Happy Birthday!
60 years ago today a nation-state that ceased to exist for some 2500 years reappeared on the map overnight.
Happy birthday, Israel. Here’s to 60 more!
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60 years ago today a nation-state that ceased to exist for some 2500 years reappeared on the map overnight.
Happy birthday, Israel. Here’s to 60 more!
Freedomist Network
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8 comments
2500 years? I’m curious as to how you arrive at that figure, as I think of the ancient land of Israel as having been destroyed around the time of the destruction of the 2nd temple.
I think he’s referring to the Babylonian captivity/around 600 BC?
Elisha Feger’s last blog post..City of Heroes
The Babylonian Empire invaded and took control of Judah in 586 BC. By the time of the destruction of the second temple in AD 70 the land of Judah had been occupied by foreign powers for nearly 600 years. It ceased being any kind of recognizable and functioning nation-state at the time of the Babylonian invasion. The Jew ceased to have any say significant say in their fate once carried off to Babylon.
Although, the Northern Kingdom, Israel, ceased to exist 200 years earlier.
The Assyrians under Sennacherib conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, exiling the "lost tribes" to other parts of their empire. (There is evidence — somewhat more than fleeting –that the modern Pathans of Afghanistan may be descended from one of those tribes.) The lost of the southern kingdom of Judea to the Chaldeans of Babylon followed 136 years later, in 586 BCE.
Had those ancient Jews possessed nuclear, thermonuclear or other weapons of massive destruction, along with Jericho II and Jericho III missiles to deliver precisely onto the cities and armies of those to whom they concern, none of the above need have happened.
In jewish history, there never has been any substitute for organized and superior armed force, willfully and ruthlessly applied, when and where threats against their nation have shown their antisemitic fangs.
I keep thinking of the day when one of those weapons may take out the present prime minister of Iran — the one who bleats continually of the coming destruction of Israel — along with whatever explodable stockpile he is accumulating, and all that is near and dear to him. And I hope that just like Haman the Aggagite, he will live just long enough to witness all this destruction at the hands of the jewish nation and its armed power.
At present rates of population growth, and without undue dependence upon emigration from other countries, Israel’s jewish nation will double in size to about 11 million by about the year of modern Israel’s first centennial in 2048. And again to 22 million in another 40 years.
Will that population expand geographically as well as numerically? You can count on it. Israel is more or less the only modern, industrialized and scientifically advanced society in the Middle East. One day they will dominate that entire area.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
OK, when you said "nation-state" I didn’t catch the drift. Yes, a truly independent nation state of Israel didn’t exist at the time of Christ. Israel the territory and the Jewish people, of course, did (not unlike the Polish and the Armenians and any number of other peoples who still considered their land and people to exist even when they had no nation-state of their own, and like the Assyrians today.)
However, unlike the Jewish people, I have a hard time believing that Poles, Armenians, or Assyrians would have remained remain a "nation in exile" for 2500 years. Odds are they’d have been integrated into other nations over time. Kind of like how we don’t have anyone claiming to be Babylonian, Roman, or Greek (as being a citizen of Alexander The Great’s Greek Empire) today.
Jews are unique of all people in history in this regard. And if ever there was proof of a God, I’d say this is it.
Hmm. That still seems a little hazardous to me. The Assyrians, by coincidence, haven’t had their own nation-state since about 600BC, and have faced numerous wars and persecutions, but retain their language and identity–most of them are found in modern day Iraq, despite having a language and a culture separate from the Arab majority. Also, despite thousands of years of persecution and having no homeland at all to speak of, the Zoroastrians have maintained their religion and strong identity as a people to this very day, with most of them found in Iran (where they’re persecuted), India (where they’re ignored) and America (where we leave them alone). And, no one even knows for sure what the original homeland of the hated Gypsy/Roma people ever was, they’ve just been a people with a language and customs more or less in permanent diaspora for a very long time now. There are probably other such peoples, those are just examples that happen to spring to mind.
Mind you, I wouldn’t argue with the notion that the Jews have a special relationship with God, and have an amazing story.
Oh, wow, I just remembered, the Babylonians are still around too, although they’re better known these days as Chaldeans. They haven’t had their own nation-state for thousands of years, but they’re still around. There’s a bunch of them in Dearborn these days, as it happens.
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