Brief History of Gaza

Earlier this week a friend, who has been learning Hebrew in an online class with an Israeli man named Netanel Y. Barak, invited me, among others, to join in on a call from her teacher. He would be talking about the history of Gaza, mainly. So I tuned in at the appointed time on Tuesday. It turned out we were an hour off; Israel had a time change last weekend, which hadn’t been calculated in. I tuned in a couple of times during the hour. Some participants stayed on the whole time. Eventually, I tuned back in, about 7 minutes before top of the next hour, and Netanel had already given a bit of update on the situation there, which I missed. But I heard all the presentation part.

Netanel Y Barak, a Hebrew teacher, and now soldier in Israel,
giving a presentation on the history of Gaza,
screenshot from his presentation

Netanel is in the reserves and has been called up, as of October 7. He feels pretty safe, personally. He’s old enough that, as he put it, “I’m not Rambo.” He’s doing things from a command center. His home, I believe he said, is within the 40 km perimeter of Gaza, but they haven’t had rocket attacks there for two weeks now. He gets to go home to his family fairly often, which helps. The family has been worried, and locking themselves in a safe room at night, so things are not what you’d call normal. But they have housing and food, for which they are grateful. And he says they’ve all gained weight, because caring people have showered them with baked goods and snacks.

Most political questions he would brush away. He is a teacher, and the purpose was to talk about the history of Gaza. So we’ll cover what he shared, plus a bit more about the current situation.

First, to review, back in 2011 I wrote a 6-part series on Israel, summarizing the history and situation. I think they hold up pretty well, although I do not focus there on Gaza. After the Gaza discussion, I may add some more about Hamas and other parties.

·        Israel, Part I: Ancient History 

·        Israel, Part II: Zionism and Migration 

·        Israel, Part III: Conflict and Violence 

·        Israel, Part IV: Holocaust and Statehood 

·        Israel, Part V: Refugees and 1967 War 

·        Israel, Part VI: Continued Unrest      

Gaza History

Netanel starts his discussion talking about the word Gaza. It’s a Greek sounding work. The Hebrew sounds like Azzah (ah-zah). Arabic he describes as sounding something like Raza, with a guttural rolled r or h in the throat, not a sound we do in English.

Screenshot from Netanel Y. Barak's presentation,
showing various versions and a possible meaning;
the banner at the top is from his military division.

Some say the gauze that we use comes from the city of Gaza, where they used to make that kind of weaving.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, mentions Gaza. It comes up in part of chapter 10, which is known as the Tablet of Nations, portraying the people that have come forth from the three sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. One of the sons of Ham is Canaan. Genesis 10:19 describes the territory of Canaan, which runs from Sidon in the north to Gaza in the south. So Gaza is the southernmost part of the Canaanite territory.

It was an important city, being on the edge. The Egyptians referred to that city as The Canaan. It was important, because, if you notice on a map, the Egyptians couldn’t get to the rest of what we call the Middle East, but was then termed Asia, without passing through Israel, and there are limited ways you can go. There’s this area called the Sea Road, the Path of the Sea, and Gaza is on that path. It was the gateway city.

But it’s more than just a gateway to Canaan. It’s also the gateway to a larger area, with a Hebrew name I couldn’t understand or spell, but it means “the other side of the river.” There’s a broader meaning here, concerning Abraham. All the world was on one side of the river, theologically speaking, and Abraham was on the other. All the world was polytheistic, and Abraham was monotheistic, worshipping the One True God.

The geographic river intended here is the Euphrates. The Nile dwellers didn’t have what the people on the other side of the Euphrates had, so they had to pass through this Gaza gateway city and through Abraham’s land to get to the rest of the world, as they viewed it. Abraham’s land included what we would now call Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and more.

Many centuries later, in 1 Kings 4:24-25, King Solomon is describing the greatness of his lands, “from Tiphsah even to Azzah” [Gaza], essentially everything trans-Euphrates, or west of the Euphrates, with Azzah, or Gaza, being more or less the southern boundary.

So Gaza was the entrance point to the original inhabitants of the larger unit of Abraham’s land.

The original inhabitants of the area of Gaza were the Avim. We don’t know much about them. The people later were called Caphtorim, the people from Caphtor. In modern Hebrew it means button, which Netanel tells us is humorous to them. There’s an assumption that these people were driven out by the Dorians into other parts of the Aegean and Egypt—basically Greek tribes who came through Crete. We know this from the Bible and from Egyptian texts. This was around the 13^th Century BC.

Deuteronomy 2:23, screenshot from Netanel's presentation

There were many skirmishes with these people, known later as the Philistines.

There’s more detail, but basically these people were the invading colonizers that Abraham’s descendants dealt with fairly regularly. These were the enemy the Israelites were fighting off in the story of David and Goliath. (Goliath, specifically, was from Gath, south on the map near Gaza.)

Note: There is no connection between these Philistines and the modern-day Palestinians. The ancient Greek-descended Philistines, or Caphtorim, were wiped out of existence by the Assyrian invaders some seven centuries BC. No such people existed when the Romans took over the area. But the Roman ruler Hadrian had a difficult time with the Jews, who revolted against him, so he wanted to wipe out anything Jewish. He renamed the area Palestine (or the ancient Latin version of that name).

The modern Palestinians definitely did not exist a hundred years ago. They started with the national Arabic movement of the last century, in response to the Jews in Israel.

Netanel gave several biblical examples of the ancient Hebrews/Israelis dealing with Gaza. Some of the time they conquered and settled that land; other times the invaders, the Philistines, conquered and held it. It would be hard to draw borders, because they were less precise about borders back then.

There’s a mention of Joshua. Remember, Joshua led the people of Israel back into the promised land after the 40 years in the wilderness. The land had been theirs during Israel’s time, but then the famine had led the family to Egypt, where they reconnected with Joseph, and they stayed there with his protection. But later Pharaohs enslaved them until Moses led them out. Anyway, Joshua was the leader who led them in reconquering the land given to Abraham by covenant. One of the last places to conquer was Gaza, mentioned briefly.

The most famous Bible story involves Samson, with several mentions. There is a time the Philistines plot to capture Samson, lying in wait for him to arise in the morning. But, as Netanel puts it, Samson was not your everyday Israelite. During the night he takes the city gates off their hinges, posts and all, and carries the gates all the way to Hebron. He has gone all the way into Philistine territory to mess with them. And he doesn’t carry the gates just up a hill, or even to a nearby Philistine city. He carries them all the way to Hebron, miles away and higher in elevation; the capital center of Israelite power at the time.

close and larger view of Gaza, southern Mediterranean portion of Israel,
maps from Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Bible maps

Samson would also meet his fate in the city of Gaza, when the Philistines are eventually able to capture Samson, after the ordeal with Delilah. Whether Delilah is Philistine is in question. She may be Canaanite., People guess she was Philistine, because the other women, Samson’s first wife and the harlot he went to, were. Delilah could even be Israelite. She had to be bribed with a lot of money to work with the Philistines. Anyway, when they were able to incarcerate Samson, they have blinded him (one of the gory Bible stories; they have gouged out his eyes) they took him to Gaza, where he met his fate. Granted great strength once again, he pushes the pillars and collapses the place, taking his captors down with him. With this event, Samsom kills more Philistines as he dies than he did in his life, which had been quite a body count.

Another Gaza story involves the Assyrian siege that would come upon Judean King Hezekiah. During the Assyrian siege, the governor of Gaza was not willing to play ball with rebellion against Assyrians, which included the people of Israel. So Hezekiah conquered the Gaza region. Later on Assyrian king gave Gaza back to Israel.

We could tell more stories about the people of Israel—which, after 720 BC entailed mainly the Jews—from the Bible, and from the Second Temple Period, which is Herod’s Temple, rebuilt close to the time of Christ, and then destroyed in 70 AD.

So, even after the dispersion around 600 BC by the Babylonians, there were Jews living in the land of Israel. Many returned, and rebuilt and rededicated the temple, 70 years later, with prophets Ezra and Nehemiah. Then after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, there were still Jews living there.

They maintained a presence there throughout the centuries. Netanel tells of a favorite poet of his, a rabbi, who lived in Gaza about 400 years ago. He is buried in Gaza. There was a Jewish community in Gaza until around 1929.

The Jews from the diaspora (wherever they were dispersed around the world) began moving to the ancient land of Judea by the late 1800s. They never fought and ousted anyone. They bought any land that was owned, and settled it and turned it from swamp or desert into productive farms and orchards. But as they gained numbers, and success, there was concern by the Arabs living in and around the area that the Jews could become a majority, so they began terrorist attacks on them, even in the 1910s and 1920s. Britain, a major world power at the time, after control of the area fell from the Ottoman Empire, offered protection with the Balfour Declaration, which they didn't completely adhere to. The Jews still got pelted.

After the holocaust in World War II, there was sympathy for the Jews, and the United Nations set up the nation of Israel in their homeland. Their Arab neighbors protested. Within the year, the Jews faced war—and won. Again in 1967 they faced all their Arab neighbors trying to take them over—and won. Miracles were involved.

At this point there are a couple of details to repeat, because they are seldom repeated. This is from my Part V:

One thing you might not be aware of is that, in surrounding countries Jews were forced to flee to Israel, many of them in poverty. Israel solved the issue by training the refugees and putting them to work. If the Arab nations that pressed the Palestinian people to become refugees had behaved similarly, these refugees would have been a short-term problem that would have disappeared about 60 years ago. [add another decade to that now].

Meme found on Facebook, attached was a useful timeline, but when
I tried to save it, it saved a video, which I gather this came from.

The Israelis aren’t the oppressors. They are the indigenous people, being attacked by the world. I wouldn’t say they are perfect, but they have a right to their sovereign state, and they have a right to defend themselves. They have a record of defending themselves by avoiding innocent casualties probably more than any warring nation in history. But the enemy uses its innocents as shields, placing their strategic equipment in or beneath schools and hospitals. When Israel has warned people to evacuate Gaza in these recent weeks, Hamas—the elected government in Gaza—has forced the people to stay put, even threatening their lives if they try to flee.

Yet the world sees Israel as the aggressor. This is also from my Part V:

Since the UN continued ineffectual, Israel began to retaliate—hard. Jewish planes and tanks struck in the Golan Heights, north of the Sea of Galilee, both causing and suffering heavy casualties. Now, at last, the UN acted—by immediately condemning Israel. This became the pattern in and around Israel: Palestinian refugees and others attack Israel; Israel suffers in patience and then strikes back; and international condemnation of Israel ensues.

That pattern has continued pretty consistently since 1967.

There was a podcast I heard, informative, and fairly positive toward Israel. But the guest also said he understood the position of the Palestinians. He told of one Palestinian who had been a child refugee in 1967. Their house is still standing, still visible to them, just over the border, but they are forced to live as refugees, without their home—because of Israel, so the hatred runs deep. Yes, it does. Especially when you don’t know what really happened to you and your people. I feel sorry for this Palestinian as well, but Israel is only protecting it's borders; the imprisonment in refugee camps for 60 years is being done by the Arab World and a complicit UN.

This is from Part VI: Continued Unrest

[In Part V] we covered some of the Palestinian refugees—the Arabs in Israel who fled their homes when surrounding Arabs refused to recognize the newly created state of Israel and went to war to eliminate Israel and the Jews. I need to add a detail about this. After the brief war that failed to eliminate Israel, the Israeli government set up a trust to handle the property of the refugees, to hold it for them. All they asked was recognition of their statehood and a permanent peace treaty. These requests were never met.

Eventually the land was purchased using a price structure set up by the UN. Israel never simply went in and took over private property; they lawfully acquired the land. Meanwhile, however, it does not appear the refugees were personally paid for their properties. If that is so, it was not because of any evil attributable to Israel.

I wonder about a duplicitous UN, which invited the Jews to create their sovereign nation of Israel and then, almost from the first year, sided with its enemies. Israel has been sanctioned more than any other nation—by several orders of magnitude—in the United Nations. Usually only the US and sometimes Britain or another single nation will side with Israel. And, except during Trump’s administration, US support has often been less than reliable. Oddly, those who attack Israel—including Hamas, which shared video of its murderous spree proudly online—is not sanctioned. Instead Israel is told not to overreact.

Hamas didn’t exist until 1988. In its charter, as other similar groups, it calls for jihad against Zionism. The goal to destroy Israel, to wipe it into the sea. The current phrase “from the river to the sea” refers to the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—all of Israel to be wiped out. That means genocide. They don’t mean to conquer the people and rule over them; they mean to annihilate them. They are, by the way, Marxist tyrants; that seems to echo the last century, which we proclaimed we would never forget.

Netanel avoided politics generally in this discussion. But near the end, when asked what we could do, he suggested that we pass along what we know—we who would sit through an hour discussing Gaza when we could be doing many other things.

Again your support and you talking with your communities, talking with the youngsters, guys, with the youth, talking with the youths, explaining to the youth this information.

Sometimes people lose track, even if their world of values, try to talk to them and in in their own way, you know. If people are supporting the—I'll take something that is not my go to like regular activity—people who are talking about LGBTQ rights and support the Palestinian cause. I don't know if you've seen it; it's like chickens for KFC.

You should explain to these people that there are no rights for anyone who is not, like, a Muslim of that type, and definitely not for gays or women's right or anything like that. So you should talk with them. You should educate them. Because sometimes the knowledge is not there. And sometimes what they see, it's like, 20-second TikTok videos…. I don't know if they have the patience to sit for more than an hour by now and listen to a discussion about Gaza in the Bible and—okay, so you should educate them in the way, you know, they may listen to you.

A billboard seen in New Jersey, since taken down,
found on Facebook

I rather doubt such short attention span people are reading this blog. But it is my attempt to help educate. Education may lead to understanding, and understanding may lead to peace.

At one point Netanel said, quoting an old saying I am supposing, “It's really hard to prophesy, especially about the future.” I don’t know how this current siege will turn out. If it turns into the final battle, I know the ending of that story. But in the meantime, I’m praying for Israel and all the suffering people.

Glenn Beck updates current status in Israel, Wednesday, November 1, 2023.

Here are a few additional resources:

·        “Israel, Palestine, and the Latter-day Saints,” CWIC Media, November 3, 2023, with guest Jason Olson, a Jewish and Ancient Near East scholar and a Naval Officer and diplomat with numerous Jewish and Israeli relationships. It’s an interesting conversation. 

·        “Israel Palestinian Conflict: The Truth About the West Bank” Danny Ayalon, July 12, 2011.  I cited this video in my Part VI in August 2011. It still holds true, yet another 12 years later.

·        “Why Isn't There a Palestinian State?” David Brog for PragerU, March 27, 2017.  This goes through the 5 times (up until 2017) that the two-state solution was rejected by the Arabs.

·        “Exposing Iran's Trap to Trigger Global War | EP 316” Glenn Beck, November 1, 2023. On BlazeTV  or on YouTube.