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January 29, 2006
by Eugene Narrett, Ph.D.
Studying a wonderful discussion of archaeology and history, James Long's The Riddle of the Exodus [1] is a bracing way toward understanding Israel's foundational place in world history. The text also indicates ways that Israel's long-established place is buried by religious, political, media and educational institutions. There is a vivid and ominous contemporary correlative of this erasure of the past set to come down: Israel's police and army, per order of the American Executive Branch, are poised to drag Jewish families out of a small neighborhood they have built in the very center of Hebron, the oldest Jewish settlement in the world. This eradication of Israel's name, history, and people (cf. psalm 83) is an old story beginning with Pharaoh's command to drown newborn Hebrew boys. Or, one could say, with Hadrian's devastating and then re-naming Judea as "Palestina" (an erasure that remains a source of torment, turmoil and disinformation) and his leveling and re-naming of Jerusalem as "Aelia Capitolina," a name that did not stick. There are only too many examples of this tendency of western civilization. And a civilization that attacks its roots or buries and misconstrues its foundations will wither and become ruins, a topic I treat in other places. [2] Among the many 19th century archaeological finds that demonstrate the historicity and scope of Israel's place are the El Amarna letters discovered in Egypt in 1887. These approximately 400 inscribed clay tablets from the era of Pharaoh Amenophis III and his son (Middle Kingdom) disclose many facts relevant to the history of Israel, not least, "Hebron, land of the Hebrews" as Joseph termed it in Genesis 40:15. (See my earlier essay, "Hebron, land of the Hebrews" for the discussion by Nachmanides, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman [1194 -- 1268], of some sources of this appellation). In several of the Amarna tablets, a Canaanite chieftain in the southern Judean hills area writes to Pharaoh complaining about and demanding assistance against "the warlike tribe of Habiru." Israel's always been tough when fighting its foreign foes but like another nation in recent times, its politicians tend to waste the victories its soldiers win. Several of the Amarna letters, interestingly, seem to be from King Saul to Pharaoh (c. 1000 BCE). One may be a report to Pharaoh about Saul's death; several mention the city of Urusalem which the world powers remain obsessed with dividing… Now, in 2006, Hebron is besieged by a warlike tribe led by servants of the Pharaoh who makes his (soon her) seat above the river named "river" (Potomac). Israel has been ordered to remove Jews from their neighborhood Hebron by January 31. The treacherous servility of Israel's leading politicians who sooner or later arrive at the left's platform of unilateral surrender and assorted anti-Jewish measures never makes it to the mass media, there or here. That seems to be another part of the burial of truth that has become endemic to our times (indeed, it is virtually indistinguishable from the routine methods of the mass media; Orwell knew this too...). PLO leaders have boasted often that Oslo was their "Trojan Horse." In the late 1970s, several admitted that the idea of a "Palestinian people" was itself a Trojan horse meant to put the destruction of Israel in terms palatable to the West's global grand-gamesters and their citizens. This subservience of the Israeli ruling elites to their assorted Pharaohs also is a lethal form of bondage, "mind-forged manacles" Blake would call them[3] because the source of the suicidal enslavement is "a covenant of lies" called "the peace process."[4] The Jews again need a Moshe to lead them back to knowledge of how they are and of "the Land of the Hebrews," a land that needs to be embraced and settled by its own, as it was not after the military victory of 1967. Another interesting find in Long's study is an inscription in the tomb of Unas, last Pharaoh of the 5th Dynasty who when young may have heard the following prophecy from an elderly Joseph:
And so it came to pass, although, as Long marshals the existing evidence, in the ensuing 6th dynasty, the last of the Old Kingdom. Perhaps it is coincidence that the Torah portions dealing with these events are being studied now and for the next few weeks in synagogues around the world; and by the Bnei Noah, too. The significance as well as the fascination of these sources is underscored by the ancient Jewish homily: "the deeds of the fathers are a pattern for their sons." Israel again is being divided and her people scattered. All the nations of the world are aggressively obsessed with Jerusalem rather than bolstering Israel if only for assistance in what is supposed to be a war on terrorism and terror-sponsoring states. The prophet Joel and many others described the consequences for those pushing this process.[5] We soon will know whether we are living through a period of terrible hester panim (God's hiding His 'countenance' and providence) with the bottom not yet in sight, or whether the guilty will be punished in our days. Many kinds of plagues have hit the world in the past two decades: perhaps they are coincidental with geo-politics or are random notwithstanding the timing of hurricanes Katrina and others with the expulsion of Jews from the seaside communities of Gush Katif southwest of Gaza. Or perhaps they resemble a pattern set 3320 years ago. [6] With accumulating archaeological and literary evidence for the historicity of ancient Israel being presented, albeit not often in the major media, and the world's leading astrophysicists and bio-geneticists conceding that the universe reveals intelligent design, probably even design for human beings,[7] it would be more than ironic, it would be bizarre if the slander and schemes to which Israel is subjected, from without and within are not foiled. But the Eternal One has His own calendar and leaves a lot in our hands and choices. Free will and moral responsibility is the essence of Judaism's view of the relation of man to the Creator. In our days there are many Maccabees, many Joshua's and Caleb's whose existence is not noted outside the alternative press of Israel, unless it is to slander generic "right-wingers" (Jews who actually want to live in Judea). The problem is that Israel's government is dominated by puppets of 'Rome' and of the Potomac. So Maccabees may not be enough for Israel today: it may take a Deliverer to undo the largely self-imposed bondage of this generation. Ghettos: during his discussion of evidence in Egyptian inscriptions complementing the Torah's listing of place names in and around Goshen, Long adduces several sources indicating that the Egyptians lured the Hebrews to building projects in the name of Egypt's own national defense; after all, hadn't they given the Hebrews a home in Goshen, nearest to Egypt's northeast border, its main defense against migrating tribes from Asia? So it was for the common good.[8] But once the Jews were conscripted, their hosts left the Jews to wall themselves in, thus "creating the first concentration camps" and the first ghettos in history. This is precisely the method of the Saudi-American 'map' for the "security fence" for which Jews are paying dearly in money, pride, deterrence and genuine defensibility, defacing and alienating their inheritance. Cherished and essential parts of the heartland of Israel are being pinched inside walls and double walls behind which Jews killers will take cover and over which they will shoot. The frantic zigzags of the wall show it to be indefensible and probably not meant to be seriously defended but rather, surrounded and evacuated, perhaps with 'extreme prejudice.' These "security fences" at Pi-thoum and Rameses are suicidal traps, the flip side of the aggression threatened against Hebron, Beit El, Efrat, Amona, and scores of other Jewish towns which our 'tell all, show all' media never show us. The Israeli Chief of Staff who oversaw the deportation of the Jews of Gush Katif and now is very tight with the folks at the Potomac admits that Israel is beset with increasing terrorism on all fronts, but per the orders of the State Department which has forbidden Jews to build anywhere in Judea and Samaria, the police and army's wrath remains focused on Jews while Hamas and Fatah vie openly to lead the extinction of Israel, while Arab buildings in tens of thousands cover the heartland, and while terrorists, emboldened by State Department support for removing them from the official terror list, prepare their next assaults on "the Great Satan." It's time for Israel to leave Egypt and apply the military force on the enemies of the Jews.
NOTES: [1] James D. Long, The Riddle of the Exodus (2002, Light Catcher Books, Springdale, Arkansas); Also see David Rohl's Pharaohs and Kings and Miriam Lichtman's Ancient Egyptian Literature among many historians and archaeologists who have done important but little known excavations and studies that Long cites. return [2] For example in the essay, "Israel, and Western Civilization's Problems with History, Memory and Survival," first presented in draft in 2005 to the Root & Branch Association in Jerusalem. That a dying Greco-Roman civilization appropriated Judaism's history and symbols, de-contextualizing most of it is fascinating and audacious. That it did so while misrepresenting, burying and slandering it sources is reprehensible and, as becomes ever more evident, suicidal. See classicist Dr. Peter Schafer's book Judeaphobia: Attitudes toward Judaism in the Ancient World (Harvard U Press, 1997) for an extensive consideration of sources on the key aspects of this long-developing expropriation. return [3] "London," in Songs of Experience (1794). return [4] Isaiah 28. The proximate modern version was the "land for peace" deals pushed by Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State, William Rogers. These followed the form and purpose of the British Mandatory Administration's (1920-48) Jewish land for worthless promises of peace initiatives. Indeed, it was the essence of British inter-War foreign policy that lives on today in the "war for freedom in Iraq" a densely textured demonstration of how one lie begets another, all of them beginning with the re-fashioning of history as Orwell describes it in 1984: "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth" (chapter 7). For a comprehensive study of the British betrayals of history and the Jews and of world order and peace, see Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (Harper 1984, reprint 2002). An even more extensive and detailed study of the 20th century aspects of this process that exposes the day-to-day labyrinths of intra-British policies and betrayal of their Mandate to "establish the Jewish National Home" is Samuel Katz's biography of one of the least known and most influential figures in 20th century diplomatic history, Lone Wolf: A Biography of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, two volumes (NY 1996). return [5] Among many sources putting this situation in a millennial context are Joel 3-4, Zechariah 12-14, Ezekiel 37-8, Obadiah, and many chapters in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Moshe also spoke to it in the song he sang on the last day of his life (Deuteronomy 32). return [6] Long 90 -98 discusses the remarkable, very startling comments recorded in the ancient Papyrus from the unfinished pyramid of Saqqara, many of which seem to describe events recorded in the ten plagues described in Exodus 6 -13. return [7] See Gerald L. Schroeder, The Science of God: the Convergence of Modern Science and the Bible (1997); Dr. Schroeder is a double PhD, Earth Sciences and Physics from MIT where he taught a long time before taking a position at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. return [8] Similarly, Israel ostensibly is within an American security umbrella, created in large part by Israeli military engineers, technology and software. The F-16, for example, has had over 600 Israeli designed upgrades to its electronic systems, from radar to firing to defense mechanisms; "Star Wars" technology also is largely a product of US "aid" to Israel. Yet, during the first Gulf War, when Israeli intelligence as well as design expertise provided the means for American security and success, the "identify, friend or foe" codes were withheld from Israel to insure that it would not risk responding to missile strikes on it. This was part of George Bush Sr.'s taking down Yitzhak Shamir's government and preparing the ground for Shimon Peres and Oslo, a policy which at that time was defined in Israel's legal code as treason. Similarly, though Israel is the main source of expertise and methods in detecting and fighting terrorism, it apparently is not "with us" in the war against terror in which we seem to be to a terrible degree not against but "with" those who want to destroy us, beginning with the House of Saud. return
Dr. Eugene Narrett is a writer and teacher in Massachusetts and is the author of Gathered Against Jerusalem: Essays on a False Peace (Dec. 2000). His book, Israel Awakened: A Chronicle of the Oslo War (2001), is currently available at www.1stbooks.com/bookview/7421.
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