Posted on 06/18/2008 5:02:15 AM PDT by SJackson
(IsraelNN.com) Historian Dr. Rivka Shpak-Lissak has embarked on an ambitious project, detailing the history of Jewish towns in the Land of Israel that are now known as Arab. Seven of her articles in this series have appeared on the Omedia website, and she has many more coming.
The bottom line, Dr. Lissak told Israel National News, is that the Arabs have not been here for thousands of years, as they claim, and that in fact most of the formerly Jewish towns of the Galilee were populated by Arabs only within the last 300 years or so.
"The goal of all the rulers of the Holy Land, from the times of the Romans and onward, was always to rid the Land of the Jews," she said. "Finally, they succeeded. Many Jews simply left the Land rather than convert to Islam."
The series began last month with a short treatise on the town of Tzipori, famous from the times of the Mishna. The article noted that the Supreme Israeli-Arab Tracking Committee was preparing a "march of return" from Nazareth to Tzipori, to mark Catastrophe Day [Israel's Independence Day]. "We should remind the marchers," wrote Dr. Lissak, "that Tzipori was a Jewish city for 2,000 years, while the [adjacent] Arab village Safuriya was founded only in 1561."
Dr. Lissak was born in "the Land," she told Arutz-7, received a doctorate in history, and lectured in Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University. She has also specialized in American history.
Other originally-Jewish cities highlighted in the series include Kafr Kana, Biram, Pekiin, Sakhnin, Gush Halav, and Arabeh.
Kafr Kana
The latest article is on Kafr Kana, just north of Upper Nazareth in the Lower Galilee. Some 260 Arab families lived there in 1945, and it now has a population of 18,000 people, mostly Moslems and some Christians - leading many to forget its Jewish past. It was a Jewish city during the period of the First Temple (between 2,800 and 2,400 years ago), as well as under Persian rule during the Second Temple period several centuries later. Josephus fortified the city against the Romans in the year 66 C.E., and after Jerusalem fell, priests from the Elyashiv watch moved to Kana. Talmudic sages lived there, and tradition has it that Rava and Rav Huna are buried there. Remnants of a 4th-century synagogue have been found in Kana.
Kana continued to be a thriving Jewish town in the ensuing centuries, though Christians began to move in as well. Eighty Jewish families were reported to be living there in 1473. Rabbi Ovadiah from Bartinura, whose student visited the town, reported that he heard that its Jews, though by then a minority among Christians, were living there peacefully. Somewhere in the 17th century, Bedouin and Arab attacks, as well as Turkish taxation, forced the Jews out, and Arabs replaced them.
During the War of Independence 300 years later, Arab terrorist gangs from Kafr Kana attacked nearby Jewish towns, until the IDF conquered it in July 1948.
Gush Halav
Another now-Arab town whose roots are Jewish is Jish, north of Tzfat (Safed). Known also by its Jewish name Gush Halav, the town is mentioned in the Mishna as having been walled since the times of Joshua ben Nun - i.e., nearly 3,300 years ago. Gush Halav was the last Jewish stronghold in the Galilee and Golan region during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-73 CE); its fall was described at length by Josephus.
As was the case with other towns and cities in the Galilee, a dynamic Jewish presence continued in Gush Halav well into the second half of the second millennium C.E. Archaeologists have excavated a synagogue at Gush Halav that was in use from the 3rd to 6th centuries, and a Jewish burial site similar to that at Beit She'arim has been excavated. The Prophet Joel is said to be buried in Gush Halav.
Many Jews continued to live in Gush Halav, but by the 18th century - by which time the town was renamed Jish - their number had dwindled. Maronite Christians then began arriving in Jish, joining the few Jews who still remained. In 1948, most of the population left, but Arabs from nearby villages took their place. Jish-Gush Halav now has a population of some 2,700 - none of them Jews.
(to be continued)
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Israel has its own variation of the problems with too many from aways moving in and taking over.
Silly argument when there are better ones. After all, most American towns/cities were not populated by Americans 300 years ago - does this somehow invalidate all US citizen’s rights?
Focus on genuine problems with levels of ARab settlement in Palestine - this argument is specious ands will rebound badly.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I agree with you, but I do find the archaeological research interesting.
What arguement it the author making? It's simply a historical piece, the author isn't advocating anything. It does expose the Arab position that Jews never lived in the region, but that's not advocacy, simply fact.
Note 7, history is all it is, there’s no arguement being advanced.
Yes she is:
The bottom line, Dr. Lissak told Israel National News, is that the Arabs have not been here for thousands of years, as they claim, and that in fact most of the formerly Jewish towns of the Galilee were populated by Arabs only within the last 300 years or so.
She is advocating a position which she fervently believes in and may well have evidence which she feels supports her theory. It has however much blowback potential in terms of undermining better arguments against Arab vs Israeli presence in the region. Israel is better off sticking to the points regarding demographics in the region prior to 1900, or between the inter World war period. That has relevance and is readily provable. This line will cheapen those and cannot be demonstrably proved. It will weaken Israel to be seen as needing support from such shallow arguments.
You’re right.
What position? She's not advocating expelling Arabs from these towns, since they were first occupied by Jews. She's not advocating doing anything to Arabs, there's no political policy statement in the article at all. Even your highlight, my bold, is simply a statement of two historical facts.
The bottom line, Dr. Lissak told Israel National News, is that the Arabs have not been here for thousands of years, as they claim, and that in fact most of the formerly Jewish towns of the Galilee were populated by Arabs only within the last 300 years or so.
The fact that it disproves the palestinian narrative doesn't make it a policy statement any more than the fact that marriage in the United States was limited to one man and one woman for the first 230 years or so is a policy statement.
Her position is the argument which I quoted. As to it being a policy statement, I never said it was - I used the term 'argument' in the scientific/academic sense. I never said she's suggesting mass deportations. My genuine concenr is that the weakness of this argument will undermine better Israeli arguments re historical occupation of the area.
PS - I’m off to the arms of Morpheus now (It’s 3am here!) but I’ll check back in tomorrow and respond. Please don’t take my comments personally - I just genuinely feel that the article above can only undermine Israel’s stronger arguments for their right to exist. A really bad argument taints the better ones.
What is to be considered is that Palestinians DO NOT REALLY WANT A TWO STATE SOLUTION. What they are really asking for is the RIGHT OF RETURN to their homes efore 1948. If they lived anywhere in 1948, that is where they want to be now.
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The Middle east is FULL of people who are NOT native to the region as a result of the barbarism of the Turk —The Turk Ottoman state utilized forced population transfers called surgun, from the verb surmek (to displace), as a tool to re establish the ethnic and economic landscape of its territories. Forced transfers were implemented from Asia to the Balkans and from the Balkans to Asia and the middle east.
Stalin learned from the best of the beasts.
In fact, many Circassians and Bosnian Muslims were settled in the north of Palestine by the Ottomans in the early 19th Century.
These people are mostly NOT Arab...they are simply muslim riff raff from the former ottoman dominions who were forcibly sent into the region by Muslim Turks who at the time found it to their advantage to do so.
“It will weaken Israel to be seen as needing support from such shallow arguments.”
Baloney. It responds to the constant litany coming from the Arabs that the Jews never lived there and thus have no claim to the land. The Arabs are busy detroying and looting and removing artifacts from the Temple Mount that have anything to do with Jewish history in order to be able to state that the Jews had no ownership to the Temple Mount, even though the wall to their Temple is still there.
It’s like what the Egyptians did when a new Pharoah took the throne. The new Pharoah would have defaced anything with the name of his predecessor on it, to wipe out the memory of the prior Pharoah’s rule. It’s an old tried and true technique, used by many invaders, squatters, migrating populations, in order to lay claim to what wasn’t theirs but by virtue of possession is nine-tenths of the law, now is.
They go around destroying old graves, shuls, and the like.
Truth is, by the the mid-1800’s there was little in all of greater Israel (no such thing as “Palestine”), except some hard core Haredi, various encampments of Samaritans (who are deemed Jews now, under the secular law), and various types Christian monks/priests holding down pretty much empty churches.
Slowly, Jews returned and made something of the place.
Arabs came from Jordan and Syria for work and because the British and Jews were good partners/employers.
These same arabs are now saying there were there first.
It is very similar (but with rockets and suicide bombers) to the Mexican reconquest movement in the United States.
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