Jewish Population Numbers In Different Periods

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                          

Abraham lived during the 2nd millennium BCE, about in 1948 BCE, most likely in the 17th Century BCE.  They had migrated from Mesopotamia, which is today's Iraq.  Ur, the city Abraham lived in is in Iraq.    He had 2 sons, Ishmael by Hagar and then Isaac by his wife and niece, Sarah.
                                                                       

     
 Isaac's sons were Jacob and Esau, twins. Esau left the family group.  Jacob later during a dry famine period, led his family containing 70 people; close family members and possibly servants, from  Canaan for Egypt.

In the beginning of the 40 year trek from Egypt to Canaan, a census was taken by Moses as listed in Numbers ch. 1 and at the end of the 40 years as listed in Numbers ch 26.

1: They gathered together the entire assembly on the 1st of the 2nd month, and they established their genealogy according to their families, according to the fathers' household, by number of the names, from 20 years of age and up, according to their head count.  As Hashem (G-d "The Name")  had commanded Moses, he counted them in the wilderness of Sinai.  

26: It was after the plague--Hashem spoke to Moses and to Elazar, son of Aaron the Kohen, saying:  Take a census of the entire assembly of the Children of Israel, from 20 years of age and up, according to their fathers' houses, all who go out to the legion in Israel.  Moses and Elazar the Kohen spoke to them in the plains of Moab, by the Jordan near Jericho, saying, from 20 years of age and up, .
1. Reuben             46,500                   43,730
2. Simeon             59,300                   22,200
3. Judah               74,600                   76,500
4. Issachar           54,400                    64,300
5. Zebulun           57,400                    60,500
6. Dan                 62,700                    64,400
7.Naphtali           53,000                    45,400
8. Gad                45,650                     40,500
9. Asher             41,500                     53,400
10. Ephraim        40,500                    32,500
11. Manasseh     32,200                     52,700
12. Benjamin      35,400                    45,600
TOTALS         603,550                  601,730 
                                                                       

 .When Moses led them all out 400 years later, he took a census.  It had taken them 40 years to go from Egypt to Canaan.  Including the Levites, the number given is 611,730.  The non-Levites were men fit for military service and were from 20 to 60 years of age.
                                                                           

The Levites were descendants from Moses and Aaron, who went back to Levi, one of the 12 sons of Jacob. Starting with Moses and Aaron, brothers, their father was Amram.  His father was Kohath, and his father was Levi.  Levites were men that were obligated to serve in temple services and were males between 20 and 50 years of age.  This was a population then of about 3,000,000.  Today, Jewish men usually know if they are a Cohen (Priest) or a Levite as they have certain functions in the synagogue during services.  The information is handed down from father to son.  Other Jews are the Israelites.  The 12 tribes conquered Canaan, the land of Israel, under the leadership of Joshua between the 113th to 11th centuries BCE.

Saul was the 1st king selected (1020-1004 BCE).
                                                                                 

Later, the Census of King David, Saul's successor (1010-970 BCE)  recorded 1,300,000 males over 20 years of age, which would be a population of over 5,000,000.  (Today, Israel's population of Jews is a little more than  6,000,000.)
                                                                             

Babylon attacked Israel in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE when they took away the best of the population.  The number of exiles who returned from Babylon is given at 42,360.  Tacitus, a Roman historian, declared that Jerusalem at its fall in 70 CE contained 600,000 people.  Josephus, a Jewish General who saved his own life and worked for the Romans as a historian of their current events, reported that there were as many as 1,100,000 Jews slain in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, along with 97,000 who were sold as slaves.  Josephus qualified this count by noting that Jerusalem was besieged during the Passover Holiday.  The majority of the 1,197,000 would not have been all residents but would have included those visiting for the festival from other towns and cities in Israel.
                                                                         
It was during the Roman (70-395)  and Byzantine rule (395-636)  that a large Jewish community survived, mainly in Galilee, in parts of the coastal plain and in Judaea.  Our reference is the Talmud which was compiled during this period, and it mentions more than 400 Jewish localities, most of the villages.

Jewish communities subsisted on agriculture.  It's leaders evolved and consolidated the Jewish way of life, in teachings and scholarship.  The outstanding works of that era are the Mishnah, completed in the 2nd century, and the Jerusalem Talmud, completed between the 4th and 5th centuries.
                                                                       

Picking up Manna during the 40 year Exodus

There were difficulties supplying 600,000 people with food crossing the Sinai desert and even later with  3,000,000 as a John William Colenso,(1814-1883)  a British mathematician, theologian, Biblical scholar and social activist, who was the first Church of England Bishop of Natal. pointed out, but he might have forgotten that the Israelites were taken care of from Egypt to Canaan with something supplied by G-d that came with instructions on how many were allowed per person. They were told  not to pick more than this allotted amount, and it was called  Manna.  (Exod. 16:4-35). I hope the Babylonian soldiers had traveled with food.  Obviously the Jews had to take all they had with them. No doubt those that survived lost a lot of weight.
                                                                             

The Torah tells us the number of adult male Jews that left Egypt 400 years later and walked back to their Homeland of Canaan.

In the Hadrianic War of 132-135 CE when Aluf Bar Kokhba fought against the Romans, 580,000 Jews were slaughtered in battle, according to Cassius dio (1xix.14).  According to Theodor Mommsen, in the 1st century CE, there were about 1,000,000 Jews in Egypt, with a total of 8,000,000 inhabitants there.  Of these, 200,000 lived in Alexandria, whose total population was 500,000.

Another historian, Adolf Harnack (Ausbreitung des Christentums, Leipzig, 1902) said that there were 1,000 Jews in Syria at the time of Nero in the 60's CE.  Also, 700,000 lived in Judea, and he allowed for additional 1,500,000 living in other places.  He estimated that there were during the 1st Century, 4,200,000 Jews in the world.  Jacobs remarked that this estimate is probably too high.  

1,100,000 is comparable to the population of the largest cities that existed anywhere in the world before the 19th century CE, but geographically, the Old City of Jerusalem is just a few % of the size of such cities as ancient Rome, Constantinople, Tokyo in the Edo period and Han Dynasty Xi'an.

The 1st century then found about 3,000,000 Jews living in Israel/Judah

63 BCE Roman empire occupied land; Herod king, 200,000 in Jerusalem.
73 CE-time of Masada, 3,000,000 Jews in the land.  After the revolt in 132-135 by Bar Kokhba and his men, many were driven into exile from Jerusalem where they had again lived for 3 the years.  Large Jewish communities emerged in countries of the Middle East and beyond like Germany and France.  .
By 1600, there were only about 500,000 Jews living there.
By 1800, even less, about 250,000 Jews. Ottoman rule for 400 years (1514-1914) Between 16th to 19th century, Jewish villages were reduced by about 1/2.  Jewish population dwindled and at the beginning of the 19th century, did not exceed 250,000.  At same time, terrible pogroms were going on in Russia and other places, driving Jews to Palestine.  Golda Meier was one of them.
By 1914,  about 680,000 people lived on the land west of the Jordan; 85,000 were Jews.

By 1948, the Jewish population was up to 650,000 on May 14th, end of year was 872,000. The Arab population had 126,000.

By 1949, the Arab population had left a 140,000 Arab population  after many Arabs had left.

By 1958 at end of year, population was 2,031, 072.
By 1968, at the end of year, population was 2,841,100
By  1971, the Jewish population was back to 3,095,100.  The great majority of Israel's people were Jews (2,636,600).  Arab Muslims numbered 343,900.  Population included 1,440,000 Jewish  immigrants; 700,000 had come from Moslem countries. They came destitute, little education, large family sizes.

By 1972, the Arab population was 458,500.

By 1978:  3,738,000 population.
By 1988: 4,477,000 population
By 1998: 6,038,000 population
By 2008: 7,337,000 population
By 2015: 8,462,000 population
By 2016: 8.522 million Israeli citizens, 10 times more than at its founding in 1948.

  Christians, mostly Arabs, numbered 77,300.  They are from 30 different denominations.  The main ones were the Greek Catholic (25,000), Greek Orthodox (22,000), Latin (16,000) and Maronite of Lebanon (3,500)  Protestants numbered 2,500 and were from the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists and Lutherans.  Adherents of the Eastern Monophysite Churches including Armenian Orthodox, Coptic of Egypt, Ethiopian and Syrian Orthodox numbered 3,500.  Over 11,000 Christians live in Jerusalem.

By 1971, the Karaites, Jews that only accepted the literal law of the bible, numbered 10,000. They live in or near Ramla.
The Samaritans who only recognize the Torah (Pentateuch) and Joshua, numbered 230 around Holon near Tel Aviv, and 250 in Nablus (Shechem), home of their high priest.
Circassians live in the Galilee and near Haifa.   and number over 700 of the Ahmadi sect from Pakistan.
Druze numbered 38,000 and lived in 18 villages in the Galilee and on Mt. Carmel.  8,000 Druzes live on the Golan Heights.

The Arabs and the Druzes are Israel's largest minority groups.
1972:  458,500 minorities in Israel of which 73,000 live in Jerusalem.

Now in 2016, the Jewish population is 6,000,000 with 1.7 million Arabs.

"An example of other places, "The city of Athens in the 4th century BC had a population of 60,000 non-foreign free males.   Including slaves, women, and foreign-born people, the number of people residing in the city state was probably in the range of 350,000 to 500,000 people, of which 160,000 normally resided inside the city and port.

The population of Sicily is estimated to range from about 600,000 to 1 million in the 5th century BC. The island was urbanized, and its largest city alone, the city of Syracuse, having 125,000 inhabitants or about 12% to 20% of the total population living on the island.

Greek historian Diodorus Siculus estimated that 7,000,000 inhabitants resided in Egypt during his lifetime before its annexation by the Roman Empire. Of this, he states that 300,000 citizens lived within the city of Alexandria.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the number of Jews living in the Land was estimated to be 10,000.  
When Israel was reborn on May 14, 1948, the number of the Jewish population was 650,000.  
"Now, 6,218,000 or 74.9% are Jews, and 1,719,000 or 20.7% are Arabs and 359,000 or 4.22% are other-Christians, etc." 

One thing we know for sure, and that is that 6,000,000 Jews were slaughtered on purpose in the Holocaust in the attempt of the Nazis to exterminate all Jews.

Today, there are 14,000,000 of us Jews  and we make up 0.02% of the world's population.

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons
http://www.gotquestions.org/Israelites-eat-flocks.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_demography
Tanach, The Stone Edition, ArtScroll Series.
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/06/demographics-of-jews-in-israel-and.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Byzantine.html

The Jewish Connection With North Africa

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

Ptolemy VI Philometor, Pharaoh-
Egypt under the control of Ptolemy VIII 164 BCE–163 BCE; Ptolemy VI restored 163 BCE

Our Jewish history connects to Africa since biblical days. "By the time of the last pharaoh, the well-known Cleopatra VII Philopator of the Ptolemaic Dynasty  no longer held the power it once did.   Fewer monuments were erected and, with her death in 30 BCE, Egypt became a Roman province and the glory and might of the pharaohs of old faded into memory. She was a pharaoh.
                                                                           

Cleopatra

Cleopatra, portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor. 

There probably were Jews serving in the military of the last Pharaohs.  At the time of the destruction of the First Temple of Solomon in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, many Jewish  fugitives went back to Egypt seeking refuge.                                                      

586 BCE, Destruction by Babylonians of the Temple

 Many records illustrate the life of the Jewish military colony at Yeb in the 5th century BCE.  This was probably not a unique situation.
                                                                           

Alexander the Great (336-323 BCE) -statue in Istanbul
Young king of Macedonia, made a deep impression on the Jews.  

Then Egypt was conquered by the Greeks, and the Jewish element increased quickly.  Alexander the Great and his successors introduced Jewish settlers into their new cities.  This is how Alexandria became a set of Jewish life and its civilization.
                                                                               

From Egypt, Jewish settlements spread west along the Mediterranean Sea.  By the 2nd century BCE, there was an important colony in Cyrene.  They have found many inscriptions and literary monuments that shows Jews lived there during the Roman period nearly as far west as the Straits of Gibraltar. Egyptian Jews were so strong that they were able to revolt after 70 CE when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans.  The Jews of Cyrene took control of the whole province in 115.

As Christianity grew in Egypt, the rivalry between Christian and Jew developed.  The Patriarch Cyril led many persecutions against Jews in the 4th century.  This was the cause of the end of Alexandrian Jewry.

Farther west, the Vandal invaders introduced a kinder policy towards Jews in the 5th century. Then the Christian Byzantine reconquered the land under Belisarius 100 years later who undid the horrible anti Jewish policies.
                                                                   

Ethiopian Jewish IDF soldier

A tradition developed at this time of the presence of many independent or semi-independent tribes saying that they were Jews.  The Jews of Ethiopia belong to this group.  Their story is that they came from the Queen of Sheba and her union with King Solomon when she went to visit him.

In the 7th century, North Africa experienced a great revival  after the Moslem invasion.   The Jewish communities became completely Arabicized in the language of Arabic, customs and social habits.  Egypt had a new city, Cairo, and it against became the seat of an important settlement.
                                                                           

Tunisia-between Algeria and Libya on the sea.
When under Spanish rule (1535-1574), many Jews were killed or were sold into slavery.  
When under French protection in 1881, Jews were permitted French citizenship in 1910.  By 1990, only 2,500 Jews left. Many Jews had emigrated to France and Israel.    

Farther West was the city of Kairouan, which was near Tunis-between Algeria and Libya.  Jews settled here after its foundation in the 7th century which became a great center of Jewish learning. The community decayed after the 12th century and until the late 19th century, no Jew was allowed to live in the city.  None lives there now.   Eldad Ha-Dani had appeared in about 883. He was a late 9th century traveler whose origins and personality still remain a riddle.  He claimed to belong to the tribe of Dan.  In 880-5, he visited Jewish communities in N. Africa and Spain and told them fantastic accounts of the 10 Tribes. He was living as a nomad.    We believe there were Jewish tribes found inland.

In the middle of the 12th century, the Almohades censored open practice of Judaism in Morocco and in neighboring territories.  This was persecution and caused the migration of Jews to go east back to Egypt.  Finally, the almohades lost their power and Jewish life in North Africa revived.
                                                                         

Jews of Morocco

In 1391, there was a persecution program going on against the Jews and this led to an emigration across the Straits and introduced a new Jewish element of a higher talmudic culture.  Then in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the Spanish King said Jews had to convert to Catholicism or leave the country.  They faced death if they did not.  This was strictly enforced everywhere, but especially in Morocco we see it was handled a little differently.  .  There the Jews were confined to their own quarter (Melelah), compelled to wear black clothing, made to pay heavy taxes, and treated very badly with swearing and other acts showing they were more like 3rd class citizens; trash.  They were excluded from several Holy Cities like Kairouan, and often gangs tried to massacre Jews.  Generally, they were just tolerated.

Finally, during the 19th century arrived and nothing had changed in the treatment of Jews.  Now the lot of Jews in Ethiopia had deteriorated.  So relations between them and the Jews of Europe opened up.  This brought security and emancipation for the time being, until the Fascist regime came to power.  This led to serious acts in Tripoli even before Italy officially adopted anti-Semitism in 1938 under Hitler's power.  Later, they adopted a policy of systematic discrimination.  Territories under the French imitated this policy after the Franco-German armistice of 1940 when any thought of previous emancipation for Jews was then nullified.
                                                                               

After the German armies occupied North Africa in 1941-1943, there was the persecution against Jews as it was happening in Germany itself.  Persecutions, forced levies, outbreaks of violence were happening everywhere from Tripoli westward.  When the Germans were defeated, the anti-Semitism slackened.  Jews and Moslems were now not getting along.
               
After 1948, the Jews of North Africa left in large numbers, mostly for Israel or France with some going to Canada.  Few Jews remained in Algeria since 1962, while the Libyan community had been liquidated since the Six-Day War of 1967, and very few stayed in Egypt.  Almost all the Ethiopian Jews were taken to Israel in the 1980s and early 1990s.  I was living in Safed at the time and saw the Ethiopian situated there.  We all lived in high-rise apartment buildings.  Safed was cold in the winter, hot in the summer.  At another period, Russian Jews were relocated on the desert.  It was too bad that the two groups could not change places, but it all depended on what housing was available at that time.
                                                                                 

Miss Israel 2014; An 18-year-old resident of Beersheva, Mor Maman, Moroccan. 

By 1990, only 13,500 Jews lived in North Africa and 10,000 of them were in Morocco, where they spoke French.  I was teaching English in the junior high in Safed from 1981-to the end of 19185.  The beautiful lady in charge of our English Department was from Morocco.  She also taught French, so was tri-lingual.  

Update: 3/13/16, 9:41 am Pacific Time:  Israel is coming back to Africa, and Africa is returning to Israel.  Prime Minister Netanyahu said this on February 23rd in welcoming visiting Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, who arrived for a 3-day state visits, the first by a Kenyan president since 1994. ( from  magazine-The Jerusalem Report, March 21, 2016 issue page 3). 

Resource: The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia
http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/alexander-the-great

The Jews of South Africa

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         

Johannesburg, South Africa; only the flag tells me this is not a picture of the USA.
The flag of South Africa was adopted on 27 April 1994, at the beginning of South Africa's 1994 general election, to replace the flag that had been used since 1928. The new national flag  was chosen to represent the new democracy.

Jews went to South Africa during the early 19th century. By 1992 they had a population of 120,000 Jews in South Africa. By July 2014, the core Jewish population was 70,000.  The expanded population was from 80,000 to 92,000 Jews.   The first synagogue built there was organized in Capetown in 1841.  Many of the Jewish settlers were traders and peddlers, traveling among the Boer farmers.  Later, they tended to move to towns.  Many Jews emigrated  to South Africa, including a number from Eastern Europe after gold was discovered toward the end of the 19th century.
                                                                               

Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein at a Nelson Mandela Memorial Ceremony.
Despite vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric going on, he attended.  Mandela was very anti-Semitic.  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. In September 1998, Mandela was appointed Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, who held their annual conference in Durban. He used the event to criticise the "narrow, chauvinistic interests" of the Israeli government in stalling negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Notice, he put all the blame on Israel and not the Palestinians ruled by Arafat who would not make peace under any conditions offered.   Mandela faced  criticism from the West for his government's trade links to Syria, Cuba, and Libya,  and for his personal friendships with Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi.  Now we see why he was against Israel and for the Arabs.  

 Johannesburg became the main center of Jewish settlement.  In South Africa, Jews enjoyed political equality in Cape Colony and Natal.  They had it in the Transvaal only after the 2nd Boer War.  The rabbis of the principal congregations in both Johannesburg (Jewish population: 63,620) and Cape Town (Jewish population  of Cape Peninsula: 28,000) have Chief Rabbis and 65 synagogues are affiliated to the Orthodox Federation of Synagogues.

A Reform movement, started in 1933, has 14 affiliated congregations.  there is a wide network of Jewish education, with 69 nursery schools, 10 primary schools, and 8 high schools.
                                                                             

Stanley and Helen Goldfoot of Jerusalem
Family was from Telsiai, Lithuania, then Dublin, Ireland 

It was Stanley Goldfoot who left after graduating high school and emigrated to Israel in 1933. He boarded a ship alone at age 18, and when in the middle of the ocean, the ship hoisted a Nazi flag.   He was afraid that he would never get to Israel.  He was the very first Jew to immigrate to Israel from South Africa.

In younger days, Stanley with 1st wife, Rebecca "Rollo" and 2 daughters,
born in Capetown, SA. 

At the age of 18, he heard a speech about the Zionist vision by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, which 

appealed very strongly to him. It was all he needed to hear before packing 

a bag, leaving a shocked family and heading for Palestine. He joined a 

HaShomer HaTzair kibbutz, picking eggplants in the fields, and making floor 

tiles, "balatot". There, he became the Chief of Intelligence for the famous Stern Group (Lehi)  which was very active in the days before May 14, 1948 when Israel was born again.

"Israel maintained deepening military and diplomatic ties with South Africa between 1967 and 1990.  There is also a modest but growing community of South African Jews living in Israel."

A large immigration of Jews came to South Africa after World War I, when the Lithuanians came in.  Restrictions were put on them during the 1930s which limited the immigration, in which many did come that were German Jews, naturally. The 30s was the time of terrible anti-Semitism in Germany.  After 1939, when Germany closed the door to German Jews emigration, the Jewish immigration was negligible, although it has increased again starting in the 1980s.
                                                                           

Abba Eban b: 1915 Cape Town, South Africa-d: 2002 Tel Aviv, Israel, Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages.
He also served in the British Army in Egypt and Mandate Palestine

Another famous South African  who emigrated to Israel was Abba Eban, who was the Foreign Minister of Israel from 1966 to 1974.  "In his career he was Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations. He was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Any emigration early on  from South African Jews had gone to Israel, but now more people have emigrated to other English-speaking countries. "South African Jewry differ significantly from those in other developing countries in that the majority of South African Jews still remain in South Africa (62% of the original 120,000 still remain), and that a significant number of those that did move abroad went to countries popular among other South African émigrés such as Australia,^] the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
                                                                               

Standing against anti-Semitism in South Africa 

The remaining Jews are well-organized and have a high degree of centralization with the Board of Deputies as its representative organization.  They also have a strong Zionist Federation.  This year they have the South African Friends of Israel Conference on their calendar, the SAZF Advocacy Group (South African Zionist Federation).
                                                                           

Capetown, South Africa

Many Jews that wound up in South Africa originally came from Lithuania.  First they had gone to England, and then Dublin, Ireland.  From there they made their way to South Africa.  A large number of the Irish immigrants were from the shtetl or small town of Akmiyan (Akmene), or townships like that in the province of Kovno (Kaunas) in Lithuania to where their ancestors had trekked from the Rhineland before Lithuania passed from Polish to Russian control in 1772.  They had been invited in by the Polish princes who wanted to colonize their lands.  The Jews had brought the added benefit of trading expertise to areas where such commercialism was closed to serfs and considered too menial for high-born Polish families.  But they did find a certain amount of anti-Semitism later on in Ireland, being it was mostly a Catholic country.  This is the route my Goldfus/Goldfoot family took, and I found today's Goldfoots in South Africa did come from Ireland first.

Resource: Book:  Jewish Ireland, a social history, by Ray Rivlin.  (I might add that he is a relative, no doubt, of today's President Rivlin of Israel.)p. 32.
The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia, page 19.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_South_Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abba_Eban
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Eban.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/despite-vicious-anti-semitic-rhetoric-south-african-jews-say-daily-life-not-disrupted/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

Israel Keeps Morals in Fighting; Trump Needs to Learn Why

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

Donald Trump has been talking tonight about how he would use waterboarding on ISIS terrorists to gain information need to save our American population.  He would expand the use, do something a little worse,  was his inference.
                                                                         

This is a pretty shocking attitude to many of us.  He had great reasoning as to why.  ISIS was cutting off heads.  They did worse than waterboarding.  The problem is, seeing such vulgar acts causes most people  to want to retaliate in kind.

I was reminded of something I had just read by Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University in Montreal in his article in Hadassah Magazine this month, "Courage Under Fire".

PA leader, Mahmoud Abbas 

                                                                           

Yasser Arafat

Lately,  the PA leadership, Yasser Arafat's replacement of Abbas and his former terrorist cohorts, thought up a real doozy of a way to attack Israel without being caught so as to be labeled terrorists again.  They told lies to their Palestinian people that Israel was going to change the status of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  In fact, they said, they want to tear down their mosque and build their Third Temple there.  At the least, they will take over the Temple Mount shortly !
                                                     

Moshe Dayan, pointing.  (1915-1981) He lost an eye in 1941 when in the British army in Lebanon.  He was chief of general staff of the Israel army from 1953-8 and in 1956.  Was Minister of Defense just before 1967, resigned in 1974. 

Now, the truth of the matter is that Israel, through Moshe Dayan, voluntarily let the Jordanian  Islamic Waqf have religious control there since 1967, after Israel won the 1967 War.

The PA has been "whipping up impressionable Palestinians to kill Israelis in a less violent way like the usual suicide bombings.  This time they walked by Jews and stabbed them with knives.  If that was killing too few Jews,  they got in their cars and rammed them into crowds of people, mostly in Jerusalem, which they want to take over anyway.

What has been Israel's reaction?  We use the Torah for guidance, and from it we learn we may fight when necessary, as everyone should know by now, being Israel has had to fight from the very beginning of its birth in 1948.  That was the War of Independence 1947-1949.  Then they had to fight in 1956 in The Sinai War from October 29 until November 5, 1956.   In 1967 Israel had to fight the Six-Day War from the 5th to 11th of June 1967. .  That was followed in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War.  That's been followed by Two Intefadas and many other battles.

Judaism is the religion of this tiny country, just like Islam is the religion of Pakistan and Christianity is the religion of the USA.    "Judaism is not Christianity preaching "love thy enemy," but still our sages advised us not to gloat, not to turn brutal---for our sake and our adversaries."  

Mr. Troy told the story of a recent attack in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market.  Two children, age 14 and 16 answered the call of the PA and stabbed an old Jewish man in his head with their scissors!  A shopkeeper came out of his shop and knocked down one of them, a girl, with a chair that was sitting outside the market.  An Israeli radio pundit interviewed him afterwards and asked him how he felt about being a hero and saving the man's life by stopping these two.

He answered that he felt terrible!  He couldn't feel happy about doing it because it was a kid that he had to stop.  His humanity is the opposite of how the Palestinian culture teaches.  They are taught to take part in this insane incitement.  They have a song to help instigate their teens.  "I'tan, I'tan (Stab, Stab).  They celebrate the killing of any Jew, no matter what their age.  They stoop low enough by teaching their children, like these young teens, to turn into murderers.  It's also what ISIS has been doing on an even grander scale.

Terrorists see Israelis as weak because they love their children and do not like to kill.  They just don't get it.  It's the Israeli's strength!  They will not lose their morality and standards just because they have to fight!

 Israelis fight because they have been put into the position of fight or die, so they "fight to keep their moral compass."  Israel is fighting the Palestinians that are Hamas terrorists because they have taken on the role as Israel's enemy, in constantly trying to kill Israelis.  As long as they prefer to be Israel's enemy, Israel will fight them intensely.  Israel intends to stay strong and take pride in keeping their moral standards and not sinking as low as their enemy in their behavior.  They have standards of behavior, perhaps much stronger than the USA's standards.  With it all, they have great hopes and determination to eventually achieve peace with the enemy.

The First Geneva Convention goes back to 1864 to protect sick and wounded soldiers.
It covers such things as treatment of prisoners of war; military necessity, along with distinction and proportionality; and the prohibition of certain weapons that may cause unnecessary suffering.  It's about  the limits to acceptable wartime conduct

                                                                         
Trump has not been in the army or any other service in the USA.  He hasn't been in moralist discussions about how and why it is important to keep standards in fighting.  There are international accepted laws pertaining to how to conduct oneself in a war if a soldier.  He thinks, at this time in history, that it's okay to waterboard just because ISIS has gone back to the dark ages with their cutting off heads and other disgusting way of winning a war. He's going to obey the laws now, but change them to allow waterboarding excesses.    So he's going to lower the boom because the enemy has done so.
                                                                 

Thank G-d Israel has not done that.  Golda Meier, Israel's past Prime Minister, has said many things about having to fight against the enemy. " A leader who doesn't hesitate before 

he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader."

"We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a 

new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries 

bloom in Israel."   "It is true we have won all our 

wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want 

victories anymore."    "We Jews have a secret 

weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no 

place to go."  But the next is my favorite saying of hers.  "

                                                                              

1914 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Golda at age 16
Born May 3, 1898 in Kiev, Ukraine

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."

Resource: Hadassah Magazine, March 7, 2016, page 224, Commentary, Courage Under Fire by Gil Troy

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

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Jews of Israel Among the World's Religions and Countries

Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

Catholic Church, St. Peters in Missouri
First Christian religion 1st Century AD (CE) 

As of 2013, there were 7.125 billion people in the world.

China had 1.357 billion people.  .

The USA had 316.5 million people.

The UK had 64.1 million people. 

                                                                         

LDS-Latter Day Saints Mormon Temple, Bismark, North Dakota
Protestant Christian, started in 1820 in New York with Joseph Smith
a religion that has spread all over the world.  

Did you know that Christianity is the largest world religion with 2 billion people?  It's found in:
1. 49 Roman Catholic countries
2. 20 Protestant countries
3. 12 Eastern orthodox countries.
Total countries: 81
                                                                   

Mosque (Islamic Center) in Detroit, Michigan- began in 610 AD (CE)

  Islam is the 2nd largest in the world with 1.6 billion people.  It's found in:
56 Islamic countries.  As of 2011, I had found 48 Muslim majority countries.  Palestine would be the next one if it is created-which would be in land originally ancient Israel.  

The West Bank is Judea and Samaria.  Judea was the southern part of Israel when it divided in 920 BCE after King Solomon died.  Samaria was the land in Israel of the city and surrounding land of their capital.  95-98% of the Palestinian population lives on 40% of the Judea-Samariaan land, leaving 60% almost unpopulated.  Nablus, the largest Palestinian city in Judea-Samaria is surrounded by undeveloped land.  Most Palestinians in Judea-Samaria live in built-up cities and towns  like Nablus and Tulkarm.  Ramallah, another Palestinian city, is the political and economic center of the Palestinian Authority.  
                                                           

Hindu Temple, New Delhi, India started between 500 BCE-300 CE

              
Hinduism is the 3rd largest world religion with 1 billion people.  It's found in 4 Hindu countries. 
                                                                                 

Buddhist Temple-statue or image  of Buddha in every temple 

Buddhism is the 4th largest world religion with 376 million people. It started in 6th century BCE
                                                                       

Neveh Shalom Synagogue in Portland, Oregon with 10 Commandments on building
Judaism started in about 2000 -1500 BCE

Judaism is the smallest and the oldest active world religion, with 14 million people and only 1 country- Israel.

 Between 5-6 million Jews make up 2% of the USA population, and 6 million make up Israel who also have 1.7 million Arabs living with them.  In 1948, there were 160,000 Palestinian Arabs who stayed inside Israel's small borders and because they stayed and did not leave, they became citizens of Israel.  Hebrew and Arabic are Israel's 2 official languages.

2 million other Jews are scattered throughout the world, such as France, Great Britain,  South Africa and others.  Jews make up 0.02% of the world population.

Israel is smaller than New Jersey, one of the USA's smallest states, which is 8,729 square miles.  Israel is only made up of 8,019 square miles.  Israel is so small that it can fit into the state of California 19 times.
                                                                     

Deborah, leader and Judge

Before Israel had kings, they had judges.  Deborah was one of them.  King Saul was Israel's first king in the 11th century BCE.  .  King David was the next king and was born about 1010 BCE and died in 970 BCE.  Jews came to the Promised land before they were even Jews.  It was with Abraham and Sarah who lived in the 2nd millennium BCE or about 1948 BCE..  They in turn had the son Isaac and he was the father of Jacob.  After traveling to Egypt during a famine, they stayed longer than expected and wound up as slaves for 400 years.  They returned to their homeland with Moses.  So they have been natives of Israel for over 3,000 years, and this is proven by archaeological and historical evidence as well as the biblical text.
                                                                   

One find of art work from the Byzantine Period of the 6th century CE was a mosaic showing King David playing the lyre.  This was found in the ancient synagogue in GAZA.  The Israel Museum reported about this.  David was said to be a gingy (red-headed).  This mosaic shows this.

There is reported to be 4,200 religions in the world today.  Some of them are: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Slavic neopaganism, Celtic polytheism, Heathenism (German paganism), Semitic neopaganism, Wicca, Kemetism (Egyptian paganism), Hellenism, Italo-Roman neopaganism.

Resource:  Israel Pocket Facts produced by StandWithUs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Catholic_Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Buddhism
http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=37&Issue=1&ArticleID=15
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions_and_spiritual_traditions
https://www.google.com/search?noj=1&q=how+many+people+in+the+world%3F&oq=how+many+people+in+the+world%3F&gs_l=serp.3..0l6.3671.9221.0.10191.29.15.0.13.13.0.286.1856.2j10j1.13.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..3.26.2011.Yy269M-HHB4