Documents from Afghanistan’s Medieval Jewish Community Make Their Way to Israel

The National Library of Israel (NLI), located in Jerusalem, just announced that it has acquired 250 pages of documents from Afghanistan, dated mostly to the early 11th century. This is the largest collection anywhere of archival materials from pre-modern Afghanistan. Arutz Sheva reports:

Because of the widespread destruction during the [13th-century] Mongol conquests, [the collection] represents virtually the only primary source for information about this once-thriving Jewish community, as well as the region’s Islamic and Persian cultures prior to the Mongol invasion. . . .

Part of the collection comes from the same archive as the handful of pages already held by NLI, [known as the Afghan Genizah]. These texts flesh out our understanding of the lives of the 11th-century Abu Netzer family of Jewish traders living in and around the city of Bamiyan, a once-bustling commercial center located on the Silk Road. [Included among the documents are] parts of multiple tractates from the Talmud, as well as liturgy, Jewish law, a historical chronicle, and portions of the Bible. A full 27 pages of a bound merchant’s account book offers a look into the economic realities of an ancient and sparsely studied community. The collection is written in Persian, Arabic, Aramaic, and Judeo-Persian.

Read more at Israel National News

More about: Afghanistan, Central Asian Jewry, History & Ideas, Jewish history, National Library of Israel

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