The Walls of Jerusalem, Discovered in Time for the Anniversary of Their Destruction

In 586 BCE, after a protracted siege, the Babylonians broke through the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the city, along with the First Temple. Archaeologists recently announced the discovery of a portion of those walls, writes Amanda Borschel-Dan:

According to 2Kings 25:10, “The entire Chaldean [Babylonian] force that was with the chief of the guard tore down the walls around Jerusalem.” But this newly found extant section of the eastern city wall, connected to two previously excavated and documented sections, means that potentially the entire length of the eastern border was not in fact torn down by the conquering Babylonians.

With this discovery, archaeologists are now able to reconstruct the run of the wall that encircled the ancient kingdom of Judah’s capital on the eve of its destruction, which is commemorated by the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av on Sunday.

The new eastern section connects with two other previously discovered adjacent wall sections found in the 1960s by the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon and in the 1970s by Yigal Shiloh. By connecting the dots on the map, there is now an almost continuous 656-foot-long fortified wall on the eastern slope of the City of David facing the Kidron Valley.

The fortification wall was constructed in the late 8th century or early 7th BCE. . . Whether the fortifications were built before the earlier siege of the Assyrians in 701 BCE or later is still unclear.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, First Temple, Jerusalem

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