Evidence Discovered of an Ancient Jewish Presence in the Jordanian City of Abila

During the period of Roman rule, there was a significant Jewish population, dating back to biblical times, east of the Jordan River. Archaeologists have now uncovered a trace of the Jews of the ancient city of Abila, located south of the Yarmouk River, near Jordan’s border with Syria. Philippe Bohstrom writes:

A menorah carved on a stone block, found in a 1,400-year-old Byzantine church in Abila, Jordan is the first tangible evidence of a Jewish presence in the ancient Hellenistic city. . . .

[I]n 36 years of excavations at Tel al-Abila, also known as Seleucia, no traces of Jews living in this Roman trading hub had been found before. The depiction of the seven-branched menorah, with a branching three-legged base, was found on a stone in the second tier of a wall, near the floor, while excavating a Byzantine church from the 6th or 7th century CE. . . .

The stone block with the menorah carving was almost certainly . . . repurposed from another structure, probably a synagogue. Since it was not found in its original site, the date of the menorah cannot be ascertained. But it has to predate the construction of the church.

Read more at Haaretz

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, History & Ideas, Jordan

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF