The Northern Ten Tribes of Israel and the Assyrians Who Captured Them

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

If you think the Egyptians were the only ancient but advanced culture, you should see what the Assyrians were like.  Their empire, the largest in the world,  covered today's countries of  Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and Cyprus.  Their dates of having power were from 911 BCE to 609 BCE, starting in King David's time.  It was from 721 BCE to 715 BCE  that they had attacked Israel and had captured the best of the 10 Tribal members of Israel.   

These tribes originated from the 12 sons of Jacob whose name was changed after a religious experience he had had to Israel.  These sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher.  The tribe of Levi had become special in that Moses gave them the priestly position in teaching about the Laws of Moses.  Out of Aaron's descendants would be the Cohens (Priests).  Since this was such a responsible position and gave them status, Moses did not want them to be given any land of their own as he was doing for the other 11 tribes.  For them, they would stay in the homes of those he taught throughout Israel.  He divided Joseph's land, though, because he had become a leader in Egypt and remained there,  between his descendants, Ephraim and Manasseh, keeping the division to 12 men.  Twelve was a sacred number.  
                                                                       

Moses died outside of Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) so that Joshua took over his position.  Reuben, Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh were given land on the other side of the Jordan River-Transjordan.  Naphtali and Asher were given land in the Galilee on the Sidonian frontier.  Issachar and Zebulun were given land in the Valley of Jezreel.  Ephraim and Manasseh were to be in the mountains of Samaria and Benjamin was to be to their southern side and Judah was to be further south.  Dan was to have  land along the seacoast around Jaffa, and Simeon was to live on the Negev desert.

It was a challenge as other people occupied their holdings.  The tribe of Dan could not hold their land as the Amorites expelled them and they had to move to the source of the Jordan River.  A few of the other tribes were also unsuccessful in holding all the land they were assigned to have.  

When Saul was king, the tribe of Simeon took the land of Seir and the territory of the Amalekites , the most hostile group toward Israelites, in their fights with the native population.  

                                                                           

       
Israel was ruled first by Judges.  During this period, the original division of the tribes was maintained.  But by the time that Solomon was king from 961 BCE to 920 BCE, there would be 19 more  kings ruling before the Assyrians would capture and take away the 10 northern tribes.  King Solomon had adopted a different administrative division of the country  He was taxing the people too much, causing rebellion.  After he died in 920 BCE,  the country of Israel split in two with the tribes of Judah, Simeon and most of Benjamin making up the southern region.  
                                                                              

200 years later in 732 BCE, the Assyrian kings started their invasion of Israel with Tiglath-Pileser II. It was Tiglath-Pileser III who was king of Assyria from 745-726 BCE.  He had levied tribute of King Menahem of Israel in 743 and invaded Syria.  

Before this happened,  Aramaic was  an official language of the Assyrian empire, alongside the Akkadian language.  The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 609 BC.  It was the largest empire in the world.    Their empire was to collapse in 123 years.  The Israelites would be in their control for the next 5 generations at least. 
                                                       

2 Assyrian gods; the Chaos monster and the sun god.
They had a pantheon of gods.  

 The religion of the Assyrians was called Henotheism, practiced  by the people of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia between circa 3500 BC and 400 AD. They believed in many gods connected to the forces of nature.  Our 10 tribes that were taken from their national family had been practicing the Laws of Moses for the past 590 years.  What would happen to them being away from their important center of Jerusalem and the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Simeon?  They would be lost to these 3 southern tribes who would call them the LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL.  

"The last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism, which developed in the 2nd and 1st millenniums, introduced greater emphasis on personal religion and structured the gods into a monarchical hierarchy with the national god being the head of the pantheon.^[1] Mesopotamian religion finally declined with the spread of Iranian religions during the Achaemenid Empire and with the Christianization of Mesopotamia. "

                                                                         

                                  Then about 10 years later in 721 BCE, Sargon of Assyria invaded Israel and they took the northern tribal members to Assyria, Media and the lands neighboring Aram-Naharaim.                                  

                                                                               

Assyrian soldier leading the northern 10 tribes way

Assyrians

146 years after this large captivity, a large section of the population of the southern kingdom of Judah was also captured and exiled by Nebuchadnezzar and taken to their center, Babylon in 597, then again in 586 BCE when the  Temple of Solomon was also destroyed.  
                               

NebuchadnezzarThe Sumerians part of southern Babylonia, who were the early Assyrians,  were advanced: as well as inventing writing, they also invented early forms of mathematics, early wheeled vehicles/Chariots, astronomy, astrology, written code of law, organised medicine, advanced agriculture and architecture, and the calendar. They created the first city-states. This included Nimrod and Cush in their population. 

                                   

Leaving Babylon and Returning after 48 years to Jerusalem 538 BCE

 Unlike the capture of the 10 northern tribes, the Judeans were able to return 48 years later in 538 BCE.  That was 2 whole generations of being away from their homeland.  They returned and rebuilt the Temple.                                                     

Solomon's Temple, housing the Ark of the Covenant

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Assyrian_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Mesopotamian_religion
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

ISAAC, True Follower of His Father, Abraham,The Real Middle Easterner

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Abraham with Lot back in 1948 BCE, his nephew who was the son of Haran, Abraham's brother.
He had traveled with Abram from Aram-Naharaiam to Canaan and wound up  with their shepherds being at odds with each other over pasture-land, so they parted with Lot settling at Sodom, and that's another story. 

It was Abraham, born in Ur, in today's Iraq, who was married to Sarah, his niece, who brought monotheism to the world.  Up to then, people believed in many gods who controlled all the elementary forces of nature and man's needs.  They could go to whatever god was important to them at that moment and plead for help.  These gods were depicted for them in idols and statues.  They belonged to large god-families.

Abraham saw that there was only one force-one God in the world.  He even carried on a conversation with G-d and knew it was in his place to continue this opening up of his mind and that his children were to carry on his new belief.
                                                                         

Terah, the idol-maker of Ur and father of Abram,
Nahor and Haran

All around him were people that believed in multiple gods used for multiple problems, so, since the world was far less populated than it is now, he left, taking his father, Terah, who was the son of Nahor I and Iyoska,  and family with him and struck out for open spaces where he could control the environment of people and their beliefs.  He couldn't wait to have children and form a new culture depending on one true G-d.
                                                                       

Sarai gives Hagar to Abram

Sarah was old by standards of those days and still hadn't produced a child.  Abram, as he was originally called, grew anxious.  He was getting older.  Sarai, her original name, allowed him to take her Egyptian maid, Hagar, to start the family growing as she was afraid her child-bearing days might be over, too.  She could have even been 40, going through the menopause as we know it today.   Sure enough, right off the bat Hagar was pregnant.  The child, according to their law, was a product belonging to Sarai, but Hagar was so proud of becoming a mother, actually being an Egyptian princess herself and thinking that this gave her more status now other than having to obey Sarai's every wish, that she started snubbing Sarai and not doing her chores.  After all, she had Abram's baby!
                                                                         

Abram,on foot, with camels, in the heat in the 2nd millennium BCE, over 3,000 years ago
recorded in the Torah by the scribe, Moses 631 years later, who also made his own journey at age 80 to return to Egypt to argue with the Pharoah,
 son of his old step-brother and insisted on releasing 6 million Jewish slaves.
 

Ishmael grew and followed his mother's behaviors, having half of her genes and as she was the one discipling him, and he was spoiled, doing as he wished, being very headstrong.  He didn't even listen to Abram.  This pregnancy of Hagar's triggered Sarah's hormones and lo and behold, she was finally pregnant!  She bore another boy-child and they named him Isaac.  Isaac was a carbon copy of Abraham AND Sarai.  He was quiet and introspective.  He noticed things and filed it away in his mind.  Ishmael was very jealous of his father's new attention going to his tiny new brother, and often he tried to hit the baby.  This continued with Ishmael always trying to interfere with Isaac and tease him.
                                                                             

The Torah relates the story of Abram being asked by G-d to sacrifice
his son, Isaac which he complies with in preparation but is stopped,
and had been tested to see  if he would obey.  This was to be the last time
that man was to sacrifice another human according to the beliefs in Judaism and
this was the lesson to be had.  NO MORE HUMAN SACRIFICES. 

We know the story and it plays out in many families today with the problem of jealousy among siblings unless the parents really work at keeping all the children happy.  This jealousy within Abram's family caused Hagar to leave with Ishmael and she went off to live with her own people. Sarai had insisted she and Ishmael had to leave their compound, so Abram took them away.
                                                                               
Isaac married, and his wife was also a relative.  It was Rebekah,  his 1st cousin once removed.  Her father was Bethuel and her brother was Laban.  Bethuel's father was Nahor II, also born in Ur of the Chaldees, father of many men.

1  Isaac b: in Negev
.. +Rebekah b: in Aram
                                                                     

                                                                       

Isaac and Rebekah had twins; Esau and Jacob.  Esau emerged into the world first  of these fraternal twins.  He was completely different in coloring and behavior.  He didn't like to listen to his father's lectures about life and belief in one G-d., but Jacob listened intently and was most intrigued.  Finally, as a teenager, Esau ran off to find Ishmael and his family, for that is what pleased him, a more active lifestyle.  He wanted action.  

Abraham now had only Jacob to carry on the family belief in one G-d, but he didn't realize this as he lay dying.  He thought both sons were near him and would follow his beliefs.  It had been Jacob who had tricked Esau into selling him his birthright as the first born. ." The birthright was two-fold. First, it included a double portion of the inheritance from the father. Second, it included a special ceremonial blessing from the father" .  As it was, both Jacob and Esau buried Isaac.  Then Esau took Caananite wives for himself. Esau and his large family clan moved away from Isaac to Mt Seir.  He is later referred to as the people of Edom.  Before the days of King Saul, there were kings who reigned in the land of Edom.  Esau had become the father of Edom.  

                                                                             

All this has been recorded in the Torah, written by Moses b: 1391BCE and who died at age 120 in 1271 BCE.  He was in communication with G-d who dictated it to him while on the Exodus, traveling from Egypt back to Canaan which took him 40 years, traveling with the freed slaves of Egypt of over 6 million people.  

Those people, Jacob's descendants, are the remnant of his 12 sons, being the tribe of Judah had remained in existence all these years under the name of  THE JEWISH PEOPLE.  They have been the true inheritors of Canaan, later called Palestine, named by the Romans who had destroyed  Solomon's 2nd Temple in Jerusalem. The Romans named the land "Palestine" after the Jews' worst nightmare-the Philistines, who had come to their shore from Asia Minor and Greek islands who came in waves of groups on ships. 

                                                                               

They did not enter in peace but were warlike, fighting right away Abraham and son Isaac.  Then others had entered from the island of Crete after being kicked out of Egypt by Rameses II in 1194 BCE.  They took over the southern coastal area.   and founded GAZA, ASCALON, ASHDOD, EKRON AND GATH.   It was the Greeks from the time of Herodotus that called the land Palestine in honor of the Philistines.  The Greek name was Syria Palaestina, and so when the Romans under Hadrian had conquered the Jews, they gave the name officially to the former land belonging to the tribe of Judah.  

 For it was the Jews that had carried on true Monotheism as Abram had seen it, through his descendant, Moses,who  had been instructed  through G-d himself,   Moses had added, not only the belief in ONE G-d, but all the values of behavior that went along with this belief.  The values were so different from the surrounding native beliefs, that they also needed to go back to their origins to have the same visions to bring it about.  

                                                                       

The Philistines were conquered by King David who reigned from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE.  The Canaanites were conquered when Joshua had battled them who were made up of some city-states.  The Israelites called the land Eretz Yisrael  THE LAND OF ISRAEL, a name still in use , and if not all were killed, they married into the new inhabitants and became one people, the Israelites. THE NORTHERN PART was called Aram (ie, Syria.
                                                                               

The Israelites had taken an oath while on the Exodus to follow the laws that Moses taught them.  Out of the 6 million present, only the tribe of Judah had been present through the 2,000 years up to the time of the destruction of the 2nd Temple by the Romans. The 10 other tribes of the North were lost to them after Assyrians  had taken them in 721 BCE.   Their one-G-d belief was now called Judaism for the tribe of Judah.  It must be remembered that along with  the change from believing in a multiple of gods being part of a pantheon of gods, they also had 613 laws given to them by Moses through G-d that were to reshape their way of thinking towards G-d and their fellow man.  For they were to believe in life in a different way.  The 1st 10 laws were the most important and have lasted through the ages with the 1st 5 about G-d and the last 5 about our treatment towards other people.  People today still have problems with a few of these laws.  

It was around this period that Jesus emerged to be the founder of Christianity which was a break-away belief from Judaism.  It would take another 500  some years for Islam to come into the world, an offshoot  from Judaism through the teachings of Mohammed.  His city of Medina  had been full of Jewish tribes who taught Judaism on the streets with readers reading to large crowds.  Mohammed (570-632)  couldn't read or write but he could listen and remember the stories.

More on Birthright:

The Birthright

This all important and strongly coveted birthright consisted of several benefits. They were:

• The leadership in worship and the head of the family.
• A double portion of the family inheritance.
• Right to the covenant blessings that God promised Abraham in which all nations would be blessed

https://amazingbibletimeline.com/blog/jacob/
Resource: Tanakh, The Stone Edition (Old Testament)
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

GAZA- All the People Who Tried to Live There BESIDES A 2,000 YEAR HISTORY OF THE JEWS

Nadene Goldfoot                                     

In Nabatean times, the very  ancient days,  Gaza was a place noted for its black pottery.  It had become noted as a trading center passing from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
                                                                 

It's mentioned in Egyptian documents of the 15th to 13th centuries BCE as a base for Egyptian expeditions to the North.
                                                                       

In the 12th century BCE it was captured by the Philistines and was the most important of their 5 coastal cities.   It is where their temple of Dagon was built. Dagon was a Semitic god whose cult was adopted by the Philistines when they entered Canaan. 
                                                      

Dagon

 Dagon was an important god in the Ugaritic pantheon of gods.  He was the god of the soil and plant-growth and widely worshiped in the Middle Eastern countries.  "While Dagan is recorded as the father of the west Semitic deity Ba'al at Ugarit, Ba'al is also known as the son of El, and some scholars, therefore, have suggested a syncretism of Dagan and El l"  The prominence of Dagan on the eastern Mediterranean of the first millennium BCE comes mainly from the Hebrew Bible and the Second Temple literature, which associate Dagan (Heb. Dāgōn) with the temples of the Philistinesl."  In some traditions the spouse of Dagan was Šalaša, in others Išhara.

Moses led the Exodus back to Canaan which had become a land of farming after the 400 years of being away.  The Israelites were originally shepherds-then turned into builders in Egypt.  

The earliest deity recognized by the peoples of the ancient Near East was the creator god El. His mistress, the fertility goddess Asherah, gave birth to many gods, including a powerful god named Baal ("Lord"). There appears to have been only one Baal, who was manifested in lesser Baals at different places and times. Over the years, Baal became the dominant deity, and the worship of El faded.

"Baal won his dominance by defeating the other deities, including the god of the sea, the god of storms (also of rain, thunder, and lightning), and the god of death. Baal's victory over death was thought to be repeated each year when he returned from the land of death (underworld), bringing rain to renew the earth's fertility. Hebrew culture viewed the sea as evil and destructive, so Baal?s promise to prevent storms and control the sea, as well as his ability to produce abundant harvests, made him attractive to the Israelites. It's hard to know why Yahweh's people failed to see that he alone had power over these things. Possibly, their desert origins led them to question God's sovereignty over fertile land. Or maybe it was simply the sinful pagan practices that attracted them to Baal.

Baal is portrayed as a man with the head and horns of a bull, an image similar to that in biblical accounts. His right hand (sometimes both hands) is raised, and he holds a lightning bolt, signifying both destruction and fertility. Baal has also been portrayed seated on a throne, possibly as the king or lord of the gods."  This pantheon is almost an exact copy of the Greek and Roman religions.  

 The temptation of Baal was a constant problem for the leaders of the Israelites.  There was no room for anything but one G-d; THE G-D.  So while they had to fight Philistines and other groups, they had this cult to fight against as well.  It wasn't all that easy keeping the Israelites kosher in following their new unseen G-d.                                                                   

The Temple of Dagon was destroyed by Samson

From Moses and Joshua, it was allotted to the tribe of JUDAH.  It remained in Philistine hands and was where SAMSON was imprisoned and died.

Philistines

                                     

Sargon of Assyria

By 720 BCE, Gaza was annexed by Sargon of ASSYRIA and in 521 BCE, by Cambyses of Persia.
Alexander the Great recolonized it as a hellenistic city in 332BCE, but after his death, it was argued over by the Egyptian Ptolemies and the Syrian Selencids until annexed by Antiochus III of Syria in 198 BCE.   It was independent in 110 BCE only to be captured by Alexander Yannai in 96 BCE, but declared a free city again by Pompey in 61 BCE.
                                                                   

David (1010-970 BCE) , as a teenager, slew Goliath with a slingshot.  Goliath was a giant of a man and a Philistine soldier.  David had outwitted him.  Of course Goliath had been over-confident that nobody could ever beat him.  David continued fighting Philistines.  It was Israel's 1st king, Saul, who had to fight them constantly till he died in battle against them.  David later was able to break the Philistine military power and annexed the entire coastal belt for Israel.

 "Jews finally conquered it in the Hasmonean era c160 BCE onward, and continued to live there. Notable residents include Dunash Ibn Labrat, and Nathan of Gaza,  advisor to false messiah Shabtai Zvi.(1626-1676)"

A Jewish population lived there throughout the Middle Ages from 476 CE to 1492, as well as a Samaritan community until its capture by Napoleon in 1799.  Gaza was a center of Sabbetaism in the 17th century, so over 2,000 years Jews had lived in Gaza.    It's Jewish people left in 1917, at the end of World War I.  The few returning left again during the 1929 Arab riots, led by Haj Amin al-Husseini.  It became the main city in the GAZA STRIP.  By 1949, the population was 30,000 being the place for refugees.

Gaza before the war 

                                                                     

UN forces guarding Gaza on border  1957

Gaza was captured in November 1956 by Israel forces who stayed there until March 1957, for 4 months.  It passed under Israel rule during the Six-Day War in June 1967.  A census taken later that year showed that the population had grown to 119,000.
                                                                             

Gaza along the seacoast

THE GAZA STRIP includes the town of Gaza.  It runs along the coast for 22 miles and is about 8 miles wide.  It is the result of the Egyptian advance into the Negav in May 1948 and the Israel offensives from October to December of 1948 which drove them out of the whole area with the exception of the Gaza Strip.  It continued to be under Egyptian control as of the Armistice Agreement of 1939.  By 1955 it was under political tension and by November 1956 was captured by Israel during the Sinai Operation but Israel returned it in March 1957 with Egyptians taking control with a UN Emergency Force along the border with Israel.
                                                                               

City of Gaza

In May 1967, U Thant, the UN secretary general  gave in to the demand by Nasser of Egypt to withdraw the UN force which led to the Six Day War. when the Gaza Strip again passed under Israel control.  It has been the place of constant unrest.  In 1967, the census found 352,260 people living in there of whom 172,520 were refugees.  By comparison, the population of Portland, Oregon in 2016 was  639,863 twice that of the Gaza Strip. Salem, Oregon's population in 2016 was 167,419, near that of the refugees.  

  Therefore, the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt from 1949 until 1967. Israel's army captured the strip only during the Six Day War in 1967.  "Gaza is within the boundaries of Shevet Yehuda in Biblical Israel (see Genesis 15, Joshua 15:47, Kings 15:47 and Judges 1:18) and therefore some have argued that there is a Halachic requirement to live in this land. The earliest settlement of the area is by Avraham and Yitzhak (Abraham and son Isaac) , both of whom lived in the Gerar area of Gaza. In the fourth century Gaza was the primary Jewish port of Israel for international trade and commerce. Israel left Gaza, lock, stock and barrel, in the name of the trade-off for peace.  Instead they've been rained on by Palestinian rockets, mortars, missiles and now fire.  This was not what you would call a good deal or even a fair deal.  This was a rotten deal.  

Resource The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.jewishmag.com/176mag/jewish_gaza/jewish_gaza.htm
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-of-jewish-settlements-in-gaza
https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon
http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/dagan/index.html
https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/fertility-cults-of-canaan

Why Gaza Keeps Attacking Israel=The Story that No One Knows About

Nadene Goldfoot                                             
                                                                         

Gaza firing missiles into Israel 

Why has there been a war erupting in Gaza in the first place?  Hamas keeps saying that they are resisting the occupation of Israel.
                                                                         

Israel's defense system, the Iron Dome-destroyer of rockets and missiles

 
Here are the facts that have been purposely ignored.  It makes you wonder why the national newspapers and TV people haven't bothered to disclose this.  .
                                                                       

In 2005, Israel had pulled out of Gaza.  There had even been Jews living in Gaza, and they were forced by the Israeli government to move out and leave the area of Gaza entirely to the Arabs for the sake of  having peace for Israel. " Israel wanted nothing more than to live in peace with this independent Palestinian entity."

To do this, Israel went ahead and dismantled every  Jewish village, town or city that was in existence up to that year.  They withdrew every IDF soldier.  They evacuated every Jew.  They left nothing of themselves and no one behind.  Even the cemetery was dug up and transplanted.
                                                                   

What they did leave were the lovely greenhouses that the Jews had built where they grew fruit and flowers for export.  It had become a thriving business.  They had decided to leave them intact to be continually used  to HELP the Gazan economy that was always in trouble.  How did the Gazans react to these greenhouses?  They TRASHED them all when they took over the land.

Israel's government wasn't finished.  They declared the border between Gaza and Israel to be a legal INTERNATIONAL FRONTIER.  This meant that Israel had renounced any claim to the territory and considered it to be an independent entity. They had to put up a fence.
                                                                       

The effect was that Israel  had created the 1st Palestinian state ever.  This was something that their fellow Muslims had never granted to these Palestinians.  The 400 previous years of the Ottoman Empire holding the land never did that for these wandering Arabs.
                                                                       

Israel was outnumbered in the 6 Day War
It took a miracle to win against all odds.  

 As for the Egyptians, they had been brutal in their OCCUPATION OF GAZA for 20 years before being driven out by Israel in the 1967 SIX DAY WAR.                                     

Palestinians in Israel prisons caught attacking under Ilegal Combatants Law

Peace was wanted by the people of Israel and from 1947 to 1967, but they had very little of it.  Their boys and girls had to become warriors to protect their families.  Girls had to fight because the odds against this tiny country was so great.  No one came to help them fight.  The UN was useless.  When the Arab nations told them to leave and let them fight against the Jews, they left.
                                     

Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel retaliating
Operation Pillar of Defense was an eight-day Israel Defense Forces operation in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, which began on 14 November 2012 with the killing of Ahmed Jabari, chief of the Gaza military wing of Hamas by an Israeli airstrike

                           

Cast Lead, Israeli Operation in Defense  2008-2009
The Gaza War, also known as Operation Cast Lead,  and the Battle of al-Furqan by Hamas, was a three-week armed conflict between Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Israel ...

     Israel had been promised by the League of Nations at the end of WWI that they all would help the Jews to create a Jewish Homeland and they gave Great Britain this responsibility who went ahead in giving away 80% of this chosen land to a Saudi Prince who wanted to rule over a country and had been forced out of his own homeland.  Israel was left with 20%, mostly desert.
                                                                               

Israel's  1st Army-Haganah in 1946
Jewish survivors of WWII land in Palestine 

Their actual ancient ground was part of the give-away.  Now this 20% was to be divided again to give half to the nomadic Arabs who had entered the land in the first place to get jobs from the industrious Jews who were busy building their Jewish Homeland!
                                                                                                       

Khaled Meshaal-Hamas leader

                       

A rare moment smiling together
Abbas of Fatah and Haniyeh -Hamas 

  And here Israel was, deciding on their own to give Gaza to the warring Arabs who seemed to promise peace.

Has Israel been given PEACE?  No way!  Gaza immediately became their rocket platform to shoot rockets, mortars and missiles at Israel with the help of their neighbors who supplied the weapons or materials to make the weapons.

Yet they keep calling out the words, OCCUPATION!!
                                                                           

(From L to R) Palestinian Fatah delegation chief Azzam al-Ahmad, Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk pose for a photo as they celebrate in Gaza City on April 23, 2014, after West Bank and Gaza Strip leaders agreed to form a unity government within five weeks. (photo credit: AFP/Said Khatib)
That didn't last. They struggle for power over the other.    

And the news kept on buying into OCCUPATION without checking into the true facts, without bothering to write about it.

HAMAS, the terrorist gang that has gone political, took over in a 1st-ever election in Gaza pushed onto Israel and Gaza by  the then President Obama of the USA to have a Democratic Election.  Of course Hamas saw to it that they themselves won the election.  It was most likely fixed, or the people were so scared that they dare not anger Hamas as consequences could be death.  So they had broken away from Fatah terrorism who were a little milder, not so vicious led by Abbas, and went wild with Hamas.  They weren't ready for a Democratic election mentally or physically.

Gaza became an armed camp and made war against Israel.  Occasionally they would call for a truce, giving them time to recover any losses.  Then they would be back at the usual shooting of rockets, mortars and missiles.  They had no intention of having peace; only to take over all of Israel as according to their promise at a meeting in Kartoum saying NO NO NO to peace with Israel and writing in their charter that they would destroy Israel.
                                                                       

President of Iran Hassan Rouhani

According to their different style of thinking and logic, they consider ISRAEL itself as being OCCUPIED LAND!.  OCCUPIED BY JEWS!   They scream that Israel is illegitimate, a cancer, a crime against humanity.  These words are thrown out by the leaders of Iran, (former Persia) to back them up.  It's Iran who is the chief patron for Hamas, their BIG BROTHER.  They supply arms for Hamas.   Hamas has been so open about their goals.  THEY ARE GOING TO LIBERATE ISRAEL.  THEY ARE GOING TO DESTROY TEL AVIV AND THE REST OF PRE-1967 ISRAEL.  This is Hamas' RAISON D'ETRE.
                                                                           

Hamas has used campaigns of suicide bombings against Israel.  Israel had to build an almost impenetrable fence for protection of its citizens.  Hamas fires rockets into Israel indiscriminately at civilians in populated areas.  Their attacks have been started with a barrage of about 150 rockets at Israel.
                                                                             

What goes on is they get new rockets, especially the Fajr-5 from Iran that they smuggle in by sea or by their famous tunnels they have built-a freeway underground,   These rockets shot from Gaza can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where 50% of Israel's population live.
                                                                           

They have gained  more strength  by gaining more patrons on their side of Middle Eastern states from the Arab Spring that started in Syria. and the change in attitude in Turkey which is an Islamist reversal of Erdogan becoming more radical in Islam.  For 66 years, Turkey, which is not an Arab state, had been a reliable ally of Israel.  This recent 180 degree shift with Recep Erdogen saw him call Israel a terrorist state.  Imagine, Israel has suffered terror from ts neighbors and Palestinians who have committed cold-blooded murder in the name of terrorism, and the victims are called the terrorists.

It's like what happened in Germany.  Whatever Hitler said was agreed with.  Hitler's writings happen to be very popular in the Middle East.  People can be brainwashed by living under fear.
                                                                   

Mohamed Morsi b: 1951, is an Egyptian politician who served as the fifth President of Egypt, from 30 June 2012 to 3 July 2013, when General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed Morsi from office in the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état after the June 2013 Egyptian protests.

Egypt, Israel's adjoining neighbor, the country they left with Moses, was also taken over by Hamas's mother organization, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD.  Hamas was its Palestinian wing. Mohamed Morsi was the leader of the BROTHERHOOD.  
                                                                               

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,b: 1954,  former General of Egypt

Finally, General Sisi got wiser and kicked him out and took back Egypt.  Things between Israel and Egypt have been much better, but it had been Obama that had backed the Muslim Brotherhood.  When he became president, one of the 1st things he did was to go to Egypt with an apology speech and he had insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood men sit in the front row to hear his speech.  The Brotherhood was outlawed at the time in Egypt, but with USA pushing, had relented in this and allowed it to happen.
                                                                         

Another backer of Hamas has been Qatar with the emir visiting there and leaving behind a promise of a cool $400 million dollars!  It obviously has been used for weapons to use against Israel.  Rarely have the people seen any helpful changes in their life.  Gaza and Judea and Samaria, where Fatah reside, rarely have made payment to Israel for their electricity or water supplies as they've created none of their own.  They've been DEPENDENT ON ISRAEL.

Israel and Egypt, in their own defense, have resorted to military blockading certain roads that would have brought in a flood of new and even more deadly weapons.  Hamas demands immunity and inviolability so they can build up their arsenal of missiles for another war on their terms.

Hamas is looking forward to creating their own Hezbollah South, a counterpart of the terror group to Israel's north with 50,000 Iranian and Syrian supplied rockets that will deter any Israeli pre-emptive attack.  They declared a cease-fire on for November 21st in 2012.  Hamas has not succeeded but more fighting keeps going on, with the latest done at the fence between Israel and Gaza.
                                                                         

Palestinian kites crossing over the fence into fields and forests of Israel destroying crops, and
precious trees, hand planted over the years, the new form of attack on Israel

The press coverage is all on the Arab side of the fence, and Israel is damned for defending themselves, as usual.  As usual, too many ignore the true facts and just give in to the strongest bully who to them are dressed in sheep's clothing, so are the weaker ones.

So almost everyone has chosen the side backed by Middle East dissidents who have not gone along with the decisions made by the League of Nations and agreed with by the United Nations, representatives of all the countries of that period.  The press certainly hasn't tried to dissuade anyone about it.  It took the late Charles Krauthammer to sit down in 2012 to write the article my information followed, though many of us have been writing these same things over and over.  It's never been picked up by the national news syndicates to my knowledge.  Let Israel dare to defend itself and they have been charged with terrorism.

Resource; Charles Krauthammer, November 22, 2012, Washington Post and copied by the Oregonian under Middle East Conflict,  WHY WAS THERE WAR IN GAZA?
https://www.hoover.org/research/gaza-flotilla-and-international-law
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-exclusives-pick your own topic
http://www.israelhayom.com/columnist/prof-eugene-kontorovich/
https://player.fm/series/hear-what-israels-top-experts-in-the-fields-of-intelligence-security-international-relations-and-diplomacy-have-to-say-about-israel-and-the-complexities-of-the-middle-east-in-the-21st-century/hamas-gaza-and-the-rush-to-judgment-amb-dore-gold
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/yes-israel-won-in-gaza/
http://jcpa.org/why-israeli-rule-in-the-west-bank-is-legal-under-international-law/
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Kontorovich-Northwestern-Statement-Golan-Heights-7-17.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/03/06/the-world-discovers-the-legality-of-the-gaza-blockade/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.829aa44975d8
https://www.quora.com/Is-Gaza-occupied-under-international-law