Georgia’s Ancient and Deep Connection with the Land of Israel

A pro-Western country that enjoys good relations with the Jewish state, Georgia—which regained its independence after the collapse of the USSR in 1991—was one of the very first countries to become Christian. It was also home to a historic Jewish community, and a few thousand Jews still live there. Moreover, the Georgian Church has its own ties to the Land of Israel. Lazar Berman writes:

Jerusalem is famous for its Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian shrines, and today there is not a single Georgian church to be found in all of Israel. But for hundreds of years, Georgians were a ubiquitous, even dominant force among Christians in the Holy Land. Georgian monks and princes built dozens of churches, and held some of Christianity’s most sacred sites.

As Georgia’s political power waned, its grip on Holy Land shrines slipped, and by the Ottoman era, all its monasteries and churches were in the hands of more powerful communities. Ancient Georgian inscriptions and frescoes were neglected and even vandalized, a process that continued into modern times.

The heart of the Georgian presence in Jerusalem was the Monastery of the Cross, which sits today in the valley beneath the Israel Museum and the Knesset. As Georgian tradition has it, King Mirian III, [who first made Christianity the country’s official religion], purchased the land in the 4th century, and a 5th-century ruler founded the first monastery on the site. . . . According to written sources, [however], the current fortress-like monastery was built by a Georgian monk named Prochore in the 11th century after the earlier structure was torn down in the Arab conquest of Palestine

Georgian Jews began moving to Palestine in the middle of the 19th century, primarily near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. According to a 1915 census, more than 6 percent of the Jews in Jerusalem and almost a quarter of the Jews in the Old City were Georgian. They were forced to flee their homes for good during the 1929 Arab riots.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Georgia, Jewish history, Land 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