Graves of Jewish Soldiers from World War I Found in Gaza

The current war has yielded some ancient archaeological discoveries, which we’ve been covering in these daily Editors’ Picks. It’s also revealed some more modern ones. Troy Fritzhand writes:

Soldiers in the IDF’s 188th Brigade were surprised to find Jewish gravestones during fighting in the Gaza Strip. According to reports in Hebrew media, the soldiers were operating in the central Gaza town of al-Maazi when they noticed stars of David on some of the tombstones at a cemetery in the town.

The cemetery, it turned out, was one of the fallen British soldiers of World War I who fought in the land of Israel against the Ottoman empire some 110 years ago. . . . One of the soldiers there, Lieutenant Colonel Oren, told Hebrew media, “It was damaged a bit in the battles, but it can be restored. We noticed the stars of David on the tombstones and names like Goldreich. We returned after a few days to the place and said kaddish over the graves after many years.”

According to the troops, there are seven Jewish tombstones in the cemetery that was found near a Hamas weapons cache.

Read more at Algemeiner

More about: Gaza War 2023, Israeli history, Jewish cemeteries, Jews in the military, World War I

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023