Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Arctish]

Yeah, no one knows who the first king was because back in 8,500-6,000 BCE when the Natufian Culture was a thing and Jericho was founded, they didn't write down the names of their rulers. And all through the thousands of years before the late Bronze Age they didn't leave records with the names of all their kings on them, even though archeologists have found overwhelming evidence that organized societies ruled by kings existed right there in Palestine. And, hard as it is to believe, those walled cities and villages actually used coins to facilitate commerce!

The first coins we have evidence of come from around 650-600 BCE and were minted by the Lydians in Anatolia. Do you have some reference to the use of coins in the Natufian culture? I can't find any corroboration for that. Lydia was an Indoeuropean community that existed thousands of years later than the Natufians.

Sorry I wasn't clear.

The Natufian culture I referenced was very early in the historical record. Coins came later, along with a multitude of walled cities ruled by kings, during the Late Bronze Age.

Smotrich's questions - "who was the first Palestinian king?" , "what language do the Palestinians have?" and "was there ever a Palestinian currency?" - are just a rhetorical device used to obfuscate Palestinian history and convince the ignorant that Palestine really was "a land without a people, for a people without a land".

We don't know the name of the first king of Jericho. So what? We do know Jericho has been continuously inhabited since the time of the Natufians over 8,000 years ago, and that their direct descendants are among the inhabitants of Jericho today.

We don't know what languages have been spoken in Palestine over the past 10,000 years. So what? We know some of the more recent ones, and we know that Palestinian Jews spoke Arabic and Aramaic, the same languages as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, before the mostly European Zionists made Hebrew the official language of their new State.

We don't know how much locally produced currency was in circulation in Palestine at any given time over the past few thousand years, but we do know that locally minted coins existed independently from the Kingdom of Israel. And anyway, what would it matter if Palestinians used coins from Egypt or Persia or Judea? That has no bearing at all on whether the Palestinians are the indigenous people of Palestine.

Smotrich appears to be JAQing as a way to spin the narrative.

 

[lpetrich]

As to Jewish identity, it doesn't go back nearly as far as the Natufian people. The first recorded mention of it was in the  Merneptah Stele a tablet that is some 3,200 years old commissioned by Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah. A translation of it:

The princes are prostrate, saying ‘Peace!’
Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows.
Desolation is for Tjehenu;
Hatti is pacified;
Plundered is the Canaan with every evil;
Carried off is Asqaluni;
Seized upon is Gezer;
Yanoam is made non-existent;
Israel is laid waste—its seed is no more;
Kharru has become a widow because of Egypt.
All lands together are pacified.
Everyone who was restless has been bound.

Donald Trump could learn a thing or two from this genre of ancient Middle Eastern literature.

ysrỉꜣr fk.t bn pr.t =f
Israel (people) waste (negative) seed/grain his/its

Other names, like Gezer, have determinative (city). So is this stating that Israelites were not as settled as the others?

 

[lpetrich]

But Pharaoh Merneptah's bragging about his armies' triumphs was at the end of the Egyptians' New-Kingdom Levantine Empire. Over 1500 - 1200 BCE, Egypt had ruled Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and southern Syria, and had run into some rival imperialists, the Hittites of what is now central Turkey. They fought each other in the  Battle of Kadesh but that battle was inconclusive.

The Egyptians had started out by expelling the Hyksos, some Levantines who had settled in the Nile Delta a few centuries earlier, and IMO, this expelling of the Hyksos was remembered in very garbled form as the Exodus story. Pharaoh Ahmose had led the Egyptian army against the Hyksos, and his name sounds something like "Brother of Moses" in Hebrew. So later storytellers filled in the gaps by imagining who Moses was. Also, the Egyptian army deciding to return home after they had chased the Hyksos far enough is not very dramatic, so some later storytellers embellished the account into Moses parting the Red Sea.

The Egyptians' Levantine empire came to an end in the  Late Bronze Age collapse a period of drought and catastrophic strife for the people of the eastern Mediterranean.

The Hittite Empire was destroyed, and it was only rediscovered a century ago.

The Mycenaean Greek city-states were also destroyed, and the people of Greece lost their first system of writing. After the Greek Dark Age of a few centuries, Greeks learned to write again, and they have kept that writing ever since.

 Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III depicted that pharaoh's armies triumphing over invading Sea Peoples. But that triumph was in the Nile Delta and not in the Levant, what Merneptah had bragged about, making it a triumph worthy of Baghdad Bob.

There are numerous names of people, many obscure, and some of them resembling later names.

 

[lpetrich]

Among the people they named were the Peleset. Does that name seem familiar?

In the Bible, the Israelites lived in the highlands, what is nowadays the West Bank and the Jerusalem area, and near the coast lived people that they called the Pelishtim, which comes down to us as Philistines.

When we first get good archeological sources on the ancient Israelites, they were divided into two kingdoms, the northern kingdom or Israel and the southern kingdom or Judah. The boundary between the two was roughly Tel Aviv - Jericho.

The northern kingdom extended a bit north of the Sea of Galilee / Lake Tiberias, and the southern kingdom contained Jerusalem, Hebron, and Beersheba (Be'er Sheva). West of the southern kingdom was the Philistines, in Ashkelon and Gaza, and west of the northern end of the northern kingdom was what's now coastal Lebanon: Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, ...

Kings David and Solomon likely existed, but they likely ruled only the southern kingdom. I've calculated David's Lord Raglan mythic-hero score, and he scores *very* low, about as low as well-documented leaders of recent centuries.

The Israelites started out worshipping a multitude of deities, including deities that their neighbors also worshipped. But they also worshipped a national protector deity, YHWH.

Also starting around then was rejection of pork, though originally in Judah: (PDF) Pig Husbandry in Iron Age Israel and Judah: New Insights Regarding the Origin of the “Taboo”

The Biblical prohibition of shellfish was likely a way of saying how icky coastal people are.

 

[barbos]

Yeah, no one knows who the first king was because back in 8,500-6,000 BCE when the Natufian Culture was a thing and Jericho was founded, they didn't write down the names of their rulers. And all through the thousands of years before the late Bronze Age they didn't leave records with the names of all their kings on them, even though archeologists have found overwhelming evidence that organized societies ruled by kings existed right there in Palestine. And, hard as it is to believe, those walled cities and villages actually used coins to facilitate commerce!

The first coins we have evidence of come from around 650-600 BCE and were minted by the Lydians in Anatolia. Do you have some reference to the use of coins in the Natufian culture? I can't find any corroboration for that. Lydia was an Indoeuropean community that existed thousands of years later than the Natufians.

Sorry I wasn't clear.

The Natufian culture I referenced was very early in the historical record. Coins came later, along with a multitude of walled cities ruled by kings, during the Late Bronze Age.

Smotrich's questions - "who was the first Palestinian king?" , "what language do the Palestinians have?" and "was there ever a Palestinian currency?" - are just a rhetorical device used to obfuscate Palestinian history and convince the ignorant that Palestine really was "a land without a people, for a people without a land".
......

"Palestinians" were jews, they spoke jewish language had their jewish kings.

 

[lpetrich]

Around 722 BCE, the Assyrians of northern Iraq conquered Israel, with numerous refugees going southward to Judah. Then in 701, Assyrian king Sennacherib capped his campaign of conquest and plunder in Judah by besieging Jerusalem. His chroniclers composed a tablet where they bragged about all the loot they brought back and how Jerusalem's king was trapped in his city like a caged bird. Seems like a Baghdad Bob version of an unsuccessful siege.

In the Bible, we also learn of the siege's failure, and we are told that an angel zapped Sennacherib's troops. It seems to me that they were not very careful about sanitation, and that they came down with some very nasty stomach bug, something like cholera.

Some people in Judah responded by starting a YHWH-only religio-political movement: worshipping only the national god of the Israelites and not the gods of foreigners. During King Josiah's reign, someone claimed to have discovered a "book of the law" in the Jerusalem Temple, a book that specified worshipping the One True God in his One True Temple in the One True Capital City. That book is likely an early version of Deuteronomy, named that because later editors placed it after some other books.

A century later, Assyria collapsed and Babylon became a dominant power, conquering Judah in 586 BCE. Many Israelites were exiled to Babylon, and some of them composed Psalm 137 about their experiences there (NIV translation here):

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

 

[lpetrich]

Then King Cyrus of the Persian Empire conquered Babylon, and in 539 BCE, he decreed that the Israelites of Babylon may return home. Which they did.

The returnees were firmly insistent that their people were not to mix with other people, and they decreed the breaking up of a lot of marriages. That seems like the ideological basis of mixed fabrics in the Bible.

That's not to say that there aren't things that are difficult to explain -- the Bible has a big list of birds which one is not supposed to eat, a list that seems to have little ideological motive. Leviticus 11 is where the dietary laws are, and while its authors start out with some careful taxonomy, they later make elementary mistakes, like saying that grasshoppers have four legs. I think that that's a naive extrapolation from most domestic animals.

The previous book begins with two priests burning incense and making "strange fire". God got pissed and sent fire to them, burning them up, or so we are told. What a dick. Couldn't he at least say "You're doing it wrong"?


The Israelites had the former northern and southern kingdoms as autonomous regions in the Persian Empire, but that ended after Alexander the Great's conquests. After AtG's death, his generals divided up his empire, and some of them tried to make the people of Judea assimilate into Greek culture. Some of them refused, refusing to consider Zeus another name for YHWH and refusing to eat pork. These people successfully revolted under the leadership of the likes of Judas Maccabaeus over 167 - 141 BCE, making Judea independent again. Their successors, the Hasmonean dynasty, conquered the surrounding land, conquering almost all of present-day Israel/Palestine north of Beersheba and nearby bits of what's now Jordan and Egypt.

But in 37 BCE, Rome conquered Judea, and Judea became a semi-autonomous region. The Hasmoneans were succeeded by the Herodian dynasty, which lasted until 100 CE.

 

[Arctish]

Writing about coins in Palestine rang a bell. I remembered discussing it with angelo. I think it might be an actual talking point for people trying to dismiss the ancestral ties non-Jewish Palestinians have to land Zionists claim belongs to Israel.

Here is a link to our discussion. The article I referenced is this one:

Jewish and Non-Jewish Coins in Ancient Canaan

 

[lpetrich]

The Jews were not very happy about being ruled by Rome, and they revolted against their rulers, in 66-73, 115-117, and 132-136 CE. All three revolts failed. After the first one, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, causing the practice of Judaism to shift from a central temple to local communities. After the third one, the Romans cracked down hard, with mass murders, mass deportations and enslavement of large numbers of people, in what was close to genocide. Jerusalem they renamed Aelia Capitolina, with a temple to the Roman god Jupiter on the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple earlier was.

The Temple Mount is now occupied by the Al Aqsa Mosque.

During this time, the people of the southern coastal region continued to call their home Peleset and its phonetic successors. Herodotus called it Palaistine, and when the Romans decided to rename Judea out of existence after the third revolt, they renamed it Syria Palaestina, more or less "Palestinian Syria", after that region.


For nearly two millennia, the territory was ruled by one empire after another, and they used versions of "Palestine" for that territory. Rome ruled it, then the Byzantine Empire, then the Arabs, then the Crusaders, then the Mamluks of Egypt, then the Ottoman Empire, and after WWI, Britain. That nation's claim to rule was from a mandate from the League of Nations, a predecessor of the United Nations. So Britain was following nearly two millennia of tradition by calling the territory Palestine, or if one counts parts of it, over three millennia.

The territory became partially independent in 1948, for the first time in two millennia, with the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine creating a Jewish state that they named Israel. They considered various others, like Judea, Zion, Ever, Ziona, Ivriya and Herzliya. The Arabs, however, continued to follow tradition and call themselves Palestinians.

 Timeline of the name Palestine

 

[Gospel]

I can almost feel the palpable presence of some mysterious force (life form status: questionable) meticulously combing through Lpetrich's posts, just itching for the perfect moment to dramatically shout 'Anti-Semite' from the virtual rooftops!

 

[Derec]

Let's leave ancient history for a moment and get back to present.

A Hamas leader, one Shadi Barud, went to join his virgins. Hope his junk wasn't mangled too bad.
IDF strike kills deputy head of Hamas intelligence directorate
The strike itself, showing several secondary explosions indicating the site was used to store explosives.


Good riddance to bad rubbish. I hope they get Yaya Sinwar soon.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The strike itself, showing several secondary explosions indicating the site was used to store explosives.

That's like one step away from screaming it was an inside jobs and something about "squibs."

 

[Swammerdami]

The God of Abraham promised to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if ten righteous men could be found. The God of Netanyahu has already killed many thousands of innocents.

Israel's calculus seems to be that killing ALL in Gaza is the way to ensure the deaths of all Hamas terrorists.

 

[lpetrich]

Why is Israel attacking south Gaza after telling people to go there? | Reuters

Since telling Gazans to head south, the Israeli military (IDF) has continued to pound targets across the area, killing an unknown number of civilians. In all, authorities in Gaza say 6,546 Palestinians have died since Israeli strikes started on Oct. 7.

Residents said the bombardment of the south intensified on Oct. 25. One strike brought down several apartment buildings in Khan Younis, some 10 km (6 miles) from the Egyptian border.

The IDF has said that even if Hamas's main power centre is in Gaza City, it is nonetheless entrenched among the civilian population across the enclave.

"Wherever a Hamas target arises, the IDF will strike at it in order to thwart the terrorist capabilities of the group, while taking feasible precautions to mitigate the harm to uninvolved civilians," the military said on Wednesday, reiterating previous statements.

They don't seem to be trying very hard.

 

[lpetrich]

Turkey's Erdogan says Hamas is not terrorist organisation, cancels trip to Israel | Reuters

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in his strongest comments yet on the Gaza conflict, said on Wednesday the Palestinian militant group Hamas was not a terrorist organisation but a liberation group fighting to protect Palestinian lands.

NATO member Turkey condemned the civilian deaths caused by Hamas's Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel, but also urged Israeli forces to act with restraint in their response. Ankara has strongly criticised Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

...
Erdogan also slammed Western powers for supporting Israel's bombing of Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire, the unhindered entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and for Muslim countries to work together to stop the violence.

...
Israel rejected Erdogan's description of Hamas, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat calling the group "a despicable terrorist organisation".

...
he fighting in Gaza comes at a time when Turkey is working to mend its ties with Israel after years of acrimony, focusing on energy as an area of cooperation.

Indicating that those normalisation efforts were now suspended, Erdogan accused Israel of taking advantage of Turkey's "good intentions" and said he had cancelled a previously planned visit to Israel.

...
Erdogan accused the West of hypocrisy for failing to respond to what he called Israel's "intentional massacre" in Gaza with the same decisiveness as it did to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

 

[lpetrich]

Gallant: We can't say 'no' to the US on humanitarian aid given how much they do for us - The Times of Israel

During the meeting, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was pressed on why the government agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt before the hostages have been returned.

“The Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” Gallant responds

Yaov corrected to Yoav

Israel Agrees to Delay Invasion of Gaza So U.S. Can Rush Missile Defenses to Region

Israel-Hamas War Updates: Troops Head to Middle East; U.S. Acknowledges Rising Gaza Death Toll

Around 900 U.S. troops deploy or get ready to leave for the Middle East as the Israeli military releases footage showing its forces conducting a second consecutive day of raids in Gaza.

Israel Agrees to Delay Invasion of Gaza So U.S. Can Rush Missile Defenses to Region

Israel has agreed, for now, to a request from the U.S. to delay its expected ground invasion of Gaza so the Pentagon can place air defenses in the region to protect U.S. troops, according to U.S. officials and people familiar with the Israeli planning.

The Pentagon is scrambling to deploy nearly a dozen air-defense systems to the region, including for U.S. troops serving in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to protect them from missiles and rockets. U.S. officials have so far persuaded the Israelis to hold off until those pieces can be placed, as early as later this week.

 

[lpetrich]

Israel agrees to U.S. request to delay Gaza invasion- WSJ | Reuters - October 25

Reuters reported on Monday that Washington advised Israel to hold off on a ground assault in the Gaza Strip and is keeping Qatar - a broker with the Palestinian militants - apprised of those talks as its tries to free more hostages and prepare for a possible wider regional war.

Last week Reuters reported the Pentagon planned to send two Iron Dome missile defence systems to Israel to help it defend itself against inbound missiles, and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and additional Patriot air defense missile system battalions to the Middle East.

 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense - THAAD

 

[lpetrich]

The House has passed a resolution standing with Israel in the aftermath of attacks by Hamas - Live Updates - POLITICO

H.Res.771 - 118th Congress (2023-2024): Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists. | Congress.gov | Library of Congress - nothing about what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip

Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives - Vote Details | Oct 25, 2023, 05:22 PM | 118th Congress, 1st Session | Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists

Voting "no": 9 Democrats: Jamaal Bowman, Andre Carson, Cori Bush, Al Green, Summer Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Delia Ramirez, Rashida Tlaib; 1 Republican: Thomas Massie

Voting "present": 6 Democrats: Greg Casar, Joaquin Castro, Nydia Velázquez, Ayanna Pressley, Chuy Garcia, Pramila Jayapal

 

[Harry Bosch]

Turkey's Erdogan says Hamas is not terrorist organisation, cancels trip to Israel | Reuters

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in his strongest comments yet on the Gaza conflict, said on Wednesday the Palestinian militant group Hamas was not a terrorist organisation but a liberation group fighting to protect Palestinian lands.

NATO member Turkey condemned the civilian deaths caused by Hamas's Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel, but also urged Israeli forces to act with restraint in their response. Ankara has strongly criticised Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

...
Erdogan also slammed Western powers for supporting Israel's bombing of Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire, the unhindered entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and for Muslim countries to work together to stop the violence.

...
Israel rejected Erdogan's description of Hamas, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat calling the group "a despicable terrorist organisation".

...
he fighting in Gaza comes at a time when Turkey is working to mend its ties with Israel after years of acrimony, focusing on energy as an area of cooperation.

Indicating that those normalisation efforts were now suspended, Erdogan accused Israel of taking advantage of Turkey's "good intentions" and said he had cancelled a previously planned visit to Israel.

...
Erdogan accused the West of hypocrisy for failing to respond to what he called Israel's "intentional massacre" in Gaza with the same decisiveness as it did to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Very much agree that Hamas is not a terrorist organization. They do many great works for their people. Who wouldn't want these busters over for a fun night of meade, mutton, and merriment fun!? They are greatly misunderstood simply because they often deliberately target, attack and kill civilians in order to pursue their political aims. They hide behind the civilians that they rule and don't allow elections. But other than this, these are good guys!

 

[lpetrich]

Israeli hostage released by Hamas, Yocheved Lifshitz, talks about ordeal, and why she shook her captor's hand - CBS News

Hamas said it had released Lifshitz, 85, along with 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, on health grounds late Monday. The Palestinian group, long listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and many other nations, is still holding more than 200 people hostage after its unprecedented October 7 rampage across southern Israel.

Palestine protests: Protestors smile as they tear down Israeli hostage posters in vile video
Pictures of hostages taken by Hamas

Before and after satellite images show Gaza destruction | CNN
Lots of it

Family of Al Jazeera journalist killed in Israeli strike, network says | Reuters

Al Jazeera said the wife, son and daughter of one of its correspondents in Gaza were killed on Wednesday night in an Israeli air strike that the Hamas-run enclave's health ministry said killed at least 25 people.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike, which the network said hit the area where Wael al-Dahdouh's family had fled to following an Israeli warning as it plans a Gaza ground incursion.

Arab world condemns Al Jazeera journalist’s family killing in Israeli raid | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

The attack came only a couple of weeks after US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken reportedly told Qatar’s emir to tone down Al Jazeera Arabic’s coverage of the war on Gaza. When he saw his slain family, Dahdouh was recorded saying, “They seek revenge through our children.”

...
At least 24 journalists have been killed in the latest round of hostilities, including 20 Palestinians, three Israelis and Lebanon’s Abdallah.

...
“He often reminds me of Shireen Abu Akleh, may she rest in peace,” al-Sayed said. He added that she was “the voice of truth that was killed by the Israeli army’s gunfire, which continues to kill children and women in plain view of the world”.

...
“No one is offering anything to help,” Ali said. It is “as if the children of Palestine and the people of Palestine are worthless”.