A 1,900-Year-Old Coin Is a Window into Jerusalem on the Eve of Its Destruction

On Sunday, Jews marked the beginning of the three-week period of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Coincidentally, archaeologists have just discovered a coin from 69 CE, minted by Jewish rebels fighting the Romans, in an ancient drainage ditch in Jerusalem. In the following year the Romans would capture the city, crush the rebellion, and destroy the Temple. Yori Yalon writes:

The coin . . . bears an inscription in ‎ancient Hebrew lettering reading “For the redemption ‎of Zion” and a depiction of a chalice. ‎Its other side depicts the “four species” used in the rituals of ‎the Sukkot holiday—the citron fruit, palm frond, and myrtle and willow branches—and the words “year four,” ‎referring to the [fourth] year of rebellion against Rome.‎

“The coin was found exactly in the same place that ‎Jews had been hiding in the drainage channel under ‎the street,” noted Reut Vilf [a representative of the organization overseeing the excavation that unearthed the coin]. Evidence of the rebels’ ‎attempt to hide under the city includes intact oil ‎lamps and ceramic pots that were found whole in the ‎sewer itself.‎

Interpreting the inscription on the coin, Vilf said, ‎‎“Freedom is an immediate thing, while redemption is ‎a process. It could attest to their understanding ‎that the end was near.”

Eli Shukron, an archaeologist with the Israel ‎Antiquities Authority, said, [however], that in all likelihood ‎the coin could [also] have fallen into the drainage system ‎through cracks in the stone-paved road.

Read more at JNS

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, History & Ideas, Jerusalem, Judean Revolt

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