A Liberal Dose, July 18, 2024 "A Brief History of Israel and Palestine Part 6"

 

A Liberal Dose

July 18, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“A Brief History of Israel and Palestine, Part 6”

 

So much is going on, I debated with myself whether to return to my ongoing series about the history of Palestine this week. I decided to do so, for two reasons. One, whether we’re looking at Biden’s age issues and the fate of his campaign or the assassination attempt on Trump, it is all still unfolding as I write this. Two, it might be a good idea for all of us to review the history of Palestine and the violence associated with it, if for no other reason than to remind ourselves of what can happen when hate prevails in a region and what it can lead to.

Last time, we had finally reached the nineteenth century, a time during which the Ottoman Empire of Turkey had ruled over Palestine for 400 years. The Turks were Muslim, but many Arabs chafed under the rule of the Ottomans. A growing sense of Arab nationalism was developing by the late nineteenth/early twentieth century; many adherents to this philosophy wanted Arabs to have control of their own lands, while others remained loyal to the Ottoman Empire but wanted Arab rights recognized. There were also different types of Arab nationalism. To some, this meant that the whole Arabic-speaking world was one nation. To others, it meant that Arab groups in individual countries ruled over by the Turks should have a strong sense of nationalism to those countries and make them independent from the Ottomans, under Arabic rule.

You might be surprised to learn that Russia played a significant role in what happened next.

In the Russian Empire, Jews were viciously persecuted and were frequently the target of pogroms -from a Russian word meaning destruction. The dictionary defines a pogrom as a violent riot with the goal of massacring or expelling Jews from a region. This activity was especially heightened in the 1880s, which is when the word first appeared -but antisemitic violence had been common throughout Europe for many centuries. Nonetheless, it intensified in Russia at this time. Countless Jews were murdered, sometimes whole communities. This contributed to large numbers of Jews fleeing the Russian Empire, many of whom immigrated to the United States (even the mouse-versions, if you know your Fievel). It also led to a growing sense among many Jews that they needed the safety and security of a country of their own, something they had not had since the Roman Empire and the diaspora (or dispersal of Jews to many regions of the world).

Whereas some Jews proposed forming a colony elsewhere in the world, such as in Africa, eventually a majority of people calling for a Jewish homeland supported making it in Palestine, the location of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah from which their ancestors had been exiled. This movement quickly became known as Zionism, for Mount Zion -a large hill in Jerusalem, which in the Hebrew scriptures and later tradition referred symbolically to all of Israel. The movement even designed their own flag in 1891, the very same flag used by the modern nation of Israel today.

This goal was initially pursued by buying land in Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and establishing Jewish settlements there. Many local Muslims resented their Turkish rulers selling away their land to outsiders, who were growing in number, which heightened tensions between the Ottoman Empire and Arab-speaking peoples in the Levant. To complicate matters further, Russia was ALSO viciously persecuting Muslims in the Russian Empire, causing many of THEM to migrate -and most were migrating to the Ottoman Empire, introducing even more Muslim diversity in the region and even more nationalism and resistance to the Turks. Since the Ottoman and Russian Empires were arch-enemies, the Turks were very suspicious of the new Muslim immigrants coming from Russian territory.

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers (primarily Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Various Arab nationalist groups united during the war, and -encouraged by Britain -revolted against Turkey, fighting on the side of the Allies in hopes of establishing a single Arab nation that would stretch from Syria to Yemen. Britain promised to recognize such a new nation, in return for the Arabs’ help in the war (this is what the movie Lawrence of Arabia is about).

Instead, when the war was over, Britain joined other European powers in dividing up the Middle East among themselves. And, before fighting had even stopped, Britain promised to help establish a Jewish national homeland… in Palestine.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

 

 

A Liberal Dose, July 11, 2024 "Supreme Court Declares Trump King"

 

“Supreme Court Declares Trump King”

 

At this rate, I may never get that historical overview of Palestine finished. Three or four weeks ago I interrupted it to comment on Trump’s 34 guilty verdicts (and how richly deserved they were). The day after that column came out, someone pretending to be me called the electric company and asked for my power to be cut off -I’m sure that was a complete coincidence.

This week, I have to set space aside to comment on the Supreme Court decision about Trump that came, with incredible irony, on the week of Independence Day. 248 years ago, we declared ourselves a nation -a nation without a king. Eleven years later, in 1787, we approved a Constitution laying out the powers of that nation’s government. Throughout the process, all the “founding fathers” agreed that the executive office of president is not the same as king, and that in America no one -no one -was above the law. Richard Nixon argued that “if the president does it, it’s not illegal” -but legal scholars did not agree. The very idea, in fact, has been unthinkable -to the extent that, when Donald Trump started making such claims to the Supreme Court -most informed people believed SCOTUS took the case on as a way to run out the clock until after the election so as to ensure his chances for victory. Almost no one believed that they -even they! -would actually give him what he asked for, because there was no Constitutional basis whatsoever to do so.

Joke’s on us.

Mere days before the 4^th of July, the conservative Court majority ruled -from whole cloth, with no connection to precedent, not that that’s stopped them recently -that no president can be prosecuted for things he (or she, someday) did as “official actions” while in office. Accept bribes, order execution of political rivals, inspire insurrections to remain in office… all immune, if said president said they were doing it for the country. But wait, says the suddenly-sensitive-to-criticism Chief Justice Roberts, we’re not saying the president is above the law- he can still be prosecuted for UNOFFICIAL actions. But the Court gives no suggestion as to what those might be. And, even worse, this Court ruled that -even if a president’s unofficial actions were criminal -no court can use as evidence of that criminality anything that president said to any of his subordinates.

In short, they have declared Donald Trump, if elected in November, King.

I say they have declared TRUMP king. Because, with the hyper-partisan-to-the-max track record of this Court, you know -you KNOW -that if Biden, or any other Democratic president, were charged with anything they would rule it prosecutable without even deliberating it. Because these actions are not about the office of president, or the good of the country. They are to protect the agenda of Donald Trump, like everything else these conservative Justices, and virtually all Republican officials, do anymore.

This is an ex-president who makes no secret about the fascistic plans he has for this country if he gets the chance, nor of his plans for political revenge against all perceived enemies. The dictatorial “Project 2025” plan details strategies to remove all governmental guardrails that prevented Trump from doing everything he wanted the first time around, and now SCOTUS has pre-approved his every illegal intention. And, assuming our democracy survives an even more deranged second Trump term, what about the future? This Court has enabled the possibility of everything the framers of the Constitution feared and warned about.

We are living in an age when one portion of the American public, and the politicians who rely on their votes, and (as we’ve been learning) the Justices grown accustomed to millions of dollars in bribes, are willing to burn down everything this country was founded on, every hope of generations to form a more perfect union… because it hasn’t gone the way they’d like it to go. “Oh, but people and their pronouns! And drag queens! And minorities! Someone needs to take a firm hand to fix all this!” Constitution be hanged, despite their claims to revere it. For that matter, Christ and morality be hanged, despite their claims of religion.

I’m not going to get through to people who think this is all hunky dory. But there are still plenty of people, right here in White County, who know it isn’t right. Stand up and speak, and get out and vote. It’s only a Republic if you can keep it.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, July 4, 2024 "A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 5"

 

A Liberal Dose

July 4, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 5”

 

We are slowly making our way, a few centuries at a time, to the situation in modern Palestine. I am going to start this week’s installment by quoting the final paragraph from last time, as a summary:

“In the eleventh century, the region was invaded by the Seljuk Turks -who were also Muslim -and they took Jerusalem in 1073. The Turks ruled tyrannically for a quarter-century, crushing any attempts at resistance and at different times killing most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Gaza. They were finally driven out in 1098 by the Fatimid Caliphate.”

As we discussed earlier, the Byzantine Empire -that is, the eastern half of what had once been the Roman Empire -had been fighting against the Persian Empire for control of the Levant, finally winning that long series of wars and retaking Jerusalem. Then came the Seljuk Turks and took Jerusalem away from them, and by 1098 the Fatimid Caliphate took it away from THEM… just as the Byzantine Empire was making THEIR move to get it back.

In 1094 the Byzantine Emperor appealed to Pope Urban II in Rome for aid in retaking Jerusalem, at that time still controlled by Seljuk Turks, in the name of their shared Christianity. A Crusade was declared to “retake the Holy Land”. Armies from various Western European lands marched to the Levant to join the Orthodox Christian Byzantines in their fight against the Turks. By the time the forces fought their way to Jerusalem -many of them killing Jews they encountered along the way in pogroms -the Fatimids had taken control of the city, so the Crusaders attacked them in a siege in 1099. It was during this siege that the Crusaders truly earned their reputation for cruelty and barbarity. They eventually took all of the Levant, as well as parts of what are now Syria and Turkey, dividing it all into four “Crusader Kingdoms”: the Principality of Antioch, the Counties of Edessa and Tripoli (in northern Lebanon, not the one in Libya)… and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which would be controlled by (mostly French) Crusaders for the next 200 years. Those two centuries were marked by waves of invasions and counter-invasions of the region, not only by the European Crusaders but by the two principal Muslim powers in the area, the Fatimids (Shiite Muslim) and the Seljuk Turks (Sunni Muslim).

About halfway through that period, in the 12th century, a Kurdish-born Sunni Muslim named Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub rose through the Seljuk ranks. He is usually called Salah ad-Din, or Saladin. He eventually rose to power in his own right, unifying the Muslims in the region and establishing his own dynasty headquartered in Egypt. Saladin then led the forces under his command against the Crusaders, winning a huge victory over them in 1187 that restored most of the Levant -and the city of Jerusalem -to Muslim rule (though the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem held on for another century, confined to a tiny strip of land, before finally falling as well.) There were very few Jews left in Palestine, but they fought on the side of the Muslims against the Crusaders.

Saladin’s Ayyubid Dynasty was short-lived in Egypt, being overthrown in 1250 by mamluks (enslaved soldiers) who set up their own Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt… just in time to defend Palestine from invasion by Mongols, who -in an effort begun by Ghengis (or Jingis) Khan, had already conquered much of the known world. The Mamluks eventually succeeded in repelling the Mongols, but -as had so often been the case -the people of Palestine suffered heavily during the conflict. With both the Mongols and the Crusaders chased out, though, Palestine would have a couple of centuries of relative peace and rebuilding. The region was taken away from the Mamluks by the Empire of the Ottoman Turks in 1516, but -compared to the Crusaders and the Mongols -it was a relatively quick process with much less death and destruction.

The Ottoman Empire would control Palestine for 400 years, until World War I. Most of the region’s inhabitants were Arab Muslims, with some Christians, Druze, and a small number of Jews. Most of the world’s Jews were living in Central and Eastern Europe.

Near the end of that period, in the nineteenth century, two movements arose that would set into motion -along with WWI -events leading to our current situation: Arab nationalism and Zionism.

To be continued.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 27, 2024 "A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 4"

 

A Liberal Dose

June 27, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 4”

 

After taking a week off from this space to finish producing my lecture videos for my summer class on the American West, I am now back in the saddle (see what I did there?) to resume our exploration of the history of Palestine. When we left off two weeks ago, it was the end of the fourth century and Rome had divided into Western and Eastern (with capitols at Rome and Byzantium, the latter exercising control over Palestine and the Middle East). Jews were now a minority in the region, with most native inhabitants being Christian (as both halves of the Roman Empire were).

The Byzantines’ chief rival in the Middle East was Persia (in case you didn’t know, Byzantium is now called Istanbul, Turkey, and Persia is now Iran). In the early seventh century -over a century after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West- the final war between the Byzantine and Persian empires took place, and Persia invaded Palestine. The Jews of Palestine fought on the side of Persia, hoping to get independence for Jerusalem and Jewish control over it out of the deal; the Persian-Jewish alliance captured Jerusalem and Caesarea, and the Jews destroyed the Christian churches there and took their holy relics as trophies. Unfortunately for them, the Persians lost the war -and Christian Byzantium retook control of the Levant, and were vey angry at the Jews of the region. All Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and their leaders were executed. This was the year 629 C.E.

Seven years earlier, the prophet Muhammed -persecuted in his home city of Mecca, where he had been gaining followers for over a decade -migrated to the city of Medina (both cities are in Saudi Arabia) and began to unify the tribes of Arabia under his teachings. Under Muhammed’s leadership, the spread of the religion of Islam by conquest began. Muhammed returned to Mecca in triumph in 630 and ordered the destruction of all idols in the city. He died in 632, but his Muslim successors continued his mission.

In 636 they invaded Palestine, and conquered it by 640. (Orthodox) Christian Byzantium was now out of power in Palestine, and the Muslims were in. However, Muslims considered Jews, Christians, and Samaritans as “People of the Book” -basically servants of the same God- and Muslims considered both Moses and Jesus to be prophets. As a result, Jews, Christians, and Samaritans were accorded far more latitude under Muslim rule than were members of religions in the other places they conquered. Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem, synagogues and churches were allowed, and European Christians were still permitted to come to Jerusalem on pilgrimages. Still, though, non-Muslims had a secondary status and had to pay a special tax (as did non-Arabic Muslims).

About twenty years later, a new dynasty took over the Muslim caliphate, the Umayyad. The first Umayyad caliph was installed to power in a ceremony held in Jerusalem, which demonstrates the high regard in which they held the city. According to the Koran, Muhammed was once mystically transported from Mecca to Jerusalem, to the site Jews call the Temple Mount as it was the physical location of the destroyed Temple, and from that site the Prophet was transported briefly to heaven where he met God, Moses, Abraham, and Jesus. At the end of the second century, Umayyad caliphs had the Dome of the Rock constructed on the site, and it remains the oldest existing Islamic monument. This one site in Jerusalem, therefore, has profound religious significance for Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike.

During this era two Arabic tribal groups, the Qays and the Yaman -essentially stemming from the northern and the southern Arab tribes -began a feud that would last for centuries, not abating until the nineteenth century and in some ways echoing into the present in Palestine. So North vs. South is not just something we do here. Meanwhile, in the following few centuries -depending on the caliph in charge -the status of Christians in Palestine went back and forth from tolerance to persecution and back again.

In the eleventh century, the region was invaded by the Seljuk Turks -who were also Muslim -and they took Jerusalem in 1073. The Turks ruled tyrannically for a quarter-century, crushing any attempts at resistance and at different times killing most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Gaza. They were finally driven out in 1098 by the Fatimid Caliphate.

And then came the Crusades.

To be continued.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

 

A Liberal Dose, June 13, 2024 "A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 3"

 

A Liberal Dose

June 13, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 3”

 

As of last week, we had reached the tenth century BCE and established the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the cities of Philistia. That was the southern Levant. After the Bronze Age Collapse of around 1200 BCE, there was a shuffling of powers in the northern Levant. The seafaring Phoenician city-states in Lebanon -cities like Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut -prospered in the following centuries, establishing colonies in other parts of the Mediterranean world, most notably the city of Carthage. In modern Syria, Damascus -which had previously been batted back and forth between the Hittites and the Egyptians -became a prominent city under the Arameans (who spoke Aramaic). To the northeast of Syria, the Assyrians became a major power, their central cities being Assur (from which they got their name) and Ninevah, in modern Iraq. Egypt, of course, remained a power far to the south.

For the next thousand years, the area formerly known as Canaan, later as Palestine, would be frequently caught in a tug-of-war between various empires. In the ninth century BCE, the Aramean king of Damascus (Hazael) expanded his kingdom into a proto-Empire, but a century later was crushed by Assyria… who also conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and (according to the Bible) took the inhabitants of the Israelite capitol, Samaria, into captivity, never to return home. By 605 the Assyrians had been greatly weakened, and were themselves crushed by an alliance including the Medes (from modern Iran) and the New Babylonians (Chaldeans from Iraq). Eight years later the Babylonians conquered Judah and destroyed Jerusalem, taking many of the Jews into captivity in Babylon. They also conquered the cities of the Philistines and took them into captivity, as well. The Philistines maintained their identity while captive for over a century, but eventually faded out of history. Their cities were resettled by Phoenicians (remember, descendants of Canaanites). About half-a-century after the Jewish captivity had begun, Babylon was conquered by Persia -who allowed the Jews to return home, escaping the fate of the Philistines. By 539 BCE Persia controlled The Levant. The returned Judeans spoke Hebrew and there were some Arabs in the area speaking their own language, but the common tongue of the whole region was Aramaic.

Whew. Got all that?

In 480 BCE the Persian westward advance was checked by the Spartans in Thermopylae. In 330 BCE the Persian Empire was crushed by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, and now Greeks were in charge of The Levant. When Alexander died in Babylon at age 32, his vast empire was divided among his top four generals, with Seleucus (and his descendants) in charge of Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and Ptolemy (and his descendants) in charge of Egypt -both at one time or another exerting influence in The Levant (and all the rulers, essentially, Greek even though they were being called Syrian and Egyptian). Koine Greek became the official language of the area, and was spoken by rulers and administrators, while most of the common people spoke Aramaic and their local languages.

By 167 BCE, Seleucid king Antiochus IV was suppressing the culture and religion of the Judeans, which led them to (successfully) rise up in revolt under the leadership of the Maccabee family.  The Seleucids were being tested at the same time by several of their conquered peoples, which helped enable the Maccabees to win Judean independence and establish the Hasmonean Kingdom, which ruled most of The Levant for a hundred years.

And then, in 63 BCE, Rome showed up. They destroyed the Seleucid empire, then ended the Hasmonean kingdom and divided it into three provinces: Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. Judea was allowed to have its own king, though: Herod. Throughout the first century CE, Jewish zealots sporadically led insurgencies against the Romans, erupting into full-scale rebellion in 66 CE… and leading to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Romans deported 30,000 Jews to Carthage and sold 100,000 into slavery, with many thousands more leaving on their own steam. Two generations later, in 132 CE, there was another Jewish rebellion that led to more death and destruction. At that point Rome changed the name of the province from Judea to Syria Palaestina. When the Roman Empire divided into West and East (Byzantine) in 391, The Levant was under the control of the Byzantine Empire -often at odds in the area with the Persians, with both sides having Arabic allies. Jews had become a minority, and most people in the area were now Christian.

To be continued.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 6, 2024: Donald Trump: Now and Forever, a Convicted Felon"

 

A Liberal Dose

June 6, 2024

“Donald Trump: Now and Forever a Convicted Felon”

Troy D. Smith

 

I am temporarily interrupting my attempt to outline the history of Israel and Palestine, important as I think that is, to address the historic events of last week.

For the first time in our nation’s history, a former president of the United States has been convicted of felonies in a court of law. 34 counts. Simultaneously, for the first time in the history of our country a convicted felon is the presumptive presidential candidate for one of the two major political parties. Of course, we’ve had a lot of firsts with this particular criminal. There’s never been a president who was impeached twice (in fact, this president has had half of all the impeachments in presidential history). There’s never been a former president even indicted for crimes. There’s never been a former president found liable in civil court for fraud and sexual assault. There’s never been a president who incited, encouraged, and cheered on a civil insurrection that involved an assault on the Capitol and efforts to kill his own vice-president.

A lot of people voted for this criminal in 2016 because they said he didn’t act like a politician, and boy were they right about that. None of us guessed then just how much worse than a regular politician a carnival huckster could be.

I know that many people in America are disappointed in this verdict, and even angry about it. That is understandable; people usually want their hero to win, and Donald Trump is a hero to a lot of people. Many of those people are saying the trial was a sham, a rigged process, an effort by Democrats to take down a challenger to the incumbent from their party. I understand their feeling that way -but they are wrong. This verdict came from twelve jurors made up of the defendant’s peers, after hearing all the evidence and weighing it in their minds -even though some of them lean very conservative. This is how our system works. This is how our system is SUPPOSED to work. If his other three trials ever get before a jury, THAT will be justice, no matter which way that jury decides after presentation of the evidence.

I posit that the injustice in this whole process is not that the conviction happened in a state that leans much more liberal than many other states; the federal government and the Democratic Party had nothing to do with the trial. The injustice is with those other three trials, which have been delayed and delayed by judges appointed by Trump, in hopes of pushing them past the election so they won’t affect his chances of winning and so if he does win he can call them off because he is president. A jury needs to decide those cases, and the public should have a chance to know what that jury decides BEFORE any votes are cast.

But we do know what happened in this one. Donald Trump was convicted on all counts. Now and forever, he is a convicted felon. Not that long ago, that would have permanently ended a politician’s career… but a lot has changed since the criminal first rode down that golden escalator to announce his candidacy. Well, maybe nothing has changed, but a lot more has become apparent about America and who we are, who we want to be, and who we are willing to be.

I’ve seen people comparing Trump, yet again, to Jesus -saying Jesus was also convicted in a sham trial but they still follow him. This strikes me as blatant idolatry- but not any more than all the other Trump-is-Jesus memes that floated around before this. It’s worth noting, though, that Jesus told his followers to lay down their weapons when he was arrested. Trump does the opposite, and in fact judges, attorneys, reporters, Democratic officials, and just known liberals have been receiving physical threats from Trump supporters. I know pearls are being clutched tightly as I say this, amid cries of “fake news.”

But I believe the felon will lose the upcoming election, and will not be able to permanently stymie those other, federal, investigations. The evidence will be presented, and jurors will evaluate it. I believe we will watch it happen in the next year or two, and the felony convictions will keep piling up.

None of this will matter to some people. But it will matter to just enough voters to change their minds on election day. The end is in sight for Donald Trump.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, May 30, 2024 "A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 2"

A Liberal Dose

May 30, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 2”

 

Last time I defined The Levant: modern Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, and part of Syria… basically, the lands along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. I introduced you to the people of Canaan (basically The Levant), who were part of a larger language group called Semitic. There were several groups living in Canaan in the years between 2000 and 1500 BCE, all with similar culture and language. There were Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and other -ites. To the east there were Amorites, Semitic people who founded the original Babylonian Empire (east of The Levant, in modern Iraq).  To the south, in modern Saudi Arabia, there were Arabic tribes, sometimes called Ishmaelites, who were also Semitic. And eventually, there were Hebrews -whose ancestors, according to tradition, had come from the Semitic city-state of Ur.

To the north of Canaan there were two major non-Semitic kingdoms and empires: Assyrians (northeast, their principal cities being Assur and Nineveh) and the Hittites (due north). To the south lay Egypt. By 1500 BCE, Egypt dominated Canaan/The Levant and made it part of their empire. They built a fort near an abandoned city that had been inhabited off and on since 3000 BCE… the fort and the revived city, which became an important stop for Egyptian caravans, became the headquarters for Egyptians in Canaan.

It was called Gaza.

I’m sure you all know the Bible stories. According to them, around 2000 BCE Abram/Abraham and his family left Ur, directed by God to the land of Canaan which was promised to his descendants. Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph was later sold into slavery by his jealous brothers (to a caravan of passing Arabs/Ishmaelites) and ended up in Egypt. He rose to prominence there, and was joined by his father and his whole family. Eventually, though, all the Israelites were made into slaves by the Egyptians. 450 years later, Moses led their descendants -two or three million of them -out of bondage in Egypt (so this would have been roughly 1300 BCE) and back to the Promised Land of Canaan… where they conquered most of the Canaanite peoples, took the land, and eventually established the Kingdom of Israel (circa 1000 BCE) and, later, the breakaway southern Kingdom of Judah. At its height (biblically), the Kingdom of Israel would have covered all of modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, much of modern Jordan, and the southern half of Lebanon. The only unconquered part was a strip of land in the south, along the Mediterranean shore, which included Gaza. That land was Philistia, home of the Philistines.

Except… most historians, archeologists, and Bible scholars don’t think it happened quite that way. There is no historical or archeological evidence of millions of Hebrews living in Egypt at that time, serving as slaves, or appearing suddenly in Canaan. Scholars believe the Israelites never LEFT Canaan. There is plenty of evidence, however, of something else major happening in the region at around the same time the Bible tells us the Israelites were fighting and conquering their Canaanite neighbors… around 1200 BCE.

As we discussed, Egypt had been in control of Canaan for about 300 years at that point -so biblical stories of Egyptian oppression have the ring of truth to them, just not taking place in Egypt itself. In the 12^th century BCE, though, Egypt was attacked by a fierce group of “sea people” arriving by ship from the Mediterranean (probably from the Aegean Sea area). In the intense wars that followed, Egypt lost much of their possessions outside their own country, and was greatly weakened. Because of the intricate trade system in place, this caused a chain reaction- and almost all the major players in the region toppled, including Babylon and the Hittites, as well as (farther away) Troy and Mycenae (this is called the Late Bronze Age collapse). This led to a free-for-all in Canaan among the various peoples living there -and that is when the Israelites enter the historical record, eventually establishing their kingdom.

Some of the defeated Sea People settled in the area now known as Gaza, and probably intermarried with the Canaanites already there… and became known as Philistines. The word that we pronounce “Palestine” in English, by the way, is pronounced in Hebrew and Arabic more like fill-is-teen. Much later, in the fifth century BCE, Greek historian Herodotus would call the land Palaestine.

Hey, look at us, we covered another thousand years this week! The stage is now fully set. To be continued.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE