Tuesday, August 04, 2020
IRAN'S USE OF SYRIA AGAINST ISRAEL
Nadene Goldfoot
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, also known as Mohammad Reza Shah, was the last Shah of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply the Shah. He had been a friend of Israel as had King Cyrus in 538 BCE of Persia.
Iran keeps her eyes open. As soon as Syria became independent in 1946, Iran established a consulate there. The 2 countries had good relations until the Iranian Revolution of 1979 when the King was deposed and the Ayatollah stepped in. Syria's president Hafez al-Assad took a 4 day trip to Tehran in 1975 and signed cooperation agreements between the two countries. It only took a few years more and Assad was supporting Iranian dissidents and started training Iranian guerrillas. Carter's time ended and Reagan took over in 1981.
Syria had a civil war when Iran aided their government in 2011 so they could deal with protesters. Iran was not prepared to lose this "golden counterweight" to Israel.
Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, said, "In Syria, the hand of America and Israel is evident. Wherever a movement is Islamic, poplist and anti-American, we support it."
One major area of cooperation between Iran and Syria was in Lebanon in the Lebanese Civil War. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran established and trained the Hebollah terrorists to spread Khomeini's ideology and repel the 1982 Israeli invasion in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is both their ammunition against Israel. Now Iran can influence the Lebanese affairs as well. In 1982, Ronald Reagan was the USA president. Today, 8/4/2020, a huge explosion was triggered and the results made Lebanon look like an A bomb scene. TV first thought fire-crackers went off. It most likely was an ammunition dump stored at the port with other explosives and went off by itself, ammunition for Iran to use bought by Russia.
By 2006, Iran and Syria signed agreements against the US and Israel's common threats against them.
In June 2009 Iran had a disputed presidential election. US president Obama condemned their crackdown on their opposition, THE GREEN MOVEMENT who were pro-democracy demonstrators. Obama was elected in 2009. In 2010 Obama signed expanded sanctions against Iran. This caused their oil exports to be halved.
"In 2012, Obama, who had previously demanded the resignation of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, said that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government would be crossing a red line and would entail U.S. military action. After reports on 21 August 2013 about the usage of chemical weapons in Syria, the Obama administration formally blamed the incident on the Syrian government and sought Congressional approval for military action in Syria. Besides, Obama sought support from Britain and France for an attack in Syria. The Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved plans for a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes to have those called off by Obama in September. On 11 September 2013 (the first 9/11), Obama put a military strike or combat operations on hold and achieved an agreement with Russia and the Syrian government to destroy all chemical weapons in Syria."
"Obama's decision to allow the violation of a red line he himself had drawn to go unpunished is widely criticised by the U.S. political establishment, as well as the allies, as detrimental to America's international credibility. However, in early 2016, Obama said he was "proud" of his decision, which repudiated what he referred to as the "Washington playbook" and avoided entangling the US in yet another "unfixable" situation in the Middle East. , "The agony of Syria is the biggest moral stain on Barack Obama's presidency. And the chaos rippling from Syria—where many now turn to al-Qaeda, not the West, for salvation—is his greatest geopolitical failure."
By June 2017, Iran launched missiles into Syria, aiming for Islamic State (ISIS) fighters in retaliation for Tehran terror attacks which killed 18 people. Iran made clear that all foreign military forces like the USA without permission should respect Syria's territorial integrity and leave the country. Donald Trump was then US president. Like father and son, Iran said that they consider Syria's security its own security, and they consider their own defense capabilities to be those of Syria. Iran has consistently invested billions of dollars into the Syrian economy. They make out to be 2 peas in a pod.
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| Ruhollah Khomeini in 1981 former " Iranian politician, revolutionary, and cleric |
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| rockets found by Israeli navy being smuggled by ship |
Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, said, "In Syria, the hand of America and Israel is evident. Wherever a movement is Islamic, poplist and anti-American, we support it."
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| Iran's Revolutionary Guard |
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| Iran's army parading |
One major area of cooperation between Iran and Syria was in Lebanon in the Lebanese Civil War. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran established and trained the Hebollah terrorists to spread Khomeini's ideology and repel the 1982 Israeli invasion in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is both their ammunition against Israel. Now Iran can influence the Lebanese affairs as well. In 1982, Ronald Reagan was the USA president. Today, 8/4/2020, a huge explosion was triggered and the results made Lebanon look like an A bomb scene. TV first thought fire-crackers went off. It most likely was an ammunition dump stored at the port with other explosives and went off by itself, ammunition for Iran to use bought by Russia.
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| Hezbollah in Lebanon-controlled by Iran |
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| Haifa is 85 miles from Lebanon from Metula, Israel, one goes to the "Good Fence" crossing. From the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel until 1970, Israel's border with Lebanon was quiet to the point that farmers from the Israeli town of Metula farmed their lands in the Ayoun Valley inside Lebanon. In 1970, after their expulsion from Jordan during Black September, the PLO began taking control over southern Lebanon and violating the tranquility that had prevailed in the area. |
In June 2009 Iran had a disputed presidential election. US president Obama condemned their crackdown on their opposition, THE GREEN MOVEMENT who were pro-democracy demonstrators. Obama was elected in 2009. In 2010 Obama signed expanded sanctions against Iran. This caused their oil exports to be halved.
"In 2012, Obama, who had previously demanded the resignation of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, said that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government would be crossing a red line and would entail U.S. military action. After reports on 21 August 2013 about the usage of chemical weapons in Syria, the Obama administration formally blamed the incident on the Syrian government and sought Congressional approval for military action in Syria. Besides, Obama sought support from Britain and France for an attack in Syria. The Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved plans for a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes to have those called off by Obama in September. On 11 September 2013 (the first 9/11), Obama put a military strike or combat operations on hold and achieved an agreement with Russia and the Syrian government to destroy all chemical weapons in Syria."
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| President Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Syria and ISIL, September 29, 2015 |
"Obama's decision to allow the violation of a red line he himself had drawn to go unpunished is widely criticised by the U.S. political establishment, as well as the allies, as detrimental to America's international credibility. However, in early 2016, Obama said he was "proud" of his decision, which repudiated what he referred to as the "Washington playbook" and avoided entangling the US in yet another "unfixable" situation in the Middle East. , "The agony of Syria is the biggest moral stain on Barack Obama's presidency. And the chaos rippling from Syria—where many now turn to al-Qaeda, not the West, for salvation—is his greatest geopolitical failure."
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| Iranian women in Syria, moving in |
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| President Donald Trump |
The Trump administration officially put Iran "on notice" following their ballistic missile tests on January 29, 2017, just days after taking office. After the late January missile tests by Iran, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on 25 Iranian individuals and entities on February 3, which it said were "initial steps", with Trump's then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn adding that ″the days of turning a blind eye to Iran's hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.
On December 30, 2018 Trump wanted to withdraw troops from Syria. Senator Lindsey Graham said that the decision was "a stain on the honor of the United States," and that while he agrees that it's possible to reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, the US must keep troops in Syria to ensure ISIL can't regroup. Graham also said that he and a group of generals would urge Trump to reconsider his withdrawal plans during a luncheon later that day. One week after this announcement, Trump asserted he would not approve any extension of the American deployment in Syria. On January 6, 2019, national security advisor John Bolton added conditions to the pullout,.
America would remain in Syria until ISIL is eradicated and until Turkey guarantees it would not strike America's Kurdish allies.
Again, the policy was not to hurt the Kurds, who were also helpful for Israel. In October 2019, Trump ordered the Pentagon to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria to allow Turkey to conduct a planned military operation against Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had been supporting the U.S. against ISIL since 2014. The sudden announcement on the night of October 6 came after a Trump telephone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. U.S. troops reportedly began withdrawing from some positions in northern Syria on October 7." This was a calamity to both the US and Israel. No one could understand it. "Trump defended his withdrawal order, stating that the Kurdish-Turkish conflict "has nothing to do with us" and described the situation as "strategically brilliant" for the U.S."
American forces continued their withdrawal from northeastern Syria and Turkey moved into the area formerly controlled by the United States’ Kurdish allies. Fighting has raged in the area for weeks, and forced tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians to flee their homes, according to aid organizations. They all felt betrayed. The Kurdish expression “No friends but the mountains” has become more painfully true. The Kurds are the closest matching DNA group of people to Jews that there are; Palestinians are not as close. Many Kurds live in Israel.
Things have not always been very good between Iran and Turkey. In a surprise announcement that marked a noticeable shift in Iran’s regional policy, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif declared Tehran’s “support” for the Turkey-backed “legitimate” Government of National Accord in Libya during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on June 15, 2020. It was the Iranian government’s first official endorsement of GNA amid claims and rumors that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is surreptitiously transferring arms to forces of the Russian-backed Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar. So Russia is backing the Libyans who also help Iran, and Iran is now supporting Turkey.
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| Iran, Turkey and Russia, now good friends |
Things have not always been very good between Iran and Turkey. In a surprise announcement that marked a noticeable shift in Iran’s regional policy, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif declared Tehran’s “support” for the Turkey-backed “legitimate” Government of National Accord in Libya during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on June 15, 2020. It was the Iranian government’s first official endorsement of GNA amid claims and rumors that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is surreptitiously transferring arms to forces of the Russian-backed Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar. So Russia is backing the Libyans who also help Iran, and Iran is now supporting Turkey.
Resource:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-s-syria-pullout-follows-years-kurdish-struggle-n1075726
Labels: ammunition, Ayatolla, explosion, Good Fence, iran, Iranian soldiers, Israel, Kurds, Lebanon, Putin, rockets, Russia, Shah, Syria, USA
Thursday, July 23, 2015
After 2nd Temple Was Destroyed in 70 CE, What Happened To Our Families
Nadene Goldfoot
Our small trickle of a Jewish population of 14 million is so lucky to exist after millenniums of people trying to destroy us. We only make up 0.02% of the world population today, but long ago in King David's time, must have grown into a goodly %, for the great numbers slaughtered were huge. Above, Danny's father came from Russia with his family as a little boy via a guide in the night like the Mexicans of today leave Mexico. His mother was a German Jew, born in the USA with a paternal grandfather Greenstein from Russia. My paternal grandparents came from Lithuania. My grandfather died when my father was 4 years old so we knew nothing about his life, just that he came from "Russia." By the time my Bubba immigrated, her city of Lazdijai had been taken over by Poland. My mother had converted to Judaism. Here we live in the melting pot of the best country in the whole world for Jews since Judah had been destroyed.
The destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE was about to change the whole world and especially the Jews. Romans entered Judah when they replaced the Seleucids as the great power of the region. They granted the Hasmonean king Hyrcanus II limited authority under their Roman governor of Damascus.
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| Danny and I and our Aliyah party 1980 Danny's mother's surname was Cohen. His father was a Levite, making him one, too. He became a high school history teacher and then earned his master's in testing and evaluation and became a counselor. His father's surname had been Iskowitz, but changed to become more American.   Danny, after moving to Israel wearing an Israeli prayer shawl |
Our small trickle of a Jewish population of 14 million is so lucky to exist after millenniums of people trying to destroy us. We only make up 0.02% of the world population today, but long ago in King David's time, must have grown into a goodly %, for the great numbers slaughtered were huge. Above, Danny's father came from Russia with his family as a little boy via a guide in the night like the Mexicans of today leave Mexico. His mother was a German Jew, born in the USA with a paternal grandfather Greenstein from Russia. My paternal grandparents came from Lithuania. My grandfather died when my father was 4 years old so we knew nothing about his life, just that he came from "Russia." By the time my Bubba immigrated, her city of Lazdijai had been taken over by Poland. My mother had converted to Judaism. Here we live in the melting pot of the best country in the whole world for Jews since Judah had been destroyed.
The destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE was about to change the whole world and especially the Jews. Romans entered Judah when they replaced the Seleucids as the great power of the region. They granted the Hasmonean king Hyrcanus II limited authority under their Roman governor of Damascus.
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| Danny's Bar Mitzvah and family in Brooklyn 1951 His grandmother was Sarah Cohen nee Greenstein |
Who was a Jew? In this Talmudic period from 100 BCE to 500 CE, anyone who had a Jewish mother was Jewish, or if the person had been rabbinically converted. Jews themselves are divided into 3 male castes; Cohen, Levi and Israelite. It is estimated that Cohanim and Levites each comprise about 4% of the Jewish people today, although about 40% that have tested their DNA are found to have the Cohen gene. This makes me wonder.
Herod was the son-in-law of Hyrcanus II and in 37 BCE was appointed King of Judea by the Romans. He was given almost unlimited autonomy in the country's internal affairs and became one of the most powerful monarchs in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. He loved Greco-Roman culture. So he launched a massive construction program including the cities of Caesarea and Sebaste, and the fortresses at Herodium and Masada. He also remodeled the Temple into one of the most magnificent buildings of its time. However, he failed to win the trust and support of his Jewish subjects He was not of the Davidic dynasty. He was the son of Antipater who was an Idumean and his mother was a Nabatean, named Cypros. His father appointed him governor of Galilee when he was a young man and he immediately showed a strong hand by executing dissidents. For this he was summoned by the Sanhedrin and only saved from death by the intervention of Hyrcanus and Sexus Caesar, governor of Syria.
In the middle of the 2nd century BCE, a Jewish writer of the 3rd book of the Oracula Sibyllina spoke to the "Chosen People" and told them that "every land is full of thee and every see." Other notables such as Strabo, Philo, Seneca, Luke-author of the Acts of the Apostles, Cicero, and Josephus all mentioned Jewish populations in the cities of the Mediterranean basin. Jews were in India and in China. King Agrippa I sent a letter to Caligula numbering the Jews in their provinces which were almost all of the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient. He didn't mention Italy or Cyrene having Jews, then. Josephus said that after Judea and Babylonia were in Syria and especially in Antioch and Damascus, where 10,000 to 18,000 Jews were massacred during the great insurrection. Philo said that Jews in Egypt numbered one million which was 1/8th of the population. Alexandria was the most important Jewish community. They were on par with their Ptolemaic counterparts and had close ties with them with Jerusalem before the destruction. Moving to Egypt then was a choice of the people there, not an imposition.
When Herod died in 4 BCE, Judah came under direct Roman administration. The population's anger kept growing against increased Roman suppression of their Jewish life and this resulted in sporadic violence which escalated into a full-scale revolt in 66 CE. Titus brought in his superior Roman forces and they were finally victorious by razing Jerusalem to the ground in 70 CE by burning it and defeating the last Jewish outpost at Masada in 73 CE.
The was total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction was a huge catastrophe for the Jewish people. Hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the siege of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country, and then many thousands more were sold into slavery.
Shimon Bar Kokhba came along in 132 CE and regained Jerusalem from the Romans, giving the population a respite from Roman rule, but his attack on the ended in defeat after 3 years of fighting and he was killed in battle, regaining Judea as it was called by the Romans. The holy city was plowed up with a yoke of oxen. Judea was then renamed as Palaestinia just to be ornery against the Jews and Jerusalem was renamed as Aelia Capitolina.
After this, many Jews were taken as slaves and brought into other lands which they called "the Diaspora." By the 4th century CE, many of these slave populations may have served as the basis of later European Jewish communities.
The majority of Jews lived outside of Judea rather than in it, and they were already living outside of Judea at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. As many as a million Jews were already living in Alexandria. The Romans treated and put to the law all Jews, no matter where they lived. They collected an annual temple tax even though they had destroyed the Temple. They were treating Jews as a distinct ethno-national group.
There was a revolt in 115-117 CE in Egypt, Libya and Crete which likely decimated the Jewish Diaspora population. Wholesale massacres had taken place in Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Meseopotamia where there were large numbers of Jews. When Caesar Augustus had started his rule, there were over 7,000 Jews living in Rome, though this is only the number that is said to have escorted the envoys who came to demand the depositionof Archelaus. Bringmann talks of about 8,000 Jews who lived in Rome. Many sources say that the Jews made up about 1/10th of the population of Rome. In the year 62-61 BCE, the tax paid showed that the Jewish population of Asia Minor was about 45,000 adult males out of a total of at least 180,000 people. There was another in 132-135 of the Bar Kochba Revolt causing the Romans to engage in mass executions and enslavement. The Romans then destroyed large numbers of Judaean towns, and forbade Jews from settling in Jerusalem or its environs. there was no further Jewish government or overarching legal system in Judaea. Jews had now become permanently exiled people with no national homeland. The restrictions continued such as taxation, discrimination, social exclusion which further alienated and marginalized remaining Jews in the Negev and Galilee.
What the Romans did was favor the settlement of culturally pagan Syro-Phoenicians and others. These would have been the ancestors of the people the Arabs have displaced.
For Arabs came from the Arabian peninsula and regions nearby it, but left their land when Islam was created by Muhammad before and after 632 to proselytize. They burst forth from their homeland to conquer the greater part of the then civilized world. They are a Semitic people like the Jews, coming from Abraham's first son, Ishmael by the Egyptian woman, Hagar, who was Abraham's wife's handmaid.
Judaea became known as Syria Palestina. The Romans did their best to ensure that Jerusalem would ever rise again or that there would ever be another Jewish Temple.
Jewish people were now in exile. Some time around the year 615, Muhammad spoke to the Jews of Mecca and Medina as though they had been expelled 2 times from the land of Judaea by the servants of Allah and told them it was a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and of the prophet, (himself).
He was wrong. The outside world in which Jews were living in (the Diaspora) happened over the centuries since they had returned from Babylon where they had a taste of living outside. Then they had to live through the Roman destruction and the subsequent rule of Christians and Muslims. For generations to come, the Jews were to be seen as an exiled and persecuted people for much of their history. The Babylonian captivity created the promise of return and getting on with their lives.
So we find many Jews were living outside of the Land of Israel before the Roman imperial oppression and before the Jewish uprisings for independence and freedom from Roman rule in their homeland. Many went back to 4 BCE like the settlement in Puteoli, Italy and originated in voluntary emigration by the lure of trade and commerce. I would think that the scholars tended to remain in Judah for as long as they could until they too, saw the writing on the wall and fled, most likely before the burning started.
Jews were living in France before 70 CE. Organized Jewish communities were living there in the period of the Roman Empire. When Christianity entered, their position deteriorated because the church councils took steps to enforce the conventional anti-Jewish codes. Under the Merovingians, some Jews occupied prominent positions at their court.
From the 8th century on, Jews were under the protection of Charlemagne and his house, so Jewish merchants began to settle in France for purposes of trade, importing foreign luxuries and establishing new communities up the Rhone Valley and into Champagne. In the 9th century, southern France was the main center of the activity of the international traders, the RADANITES.
Sephardi originally meant Jews descended from the communities that existed in Spain before their expulsion of 1492. Today we use Sephardim to mean all descendants of the communities of North Africa and the Near East who follow the Sephardi rite of worship and their cultural traditions. Before the middle of the 20th century, gene flow between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi groups was restricted by distance, but some cities found both living there, each attending their own synagogues. Language would have been a barrier and some small differences in customs, for instance, Sephardi allowing rice to be eaten during Passover but Ashkenazis not allowing it. I wonder if Jacob's wife, Rachel, was this beautiful. I hope so.
Resource: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Romans.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition, Kevin Alan Brook
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0007_0_07174.html- Genetic Ancestry, Jewish
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sephardi+Jews,+pictures&biw=1024&bih=677&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CDYQ7AlqFQoTCL3W3rPn8cYCFc1biAodOZ0PrA#imgrc=sWBiEDr6U7q7MM%3A
In the middle of the 2nd century BCE, a Jewish writer of the 3rd book of the Oracula Sibyllina spoke to the "Chosen People" and told them that "every land is full of thee and every see." Other notables such as Strabo, Philo, Seneca, Luke-author of the Acts of the Apostles, Cicero, and Josephus all mentioned Jewish populations in the cities of the Mediterranean basin. Jews were in India and in China. King Agrippa I sent a letter to Caligula numbering the Jews in their provinces which were almost all of the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient. He didn't mention Italy or Cyrene having Jews, then. Josephus said that after Judea and Babylonia were in Syria and especially in Antioch and Damascus, where 10,000 to 18,000 Jews were massacred during the great insurrection. Philo said that Jews in Egypt numbered one million which was 1/8th of the population. Alexandria was the most important Jewish community. They were on par with their Ptolemaic counterparts and had close ties with them with Jerusalem before the destruction. Moving to Egypt then was a choice of the people there, not an imposition.
When Herod died in 4 BCE, Judah came under direct Roman administration. The population's anger kept growing against increased Roman suppression of their Jewish life and this resulted in sporadic violence which escalated into a full-scale revolt in 66 CE. Titus brought in his superior Roman forces and they were finally victorious by razing Jerusalem to the ground in 70 CE by burning it and defeating the last Jewish outpost at Masada in 73 CE.
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| Leaving Jerusalem |
Shimon Bar Kokhba came along in 132 CE and regained Jerusalem from the Romans, giving the population a respite from Roman rule, but his attack on the ended in defeat after 3 years of fighting and he was killed in battle, regaining Judea as it was called by the Romans. The holy city was plowed up with a yoke of oxen. Judea was then renamed as Palaestinia just to be ornery against the Jews and Jerusalem was renamed as Aelia Capitolina.
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| The Arch of Titus leading away the loot from the Temple and Jewish slaves |
The majority of Jews lived outside of Judea rather than in it, and they were already living outside of Judea at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. As many as a million Jews were already living in Alexandria. The Romans treated and put to the law all Jews, no matter where they lived. They collected an annual temple tax even though they had destroyed the Temple. They were treating Jews as a distinct ethno-national group.
There was a revolt in 115-117 CE in Egypt, Libya and Crete which likely decimated the Jewish Diaspora population. Wholesale massacres had taken place in Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Meseopotamia where there were large numbers of Jews. When Caesar Augustus had started his rule, there were over 7,000 Jews living in Rome, though this is only the number that is said to have escorted the envoys who came to demand the depositionof Archelaus. Bringmann talks of about 8,000 Jews who lived in Rome. Many sources say that the Jews made up about 1/10th of the population of Rome. In the year 62-61 BCE, the tax paid showed that the Jewish population of Asia Minor was about 45,000 adult males out of a total of at least 180,000 people. There was another in 132-135 of the Bar Kochba Revolt causing the Romans to engage in mass executions and enslavement. The Romans then destroyed large numbers of Judaean towns, and forbade Jews from settling in Jerusalem or its environs. there was no further Jewish government or overarching legal system in Judaea. Jews had now become permanently exiled people with no national homeland. The restrictions continued such as taxation, discrimination, social exclusion which further alienated and marginalized remaining Jews in the Negev and Galilee.
What the Romans did was favor the settlement of culturally pagan Syro-Phoenicians and others. These would have been the ancestors of the people the Arabs have displaced.
Judaea became known as Syria Palestina. The Romans did their best to ensure that Jerusalem would ever rise again or that there would ever be another Jewish Temple.
Jewish people were now in exile. Some time around the year 615, Muhammad spoke to the Jews of Mecca and Medina as though they had been expelled 2 times from the land of Judaea by the servants of Allah and told them it was a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and of the prophet, (himself).
He was wrong. The outside world in which Jews were living in (the Diaspora) happened over the centuries since they had returned from Babylon where they had a taste of living outside. Then they had to live through the Roman destruction and the subsequent rule of Christians and Muslims. For generations to come, the Jews were to be seen as an exiled and persecuted people for much of their history. The Babylonian captivity created the promise of return and getting on with their lives.
So we find many Jews were living outside of the Land of Israel before the Roman imperial oppression and before the Jewish uprisings for independence and freedom from Roman rule in their homeland. Many went back to 4 BCE like the settlement in Puteoli, Italy and originated in voluntary emigration by the lure of trade and commerce. I would think that the scholars tended to remain in Judah for as long as they could until they too, saw the writing on the wall and fled, most likely before the burning started.
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| Worms, Germany |
Jews migrated into NW Europe, including NE France and N. Germany with settlement documented back to the 6th century.
Jews were living in France before 70 CE. Organized Jewish communities were living there in the period of the Roman Empire. When Christianity entered, their position deteriorated because the church councils took steps to enforce the conventional anti-Jewish codes. Under the Merovingians, some Jews occupied prominent positions at their court.
From the 8th century on, Jews were under the protection of Charlemagne and his house, so Jewish merchants began to settle in France for purposes of trade, importing foreign luxuries and establishing new communities up the Rhone Valley and into Champagne. In the 9th century, southern France was the main center of the activity of the international traders, the RADANITES.
From the 10th century, Ashkenazi Jews spoke Yiddish which was written with Hebrew letters but using a language that was mostly from German.
Jews were in Lithuania from 1321. By 1398 a community of Karaites lived in Troki. by 1495 (3 years after the 1492 Spanish expulsion) Jews were living in Vilna, Grodno and Kovno totalling 10,000.
Poland had Jews living there since the 9th century. They were thought to have come there from Germany or Bohemia or from the kingdom of Kiev or the Byzantine Empire and reinforced by some from Khazaria.
Ukraine's Jews are thought to have come from Khazaria in waves, the Caliphate and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries, from Central Europe in the 14th-15th centuries, and from Poland in the 16th to 17th centuries. It's always been an anti-Semitic center.
Latvia had Jews from the 16th century. 2,000 lived there in 1795 when it was annexed to Russia. In 1835 Courland and Livland were excluded from the Pale of Settlement where Jews were allowed to live as they couldn't live in Russia proper according to Catherine II"s law.
Belarus or Belorussia was called White Russia. Jews moved there from Poland and were living in Grodno in the 12th century at Brest-Litovsk in the 14th century and Pinsk from 1506; capital is Minsk.
Crimea had Jewish settlement from the 1st century BCE. From the 7th century to 1117, eastern Crimea was controlled by the Khazars. Karaites ived there from the 12th century centered at Kaffa. Many of those Jews converted to Islam under Tatar rule.
Russia had Jews since since classical times. In 986 Jews lived there, but Catherine II put a stop to that in 1791 and the law remained till WWI.
Jews were in Lithuania from 1321. By 1398 a community of Karaites lived in Troki. by 1495 (3 years after the 1492 Spanish expulsion) Jews were living in Vilna, Grodno and Kovno totalling 10,000.
Poland had Jews living there since the 9th century. They were thought to have come there from Germany or Bohemia or from the kingdom of Kiev or the Byzantine Empire and reinforced by some from Khazaria.
Ukraine's Jews are thought to have come from Khazaria in waves, the Caliphate and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries, from Central Europe in the 14th-15th centuries, and from Poland in the 16th to 17th centuries. It's always been an anti-Semitic center.
Latvia had Jews from the 16th century. 2,000 lived there in 1795 when it was annexed to Russia. In 1835 Courland and Livland were excluded from the Pale of Settlement where Jews were allowed to live as they couldn't live in Russia proper according to Catherine II"s law.
Belarus or Belorussia was called White Russia. Jews moved there from Poland and were living in Grodno in the 12th century at Brest-Litovsk in the 14th century and Pinsk from 1506; capital is Minsk.
Crimea had Jewish settlement from the 1st century BCE. From the 7th century to 1117, eastern Crimea was controlled by the Khazars. Karaites ived there from the 12th century centered at Kaffa. Many of those Jews converted to Islam under Tatar rule.
Russia had Jews since since classical times. In 986 Jews lived there, but Catherine II put a stop to that in 1791 and the law remained till WWI.
By the 16th century, Jews populated communities going from the Loire in the West to the Dnieper in the East, and from Rome in the South to the Danish border in the North.
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| My great aunt, Jenny Criss nee Jermulowske, spoke Yiddish and English |
Jews could tell by listening to someone where they had come from. There was Western Yiddish, now almost extinct, and Eastern Yiddish, subdivided into a northern dialect centered in Lithuania and a southern dialect extending from Poland to the Ukraine. and Romania. In the USA, the southern dialect dominated on the stage and the northern dialect on the lecture platform. My father only spoke Yiddish until he started 1st grade, where he had to start learning English. His mother never did learn English, so her children always spoke Yiddish with her. I learned such phrases as "kiss mere tuchus!" and "Oy Gevalt!" and "Potch'n tuchus!"
In the 9th and 10th centuries, Judaism became the most widespread religious influence upon the Khazars.
Jews from Khazaria's royal house had converted to Judaism. The state of Khazaria became independent in the 630's and 640's. I note that Muhammad had died in 630 as well and Islam spread quickly from then on. Some Khazars became Muslims from about 690 to the late 10th century. The Khazars became the dominant power in southern Russia and they displaced other ethnic groups, most notably, the Bulgars who were a mixture of Hunnic, Turkic and Iranian groups mixed together. Jews from eastern Europe facing anti-Semitism could find refuge in Khazaria as the royal family had chosen to convert to Judaism and allowed their people to choose whatever religion they wanted for themselves. So Khazaria was a vast land with many large Jewish settlements. The Khazars had 100 cities or clans. Settlements were located in the Don and Volga river valleys, on the Crimean peninsula, in today's Ukraine and north of the Caucasian mountain range. However, archaeological evidence indicates that Jews have lived in the Balkans, in the Caucasus including Georgia, along the northern shores of the Black Sea, and in other areas of eastern Europe since Roman times.
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| Yasmin Levy, Sephardic singer and song writer from Jerusalem with fans even in Pakistan |
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| Some of those Jews led to extermination camps |
There were about 8 million Ashkenazi Jews just prior to the outbreak of World War II of 1941. 6 million were slaughtered during the war.
650,000 Jews were living in Palestine in 1948.
Today, 6 million Jews live in Israel, about 6 million in the USA, and 2 million in the Diaspora.
Today, 6 million Jews live in Israel, about 6 million in the USA, and 2 million in the Diaspora.
Resource: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Romans.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition, Kevin Alan Brook
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0007_0_07174.html- Genetic Ancestry, Jewish
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sephardi+Jews,+pictures&biw=1024&bih=677&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CDYQ7AlqFQoTCL3W3rPn8cYCFc1biAodOZ0PrA#imgrc=sWBiEDr6U7q7MM%3A
Labels: Arabs, Ashkenazi, bar Kokhba, Damascus, Danny Eskow paintings, Egypt, Herod, Jerusalem, Judh, King Hyrcanua II, Rome, Sephardi, Syria, Syro-Phoenicians, Yiddish
