The Irony of Centuries of Changes Between Iran and Israel's History

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

       Babylonians marching away the Jews from Jerusalem

Our historical connection all started with the Babylonian Empire.  In the summer of 586 BCE, the Babylonians burned down Solomon's 1st Temple in Jerusalem, effectively ending worship and sacrifice for decades.  They executed the chief priest, who was a Cohen, Seraiah as well as his 2nd in command and several other priestly "keepers of the threshold, " documented in 2 Kings 25:18.  A number of surviving priests wound up in Babylon during the Jews' 50 year exile. They were all descendants of the older brother of Moses, Aaron,  who had designated them as being priests with the responsibilities thereof for their people in observing Judaism.  This was documented in The Book of Ezra.  A 3rd reference from  ancient papyri and from the writings of the 1st century as a Jewish Historian and Roman apologist and even a general considered as a traitor to the Jews, Flavius Josephus,  we know that Jewish temples existed in Babylon during the exile.  This obviously tells us how synagogues started, local places for communal worship that became a hallmark of Diasporan Judaism in the Common Era of CE. 

                                               

In 539 BCE, the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persians, whom we call Iran, today.  This was fortunate for the Jews who had been brought there as captives.  This ended the reign of the Babylonians, setting the scene in motion for the restoration of the Jewish presence in Judah and the construction of the 2nd Temple.

                                                

The very next year of 538 BCE, Cyrus, the Persian King, showed to be a man of leniency, and he established a policy of reconciliation and repatriation of deportees----and their various deities----to  return to their homelands.  As referenced in the Book of Ezra (I:1-4) which is also summarized in Joseph Blenkinsopp's book, Sage, Priest, Prophet,  Cyrus's proclamation led to the return of some 50,000 Babylonian Jews, who wasted no time in constructing an altar, offering sacrifices, and celebrating the harvest festival of Sukkot in Jerusalem once again.  It is believed that Cyrus was the son of King Ahasueros and his Queen Esther as found in the Book of Esther.  Another theory was that he was the grandson, not the son.  

"Cyrus is the grandson of King Ahasuerus ((Astyages) and Queen Esther.  Cambyses, Cyrus' father dies when he is 12 years old.  His grandparents (King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther) summon him and his mother (Mandane) to come live with them at the palace.  Cyrus is taught by Esther and the King about the laws of God and the prophecies written 150 years before by God through the prophets about him (Cyrus).  When the time comes Cyrus king of Persia issues the edict for the Jews to return to Israel:   "Isa 44:28  That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid."  "

If the Persians hadn't taken Babylon, and then allowed the return of the Jews to their homeland, Jewish cultural continuity would have been lost.  Persian action  saved Judaism. 

Such an event reminds one that the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, killing 6 million Jews, paved the way for the re-creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948.  Wouldn't Hitler be shocked that his maniacal animosity for Jews revived Israel and the Jewish people after 2,000 of waiting and praying 3 times a day?  

Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in central-southern Mesopotamia. A small Amorite-ruled state emerged in 1894 BCE, which contained the minor administrative town of Babylon.  The town of Babylon was located along the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq, about 50 miles south of Baghdad. It was founded around 2300 B.C. by the ancient Akkadian-speaking people of southern Mesopotamia. Babylon, one of the most famous cities from any ancient civilization, was the capital of Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia. Today, that’s about 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq.

                                                   

 Laws Known as the Code of Hammurabi helped Babylon surpass other cities in the region.  Hammurabi's Laws were sort of a precursor of the Ten Commandments.                

Strangely, Iran and Iraq fought each other again in a terrible war from September 22, 1980 till August 20, 1988.  Open warfare began on September 22, 1980, when Iraqi armed forces invaded western Iran along the countries' joint border.                             

Iraqi forces firing rocket launchers on the outskirts of Khorramshahr, Iran, October 1980.

© Zuheir Saade—AP/REX/Shutterstock.com

Iraq, however, claimed that the war had begun earlier that month, on September 4, when Iran shelled several border posts.  The roots of the war lay in a number of territorial and political disputes between Iraq and Iran. Iraq wanted to seize control of the rich oil-producing Iranian border region of Khūzestān, a territory inhabited largely by ethnic Arabs over which Iraq sought to extend some form of suzerainty. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein wanted to reassert his country’s sovereignty over both banks of the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab, a river formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that was historically the border between the two countries.

In total, around 500,000 Iraqi and Iranian soldiers died over the course of the war, in addition to an estimated 100,000 civilians. The end of the war resulted in neither reparations nor border changes.  Boys were used as fighters in the end as they were running out of men.  

It was on Sunday, September 28, 1980 that my husband and I arrived in Haifa at the Abba Khousy Absorption Center  after landing in Israel a few days earlier.  We had been so busy with making aliyah, which was a lifetime change, that we had no idea of a war that had started.  This made our over 5 year stay, for we left in late November, 1985, a fairly safe hiatus of war in Israel.  As two teachers, we were settling in for 10 month period of studying in order to pass the Israeli test to teach in Israel, which we both passed.

  "By June 14, 1981 I was still in the Haifa Ulpan studying.  We had celebrated Shavuot by taking a trip to  a school on the Mediterranean Sea with our teacher and we saw a program of singing and dancing on stage and an agricultural parade of wagons  carrying fruits, vegetables, and flowers.  That was followed up with visiting with our teacher's sister and eating cheesecake.  When we arrived at her apartment, a neighbor told us about Israel bombing the Iraq atomic plant.  What a big surprise to us!  We had no idea about it. Again, Israel is in the news.  Well, France shouldn't have supplied Iraq with such deadly things.  Sarah, our teacher, wound up giving us a whole dinner while we discussed it".                                              

 Operation Opera (Hebrew: מבצע אופרה‎), also known as Operation Babylon, was a surprise airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force on 7 June 1981, which destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometres (11 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. The destruction of Iraq's Osirak reactor has been cited as an example of a preventive strike in contemporary scholarship on international law. The efficacy of the attack is debated by historians, who acknowledge that it brought Iraq back from the brink of nuclear capability but drove its weapons program underground and cemented Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's future ambitions for acquiring nuclear weapons.

Reference:

Jacob's Legacy by David B. Goldstein, David Benjamin Goldstein is an American human geneticist. Goldstein is founding Director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center, Professor of Genetics and Development and directs the genomics core of Epi4K and administrative cores of Epi4K with Dan Lowenstein and Sam Berkovic.

Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot

https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-Iraq-War

https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/babylon-babylonia-tower-babel-hanging-gardens-hammurabi/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera#:~:text=Operation%20Opera%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%A6%D7%A2%20%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%94,)%20southeast%20of%20Baghdad%2C%20Iraq.

http://www.cognm.org/cognm/Publications/Esther_-_The_Rest_of_the_Story.htm