The Ancient Biblical Golan of Israelites, Ready to Double Its Population

Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                                                            Mt. Hermon in Winter                                                                                                                                      

                                         Skiing at Mt. Hermon

The Golan was originally an ancient town of West Bashan, one of the cities of refuge as told in Joshua 20:8.  There were 3 east of the Jordan and 3 west of the Jordan.  They were cities of asylum, provided for in which an accidental killer was to be safe from the vengeance of the murdered man's kinsmen, and where he was required to live until the death of the reigning high priest.  It was also for political fugitives but proved inadequate protection for them.  The city of refuge was a place of expiation and only operative in cases of contributory negligence.  Grave carelessness could not be adequately atoned for by seeking sanctuary.  

 It was the capital of a region in the 2nd Temple times and had a Jewish settlement until the 5th century CE.   Bashan was in the region of Transjordania, now a part of Jordan.  Broadly speaking, Bashan contains Haurana, the Argob region, Golan as far as Mt. Hermon, and NE Gilead as far as the Yarmuk River. 

                                                       

            Yarmouk is an arm of the Jordan going eastward.  

 In ancient times, it was on the trade-route from Damascus to Arabia and the Red Sea ports.  It's original inhabitants, according to the Bible , were the Rephaim who were succeeded by the Amorites.                                                          

The Rephaim were an ancient people living in Transjordania in the time of Abraham as told in Genesis 14:5. Some of them apparently settled near Jerusalem in the "Valley of Rephaim.   During the Exodus period, it was ruled by Og, an Amorite king of the land of Rephaim in Bashan and Gilead, called "king of Bashan."   who was defeated and slain by the Israelites. Og was noted for his stature and physique.  He tried to interrupt the march of the Israelites but was defeated. Israel was made up of 603,550 members when they started off, losing only 1,820 at the end of their journey to Canaan.  His land was strongly fortified territory throughout the Middle and late Bronze Ages.   Bashan, then noted for its oak woods and fertile pasture and sounding like Oregon, was settled by half of the tribe of Manasseh.                                                                                                                   

Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria overran Bashan in 732 BCE in the Great Assyrian Attack that started in 721 BCE.  It was subsequently under the rule of the Persians in the 4th century BCE, and then the Seleucides in the 2nd century BCE, and then the Romans from the 1st century BCE.                                                                                                               

Augustus gave it to King Herod of terrible reputation who settled Idumeans-or Edomites of Mt. Seir, descendants of Esau, hunters, of which he was one of,  and Jews from Babylon there to guard the country from desert robbers.  

The other Golan spoken  of so often is the Western region of Bashan, named after its chief town.  It was known in Greek as Gaulanitis.  The upper Golan, called in the Bible as Beth-Maachah, stretched from Mt. Hermon to the Sea of Galilee, and was pasture land, sparsely populated.  

The Lower Golan, which was the biblical Geshur, was rich and fertile until the Arab invasion.  The name "Geshur" is found primarily in biblical sources and has been taken to mean "stronghold or fortress". The Bible describes it as being near Bashan, adjoining the province of Argob (Deuteronomy 3:14) and the kingdom of Aram or Syria (2 Samuel 15:8; 1 Chronicles 2:23)

The Golan Heights, from which the Syrians bombarded kibbutzim along the upper Jordan Valley, was occupied by Israeli troops in the 1967 Six Day War (June 5-11), and was extensively populated with Israeli settlements.  Its 1985 population was 22,500 which included the Druze population.  

The Golan was part of biblical Israel and remained under Jewish control until the early part of the common era. Israel officially annexed the Golan in 1981 and the US, under President Trump, recognized it as part of Israel in 2019.                                                            

Legend has it that Safed was founded by a son of Noah after the Great Flood. According to the Book of Judges (Judges 1:17), the area where Safed is located was assigned to the tribe of Naphtali.

Safed is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of 900 metres of the Hula Valley, the Golan Heights and parts of modern-day South Lebanon.  In 1974, 25 Israeli Jews (mainly school children) from Safed, were killed in the Ma'alot massacre. Over 1990s and early 2000s, the town accepted thousands of Russian Jewish immigrants and Ethiopian Beta Israel. In July 2006, "Katyusha" rockets fired by Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon hit Safed, killing one man and injuring others. Many residents fled the town for the duration of the conflict. On July 22, four people were injured in a rocket attack.  I lived here from 1981 to almost 1986 and taught in the junior high across the street from my apartment building.                                  

     Golan as seen from Bental Mountain

The government approved a plan to double the Jewish population in the Golan over the next 5 years. The plan includes 1 billion shekels of spending on housing, infrastructure and other projects to attract 23,000 new residents to the Golan. Around 25,000 Israelis currently live in the Golan, along with around 23,000 Druze, who remained in their villages after Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War. 

The area was part of extreme southwestern Syria until 1967, when it came under Israeli military occupation, and in December 1981 Israel unilaterally annexed the part of the Golan it held.  The area's name is from the biblical city of refuge, Golan, in Bashan (Deuteronomy 4:43; Joshua 20:8).

"On the other side of the Jordan, by Jericho, to the east, they designated Bezer in the wilderness in the plain from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in the Bashan from the tribe of Manasseh". (3 places of refuge on the other side of Jordan-from Joshua).   

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Israel AM-top Israel news

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safed

Stressing out the Iran Deal Decisions

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                            

Iranians burning an Israeli flag at a rally-riling up hatred amongst the attendees

Watching how people feel about the Iran deal put together by Secretary of State John Kerry has been most interesting.  For me,  it is very stressful being I'm against the deal and our President is touting it as the best thing that has come along since chocolate milk shakes and that we should be grateful it's so great for Israel!
                                                                                     

Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning the world of Iran's closeness to making a nuclear bomb to use on them and the USA.  Has anyone taken this to heart?  

Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the little country, is all against it and so are the majority of Israelis.  They are the ones who Iran has been bashing for years and threatening to wipe out and that Israel shouldn't exist and doesn't.  In fact, they were so gleeful that the USA has signed the deal so far, that they had the Palestinian terrorists firing from Syria shoot rockets at the Golan and other sites in Israel on Thursday already.  Yes, Iran backs these terrorists and others.  Signing this deal just gave them the green light to really show their power.  They must be elated with all the money coming to them now that they can use for just such purposes, arming the terrorists to take out those they don't want.
                                                                         

Rabbi Rachel Mikva of Chicago, Illinois signed and is a member of J Street.

The most disappointing factor to me was that 340 rabbis have signed saying they agree with Obama's plan.  This has left the pundits confused as they thought Schumer spoke for all American Jews, and after his careful studying, decided it wasn't what it was cracked up to be and is not signing on.

I looked at these 340 names and found that many belonged to J Street, the competitor of AIPAC who do not  speak for Israel as AIPAC does.  In fact, whatever Israel wants or needs, J Street is against.  J Street goes along with Obama. One of the originators of the group was George Soros, the billionaire worth $24 billion.   Today he's just a member, so we're told.

Below is a map showing the Jewish population by states.

                                                                       

I noticed that 71 names were from California.  So I checked and found out that out of these;
38 belonged to J Street.  14 were women and 24 were men.

California is very liberal and 32 were not members of J Street of which 11 were women and 21 were men.
Altogether, California's rabbis for the Iran deal amounted to 25 women and 46 men.

New York had a large group of rabbis, also.  50 rabbis voted for the Iran deal.
15 belonged to J Street.  Out of that group, 5 were women and 10 were men.
35 rabbis didn't belong to J Street, and were  7 women and 28 men.
New York's voters for the Iran deal amounted to 12 women and 38 men.

My  Oregon was another matter, having a much smaller Jewish population.
6 rabbis voted for the Iran deal.  1 was a woman and 5 were men.
10 rabbis belong to J Street in Oregon. .  I note that the  4 other  members of J Street remaining rabbis did not vote for the deal.

In the United States, there are about 6 million Jews.  As of 2014:
New York had 1,757,270  or 1.1 million Jews. Jews are 8.9% of New York's population.
California had 1,232,190.  Jews are 3.2% of California's population.
Oregon had 40,650.  Jews are 1.0% of Oregon's population.
Altogether, Jews make up 2.1% of the United States' Population
In the world's population, Jews only make up 0.02% of it.
                                                                     

Another Israeli praying at the wall.

My genealogy friend, Rabbi Goldberg of Jerusalem, Israel, who was recently viciously attacked and killed in an attack on rabbis while praying in the synagogue in Jerusalem.  How do you think he would vote?  The majority of Israelis are against the deal.  It's not what it was supposed to be originally.  

Now, the whole world will be affected by the deal John Kerry and Obama has made with Iran.  They think, and the rabbis that voted for the deal think, that they have accomplished something of protecting the world for a few years from the extreme Ayatollah hatred of Israel and anyone else who disagrees with them.  It isn't that they have a disagreement with Israel, it's just that they are extremely intolerant by not being able to accept a Jewish state in an area of Muslim states.
                                   

Larry Cohler in Iran 

                                                                               




Iran flaunts their own Jews, said The Forward Reporter this morning on CNN's Fareed Zakaria's Sunday morning program, holding them up as an example of not hatred for Jews per se, just not accepting of  the Zionistic state of Jews once again back in Eretz Yisrael.
                                              
 Larry Cohler found out that Sharia Law rules the Jews as well and Jews are under many disadvantages there.  If a Jew is harmed by a Muslim, the Muslim just pays a fee, but if a Jew harms a Muslim, death is the penalty.  The Jews are trying to make improvements in the system.  Good Luck!
                                                                         

Busheher nuclear plant

Iran would love to be the leader and show the rest of the Middle East how its done by stomping out Israel.  That would make them lord and master over all besides holding nuclear weapons like North Korea.  Two unstable nations with unstable leadership as unstable as TNT sitting with the most deadly of weapons is what we have to look forward to.  This idea of inspection is turning out to be a bigger joke than first believed with parts of the contract that haven't been properly translated from Farsi into English that say Iran will do some inspections and you needn't worry.
                                                                 

Ha!  They're laughing all the way to their bank where they will have untold amounts of money to invest in weapons for terrorism.
                                                                           

 They've already started on Israel  on the 20th with 5 rockets of which one hit the Golan.  They couldn't wait, could they.  At least no deal wouldn't have handed over all the money in the world.  It would have made hitting Israel more complicated.  Dealing with their big head and heavy pockets now is going to be impossible.

Update 9/3/15 from Honest Reporting:http://honestreporting.com/idns-09032015-senate-iran/
"1. The White House clinched its magic number of 34 senators supporting the Iran deal when Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland gave it her approval. Thirty four is the number needed to prevent opponents from scuttling the deal.

Politico reports that the White House is now setting its sights on  securing 41 votes, “which would stop the resolution of disapproval from ever reaching the White House” and spare the president the need to wield a veto."  Notice that the Democrats got it passed.  

Resource:  http://www.jta.org/2015/08/17/news-opinion/politics/340-u-s-rabbis-sign-letter-supporting-iran-deal
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html
http://forward.com/news/318930/a-jewish-journalists-exclusive-look-inside-iran/

The Myth of Israel Being Aggressive

Nadene Goldfoot                                      

Living in the Middle East, about the least aggressive country we find is Israel.  Whatever steps Israel takes is only in the act of defensiveness, not aggressiveness.  There is a big difference.  Aggression is an offensive action;   the practice of making attacks or encroachments;   unprovoked violation by one country of the territorial integrity of another;   an aggressive outlook or its manifestation,  as in overt forceful action or in mental attitudes.  Defense, on the other hand, is the act of defending;   the capability of resisting attack;   means or method of defending;   and to be defensive is taking a defensive position.  Above you see a missile headed for Sderot, Israel shot from Gaza.  When Israel is on the defensive, they will use an airstrike and pinpoint the place where missiles are coming from.  They're not trying to kill innocents, whereas that missile will strike in a populated civilian area.  Of course, the the Muslim Brotherhood has taken the stand that the existence of Israel is a violation, thus the terrorist acts against this fledgling country.  They refuse to accept all the legalities that Israel went through to exist including recognition in the UN.

The fact is that Israel is a teeny country of  8 thousand sq miles with a teeny sized population of  7.5 million people, of which 6 million are Jews.  Israel was established as a haven for Jews who have suffered persecution since the Roman days,  and especially after losing their one and only country, Judaea in 70 CE.  They've had to fight since its rebirth in 1948 to keep what they had prayed for in the past 2,000 years because of all the aggressiveness from their neighbors.  Why would they ever try to take on the their Muslim neighbors who wouldn't sign a peace treaty except Egypt and Jordan, their close neighbors?  Crazy, Israel is not.  They had to wait for 2,000 years for this country, and Israelis are not about to blow it.

Having been reminded of  Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet, I will take on the voice of Israel's neighbors in speaking to Israel:  "How do I hate thee?   Let me count the ways" .....Remember, the Palestinians refuse to even recognize Israel as the Jewish state.  Why?  Religion?  Politics?  Racial?  Their aggression?  The planned for Palestine is to have not one Jew living in the land. They want it "Judenrein!"   Compare that to Israel with 1.7 million Arab citizens.  Jews didn't even get the chance to offer an olive branch.  They were shot before and the very  moment after the announcement of being conferred with state status.

Right now, we have the condition that every county of Muslim majority in or near the Middle East has it in for Israel.  There are Muslim religious leaders, such as Qaradawi of Qatar broadcasting to followers to kill all Jews.  We have the Muslim Brotherhood which has taken hold on the Middle East with a charter saying to not accept Israel's presence and to wipe her out and take it for themselves.  Then we have terrorist organizations up to the gazoo  working under this same flag with the same goal.  It's not paranoia on Israel's part.  There are many people who are out to take and destroy Israel.

Syria, whose border with Israel is only about 100 miles away,  has been in a civil war for the past 2 years. Next door to Syria is Lebanon who also shares the border with Israel.  Hezbollah, the terrorists who want to wipe out Israel, who openly say they are the resistance movement against Israel, are embedded in Lebanon.  What has been happening is that Iran, who wants to wipe out Israel, has been supplying weapons to Hezbollah through Syria.  Behind all this backing them is Russia.  It's become the evil empire against the West, and Israel, besides being  a Jewish state, is the token West in their midst.  Israel has a good system of finding out what is going on.  They've already discovered a weapons armory in Syria which could contain chemical as well as many state of the art weapons that could cause huge damage and could fall into the arms of Hezbollah in Lebanon.  So they have attacked this site and the trucks parked outside ready to deliver them.  This is a defensive act, not an aggressive one.  Everyone knows that Hezbollah can get these weapons and use them against Israel.

President Obama of USA has stated that Israel has the right to do this.  He now realizes how close the antagonists are to Israel.  Coming from the states, it's hard for anyone to understand the closeness if they haven't seen it with their own eyes.  It's similar to the neighborhood nearest you to start a missile attack on your house.

Israel told Assad that no war is intended and that they are not taking sides in their civil war, but they don't want to be a casualty in it, either.  Already Syrian missiles have struck the Golan Heights, which is part of Israel which were thought to be strays from the civil war.  That's how close everyone is; hit by a stray missile, yet.  The Syrian Coalition, those against the regime of Assad, remains suspicious feeling that this is taking away attention from the crimes and massacres on the Syrian coast, so they are blaming both Israel and Assad.

When Israel has been forced to act in defense, it is due to the obvious threat for their lives and done to protect their citizens, which has happened with all the terrorism coming out of Gaza.  Not once has Israel acted out of desire to take land.  If one is looking at Judea and Samaria (West Bank),  the same applies.  It was an all out war against Israel to drive her into the sea in 1967 that caused the Arab nations to attack her.  Maybe there are miracles happening after all, because by all logic, Israel should have lost, but instead, proved the gamblers wrong and won against a horrid attack.  As it turned out,  this battle to the death gave Israel back land she was told was hers way back in 1917 from the League of Nations that was to be the Jewish Homeland.   Judea and ancient Israel's capital, Samaria, later referred to as SAMARIA, was the ancient homeland of Israel from the days of Moses.  England withdrew their word and promise to Israel by giving away 80% of Israel's promised land.  Not everyone has been honest in their dealings with Israel.

Aggressors abound in the Middle East today.  Iraq is an ongoing battleground.  In 1982 they fought the bloodiest of battles with Iran.  The USA even entered taking out Saddam Hussein, one of the worst dictators,  but found no stockpiles of weapons.  The accusation was that they were the country spurring on the 9/11 attacks in the USA causing over 2,000 deaths, even though the assailants were all  from "friendly "Saudi Arabia..  It's not a safe haven in Iraq yet.

The Sunni and Shiite religious factions are attacking each other.  The Sunnis living in a camp in the north are protesting that they are being treated like dhimmis (2nd class citizens) with a security crack-down  by the Shiite-led government.  Shiites blasted away at Sunnis near a cafe in the Sunni neighborhood near Baghdad and killed 9 and wounding dozens on Sunday in and around the capital.

Syria's aggressiveness is sectarian with a Sunni rebel movement against a regime dominated by Alawites and backed by Shiites including Hezbollah and Iran.  Here we see Muslims against Muslims, like Ireland's Catholic and Protestant battles.  Assad has recently used chemical weapons against his foes.  They have just executed dozens, possibly hundreds of Sunni men, women and children.  Most Assad people live along the coastal region.  The rebels, called the Syrian Coalition, just showed videos of the carnage on their people.  The pictures were of bloodied corpses of babies and adults, some of whom had been shot in the head or burned.

Pakistan's military forces suffered losses of their security forces from insurgent attacks in lawless districts that left 8 dead.  30 militant and criminal suspects were also killed on Sunday.  Clashes went on in the Tirah Valley in the NW where 2 soldiers and 16 militants were killed.  The army's offensive last month were targeting the Taliban and another offshoot of them, Lashkar-e-Islam.  In the Waziristan region near Afghanistan, a roadside bomb attack on a convoy killed 2 soldiers and wounded 3.  In Baluchistan, 13 suspects were killed in clashes. This all happened and was reported on Sunday.

Afghanistan insurgents killed a German special forces soldier and wounded  a 2nd on Sunday.  It was a slow week.
Nigeria  had an attack that targeted a church and a local market.  How can those aggressors say that they caused harm to them?   This African country isn't all that far away from the Middle East and contains 155,215,573 , the 4th largest Muslim majority country of which 50.4% or more today are Sunni Muslims.
Somalia, a country that is 100% Sunni Muslim, the 25th largest Sunni Muslim country with 9,558,666 suffered from a suicide bomber, killing 7 people on Sunday.  They tried to ram a car filled with explosives into a military convoy.  Is this an Arab Spring reprisal?  Armies are being attacked by rebels in many of these Muslim countries.
Tanzania is turning aggressor with someone placing a bomb in a Roman Catholic church just before Sunday's Mass.  This killed one woman and wounded 44 seriously.  What reason is there for this act?
Curacao, a small Dutch Caribbean island off the Venezuelan coast had an aggressive man shoot and kill the leader of the Pueblo Soberano political party, member in the coalition government.  People there are in shock.
Boston, Massachusetts, USA, our recent terrorist attack from one of the worst aggressive acts from mentally brainwashed Muslim young brothers with the possibility of others' involvement..  Those watching the marathon did nothing to these two fellows except to be the taxpayers that paid for much of their government- funded amenities such as food, lodging and education, taking them in when their father called out that he was in fear of his life in his home country.

Resource:Oregonian newspaper 5/6/13 page A5, Syria issues warning after airstrikes, News Update, page A4, Nigeria vilence, Somalia bomb, Tanzania blast, Curacacao politician
 http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-43-how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-wa/
Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionary