User talk:Zero0000/temp

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[edit] Tantura

Until 1948, Tantura (also al-Tantura) was an Arab village on the Mediterranean coast, 30km south of Haifa. In 1948 it was depopulated during the Arab-Israeli war. Since 1998, Tantura has become famous due to allegations that Israeli forces committed a large scale massacre there in May 1948.

[edit] History

The village was situated at the place occupied by the Canaanite city Dor since at least the 13th century BC. Later it was occupied by the Greeks and others, until abandonment after the 4th century AD. Much later, the Crusaders built a castle called Merle there. It is not known when the village of Tantura was founded, but it existed by the end of the 18th century when it was burned by Napoleon. In 1855 it was described as having 30-40 houses, and later that century had expanded to about 1200 residents. In 1931 there were 952 Arabs and 1 Jew living there; in 1944/5, 1490 Arabs. The village economy was based on agriculture and fishing, with 1622 tons of fish harvested in 1944.

On May 22-23, 1948, approximately one week after the state of Israel declared its independence, Tantura was captured by the Alexandroni Brigade, a unit of the Israeli Army. Many villagers died during or soon after the battle, and the remainer were expelled. Most ended up in refugee camps in the West Bank or Syria. The village was almost immediately destroyed except for a few buildings, and in June 1948 the Jewish kibbutz of Nachsolim was established nearby. Today the site of the village is a beach recreational area.

[edit] Allegations of a Massacre

A book by Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib published in 1950 quoted two eye-witnesses from Tantura as saying that a group of 40 young men of the village had been systematically executed and buried in a mass grave. However these claims drew little attention, even from Palestinian historians.

In 1988, the Israeli Teddy Katz submitted a Masters thesis to Haifa University claiming to document a massacre of up to several hundred Arabs after the capture of Tantura. Katz's claim was supported by the oral testimony of several veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade and of many Arabs who were former residents of Tantura or neighboring villages. Katz was awarded the degree with an A+ grade. A summary of the thesis, and some independent investigation, was published by the newspaper Maariv in 2000 and caused an outcry. The organization of Alexandroni veterans sued Katz for defamation. During the first two days of the trial, it was revealed that Katz could not support some of his claimed testimonies, and indeed in a few cases the recordings of the interviews appeared to contradict the reports that Katz had made of them.

At this point, Katz signed a statement repudiating his own work. The statement said that Katz "beyond any doubt [believed that] there is no basis for the allegation that the Alexandroni Brigade ... committed killings of people in Tantura after the village surrendered". Twelve hours later, Katz changed his mind and attempted to withdraw his statement but the court refused to accept the withdrawal and ruled the case against him. Katz then appealed to the High Court, asking it to direct the lower court to reopen the case, but it declined to do so.

Meanwhile, Katz's degree had been suspended by Haifa University and he was invited to submit a revised thesis. He did so, with a much expanded thesis that still contained allegations of a massacre at Tantura. Five examiners were asked to read it, but three gave it a failing grade. The university then awarded Katz a "second-class" degree.

--the testimony (waiting for the English edition of the revised thesis; any day now)

--investigation by Morris

[edit] Sources

[edit] Etymology of the name Jerusalem

The origin and meaning of the name "Jerusalem" cannot be established with certainty, though there are many theories.

Despite earlier claims, Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Ebla tablets. The earliest known plausible reference to Jerusalem appears in Egyptian execration texts of the 19th and 18th centuries BCE, when Jerusalem was a small walled city. Egyptian inscriptions can be read in multiple ways, but one recurring inscription can be read as (U)rushalimum and is commonly thought to refer to Jerusalem. An 18th century Sumerian reference to Urusilimma has also been claimed. However, in both cases, other readings have been proposed that don't refer to Jerusalem at all. [1,2,9,10]

The first uncontested reference to Jerusalem appears in the Amarna Letters of the 14th century. There are 6 letters from Abdi-Heba, king of "Urusalim" and some others that refer to him. The identification of Urusalim with Jerusalem has been confirmed by scientific examination of the clay tablets on which the letters are written. Palestine was then part of the Egyptian New Kingdom, but very little trace of settlement in Jerusalem at the time the letters were written has been unearthed. Perhaps the name refered to a region, or perhaps the settlement was very small. [1,3,4]

The name Urusalim is usually interpretted as "City of Salim". Since Canaanite cities were often named after gods, the majority opinion of scholars is that Salim here is the Canaanite god of that name who is attested to in many West Semitic sources. The most information about Salim (Shalem, Salimmu, Shalman, etc) comes from the Ras Shamra (Ugarit) archives. There, the two gods Shachar and Shalem are said to be the twin children of the god El. They are identified with the dawn and the dusk, respectively, though many scholars believe they represented the morning and evening stars. Several scholars have claimed to see direct evidence of Shalem worship at Jerusalem, but these claims are controversial. [1,2,5,6,11,12]

Variants of Urusalim (Assyrian Ursali-immu, Aramaic Urishlem, Mandaic Urashelam, Syriac Urishlem, Arabic Aurishalamu) appeared during the following centuries, but the Hebrew Bible adopted a somewhat different form. It would later be vocalized by the Masoretes as Yerushalaim or Yerushalayim, but originally the pronunciation was most probably Yerushalem. Scientific scholars overwhelmingly associate the "shalem" of Yerushalem with the salim of Urusalim, but the prefix Yeru is more problematic. Many suggestions have been made, but none can be positively proven. An earlier theory, which is now unfashionable, notes that yeru in Sumerian means "settlement", conveniently similar to the uru (city) of Urusalim. Another attempts to derive it from the name Yevus by which the city is called in Jg. 19:10 (after the Jebusites). Some writers have suggested that the origin lies with the word yerusha (heritage). However, the most popular theory today is that yeru comes from the word yarah (to lay a cornerstone, as in Job 38:6). If this theory is correct, "Jerusalem" means something like "Foundation of Shalem". [1,6,7]

Writers who doubt the connection of the name of Jerusalem with the god Shalem have looked for alternative etymologies. The Hebrew word shalem (complete, perfect) is the obvious choice, and the similar word shalom (peace) also suggests itself. By this path, many variations like the popular "City of Peace" have arisen.

[1] L. Grabbe, Ethnic groups in Jerusalem, in Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition (Clark International, 2003) pp145-163.
[2] N. Na'aman, Canaanite Jerusalem and its central hill country neighbours in the second millenium B.C.E., Ugarit-Forschungen Vol. 24 (1992), pp275-291.
[3] Y. Goren, I. Finkelstein and N. Na'aman, Petrographic investigation of the Amarna Tablets, Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 65, Iss. 3 (2002), p196.
[4] M. Steiner, It's not there: Archaeology proves a negative, Biblical Archaeology Review. Jul/Aug 1998 [1]
[5] N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit (Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).
[6] G. A. Smith, Jerusalem (Hodder & Staughton, 1907).
[7] M. Ben-Dov, Historical Atlas of Jerusalem (Continuum, 2002).
[8] K. van der Toorn, R. Becking and P. W. van der Horst, editors, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, revised edn. (Lieden, 1999).
[9] G. Kittel and G. Friedrich, Theological dictionary of the New Testament (Erdmans, 1971).
[10] J. Muhly, Ur and Jerusalem not mentioned in Ebla tablets, say Ebla expedition scholars, Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec 1983, pp74-75.
[11] M. Astour, Greek names in the Semitic world and Semitic names in the Greek world, J. Near Eastern Stud., Vol 23, No 3 (1964) 193-201.
[12] J. Lewy, The Sulman temple in Jerusalem, Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 59 (1940) 519-522.

[edit] Notes (not part of the article at the moment)

  • The paper of M. Astour, Greek names in the Semitic world and Semitic names in the Greek world, J. Near Eastern Stud., Vol 23, No 3 (1964) 193-201 says the following on page 198: [diacritics missing] "We know that Shr, the Dawn, was a West Semitic god, the brother of Slm, Dusk. We also know that the latter deity was worshiped in the pre-Israelite Jerusalem as the goddess Sulmitu or Sulmanitu." The citation given is Böhl, Opera minora 380-83, 517-18. The latter is an obscure book published in German in 1953 and I don't have a copy. I have a lead on an alternative source but didn't find it yet. Some of this material is very difficult for a non-specialist to understand.
  • Unfortunately, some of literature on this subject was written by Velakowskyites. It can't be trusted, but on the other hand they quote a lot of genuine scientific articles which can be independently consulted. There is also some written by modern pagans, especially on the web.

eruth in malayalam means cowshed, cattleshed. Since jesus was boern in a cattle shed the word eruth might have become eruth and later jerusalem.

[edit] Bits and pieces

After the 1929 "disturbances", the British authorities fined the Hebron community 14,000 pounds (Pal. Post. Dec 15, 1932). The final evacuation of the Hebron Jews: Pal. Post April 20-23, 1936. July 12, 1933: Although for economic reasons no settlement scheme was initiated in Hebron, after the riots, it was decided not to abandon Hebron as a Jewish centre. People returned, newcomers joined them, and to-day...a second storey is being constructed by the Sephardi community. We note with satisfaction the presence of Arab notables at the stone-laying foundation...".

Ref for Syria in the 1948-war: [2]

[edit] temp

"מחה תמחה ... עד חרמה"

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