Halkin shows himself equally ignorant (in company with the vast majority of mis-educated Israelis) of Gaza's role in Jewish history when he cavalierly declares that Gaza was a region "with no history of Jewish settlement and almost nothing of Jewish sentimental value." To be sure, Gaza has nothing like the significance of Jericho or Shiloh or Hebron. The Gaza strip was part of southwestern Canaan, that portion of the Promised Land which reaches "from the river of Egypt" (Genesis 15:18), or the Shihor (its Egyptian name in honor of Horus, cf. e.g. Isaiah 23:3), i.e. the ancient, easternmost Pelusian branch of the Nile Delta (now obliterated by alluvial fill), "...to the borders of Ekron northward..." This area included the lands of "the five lords of the Philistines" that "remained to be occupied" at the end of the tribal conquest (Joshua 13:1-3).

The prolonged struggle against Philistia is at the center of the accounts of the Judges and early kingdom period. First conquered by Judah (Judges 1:18) the region was lost to the Philistines. As the primary Philistine city, Gaza dominates the Samson narrrative. After the Philistine era, Gaza passed back and forth from Judean to foreign control. Albeit often hostile, its function as an invasion route made it share many calamities that befell the Jewish kingdoms. It was destroyed by the Assyrians in 734 BCE and by the Babylonians in 605 BCE. Under the Seleucids it became the largest Polis in Judea whose largely Greek and Macedonian population was consistently hostile to its Jews.

In 96 BCE, the Hasmonean King Yanai (Janaeus Alexander) captured and wreaked a terrible vengeance on Gaza. Rebuilt under the Roman procurators, this Greco-Roman Gaza was again destroyed by its Jewish inhabitants in the Great Jewish War.

In the long centuries following the last revolts against Rome, a Jewish community persisted, despite oppression, expulsions, Bedouin raids and wars. Medieval Christian travellers testify to the Jews' economic role (e.g. Giorgio Gucci of Florence in 1384 speaks of the fine wine they produced), their far flung connections (e.g. Bertandon de la Brocquiere, 1432) as well as their oppression (e.g. Felix Fabri, 1483), and their remarkable resilience in spite of it (George Sandys, 1611).

The Jews of Gaza contributed significantly to Halachic development. Gaza was the largest Jewish center in the Holy Land at the time of the Arab conquest, and even afterwards the declining community long remained a center of learning. Its religious vitality is reflected in numerous rabbinic responsa and in Jewish travel accounts (e.g. of Benjamin of Tudela or Meshullam of Voltera, 1481). Even negative developments, such as the Sabbatian ferment of 1665 (fostered by Nathan of Gaza) testify to the community's vitality.

In 1799, the Jews of Gaza fled before Napoleon's army. The community revived only to be destroyed by expulsion and flight in the six month-long British bombardment of Gaza in 1917. The bloody Arab disturbances of 1929 put an end to the stubborn efforts of a few Jews to revive a Jewish presence in the midst of a town that had become the snakepit of the Arab national movement. In 1946, religious settlers returned to the region, establishing the village of Kfar Darom near the site of the ancient Jewish village of Kfar Darom that had been the birthplace of Rabbi Eliezer ben Yitzhak, a famous contemporary of the second century Rabbi Akiva. In 1948, the handful of young settlers fought the Egyptians for seven weeks before the decision was taken to evacuate them. The hope of return was fulfilled when the entire Gaza area was conquered by Israel in 1967. In the 1970s, the series of settlements Sharon now wants to dismantle were established, many of them by Jews forced out of their homes in the Sinai (ironically it was Sharon who carried out the evacuation). They settled in the Gaza region at the urging of the Labor and then the Likud government, both eager to establish buffer Jewish communities in the region, precisely because of its strategic importance.

Jews settled in the Gaza region at the urging of both Labor and Likud governments.

Twice in Jewish history gates were removed from Gaza, once triumphantly when Samson tore them out of the city's wall and carried them off "to the top of a mountain near Hebron" (Judges 16:3); the second time as Jews fled the city in 1799, taking the gates of their synagogue's ark with them to Hebron. Hebron, with its deep roots in Jewish history, is likely to be the next area sacrificed -- to no purpose -- in Sharon's campaign of capitulation.

In an article in the Jerusalem Post (Feb. 6) entitled "Sharon's Folly," editor Carolyn Glick notes that in 2002 Sharon said that Netzarim (the most exposed of the Jewish settlements in Gaza and an especially frequent target of the left on that ground) "is the same as Negba and Tel Aviv. Evacuating Netzarim will only encourage terrorism and increase the pressure upon us." So what had changed to make Sharon so shortly afterward seek to eliminate all the Gaza settlements? Glick writes: "Quite simply it makes no sense."

In rational terms, Glick is correct. Each retreat, whether with the Oslo accords, the retreat from Lebanon, the repeated massive releases of terrorists from Israeli jails, has had the same result: increasing terror and the pressures upon Israel for further retreats. But we deal here with madness, which has been defined as repetition of the same act over and over again, always expecting a different result.  

Erich Isaac is professor emeritus of geography at the City College of New York and a founder of Americans For a Safe Israel.

March 2004               - 7 -               Outpost