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A Trove of 3,600-Year-Old Artifacts Found in Israel

Nov. 16 2016

An Israeli and American team of archaeologists recently discovered a collection of gold and silver items at the ruins of the Gezer, a Canaanite city located in the Judean foothills that flourished at the time of the biblical patriarchs. Dan Lavie writes:

The find includes . . . a gold-framed Egyptian seal from the Hyksos period [in the mid-second millennium BCE] and a silver medallion. The medallion consists of a silver disk on which an eight-pointed star is engraved. The disk is flanked by two thin “horns,” from which it would have connected to a rope or a chain. The archaeologist Irit Tziper said that the symbols on the disk are known to represent Canaanite gods similar to the Mesopotamian gods Ishtar and Sin. . . .

Analysis of the artifacts indicates that the trove was placed as an offering in a structure likely [meant] to synthesize Mesopotamian-Canaanite gods and Egyptian culture. The structure complex itself is part of a Middle Canaanite-period city that includes an impressive gate, a wall, and the largest Canaanite water tower known to date.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Canaanites, History & Ideas, Paganism

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic