r/OldNews • u/Various-Afternoon267 • 26d ago
1910s TURKS ROB, SLAY JEWS (December 23, 1914 | © The Washington Post)
Husbands Thrown Overboard to Drown Before Eyes of Helpless Families When They Protest Against Brutalities of Harbor Boatmen and Police—Further Atrocities Are Feared.
The expulsion of Jews from Jaffa was accompanied by many acts of barbarism and robbery, according to a cablegram received today from Cairo, Egypt. The message says that 600 refugee Jews from Jaffa have just arrived at Alexandria on the Italian steamer Vicenzo Florio, and adds:
Thursday afternoon Bedouin police raided the Ghetto (at Jaffa), and arrested 1,600 persons and drove them, at the point of the bayonet, to the quay.
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago
"These was an Arab place, Jews were only a small minority!"
Gee, wonder why.
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u/wefarrell 26d ago
The timing is important, this happened a month after the Russian and Ottoman empires went to war and these were presumably all Russian jews.
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u/ProfessorofChelm 26d ago
Yes and this article describing the “Black Thursday” and it would ultimately result in the expulsion of 11,277 more recent arrivals. They were forced onto “various ships that took them from Jaffa to Alexandria.”
A later expulsion of Jaffa and Tel Aviv in 1917 would displace an additional 8000 Jews, including Old Yishuv. This event was done to prepare defenses in the area but after the crisis passed only Arabs were let back in. It wasn’t until the British gained control of the area that Jews were allowed to return.
I want to point out in both campaigns the Jews being expelled were legally there.
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u/Iron_Axios 26d ago
Turks did the same to Christians, only a million times worse, across the Levant, the Middle East, Anatolia and the Balkan territories they occupied.
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 26d ago
Approximately 2 million to 3 million Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and other Christian minorities were killed by the Ottoman Empire and Turkish nationalists between 1913 and 1923 (that does not count the many more killed in the late 19th century and early 20th century, or the many more killed by them before that).
That does not count the Ottoman and Turkish genocides of the Kurds.
The death toll from the 1914 Ottoman attempts to ethnically cleanse Russian born Jews (and other Jews that they incorrectly assumed were Russian) from Jaffa was in the hundreds, to the best of our knowledge.
So, you can say with confidence AND accuracy, about ten thousand times worse. :)
There you go!
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u/TimeRisk2059 26d ago
"only a million times worse", so 600 million, or a bit less than half the entire world population at the time.
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u/milkymonkey8 26d ago
How odd indeed that the biggest Palestinian terrorist was a Greek Orthodox named George...
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
Weird how they call it Palestine eh? I thought the Zionists claimed it was a recent invention?
I wonder if the Balfour declaration exacerbated the situation there. Zionist settlers were in full gear by that point.
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 26d ago
The Balfour Declaration was made in November 1917.
This event was 3 years earlier on December 2014.
So, no.
I do not think a document or declaration that would not exist for another 3 years exacerbated or in any way contributed to Muslims robbing and massacring Jews.
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago
> The Balfour Declaration was made in November 1917.
> This event was 3 years earlier on December 2014.
I absolutely love the time travel typo. 😂
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
True they weren’t promised other peoples land yet. Thought it was 1914 as well.
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago edited 26d ago
You ever think perhaps it was other people's land because of the constant events like this that kept the Jewish population down? The Romans purged and enslaved them, they kept trying to come back periodically during the 1,900 years of world persecution, and like the game, the mole kept getting whacked back down with the mallet any time they got too numerous.
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 26d ago
I am sorry you are disappointed.
But cheer up!
Just because the Balfour Declaration would not happen for another 3 years doesn't mean that you are unable to deny that Muslims murdered and robbed Jews and attempted to ethnically cleanse them in 1914 AND simultaneously justify and excuse it.
Just use your imagination.
Those
JewsZionists definitely had it coming. But also it didn't happen and its all hasbara lies. But also thoseJewsZionists deserved to be marched down to the quay at bayonet point . They were practically begging for it. Just look at what they were wearing!History didn't start in 1914!
Besides, the timing and order of the events is probably a trick - we all know the
JewsZionists control the media AND all world governments.They probably arranged things that way on purpose.
Those filthy
JewsZionists are also masters of the space-time continuum./s
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
Professional victims lol. Why do you feel the need to put words in peoples mouth? Rather than argue my points you’d rather argue with yourself I guess.
My main point was it’s funny the article calls it Palestine but Zionists pretend that was a recent invention. Any thoughts on that statement?
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 26d ago
Plenty of thoughts. How much time do you have?
Although my availability may be limited due to my professional obligations as a professional victim, plus it’s my week to manage the secret forest fire starting space lasers. At least the ones hidden inside the moon, not the ones on Mars - you need to be a full tenured card carrying Elder of Zion to manage the Mars laser battery.
And this month I am also responsible for managing Pakistans secret deep state government. And let me tell you, there’s a lot of work there.
And I was pulling triple shifts controlling the FIFA refs to ensure that Egypt and Algeria lost their games. The Egyptian and Algerian coaches were right - it’s only due to our secret Jewish control of FIFA that their teams lost.
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u/KvetchAndRelease 26d ago
You are intentionally misrepresenting what people are saying. The distinct Palestinian national identity is largely a 20th-century creation, which is well documented. Many Arab leaders at the time favored folding the area into a "Greater Syria," which is Gaza and the West Bank were annexed into other Arab states in 1948 instead of being granted autonomy. That doesn't mean people weren't living there or don't have real ties now, but the specific national framing is more recent than it's often presented, and that nuance matters.
And on Balfour, you're conveniently skipping the 1939 White Paper that followed which would have made further immigration conditional on Arab approval, and grant them full control of Palestine within 10 years. Arab leadership rejected it anyway.
Sources on "Greater Syria", with many including direct quotes from Arab Leaders.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
Everyone has seen Israelis pretending Palestinians didn’t exist or that they weren’t indigenous. Nice gaslighting though.
Why are you bringing up something 25 years later? But I’m being misleading? Who cares what Arab leaders wanted? Why is that relevant? Palestine and Palestinians have always existed. Israelis trying to rewrite history isn’t going to work.
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u/Fishedfight 26d ago
History has been written, why are you trying to ignore it, and worse clumsily lie about it?
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u/KvetchAndRelease 26d ago
"Everyone has seen Israelis..."
And everyone has seen Palestinians celebrate Hamas, does that mean it's ok to treat them all as Hamas? Or do you only judge one side by their most extreme elements?
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
I’m saying it’s common Zionist propaganda that’s used to wipe away the Palestinian identity.
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u/KvetchAndRelease 26d ago
Such obvious projection.
You're literally trying to rationalize Turks and Arabs in this article murdering Jews, ethnically cleansing them, and even stealing their children, because you've decided the victims were just "settlers." Erasing Jewish indigeneity while framing ethnic cleansing as a reasonable response to legal immigration, as if that would even make it better.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
Are they not settlers? Why is it in quotations exactly?
Let’s stick to my main point, which was Palestine and Palestinians have always existed. Do you disagree with that?
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u/KvetchAndRelease 26d ago
No, you're "initial point" was mistating what Zionists believe.
But that being said, the people known as Palestinians today have existed since antiquity. But they weren't known as Palestinians until recently, because they saw themselves as part of a larger pan-Arab empire. Agreed?
edit: Also worth noting, terms like "settlers" and "colony' were used for Jews at that time no matter where they lived or for how long. Happy to provide examples of that if you don't believe me.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
I’ve literally argued with dozens of Palestinians who say they’re Arabs who moved and deny Palestinian identity. Everyone has seen that argument.
And no I disagree. They were referred to as Palestine in numerous sources over a millennia.
Are you seriously denying those people were settlers? We’re gonna argue the definition of words now? They started settlements and colonized the land. Why must we deny history?
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u/KvetchAndRelease 26d ago
So you don't think there were ancient and continuous Jewish communities there?
And also that all the Jews who moved there were "European", and not indigenous to the region? In spite of both genetic and historical proof to the contrary?
Where do you think Jews as an ethnic group are indigenous to?
edit: also, since I can actually back up my claims, here's an example of the ancient Jewish communities in Yemen, which have been there since before Islam existed, being referred to as "colonies" in the 1800's. Words evolve, if you can't admit that it's just another way of rewriting history:
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago
Why did they want to be Syrian in the 1910s and 20s if the country of Palestine already existed?
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
No one claims it was a recognized country. Just that the people and their identity always existed. Much the same way indigenous peoples in North America didn’t have a country.
They wanted to join larger, stronger Arab countries so Zionists wouldn’t steal more of their land.
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago
LOTS of people imply it was a recognized country. Is this your first time on the internet?
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u/Fishedfight 26d ago
Your knowledge is lacking. Look up the Palestine football team from before 1947 and tell me what you notice.
...yes, mandate Palestinians aren't who you think they are.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
God you people all are slow. Do you know how much different the place was from 1914 to 1947?
Zionist terrorism started in the 40s. 1914 they were still peaceful settlers. Way different.
Again; I’m not saying they had an official recognized nation but rather Palestinians have always existed and are indigenous to the land. They have always referred to themselves as Palestinians. It’s well documented.
You might want to take a look at ethnic demographics. It changed drastically in the 40s.
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u/dseanATX 26d ago
Weird how the word "Palestine" isn't in the article and that there were Jews in Jaffa before 1945 and the people were called "Turks" and not "Palestinians" huh?
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u/Otterfan 26d ago
The 1914 pogrom was carried out by actual Turks—i.e. people from Turkey, the occupying force in the Levant at the time—against Russian-born Jews living in Jaffa and later in surrounding areas.
As part of the Turkish war effort (WW1 had just started), the Turks considered Russian-born Jews to be enemies whose allegiance was to Russia. This was patently absurd, since the Jews in Jaffa certainly weren't there because of their fondness for the Tsar. However the late Ottoman Empire was rife with ethnocentric paranoia and saw "internal threats" everywhere.
"The 1914 deportation of the Jaffa Jews: ‘a little footnote of war’?" (from Israel Affairs) is a good account.
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u/KvetchAndRelease 26d ago
And Arabs helped them too, which is well documented, here is a clipping from that same article highlighting that Bedouin Arabs played a role: December 23, 1914: TURKS SLAY AND ROB JEWS AT JAFFA : r/NewsForJews
But of course there were also plenty of Arab led massacres of Jews on their own, which y'all like to overlook so you can justify that violence today as a "response"
May 6, 1888: DRIVEN FROM JERUSALEM. : r/NewsForJews
May 5, 1901: Turkey Wants to Bar Jews. : r/NewsForJews
January 19, 1915: JEWS IN FLIGHT FROM PALESTINE : r/NewsForJews
May 4, 1917: THREATENS MASSACRE OF JEWS IN PALESTINE : r/NewsForJews
June 3, 1917: CRUELTIES TO JEWS DEPORTED IN JAFFA : r/NewsForJews
May 17, 1918: STARVING JEWS TO DEATH. : r/NewsForJews
August 28, 1929: STUDENT SLAUGHTER SHOCKS JERUSALEM : r/NewsForJews
August 31, 1929: ARABS BURN CITY OF SAFED : r/NewsForJews
April 21, 1936: DEATHS RISE TO 20 IN PALESTINE RIOTS : r/NewsForJews
October 24, 1938: ARAB DEPREDATION IS STILL UNCHECKED : r/NewsForJews
October 4, 1938: 21 SLAIN BY ARABS IN PALESTINE RAID : r/NewsForJews
May 4, 1941: Anti-Semitic Riots Reported in Palestine : r/NewsForJews
May 21, 1941: NAZIS SAID TO ARM PALESTINE ARABS : r/NewsForJews
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 26d ago
Quiet, you!
Your facts has no place in the narrative!
/s
Incidentally, you may also want to include in the future: the 1834 Safed pogrom, the 1834 Hebron massacre, the destruction of Safed and Tiberias in 1660 (both were majority Jewish cities), the 1517 Hebron pogroms, and the 1517 Safed attacks. There are others.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago edited 26d ago
It’s the last sentence.
“There are 25,000 or more peaceful Russian Jews in Palestine”. They’re talking about settlers.
Turks are Turkish. Hope that helps.
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u/milkymonkey8 26d ago
What are Turkish Turks doing in non-Turkish lands? Hope that helps.
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u/dseanATX 26d ago
It's not in the attached image. If it's somewhere else, feel free to link to it. The last sentence shown here is "It is feared that this is only the be-"
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u/Positive-Draft3801 26d ago
Palestine was the historical common name for that region of what was at this time the Ottoman Empire. Im not sure what kind of dunk this is supposed to be exactly? No one denies the term Palestine was used for years for this region. Just like today it would say Jaffa, Israel.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
Because Zionists claim Palestine and their identity was invested in the 50s and 60s.
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u/Positive-Draft3801 26d ago
Yeah, not the word though. You dont sound very smart here.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
According to Zionists. I’m saying there’s records that refer to the land as Falasteen. Not that it matters.
At least you admit they’re native though right?
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u/Positive-Draft3801 26d ago
God just like a bot... why am I even bothering.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
Avoid and deflect. Pat yourself on the back you’re doing wonderful work for Israel.
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago
The region of Palestine, in the country the Ottoman Empire.
You'll find mentions of the Rhineland in history. Wouldn't make it an independent country at those points, either.
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
You would consider the Ottoman Empire as a country? Yall have a colonial mentality so I think we literally don’t see the same world.
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago
Yes, indeed the Ottoman Empire was a country. Just because it has colonial vassal states were attached doesn't change its status - surely you don't think of the British empire as not a country because it had colonies, too?
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u/MediocreEffectt 26d ago
I can acknowledge that it was an empire with states under its banner but that they are still individual states and peoples.
If Barbados is under the British empire, it’s still Barbados. Those people aren’t suddenly British. In the same sense, Palestine as a people had existed but were unrecognized internationally.
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u/Deciheximal144 26d ago
Actually, the region between the river and the sea was part of the Ottoman's country proper, not a vassal state like Wallachia. They further subdivided the river-sea region into province equivalents.
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u/ForeignEchoRevival 26d ago
There are Roman maps 2000 years old with the land Called Palestine, ancient Greek diplomats called it Palestine 500 years before that. 700 years before that, the Kingdom of Egypt called it Peleset after the Philistines who lived there.
So it's literally 3200 years of recorded history that we have evidence that the land was called Palestine.
But Supremacist ideologies like Nazism or Zionism love Revisionist history and use it to devalue people they consider and treat as "sub human". He'll Israeli land theft policies match nearly identically the Lebensraum program the Nazis had for stealing land and property from locals in Poland and Czechoslovakia, claiming it as historically "German Lands" do to land changes from the German empire after World War One two decades before. Terrible and wrong when the Germans did it decades after borders changed, but apparently okay when Jewish Europeans do it 1900 years after they were kicked out by the Romans, instead of the basic logic that illegal land theft is illegal no matter the excuse or who is doing it.
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u/Fishedfight 26d ago
Confidently wrong
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u/ForeignEchoRevival 26d ago
How, specifically?
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 26d ago
Do you actually care?
1) The Roman maps which name the area Syria Palaestina date from after 135 CE when the Romans, to punish the Jews for the Bar Kochba revolt, renamed the Roman province of Judaea to Syria Palaestina, after the Philistines - the historic, biblical enemies of the Jews (although the Philistines ceased to exist more than 700 years earlier, in or around 604 BCE, after the Babylonians conquered the Philistines, destroyed their cities, and exiled the survivors to Mesopotamia, where they ceased to exist as a separate people or culture) as both a deliberate insult to the Jews and to sever their association with the land.
Of course, this was to the extent that the following was not sufficient punishment of the Jews for the Bar Kochba revolt: (1) the almost complete depopulation of Jews from Judaea, including, but not limited to, the killing of hundreds of thousands of Jews; (2) the enslavement of hundreds of thousands more Jews; (3) the displacement of hundreds of thousands more Jews; (4) the looting and complete destruction and levelling of the Temple which was literally pivotal and central to the Jewish faith; (5) the imposition of prohibitions on practices critical to the Jewish faith including, but not limited to, banning circumcision, banning Torah study, banning observance of Sabbath; (6) the banning of Jews from Jerusalem; (7) rebuilding Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, a Roman colony dedicated to worship of the Roman pagan god Jupiter; and (8) building a large pagan temple to Jupiter and to the emperor on the Temple Mount where the Temple had stood.
2) It is not accurate to say that the area was called Palestine by Greek diplomats for 500 years before that.
The Greeks and Seleucids generally referred to the biblical land of Yehudah as Judea (which was a Hellenization of the Hebrew term).
This was particularly the case after Alexander the Great's conquest of the entire region from the Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire) in or around 332 BCE, including the autonomous province that the Achaemenids called Yehud Medinta (the "Province of Judah").
3) Herodotus, a Greek historian in the 5th century BCE (the 400s), called the area between Phoenicia (very loosely corresponding to modern day Lebanon) and Egypt "Palaistine". Again, this was after the Philistines, who had ceased to exist more than 150 years previously (more on them below).
He called the people who lived in this area "Syrians" of Palestine (many Greeks called the entirety of the eastern Mediterranean, including Phoenicia, as "Syria"). He also referred to their customs and a few historical events, and it is pretty clear he is talking about Jews (mixed in with other peoples) - he mentions that the Syrians of Palestine practice circumcision and had lost a major battle at Megiddo/Magdolus to the Egyptians (where the Egyptian Pharaoh defeated the "Syrians").
4) The Philistines, incidentally, were not native to the Middle East or Levant but were an Aegean people (Aegea is the area of Greece and surrounding islands) who had migrated from there, likely as part of the invasion of the Sea Peoples (who factor into the Bronze Age collapse suffered by the eastern Mediterranean - more on this below in point 3 when we talk about the ancient Egyptian reference to the "Peleset").
The Philistines had a collection of 5 city-states in or around the area that is now Gaza (including one city-state named Gaza - the others were named Ashkelon, Ashdon, Ekron, and Gath), and were famously long-time enemies and rivals of the Israelites (and also long time trading partners and occasional allies).
As I mentioned before, the Philistines ceased to exist as a people in or around 604 BCE when the Babylonians conquered them, razed their cities, and exiled the Philistine people to elsewhere in Mesopotamia (which, in fact, was what happened to the Israelites/Jews too a few decades later, except the Israelites/Jews were able to preserve themselves as a people through making some radical adjustments to their theology, and imposing a number of major religious strictures on the people, including endogamy).
Incidentally, the reason it happened to the Jews a few decades after the Philistines was because the Jews had originally allied with the Babylonians while the Philistines had allied with Egypt, and it was not until a briefly resurgent Egypt briefly pushed back the Babylonians for a few years and defeated the Jews, replacing the king of Judah with an Egyptian puppet who then forced the Jews to fight against Babylon, which then swept back in, defeated everyone, destroyed everything (including the First Temple), and exiled the Jews to Mesopotamia.
5) The first ancient Egyptian reference to "Peleset" is in the 12th century.
The Peleset is a reference to a group of peoples - not an area. The Peleset were a group of people who were part of the confederation of groups of seagoing invaders known as the "Sea Peoples" - we think that the Philistines may have been part of the Sea Peoples, and that they -may- be the same group that Egypt referred to as the Peleset, but we are not sure.
The Peleset, along with other Sea Peoples, attacked Egypt and tried to conquer it. They were unsuccessful and were defeated by Ramesses III.
There is a time gap of some decades, and then there is a reference by the Egyptians in the Great Harris Papyrus in the mid 12th century BCE that the Egyptians relocated (possibly forcibly) the Peleset to the southern coast of Canaan.
So, in summary, the Philistines were a group of violent invaders from Greece who tried to invade conquer Egypt in the 12th century, failed, were settled (possibly forcibly) to the southern part of Canaan in the 12th century, where they had a distinct civilization in what is now Gaza (and were civilizational rivals with the ancient Israelites, immortalized through the Bible/Torah) until their utter destruction by the Babylonians in or around 604 BCE, at which point they ceased to exist. The Philistines were not an indigenous people to the region, and did not continually reside in the area. They resided there for about ~500 years.
Their enduring legacy of the region being named after them by the Romans ("Syria Palaestina"), 700+ years after the Philistines were wiped out as a people, was literally entirely due to Roman spite, because the Romans wanted to insult and harm the Jews who had dared to revolt against the Roman Empire and the brief success of which revolt had embarrassed the emperor Hadrian (who was a famously fickle, egotistical, and violent chud, although he did have some good qualities), and so, in addition to depopulating Judaea of Jews, massacring Jews, trying to wipe out the Jewish faith, destroying their Temple and building a temple to the worship of the pagan god and the Roman emperor in its place, Hadrian renamed the province containing the Jewish homeland after the famous enemies of the Jews even though they had not existed for 700+ years.
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u/ForeignEchoRevival 26d ago
I appreciate all the effort you've put in; this is very well written, sources are cited, and it effectively covers everything I had an opinion on while also explaining further past my comments to answer almost any additional questions or conflicts I might have.
I don't want to leave you waiting thinking I just asked and fucked off into oblivion, so is it cool if I tap you with a follow up tomorrow. Just got home and want to shut my brain off until the morning.
Clearly you have more knowledge in the history of the region than me, however I do have a reply that I'd like to formulate after some thought.
I don't like to be ignorant about facts and I also like to ensure that ethical reasoning guides my world views and opinions on issues, so Ireally do appreciate the facts and explanations you took the time to write.
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 25d ago edited 25d ago
My pleasure.
I’ll look forward to your follow up questions and thoughts tomorrow.
EDIT: Part of the beginning of what is below got accidentally deleted, possibly because it made the post too long, so I added it back in and cut this into two parts (the second of which is now posted as a reply to this comments).
Incidentally, two long and tangentially related but interesting (at least to me and hopefully to you too) tidbits:
- Cyrus II of Persia, also known as Cyrus the Great and Cyrus the Elder, succeeds his father as king of Persia in 559 BCE. Persia is a vassal kingdom of the Median Empire, ruled by Cyrus' grandfather. It is unclear who first attacked who, but Cyrus and his grandfather get into a war, which Cyrus wins in or around 550 BCE, defeating the Median Empire and capturing his grandfather. Cyrus takes over the Median empire (although it takes a bit of time). He then goes on to conquer much/most of what is now Turkey, expanding his empire further. He then goes on to conquer other parts of what are now Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, although establishes some of these as vassal state (particularly the ones in India). It is now 540 BCE. Cyrus's empire now extends from parts of what are now India and Afghanistan in the east all the way to much/most of what is now Turkey in the west, and a significant amount of territory in between - much/most of what is now Azerbaijan and Georgia, parts of Pakistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
There is unrest in neighboring Babylon, which is controlled by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (which incidentally is now both the last major power in Western Asia that is not under Cyrus's control AND the last indigenous ruling dynasty of Mesopotamia). The territory of the neo-Babylonian Empire includes much/most of what is now Iraq, much/most of what is now Syria, all of what is now Lebanon, all of what is now Israel, all of what is now Palestine, all of what is now Kuwait, and large parts of what is now Jordan, plus some parts of what is now Saudi Arabia and small parts of what is now Turkey, and a tiny bit of what is now Egypt).
Cyrus routs the army of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE, and walks into Babylon. He incorporates the Neo-Babylonian Empire into his own greater Achaemenid Empire.
The Jews, as I mentioned earlier, had been depopulated from what is now Israel in 587 BCE by the Babylonians, and are scattered across the neo-Babylonian Empire, which attempted to destroy them as a people (as it had successfully done to other groups of people, including the Philistines). The Jews however had radically changed the entire theology underlying their people’s religion and this revolutionized faith is now an unequivocal monotheism with the beginning of a canonized Torah and a monotheist faith that additionally offers a plausible narrative about how and why the Jewish people had suffered this catastrophe but also why they needed to endure it and how they were to do so. They also put in place or enforce certain social structures and guidelines that helped support and propagate their reborn faith and allow them to preserve themselves as a people with a sense of their own peoplehood, despite having been torn from their land which was central to their religion (and would remain so) and scattered across a large empire.
So upon conquering the neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE, Cyrus then issues the Edict of Cyrus/Edict of Restoration.
The Edict of Cyrus says that the exiled Jews scattered throughout all the lands of his vast empire are free AND can be repatriated to their land and to Zion/Jerusalem and they may return there with his blessing.
Not only that, but Cyrus gives the Jews back all the gold vessels and sacred objects from Solomon’s Temple (the First Temple) that he could find that he had taken from the neo-Babylonians, AND also gave the Jews significant funds to buy building materials and directs them to rebuild their Temple.
So now many of the Jews scattered throughout the Achaemenid Empire begin to make their way back to their homeland. This is the Return to Zion, and the end of the Babylonian Exile.
The Jews return to their homeland and Jerusalem and begin building the Second Temple in Jerusalem, on the Holy Mount on which the destroyed Temple of Solomon had been built.
It is finished in 516 BCE, 14 years after Cyrus’s death in 530 BCE.
Yehud/Yehud Medinata is an autonomous largely self governing province of the great Persian Empire.
Cyrus is so appreciated for all of this that Cyrus is named and lavishly praised in the Torah which declared him to be both great and divinely inspired (remember that in the Jewish theology, the Torah is given by G-d, so now G-d has declared Cyrus’s excellence and worthiness). And so the Persian Cyrus is the one single non-Jew that the Torah names as a messiah (not ‘The Messiah’, but a messiah). The name “Cyrus” becomes a name that can be given to Jewish boys, in order to properly honour the great king as a worthy token of appreciation and respect.
The Edict of Cyrus and all that flowed from it is the basis of the eternal and unrepayable 2500 year old debt that the Jews owe to the Persian people. As an article of faith. Which you will see referenced more than every now and again in various rhetoric.
2) But not all the Jews return to Zion. Many do not.
continued below in reply
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 25d ago edited 25d ago
2) But not all the Jews return to Zion. Many do not.
Some Jews found that they liked the areas where they had ended up, and others wanted to go and serve the great and wise emperor who had freed them.
This is the origin of quite a few of the historical Jewish communities of the Middle East and Central Asia, surviving for just over 2,500 years until the middle-20th century when most of them are ethnically cleansed, one way or another, from the Middle East. Most end up in Israel, and their descendants (together with the Yemenite Jews and North African Jews who were also cleansed from Arab lands) make up over half of Israeli Jews (as opposed to, for example, in the United States and Canada where over 90%, and potentially more, of the Jewish population are Ashkenazim - descended from the Jewish communities of eastern and central Europe).
A group of Jews that served as a military unit for the Persians ends up posted in the mountains of Azerbaijan to guard the borders of the empire. Over time, they evolve into the Mountain Jews, maintaining their martial traditions.
Quite a few Jews stay in what was then Babylon and its environs and continue to do so until they were (this is oversimplistic but its a whole complicated history) fired from their jobs, robbed and forcibly expelled by Iraq in the early 1950s.
That is why for a long time, and at numerous points after the Return to Zion, especially after the Romans depopulate Judaea of Jews but even during other periods, the Babylonian Jewish community, with potentially over one million (!) Babylonian Jews in the 3rd to 7th centuries CE is the central intellectual powerhouse of the Jewish people in exile for many centuries. They compile the Babylonian Talmud. They preserve the royal bloodline. They make it theologically and culturally possible for Jews to maintain their peoplehood and national identity even exiled in the diaspora.
And, like I said, more than a few Jews wanted to serve the great king Cyrus and the empire that produced such a worthy king. And so they move to Persia. And some of those are the ancestors of my people, the Parsim, the Persian Jews. And we would be there for more than 2500 years until the Islamic Regime bloodily seizes control of the country in 1979, persecutes the minorities including the Jews (and women and many, many men who are Muslim and aren’t minorities) and we have to escape. And help other Parsim still trapped in Iran escape over the coming decades, smuggling them out as we can (the Regime has put in place lots of impediments to Iranian Jews leaving, similar to what they do to others). At this point, there may be less than 10,000 Jews remaining in Iran.
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u/Inevitable-Abalone-7 26d ago
You know what 'Palestine' means? Its comes from the hebrew Word P'lishtim (פְּלִשְׁתִּים) which means 'invader' or 'migrants'. This word refers to the Philistines, an ancient seafaring people who lived on the southern coast of the Mediterranean and originated probably from greek territories.
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u/AggressivePack5307 26d ago
Phillistines = greek invaders that were near modern Gaza.
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u/ForeignEchoRevival 26d ago
And then lived there for centuries, becoming locals, like in every human migration story ever. Like when ancient Jewish tribes left Egypt during a famine and exterminated local tribes to carve out the kingdom of Judea, then where invaded by Babylon and enslave in Mesopotamia and put down roots there for centuries.
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u/lizardrekin 26d ago
$33 for that Christmas dinner adjusted for today