Finding the Fortress of Zion or Citadel by Israeli Archaeologists Defies Naysayers

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

                                          Tower of David in Jerusalem
" In the Second Book of Samuel, it is written that King David captured Jerusalem, then under Jebusite control, using a water shaft to penetrate the city’s defenses." 

Associated Press does a number today in their small article called Middle East Archaeology about Eli Shukron, a 20 year well-known Israeli archaeologist who works for Israel's Antiques Authority,  "who found the legendary citadel "captured" (in reality he had built it)  by King David in his conquest of Jebus."  A citadel is a fortress that commands a city, a stronghold. Above is the Tower of David that he also had built.  He also found the water shaft mentioned above which is was a water tunnel.  AP has followed the lead of other writers on the web in questioning the authenticity of King David's existence.  King David to Jews was a member of the Tribe of Judah, the largest of the 12 tribes.  Shukron made important finds in 2004, 2007, 2009, 2012 and now in 2014.  Of the the finds was " a shard from a bulla bearing the name of the city of Bethlehem. This is the first time that Bethlehem is mentioned outside the Bible from the period of the First Temple.  How about that for the atheists?

"Shukron's dig, which began in 1995, uncovered a massive fortification of five-ton stones stacked 21 feet wide. Pottery shards helped date the fortification walls to be 3,800 years old. They are the largest walls found in the region from before the time of King Herod, the ambitious builder who expanded the Second Jewish Temple complex in Jerusalem almost 2,100 years ago. The fortification surrounded a water spring and is thought to have protected the ancient city's water source."

King David was Israel's 2nd king who ruled from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE.  He was the father of King Solomon, whose reputation was to have been extremely wise.  It was Moses (1391-1271 BCE) who lead the Israelites into Canaan where they created Israel with Joshua leading them in 1271 BCE when Moses died.
                                                                       

The article brings out the fact that using the Bible as a field guide to identify ancient ruins has become a longstanding debate.  We Jews regard our Tanakh (Old Testament to Christians) as quite accurate, especially in such matters concerning policy, government, geography, wars, etc,  It's to us a regular history book.  The article even used the adjective, "legendary" for King David, evidently not even accepting his existence, along with the Palestinian Muslims who are also in denial as to Israel's ancient history of living on the land since Joshua.  Associated Press say that King David" has long eluded historians looking for clear-cut evidence of his existence and reign."

 I've seen where people of little faith do not believe anything in the bible.  They're called atheists.  Here we have on record a 4,000 year old history of our people and because it isn't copyrighted in New York, is unacceptable to them.  Too bad.  That's not stopping our archaeologists who keep unearthing treasures of history every day.

Every day Israeli archaeologists have found evidence of our existence there from coins to artifacts to structures.  Jews have been writing since Moses in 2,000 BCE, who we accept as the writer of the "Five Books of Moses", Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,  and Deuteronomy, or our Torah.  Jews had been writing when other peoples were still living in trees.  Genealogies were kept and articles of trade. Poetry, literature, rules were all part of our writing history as long with geography.  It's quite hypocritical to think that our history is  nothing but legend.  I haven't forgotten that early in one of Israel's many wars, soldiers with their Torah with them used it to find a faster path to safer ground not known to them but found in the good book, and this saved their lives.   I wonder if they were surprised to find its accuracy.

We know that the earliest evidence of man in the Jerusalem area was found in the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic Age.  The foundation of the city of Jerusalem took place in the Early Bronze Age about 3500 BCE to 2000 BCE when Abraham appeared on the scene and when the Caananites first came to this country.

Our history and excavations tell us that Jebus had been inhabited  from 2000 to 1550 BCE by the Caananites, just like Salem which was ruled by Melchi-zedek, a priest of the most high god who was honored by Abraham as told in Genesis 14:18-19.  The Hyksos had a revolution and left behind in this Canaanite village of Jebus signs of Hittite and Hurrite habitation.  Then in the Tel el Amarna Period of the 15th century BCE, the town was ruled by a king who was attacked by the Habiru invaders and he sent a request to his suzerain, the pharaoh, for help.  Now, if we know all this pre-Jerusalem period of our Jewish history, certainly our archaeologists were capable of finding out more, and they did.

The Egyptians kept a Cushite garrison in Jebus.  At the time of Joshua's conquest in about 1320 BCE, Adoni-zedek, king of Jebus, was defeated at Aijalon.  His city stayed as an independent enclave between the tribal areas of Benjamin and Judah, 2 of the 10 Tribes of Israel.  By the 12th century, Jebus-Jerusalem stayed independent with Philistine help until David captured it in 1010 BCE.  Jerusalem was made capital of his united Israel as told in II Samuel 5: 6-8.and again in Chronicles 11:4-6. The last Jebusite king was apparently Araunah as found in II Samuel 24:15.   David was lenient with the Jebusites.  The Jebusites became tributary under King Solomon and then assimilated. Many wound up intermarrying with the tribal members.    David added the Fortress of Zion then which must be the  citadel that AP described as being captured by King David, so somebody has his facts incorrect.
                                                                         

                                          Tower of David in Jerusalem, different angle

King David also built a "House of Heroes" for his guard.  Then he built a tomb inside the city  for himself and his dynasty, which many of us do in our cemeteries.   David transferred the Ark of the Covenant there.  He made Jerusalem the religious center of Israel.  King David was a warrior who conquered.  He built his empire which reached from the Red Sea to the Euphrates River.  He was too much of a warrior to be allowed by G-d to build such as building as a Temple, so that remained for his son, a man of peace, to do.  Solomon built the Temple for G-d as a place to keep the Ark with the 10 Commandments and other artifacts.

" Virtually all of the holy sites, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Western Wall and Temple Mount, are located in the Old City which is in the eastern part of the city."  The Muslims demand this as the capital of their future Palestine-which is to be minus any Jew.  They expect to practice apartheid and love it.  This is one reason why the peace talks have failed.  In the meantime, the Muslims are quite free to pray in their mosques at the Temple Mount.  

Elad 's foundation is said to have a nationalist agenda.  Of course.  Any proof Israel can find to prove our history is proof needed in the attack from Palestinians that Jews never lived in the land.  The foundation's funding is from private donations from American and UK Jews.  They then have money to buy Arab homes that lie near the excavated area where Jews have moved in, often under heavy guard because of the danger of the neighborhood.  The land in Israel is full of history, so in this case, is just as fair as the Jewish community who had to move out of South Portland in the 50's for Portland's new growth.  I lost my synagogue to this, Neveh Zedek with Rabbi Kleinman.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Oregonian Newspaper, May 7, 2014, page A12 AP, right-side at bottom of page under BUZZ.
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/03/archeological-finds-in-israel-proving.html
http://www.theblaze.com/ on Eli Shukron
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/05/06/israeli-archaeologist-says-found-citadel-captured-by-king-david/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Shukron
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/Citadel.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/02/people-that-validate-jewish-history.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/06/archaeology-proves-israels-past-history.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/12/king-solomons-temple-relics-show-up-in.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2011/12/palestinians-guilty-of-identity-theft.html

Galilee Israeli- Arab Terrorist Group Murders Again

Nadene Goldfoot                                                      

Every city in the USA has had murders happen, even serial murders, but in Israel this is different when the murders are committed by Palestinian-Arab terrorists out for notoriety in order to cause fear in citizens and possibly to stir up trouble between the 1.7 million Arab-Israeli citizens with the 6 million Jews of Israel.

A beautiful 20 year old Jewish Israeli woman, Shelly Dadon,  was murdered on May Day (5/1/14) by a gang of Arabs that are also citizens of Israel who have been found to belong to a terrorist organization called "The Galilee Liberators."  She was stabbed many times inflicted savagely into her breasts (upper torso).  The killers left clues purposely to let the police know what group had killed her, so it was a terrorist act meant to put fear into the community.  Her body was found in a deserted woods near the Migdal ha Emek industrial zone in northern Israel.  She herself was from Afulah. That bothers me.  Chances are she was forced at gunpoint to walk with her attackers till they knifed her to death.  At her age, I imagine she had been in the IDF from 18 to 20 so should have known how to defend herself, but being their were probably 3 attackers involved, she was outnumbered.  She could have talked to one and then suddenly the others appeared and surrounded her.

The Galilee Liberators started with Arabs who lived in northern Israel in 2002 when Palestine suicide bombings on Israeli towns during the 2nd intifada were at their peak.  Since then for the past 12 years, they have developed ties with other Palestinian terrorist organizations like the Popular Front, PFLP-General Command, Hamas and Al Aqsa Brigades.  Some are allied with the Lebanese Hizballah and others with al Qaeda.  Everyone is in the mix.

Members are spread out from Acre to Safed and Nazareth.  They specialize in murder (for hire) and hiding used weapons or providing hideouts for killers.

The practice is that they get a person in a quiet spot and kill them brutally.  Oleg Shaychat , an IDF soldier from Nazareth was killed this way.  The killers were Mohammed Anbatawi and Mohammed Hatib from Kafr Kana.  They grabbed him from Beit Rimon's intersection in 2003 on a hot day of July 21st and abandoned his body in a nearby olive orchard.
                                                                       

Teen-aged Dana Bennett was their next victim.  They like to single out girls and tail them to a lonely spot before the death blow, and this they did on August 1, 2003.   The police couldn't find her body, so they became frustrated about it as they want the publicity.  They actually called the French News Agency AFP in January 2005 telling them they would tell where her body was for a price of 1,000 Palestinian terrorists in jail to be released.  She was found and laid to rest without making such a deal. The  killer, with the help of a 22 year old woman, was Yihya Farkhan, 33 years old from Wadi Hamam.   This  "young woman,  considered a murder suspect, recounted in her investigation how she and Farkhan met Bennett near a bridge as she was getting out of a taxi late at night. Farkhan sent the woman to persuade the young girl to enter their car, after Farkhan told her he was a hotel owner looking for new employees.  Bennett only realized something was wrong as the car turned to a dirt road near Wadi Hamam, but this was already too late. She tried to resist, but to no avail: Farkhan forcefully dragged her out of the car and started hitting her with his bare hands until she died.  Farkhan had killed at least 4 people already and was called a serial killer.  Before he had killed Dana, he raped another female and tried to kill her afterwards but she got away. " 

On August 12, 2008, Ahmed Mahmoud Khatib from Kafr Manda grabbed the automatic sidearm of an Israeli security guard in the Old City of Jerusalem.  Then he shot and injured 10 walkers before he was caught.

This same terrorist gang had 3 members murder Yof'm Weinstein in November 2009.  He was a taxi driver from Nazareth Ilit, and then also they had left the proper clues behind so that people knew about their terrorist gang.  They did it for the notoriety.

In the past years this terrorist group has committed many attacks that the public was not aware of which would have given them the notoriety they seek.  They've ambushed police vans, broken into IDF bases to vandalize equipment and steal weapons, tracked IDF movements in the North and passed information onto other terrorists in Judea and Samaria and Lebanon.

It's time to inform the public and let them all know, men as well as women, to not be outside alone for any reason.  If you need to get your walk for the day, go in  groups and wear whistles around your necks and a bracelet with mace.

In 2011, after hearing a singing group of Palestinian Arabs here in Portland's Lincoln High School  sing about how bad Israel was, and grabbing a speaking engagement about it caused me to wonder how long it would be before some overt action happened, and here it is.  They cause havoc for all the other 1.7 million Arab citizens who are happy being Israeli citizens by creating a terrorist group.  The best thing that can happen is that they are stamped out immediately.  Their cells must be found and broken apart.  Israel doesn't need discord to divide their citizens but events that bring them together as one unit.

Resource: http://www.debka.com/article/23888/Shelly-Dadon-was-murdered-by-the-veteran-Israeli-Arab-terrorist-group-%E2%80%9CGalilee-Liberators%E2%80%9D
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3721705,00.html
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/12/12/palestinian-hip-hop-group-comparing-israelis-to-nazis-performs-for-oregon-public-high-school-students/
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2012/05/anti-semitism-at-lincoln-high.html-Palestinians spreading hatred

Jordan, Sitting on the Edge of Peace

Nadene Goldfoot                                                          

July 25, 1994 with King Hussein I of Jordan;  President Bill Clinton of USA, PM Yitzhak Rabin of Israel This was when the 3 signed the peace treaty with Israel.  

Who has lived traditionally in the land where Jordan now lies? The kingdoms of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Israel and also the Amalekites had lived there   They were all Semitic Canaanite-speakers.   

The Kingdom of Jordan comes from 1921's area that was called Transjordan.  It was detached from the area originally taken by Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom for himself that was designated through the Palestine Mandate to be part of the Jewish National Homeland. Abdullah was a Hashemite, which was a clan of Hashim, Banu Hashim, an Arabian clan which was part of the Quraysh tribe of Arabia.  The English owed Abdullah for helping them fight against the Germans.  They owed the Jews, too, and had given their promise to create the Jewish Homeland out of Palestine.  The Jews wound up with 20% of "their" homeland while the Arabs go 80% of it and are still complaining as they want the remaining 20% that happens to be Israel.  After all, 8,000 square miles of Israel is not a big chunk.

 "In September 1922, Transjordan was officially formed from the British Mandate of Palestine, once the League of Nations sanctioned the British Transjordan proposal which laid down that the Mandate regions to the east of the Jordan River would be kept out from all the stipulations taking care of Jewish colony. Transjordan was governed as a semi-independent province by as-Sayyid Abdullah bin al-Husayn, who was nominated as Emir by the British Government in 1921. After independence, he was made known as King Abdullah I, also Abdullah the Founder."
                                                                   

                                                              King Abdullah II of Jordan

 The Hashemites trace their lineage of DNA to J1ca3d  haplotype which goes back to Mohammad. " The Hashemite royals of Jordan are descended from Al-Hassan bin Ali's (ra) son Al-Hasan al-Muthanna."  The wisest move was that Abdullah I had become the king and not his half brother, Faisal who was a rebel to the idea of peace with Jews.  They have maintained peaceful coexistence since after the 73 War, 41 years ago.  When they reach the 50 year mark I hope both celebrate with a great Jubilee.

The nation was under British control till after the Second World War. The British authorities urged the United Nations in 1946 to endorse a conclusion to British Mandate regime in the territory.  So, in 1946 the British handed over the reigns to Jordan.  They celebrate May 25th as their Independence Day.  This year they will celebrate 68 years of being a state.

In 1948 Abdullah annexed the eastern part of Cisjordan (Judea and Samaria)  which had been designated by the UN as a separate state.  It made up almost 80% of the Jewish Homeland promised, however.  It was now proclaimed as "The Kingdom of Jordan. and he was the king.

 Judea was  formed when King Solomon, the Jewish king, died in 920 BCE.  It came under Roman rule in 63 BCE and was renamed Palaestina in 135 CE when the 3 year battle of Bar Kokhba was finished with Kokhba's death.  For 400 years till 1917, it had been under Ottoman Empire rule of Turkey.  The Empire had sided with the Germans in WWI and lost the war to the Allies (England, USA, France, etc)  Samaria had become the capital of Israel when Judah was formed and included the surrounding lands.  What people call "The West Bank" was the original land  of Israel and Judah.  Originally it had all been Israel, but Judah broke away the southern part to become Judah.

I've often wondered why Jews didn't settle in Judea/Samaria first when they started to return in the 1880's during the first aliyah.  Most Jews who had never left were living in Jerusalem and Safed, two cities that had a high elevation and were more tolerable in the immense heat of the Middle East.  These were the preferable centers in the 1500's.  They were also holy cities.  When Russian Jews returned, they came by ships who entered ports, and there Jews remained till they had their bearings.  Meyer Levin's book, "The Settlers" tells about how the immigrants spread out all over the land and developed towns and cities as well as a kibbutz and later a moshav.  If we Americans think we had problems pioneering our West, you should see what they also went through.  They had very similar problems except that the Ottoman Empire did have some sort of government control going on and they came down pretty hard on the Jewish settlers.  Then again, the Sephari Jews returned at the creation of Israel in 1948 when they were tossed out of their states because of this, so came to Israel and found refuge where there were vacancies and jobs.  

From 1952 the country of Jordan was ruled by Abdullah's  grandson, Hussein.

By 1967, Hussein entered the Six-Day War with Egypt and Syria against Israel but the Arabs lost which meant that Israel took over Judea and Samaria, the ancient homeland of the Jews.

 In 1970 he was forced to expel the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization under Arafat) from his country because they tried to take over in what was called Black September. The war lasted from September 1970 to July 1971.   Later reconciled with the old leader.  In fact, there exists 2 states today, Israel and Jordan which is basically the Palestine state right next to Israel.  He doesn't want anymore Palestinians entering his state.  Who acted as a protector of Judea and Samaria?  Why, Hussein, of course.  A change of heart happened and in 1988 he announced that he was not going to act as their protector anymore and was leaving it to the PLO to manage.  His own supporters come from the Bedouin tribesmen of Jordan while a majority of the population are Palestinians.

" Wadi Araba Treaty) was signed in 1994. The signing ceremony took place at the southern border crossing of Arabah on 26 October 1994. Jordan was the second Arab country, after Egypt, to sign peace accord with Israel.  The treaty settled relations between the two countries, adjusted land and water disputes, and provided for broad cooperation in tourism and trade. It included a pledge that neither Jordan nor Israel would allow its territory to become a staging ground for military strikes by a third country.

The population of Jordan is about 5,568, 565 with about 95% being Sunni Muslims.  Islam is their state religion, of course.  They now face a new danger of al Qaeda and other terrorists from a takeover. The real danger lies in the Muslim Brotherhood who will try to overcome the government.  Jordan is also facing Syria's refugee problem by building several refugee camps for them.   Zaatari Refugee Camp was built in 2012 and held 144,000 by 2013.  It's like a large city in size. Jordan  built another camp to hold 130,000.   "UNHCR remains responsible for the refugees and the camps are managed by the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization / JHCO.   In March 2013 the UNHCR called the German Mr Kilian Kleinschmidt to be the "Senior Field Coordinator" of the first camp."  Food is a scarce commodity. 

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Jordan_peace_treaty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan
http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/jordan.html
http://www.mapsofworld.com/jordan/independence-day.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemite
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer236/jordans-new-political-development-strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaatari_refugee_camp
Messages From a Syrian Jew Trapped in Egypt by Nadene Goldfoot, Jack Huffman-detail on Syrian refugee camps.

Iran's Big Fear is Facebook

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

                                                          Mark Zuckerberg

Social media is a big threat to the power of Iran.  This is why they have blocked test messaging service called Whatsapp, a new button to push on cell phones.  Iran's excuse for doing this is that Mark Zuckerberg, facebook's CEO and founder, is an AMERICAN ZIONIST.

 Zionism is a theory, plan or movement for setting up a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine according to Webster's Dictionary.  The word was coined in 1893.  Theodor Herzl, the newspaperman from Austria started it with the first Zionist Congress in 1897, a movement to get Jews to move back to the Land of Israel.  We are still a people or nation and most of us do not want to assimilate by religion or culture with other people but wish to retain our identity as a national community.  Whether we do it consciously or unconsciously, we have been treated as so; different, not accepted in the group until recently in the USA.

 That happened already.  It's a done deal.  The League of Nations voted for the Jewish National Home and it was created all legal through the United Nations.  The world reps voted and passed it.  Israel will be 66 years old next week.  I feel that Israel has every right to exist.  I even lived there from 1980 to the end of 1985 teaching English in Safed.  I'm a Zionist.  Even so, 5 minutes after their birth was announced on the radio, Jews were attacked by the Arabs, and so it's been going on for 66 years now.  Nevertheless Israel has grown and developed.  It is a creative country and has invented so many things that they share with the world.  I'm so proud to be a Zionist and to hold dual citizenship!
                                                                 

 Facebook bought this mobile messaging service in February 2014 for $19 billion and cash and stock.  Whatsapp was created in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton.
                                                                               

As for Zuckerberg, he is Jewish.  That's it.  Nobody knows how he feels about Israel. It just accidentally happens that he was born on Israel's birthday of May 14th, only Israel is 36 years older than he is.  That doesn't make him a Zionist but it is remarkable!  Mark is very intelligent, and attended Harvard U. He was a billionaire by the time he was 23 years old.  Today he's worth $25.3 billion dollars.  He's now married.

   Jews are not sheep that follow one opinion.  Each person has their own idea about things and acts accordingly, so just because he's Jewish tells me nothing about his political views, only that he believes in one G-d and if he ever attends anything religious, it probably will be a synagogue.  I only wish that we all felt Zionistic about Israel which I do.  I hope he does likewise.  In the USA, we have no way of knowing such things and like it that way.  We don't have cards with our religion stamped on them or our political views unless we carry our voting card showing if we're Democrats or Republicans.  Our passports don't relate any such information.  Why?  It's never been necessary.  We haven't had internal strife calling for such steps to be taken.  

What Iran doesn't want for their citizens is information other than what they print in Iran.  Facebook and Twitter are officially blocked in Iran, though a few people do manage  know how to get around in the Internet.  It's laughable, because Rouhani has accounts in both places, no doubt using it to spy on the world consensus about foreign and domestic matters.  What he reads he dares not allow his people to read.
                                                                         

Iran's Supreme leader, (sounds like g-d) Ali Khamenei saw the power of information coming from social media in 2009 in their so called "Green Revolution."  With cell phones in their hands, thousands of Iranians went into the streets to protest the re-election of their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  They realized that the elections were rigged, so held mass demonstrations throughout Iran, but were stopped with rifles.  Neda Agha Soltan, a beautiful Iranian lady,

 was shot right away just for being in the crowd.  Protest leaders are still under house arrest and the "Green Movement' has been broken apart by" crackdowns and intimidation."
                                                                                   

The way President Rouhani got elected this time was to promise to fix the economy, and improve their relations with the West and to promote greater freedoms.   Out of the contenders for the position, he's the one I also picked.  Think of it, to have more freedom.  Americans have every freedom imaginable.  In fact, we worry about losing our freedoms because of terrorism causing us to allow the government to have more freedom in snooping into our affairs.  Now we're between the devil and the deep blue sea.  It not a good position to be in as we've had lots of pride in having the most freedoms on this planet.  To protect ourselves, we have allowed the government new freedoms on our freedom of speech which involves phone conversations.  Cell phone conversations are being recorded and we don't know who has been caught in the web of secrecy.   Most of us are not worried if we're not doing anything wrong.

Iran is brainwashing its people by keeping them in the dark.  They're only hearing one side of the political agenda.  That should never happen to a country.  It's what we must watch out for, too.  There should be freedom of speech on our own news media and not put down stations like Fox News because they share a non-liberal viewpoint of politics.  Only if someone comes out and tells downright lies should they be stopped, and that's where Iran fills the bill.  No doubt that's what they are afraid of.  Social media such as facebook will expose their people to their lies.

This happened in Germany in the 1930's.  The value of their currency went down to just about nothing.  People were using wheelbarrows instead of billfolds to carry their paper currency to buy a loaf of bread.  Our country of the USA has had this happen, too, as recently as 2007, but never that extreme.  It's when people get itchy and start looking for scapegoats to blame matters on.

This is the beauty of living in a civilized world with 7 billion people.  Out of all our inhabitants, there are many ideas floating around that our simple little brain alone doesn't think of.  It's good to have differences of opinions. The USA has 316,148,990 people.   Out of many, one can come to the forefront and be used to improve living standards for many.  Iran has about 76,923,300 people.  Surely they all aren't thinking the same thoughts all the time.  China's population is 1,236,344,631.  Israel has 6,000,000 Jews and 1.7 million Arabs, totaling about 8,000,000.

 Facebook by September 30, 2012 had 937,407,180 subscribers.  Mark Zuckerberg was lucky to be living in the USA to come up with such an idea.  He would have enjoyed the same freedom of starting up such an enterprise in Israel as well.  I personally value the friends I have on facebook immensely.  My life is much fuller and my concept of people from other countries has changed for the better from my contacts and with what I have learned.  It's too bad that Iranians do not enjoy these same freedoms.  I doubt if Syrians have such freedoms as outside contact with people, either.  I wonder if any of them can have pen pals such as I did in pre-computer days of the 1940s?  Ugh, facebook is so much easier than that!

Resource:  http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-bans-whatsapp-citing-zionist-owner-zuckerberg/
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
Fox News covering above
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/wpc.php?utm_expid=4939992-7.scuhn054Q5WXvFD9uRG9Xw.2&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
http://www.internetworldstats.com/facebook.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionarycopyright 1971
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan

The Jewish Messiah: Coming From the Davidic Line

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

                                              RASHI, descendant of King David

Our Messiah (Mashiah in Hebrew) means the Anointed One, the ultimate deliverer.  In our Tanakh "Bible", it is an adjective referring to kings because they were anointed and have received Divine sanction. King in Hebrew is Melekh.  Queen is Malkha.   Israel does not use kings today.  High priests were also anointed.  In our times of exile and after exiled times the word came to mean anyone with a special mission from G-d like the patriarchs, prophets, the Jewish people themselves and even gentiles such as Cyrus II, the Mede.  Cyrus died in 529 BCE and was the King of Persia.  He is the one who overran the Babylonian empire, including  Israel/Judah.  He was good to his subjects and in 538 BCE, granted permission to the Jewish exiles of Judah in Babylon to return to their homeland to rebuild the Temple.  This is written about in Ezra 1:1-44; II chronicles 36:22-23.  The Jewish exiles regarded Cyrus as a Divine agent  which can be found in Isaiah 44:28; 45:1.
                                                                       

                                     King Solomon, son of King David  

In the beginning, Jacob's 12 sons were the heads of the family and each family became a tribe, each with a tribal chief.  They soon were replaced by leaders with more responsibility such as Judges.  Finally a king was established with the first one being Saul, son of Kish from the tribe of Benjamin.  He was both a judge and a military leader with a standing military force.  He was a ruler without absolute power and dealt with prophetic criticism.  King David, who came next, had his criticism from Nathan.  King Ahab had criticism from Elijah.  The House of David ruled in Judah until the Babylonian Exile but was the authority of the exilarchs in Babylonia until the 14th century CE.

"The Hasmoneans, also known as the Maccabees were a priestly group (kohanim) from the Tribe of Levi. They established their own monarchy in Judea following their revolt and war against the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty. The Hasmoneans were not considered connected to the Davidic line nor to the Tribe of Judah. The Levites had always been excluded from the Israelite monarchy, so when the Maccabees assumed the throne in order to rededicate the defiled Second Temple, a cardinal rule was broken."

The Kings of Judah ended with Zedekiah from 597 to 586 BCE.  
                                                                   
After the exile there was a prophetic vision of the universal establishment of G-d's kingdom.  This was associated with the in- gathering of Israel under a representative of King David's house who would be G-d's anointed.  We are experiencing the in-gathering of Israel already.  Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel's Prime Minister of Israel and Shimon Peres is the President or Nasi.  The Hebron-resident sons of Heth addressed Abraham as "a Nasi of God you are among us." The heads of the tribes of Israel were also called Nesi'im 

During the Second Temple Era and throughout the Mishnaic and Talmudic eras, "Nasi" was the title of the head of the Sanhedrin - the man leading the high religious and judiciary authority among Jews in the Land of Israel.  

From the 2nd century BCE, the divine sanction of the Davidic house with the act of anointing was developed in the conception of the Messiah.  Different Jewish revolutionary movements of the 1st-2nd centuries CE had many people claim to be the messianic king such as Andreas, Lukuas and Bar Kokhba.  However, the Zealots rejected any kingship but that of G-d.  

During the days of Roman rule Jews needed and expected a personal Messiah and he was deemed to be a descendant of King David who would do away with alien rule and establish a golden age.  The messiah became very important of eschatological concepts and is found in many Hellenistic-Jewish pseudepigraphic literature from the 1st century CE.  People were highly emotional about a Messiah's coming shortly before 70 CE when Jerusalem fell to the Romans so things were getting very unbearable.  Many false messiahs kept appearing.  The New Testament shows the messianic ferment at this period.  

                                                                         

                                                             Bar Kokhbah 

Talk about a coming Messiah became very strong after the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE.  World events that affected the life of Jews made waiting for the Messiah something the people yearned for.  The Book of Daniel and other biblical passages were used to predict the time he was coming.  The Jewish revolt from 115 to 117 caused the need and call for a Messiah.  Again, the last revolt against the Romans with Bar Kokhba leading it made him the expected Messiah which he was called in 131 CE, as he held out against a giant Roman army force for 3 years, that in itself a miracle.  He was killed in 135 CE by the Romans.  

By the 5th century there was a Moses that Jews thought was the expected Messiah who was a visitor in Crete.  In the 7th century, the fall of the Persian and Byzantine empires gave hope to Jews that the Messiah was due to arrive next.  In the 8th century there were 3 pseudo Messiahs who were on the scene; Abu Issa al-Isfahani was living in Persia, Severus or Serene was in Syria and Yudghan was in Hamadan.  By the 9th century Eldad Ha-Dani announced the existence of the Lost Ten Tribes who had to return first to start the Messianic era and that caused a lot of apocalyptic talk.  

Maimonides wrote a letter to the Yemen population in about 1172 where he "restated in glowing terms the messianic doctrine", and said he was sure the coming of the Messiah was near.  He insisted that the Messianic Age would be rational and unmiraculous.  We would know it happened by the ousting of foreigners holding a political yoke by a leader of the House of David. Israel became a Jewish state on May 14, 1948, and will soon have it's 66th birthday.  She isn't quite free of the yoke of others yet, so a descendant of King David is expected to show up to free Israel of the ties that still bind so that she can stand alone but strong.  

Many pseudo Messiah's kept popping up throughout history from the Crusading Period.  In 1096 people thought in Salonica that the deliverance had already begun.  In 1121 a Karaite claimed to be the Messiah in "Palestine."  In 1147 David Alroy showed up in Mesopotamia.    Others claiming to be the Messiah were found in Yemen, Fez, Persia, Spain and France in the 11th and 12th centuries.  Abraham Abulafia was in Sicily  in the 13th century and was followed in Spain by his disciples, Samuel and Abraham.  A messiah was expected at Avila.  The Spanish persecution of Jews in 1391 produced Moses Botarel as the Messiah.  

The Spanish Inquisition of 1492 became a time of expulsion of Jews and was followed by many Messiahs; Asher Lammlein in 1503, Solomon Molcho in about 1500 to 1532 and others.  

The most well known false Messiah as Shabbetai Tzevi in 1626-1676 of Smyrna who gained wide following and caused an offshoot of whose sect, the Donmeh still survives.  He failed to prove he was the Messiah at a time that there started a universal trend toward being rational which created a reaction against messianic speculation, but didn't stop Messiahs to keep showing up. There was in the 18th century:

1. Jacob Frank: 1726-1791

2. Hayyim Malakh

3. Mordecai Mokhiah

4. Judah Hasid

5. Lobele Prossnitz 

Finally, there was a false Messiah in the 19th century in the person of a Yemenite.  Jew.  

Deuteronomy 17:14-19 was the influence of the Puritan revolutionary movement of the  17th century when in 1620 the Puritans sailed for America.  The position, rights, and limitations of the king are specified in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 2:2-5 and in a special section of Maimonides' Mishnah Torah..  The Book of Kings or Sepher Melakhim is the last of the 4 books in the former Prophets section of the Tanakh (Bible).  It talks about the history of the Jewish kings.  

There are very old family trees tracing the descendants of the House of King David.  RASHI, the famous biblical commentator was supposed to be one.  He was born in 1040 in Troyes, France and died in  there in 1105.  Worms, Germany was a center of Jewish learning and many rabbis resided there, so we have descendants of Rashi coming from this city.  

Resource:  http://www.president.gov.il/English/Pages/Default.aspx
The  New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidic_line

IDF Faces Frame-Up By B'tselem And Arab Gangs For Propaganda

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

David, a  Nahal Brigade soldier,  was provoked by a teen-aged Arab gang who threatened and provoked him in Hevon, (Hebron).  Hebron has the Jewish  history of being a levitical city and a city of refuge of which there were 4 in Israel's early history with Joshua.  This is where King David ruled for 7 1/2 years before he moved to Jerusalem.  It's where Abraham bought land holding the Cave of Machpelah so that he could bury his wife, Sarah.  Hebron is now considered a Palestinian city which lies 19 miles south of Jerusalem which is in Judea/Samaria.   What is a soldier to do?  He was all alone so he warned one of the boys not to continue doing this but the teen pushed him  and continued to act in a threatening manner.  The soldier himself could have been no more than 18 years old himself.
                                                                     

                                                              Hebron
The problem is that the teens had been helped in their behavior by B'tselem, an NGO that gave out cameras to Palestinian Arabs for the very purpose of catching soldiers behaving in ways that could get them in trouble so as to have something on film for anti-Israel propaganda.   B'tselem gets funding from the New Israel Fund.  B'tselem says it has "championed human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for over two decades, promoting a future where all Israelis and Palestinians will live in freedom and dignity".but their way is to frame the Israeli soldiers with lies, giving the Arabs ammunition to fight against them which is not bringing about peace and harmony between the two peoples.  

An earlier attack on a soldier turned out to be very successful.  They got a senior officer, Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner dismissed from service.  A teen-aged gang  had tried to disrupt traffic on a major highway and the gang was being violent towards Eisner by breaking one of his fingers.  So they're out for more IDF victims.

The Nahal soldier being threatened had cocked his rifle and pointed it at the teen.  Then he pointed it at another Arab who jumped towards him with what looked like a set of brass knuckles on his hand, so the soldier kicked the first first teen away, making ready to handle the 2nd who was coming at him. It is alleged that he was involved in another incident earlier in the week.  Then it would seem that he has been pointed out by the Arabs as someone to work on and break down.

All this was being filmed.  Arabs and left-winged allies uploaded the video to the Internet and onto facebook and called the media.  The IDF heads, in defending their own IDF values, mores and reputation, said that the soldier had acted in a way that wasn't the regular way and said that he might be dismissed from his unit.  Also, he wouldn't be serving in combat positions.  In fact, chances are that he could be jailed for acting in an "inappropriate manner" and will be tried in court.   The IDF may even take steps against the supporting soldiers who held up signs they uploaded on facebook.

What would have happened had not the soldier reacted normally?  No doubt in this soldier's mind that he would have been taken down by the gang and attacked which might have led to his death.

The reaction of the soldier's fellow soldiers was that thousands of IDF soldiers from all units are supporting him.  They are protesting the action taken against him.  These soldiers see that the lone soldier was in a tight spot and treated unfairly so that they are demanding that the Israeli government give them the word to properly deal with these types of problems.  Right now the rules are such that they are not allowed to protect themselves and they must respond to violence by the Palestinians.  This policy is evidently not made by the army itself.  It's being an ongoing happening that Palestinian Arab teenagers deride and provoke IDF soldiers into a defense position.  What happens in this type of media is that they cut out the Arabs' actions and only show the IDF soldier's act.

This IDF position is like that of a new teacher in a classroom.  He has to set down rules of behavior in the fall to set the scene for future events that will come up.  The teacher cannot be wishy-washy or weak.  If you say NO to something, there must be consequences if not listened to.  David is expected to act like the British guard in England with the high tall black furry hat, not to move a muscle or say a thing.  He cannot do this when confronted with taunting getting into his space.  One soldier facing a gang bent on causing trouble should be backed up by his peers who will have to face similar situations.   The rules of behavior should be altered to cover these situations.  If there wasn't a camera available, this wouldn't have happened.  .

Resource: Arutz Sheva; news@israelnationalnews.com, Unprecedented IDF Protest over Soldier's Punishment and As AIDDF Protest Grows, Nahal Soldier Faces Jail, by Gil Ronen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebron-has error listed.
New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia: Hebron
http://www.btselem.org/

How Moscow Felt About Jews

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

                           Nathan Goldfus/Goldfoot, b: 1870 Lithuania; d: 1912
                                                                             

Moscow is the capital of the Russian republic.  Jews have not been allowed to live there.  Orders were even issued in 1490, two years before the Spanish Inquisition, that Jews could not enter Moscow.  These same orders were issued again in 1549, 1610 and 1667.

Jews were living in Lithuania in 1321.  By 1398, mostly Karaite Jews were living there.  In 1495 Jews were living in Vilna, Grodno and Kovno, totalling 10,000, but in that same year from 1495 to 1502 they were excluded from Lithuania.   By 1529 they received a charter guaranteeing freedom of movement and employment, but in 1566 to 1572 they had to wear a Jewish badge.  They also couldn't give evidence in court.     White Russia (Belarus) was annexed to Russia in 1772 and after that happened, Jewish merchants began to go into Moscow, mainly from Shklov.  From 1826 to 1856, a ghetto was created there.  Most Jews residing there permanently were Cantonists or teen-aged conscripts that had been drafted into the army.  From 1805 to 1856, Jews were subject to the decree from 1827, and a very high number of Jewish children were taken away from their parents with the intent of converting them to Christianity.  The Jewish communities were expected to supply early a certain number of recruits between the ages of 12 years of age and sometimes even as young as 8 years of age and up to 25 years old.  Once they were in the service they had to serve for 25 years if they lived that long.  The count didn't start until they were 18 years old, so they had to serve until they were 43 years old.

There was a Catherine I, who was an empress of Russia.  She ruled from 1725 to 1727, and in May of that last year expelled all the Jews living in Little Russia (Ukraine).  This order was then countermanded after her death.
                                                                       

Catherine II the Great Empress, ruled from 1762 to 1796.    In 1791, she  hadn't allowed any Jews into Moscow by writing up a decree about it. Her method of dealing with the Jewish policy was a combination of liberalism and coercion.  She allowed Jews to register in the merchant and urban classes in 1780 but permission was restricted to White Russia (Belarus) in 1786.  This marked the beginning of the Pale of Settlement.    Jews were to live in the Pale of Settlement, which consisted of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus,  Ukraine and Crimea.It also included Bessarabia, which was a province, formerly Romanian, and now in the Moldavian and Ukrainian Republics.
                                                                         

                                 Pale of Settlement

Jews were living there when Bessarabia was annexed to Russia in 1812.  Between 1839 and 1858 Jews were forbidden to live within 50 versts of the frontier with Russia proper and, like the gypsies, couldn't ever become government officials.  Lots of anti-Semitism existed in Kishinev.  90,000 Jews escaped from Soviet Russia through Bessarabia in 1919 to 1925 and many emigrated from there to Brazil. Catherine II was nasty to Jews in her last years.  She prevented the extension of Jewish settlement and in 1795, prohibited Jewish residence in the countryside areas.

My grandfather, Nathan Goldfus, was born in Telsiai, Lithuania in 1870.  I"ve managed to trace his ancestors back to 1730 to Iones "Jonah Goldfus in that same city.  Nathan's father was Morris Goldfus, a distiller. Either grains or potatoes are used to make Russian Vodka which must be 40% alcohol.   How his family managed to exist all that time in this city is astounding, but we know that they got there after living in the Rhineland (Germany).    Some members of the Goldfus family were given special passes to sell corn in Russia proper.  A few people were allowed to live outside the Pale if they were members of the liberal professions with a high school diploma, big businessmen, skilled artisans, and ex-Cantonists (by then converted to Christianity.)  .  If you were a common Jew and found outside the Pale of Settlement without permission, your fate depended on the decision of the local governor.

 These young Jewish recruits were educated at special schools outside the Pale of Settlement  and then sent far away to do their service in the eastern provinces like Siberia.  Thousands were converted and assimilated, but many died from hardship.  Most of these cantonists were from poor families who could not buy their child out of doing service in the Russian army.  The Russian police were brutal in picking up the children which literally amounted to kidnapping.  This led to a lot of corruption and much resentment against the richer Jews by the poorer ones.

Moscow's Jewish quarter expanded rapidly and was a center of the Hoveve Zion.  In 1891 there were 20,000 craftsmen, workers, teachers living there but they were all expelled to the Pale of Settlement.  After Russia's 1905 revolution, things got better for them.

The 1st World War started in 1914 and ended in 1917.  During the war, 100,000 Jews were expelled or emigrated to the Russian interior in Lithuania.  After the 1917 revolution, the Jewish population of Moscow increased greatly and it became the most important Russian Jewish center.  It held Jewish cultural activities such as Tarbut, the Ha-Bimah and Yiddish theaters which flourished for a time.  That was culture, but religious life did not grow.  The cultural authorities came to an end in the last year of Stalin.  Everything revived, such as culture and religion with the introduction of Perestroika."which was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s (1986), widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system.Perestroika is often argued to be the cause of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, and the end of the Cold War."
                                                                          

                                              Russian  Jews

There were at least 175,000 Jews in Lithuania at the start of WWII.  About 25,000 were deported by the Russians from Lithuania and Latvia in July 1940.  The remaining Jewish of Lithuania were massacred by the Germans and the Lithuanians by 1943.  24,000 Jews were living there in 1959, but by 1989 about half had left for Israel, leaving 12,312 Jews behind.   By 1989 there were 232,000 Jews in Moscow.

Resource: Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodka
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/pale.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Russia