dissolved, the Philistines re-established their independence but were never thereafter a serious factor.  It was the Romans who gave the name officially to the former land of Judah as Palaestina or later known as Palestine.

Israelites were not as good as expected, so wound up in the hands of the Midianites for 7 years.   They had power over Israel.  The Israelites had to make "dugouts" that are in the mountains, caves and strongholds.  When the Israelite farmers went out to sow the fields, the Midianites would come.  Not only that group, but also the Amalaek (meanest) and the people of the east and they would all overrun it.  They would camp there and destroy their crops, until the approach to Gaza.  These raiders would leave nothing of food; no sheep, oxen or donkeys.  They would take it all and remove their tents and leave.  They were like a swarm of locusts.  They came on camels and their intent was to destroy all the Israelites were growing on the land.
                                                                             

Joshua killed them from Kadesh-barnea to Gaza.  Joshua conquered all the kings and their land that G-d had directed.  Joshua returned to Gilgal....  Ashdod, its towns and villages; Gaza, its towns and villages to the Brook of Egypt and the Great Sea (Mediterranean), and the border.
                                                                         

                                              King Solomon (961 BCE to 920 BCE) 

King Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms, from the Euphrates River to the land of the Phillistines, until the border of Egypt;  they brought tributes and served Solomon all the days of his life.  Solomon's provision for one day was: 30 kor of fine flour, 60 kor of flour, 10 fattened oxen, 20 oxen from the pasture, and 100 sheep and goats besides gazelle, deer, yachmur and fattened fowl.  For he ruled over the entire area beyond the Euphrates River from Tiphsah to Gaza, over all the kings of the area beyond the Euphrates River; and he was at peace  with the lands on all sides, roundabout.  Judah and Israel lived in security, each man under his grapevine and under his fig tree, from Dan to Beer-Sheba, all the days of Solomon.  

Resource: Tanakh, Art Scroll Series
 Judges, 6:4
Joshua 10:41; 15:47
I Kings, 5-4