BARS-144

Brit-Am Research Sources

BARS-144. Brit-Am Research Sources
https://hebrewnations.com/features/bars/bars144.html
Contents:
1. Assyrian Deportation and Resettlement: The Story of Samaria
2. General Marie-Pierre Koenig and the Jewish Brigade
3.  Megadrought and the Fall of Assyria.
What felled the great Assyrian Empire? A Yale professor weighs in
By Bess Connolly
4. Urartu (Place of Israelite Exile) was comprised of diverse populations
5. Brit-Am English-Hebrew Etymology. DEN, DIN
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1. Assyrian Deportation and Resettlement: The Story of Samaria

https://www.thetorah.com/article/assyrian-deportation-and-resettlement-the-story-of-samaria
Forwarded by Mark Williams
Article is concerned mainly with archaeological evidence of an Assyrian presence in Samaria and proof that newcomers from Mesopotamia (so called "Samaritans") were settled the in place of exiled Israelites.
Claims however that exiles from the Ten Tribes were scattered through various regions of the Assyrian Empire.
This, at a superficia level, is at odds with Rabbinical Traditions that they stayed together in three different areas.

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2. General Marie-Pierre Koenig and the Jewish Brigade
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/138mag/koenig_jewish_brigade/koenig_jewish_brigade.htm
Extracts:

Of the 460,000 Jews in Palestine, 30,000 served with the British armed forces. Of the 1,600,000 Arabs in Palestine, 9,000 served.

Fifteen Palestinian Jewish battalions were authorized in 1940. The Jewish battalions were quickly sent to Greece. 100 Palestinian Jews were killed and 1,700 taken prisoner by the Germans.
Desperate for reliable manpower, the British acquiesced and formally permitted the creation of the Jewish Brigade Group, September of 1944. 5,000 Palestinian Jewish Brigade volunteers fought under the flag of Zion. Led by Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, the Jewish Brigade fought against the Germans in Italy from March 1945 until the war ended in May 1945. In reality, smaller Jewish Palestinian battalions had been fighting for Britain actively in North Africa since 1941.

The war was not going well for the British in early 1942. Rommel and his Italian allies were pushing back the British relentlessly. Losses were staggering for the British. They were being decimated in Libya and needed to retreat, to regroup, rest and resupply. British loss, after loss, British defeat after defeat, the ability of retreating in order, without disaster, was very questionable. If the Allied forces could not retreat in an orderly manner, the North African war would be lost. It did not look good. A delaying action was ordered by the British high command.

In a remote area of the Libyan Desert, near an old Turkish fort, the Free French Forces were ordered to stand and fight. The fort was built near an oasis. It was called Bir Hakeim and was the key to the great port city of Tobruk. A line was drawn ahead of the Germans. The First Free French Division, led by legendary General Marie-Pierre Koenig was ordered to hold. The French dug in. Thousands of individual fox holes were dug. Mines were laid in thick fields to slow the Germans. The French waited. A British brigade, unknown at the time to General Koenig, was hastily sent to hold the far end of the French line near Bir-el Harmat. They were a battalion of mine layers, poorly armed and provisioned, without heavy weapons, or anti-aircraft equipment but with a grim, teeth clenched determination. They were a battalion of 400 Jewish Palestinians under the command of Major Liebmann from Tel Aviv. It was May 26, 1942. The Jewish fighters dug in.

Raising a flag of truce the German commander came near to the Allied position and demanded they surrender or be annihilated. Noticing the strange flag flying, the German asked who they were. To the amazement of the German officer, Major Liebmann told him they free Palestinian Jews fighting for the British government. They would not surrender. The flag was the flag of the Jewish people. It was June 2, 1942.

June 10: Orders from the British 8th Army reached the French at Bir Hakeim and the Jews at Bir-el Harmat: retreat. The British 8th Army was safe. It had retreated in good order with its equipment and supplies. The delaying action could be called off. In the dark of the night of June 11, the French and the Jews slipped away, unbeknownst to the Germans. They had done the impossible.

... Speaking in perfect French, he told General Koenig they were Jewish Palestinian soldiers. Of the 400 men who made up the battalion, over three hundred, 75%, had been killed or wounded. They were the survivors.

General Koenig remained a committed friend and advocate on behalf of Israel for the rest of his life. In the lower Galilee, near Nazareth, trees grow in the soil of a free Israel; the Marie-Pierre Koenig Grove.

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3. Megadrought and the Fall of Assyria
What felled the great Assyrian Empire? A Yale professor weighs in
By Bess Connolly
https://news.yale.edu/2019/11/13/what-felled-great-assyrian-empire-yale-professor-weighs?utm_source=YNemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=yn-11-14-19
november 13, 2019   
Extracts:

Deportees after the Assyrian siege of Lachish, Judea (701 B.C.E.). Detail from bas-relief removed from Sennacherib's 'Palace Without Rival,' Nineveh, Iraq, and now in The British Museum. (Photo courtesy of The British Museum)
The Neo-Assyrian Empire, centered in northern Iraq and extending from Iran to Egypt, the largest empire of its time, collapsed after more than two centuries of dominance at the fall of its capital, Nineveh, in 612 B.C.E.

Despite a plethora of cuneiform textual documentation and archaeological excavations and field surveys, archaeologists and historians have been unable to explain the abruptness and finality of the historic empire�s collapse.

Numerous theories about the collapse have been put forward since the city and its destruction levels were first excavated by archaeologists 180 years ago. But the mystery of how two small armies, the Babylonians in the south and the Medes in the east, were able to converge on Nineveh and completely destroy what was then the largest city in the world, without any reoccupation, has remained unsolved.

A team of researchers - using archival and archaeological data contributed by Harvey Weiss, professor of Near Eastern archaeology and environmental studies at Yale,  was able for the first time to determine the underlying cause for the collapse. By examining new precipitation records of the area, the team discovered an abrupt 60-year megadrought that so weakened the Assyrian state that Nineveh was overrun in three months and abandoned forever. The research was published in Science Advances on Nov. 13.

Assyria was an agrarian society dependent on seasonal precipitation for cereal agriculture. To its south, the Babylonians relied on irrigation agriculture, so their resources, government, and society were not affected by the drought, explains Weiss.

The team analyzed stalagmites, a type of speleothem that grows up from a cave floor and is formed by the deposit of minerals from water, retrieved from Kuna Ba cave in northeast Iraq. The speleothems can provide a history of climate through the oxygen and uranium isotope ratios of infiltrating water that are preserved in its layers. Oxygen in rainwater comes in two main varieties: heavy and light. The ratio of heavy to light types of oxygen isotopes are extremely sensitive to variations in precipitation and temperature. Over time, uranium trapped in speleothems turns into thorium, allowing scientists to date the speleothem deposits.

Weiss and the research team synchronized these findings with archaeological and cuneiform records and were able to document the first paleoclimate data for the megadrought that affected the Assyrian heartland at the time of the empire's collapse, when its less drought-affected neighbors invaded. The team's research also revealed that this megadrought followed a high-rainfall period that facilitated the Assyrian empire's earlier growth and expansion.

"Now we have a historical and environmental dynamic between north and south and between rain-fed agriculture and irrigation-fed agriculture through which we can understand the historical process of how the Babylonians were able to defeat the Assyrians," said Weiss, adding that the total collapse of Assyria is still described by historians as the "mother of all catastrophes."

Through the archaeology and history of the region, Weiss was able to piece together how the megadrought data were synchronous with Assyria�s cessation of long-distance military campaigns and the construction of irrigation canals that were similar to its southern neighbors but restricted in their agricultural extent. Other texts noted that the Assyrians were worrying about their alliances with distant places, while also fearing internal intrigue, notes Weiss.

These societies experienced climatic changes that were of such magnitude they could not simply adapt to them.
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4. Urartu (Place of Israelite Exile) was comprised of diverse populations. Brit-Am Understanding of Historical Sources Confirmed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urartu

Urartologist Paul Zimansky speculated that the Urartians (or at least the ruling family) may have emigrated northwest into the Lake Van region from their religious capital Musasir (Ardini).[27] According to Zimansky, the Urartian ruling class were few in number and governed over an ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse population. Zimansky went so far as to suggest that the kings of Urartu might have come from various ethnic backgrounds themselves.
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5. Brit-Am English-Hebrew Etymology. DEN, DIN

The English Word "Den"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/den
Etymology 1
From Middle English den, from Old English denn (den, lair (of a beast), cave; a swine-pasture, a woodland pasture for swine),... Cognate with Scots den (den, lair), Middle Dutch denne (burrow, den, cave, attic), Dutch den (ship's deck, threshing-floor, mountain floor), Middle Low German denne, danne (threshing-floor, small dale), German Tenne (threshing-floor, barn for threshing).

A small cavern or hollow place in the side of a hill, or among rocks; especially, a cave used by a wild animal for shelter or concealment.
a den of robbers
Daniel was put into the lions' den.
A squalid or wretched place; a haunt.
a den of vice
an opium den; a gambling den
A comfortable room not used for formal entertaining.
Synonym: family room
(Britain, Scotland, obsolete) A narrow glen; a ravine; a dell.

Suggested Hebrew Parallelism
The word-root DON connoting "dwell, live, sojourn."

cf. Lo YaDOON Ruchi (Geneseis 6:3).
translated as "abide, " cf.

Genesis (ESV) 6:
3 Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit shall not abide [Hebrew: "YaDoon"] in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.'

Metityahu Clark quotes S.R. Hirsch as deriving it from the root "DNN" meaning "rest permanently."

There is another similar Hebrew root DNH, or DIN, connoting "judge, contend."
This has led some of the Translators to render yaDOON in Genesies 6:3 as "contend, strive," cf.

Genesis (NASB) 6:
3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years."

 

This may be related to the English word "din" meaning "loud noise."