Brit-Am Historical Reports
Contents:
1. Amnon Goldberg: Fieldmarshal Montgomery
2. What kind of salads did the Canaanites eat?
3. International Trade Connections in Ancient Times
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1. Amnon Goldberg: Fieldmarshal Montgomery
"Behold a Nation that Dwells Alone!" (Good Shabbos, June 23) referred to the crucial British victory at El Alamein. Hashgocho [Divine Providence] determined that the architect of that victory was one Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976).
A loss at El Alamein would have enabled the Axis to seize the Suez Canal, cutting off supplies from Asia, and allowed the Nazis to advance through the Sinai in to Palestine to exterminate the half-million Jewish yishuv, and then on to the oil of the Persian gulf and their dream of total world subjugation.
Montgomery the son of a bishop, had been shot in in WW1. A teetotaller, he never remarried after his wife died of an insect bite in 1937. As commander of the British forces in Palestine in 1938 he put down the Arab Revolt reporting "I shall be sorry to leave
Palestine in many ways, as I have enjoyed the war out here"! Because of his thorough training of his troops, he and his 3rd "Iron Division" escaped intact from Dunkirk in 1940.
Even though they outnumbered the Germans 3 to 1, the British had been pummeled across a thousand miles of North Africa by the "Desert Fox" General Rommel' s Afrika Korps, in defeat after defeat.
A meticulous planner who would not be rushed, Montgomery was very careful with the lives of his soldiers and refused to squander them in careless assaults, unlike other generals. On assuming command he completely revivified the tired, demoralised, underconfident (they actually wore the low self-esteem promoting symbol of a "Desert Rat" on their shoulder patches!) 8th Army. Montgomery ordered all contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed: "I have cancelled the plan for withdrawal. If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead. Everyone must be imbued with the desire to kill Germans, even their padres - one for weekdays and two on Sundays!"
Rommel and Montgomery believed that they were gilgulim [reincarnations] of the ancient rivals the Carthaginian general Hannibal and the Roman general Scipio Africanus, who were re-fighting their battles in the African Desert.
It was in summer 1942 that the Germans started to implement in earnest the genocide of European Jewry that they had decided upon in their dastardly January 1942 Wannsee Conference. And it was just at this time that they reached the high tide of their conquests at Stalingrad and El Alamein, and from whence on Hashem ensured that they would experience only retreat, all the way back to the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin.
On the eve of D Day in June 1944 Montgomery stated "Let us pray that the LORD, Mighty in Battle, will go forth with our armies, and that His special providence will aid us in the struggle".
In September 1944, now a Field Marshal, daringly tried to end the war by Xmas by 'bouncing the Rhine' in Operation Market Garden, dropping 30,000 airborne troop behind the enemy lines in Holland. Unfortunately lo l'kalim hameirutz - "the race is not always to the swift" (Koheles - Ecclesiastes 9), and the attempt was thwarted in the famous battle of Arnhem Bridge.
His 1958 memoirs were highly inflammatory & critical of his former WW2 colleagues, including then US president Eisenhower. "Monty: in defeat unbeatable; in victory, unbearable!" (Churchill).
He sobbed whilst visiting the Commonwealth cemetery at El Alamein in May 1967, and warned Nasser's Egyptian officers that if they started a fight against Israel they would lose, which was confirmed only one month later in the Six Day War.
Montgomery wrote: "There are only two rules of war. Rule number one: do not provoke Russia; Rule Number 2: do not provoke Russia!", something that NATO and others might do well to remember in the current tensions in the Black Sea, Ukraine, Crimea, Baltic etc.
Montgomery's dying words were: "I'm going to G-d now, and I'm going to have to give an account of all those men I killed at El Alamein", R.I.P.
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2. What kind of salads did the Canaanites eat?
https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/what-kind-of-salads-did-the-canaanites-eat-669805
The researchers analyzed more than 3,500 plant finds and identified emmer, lentils, pistachio, grass peas, figs, olives, flax, barley and grapes, among others.
By ROSSELLA TERCATIN
Extracts:
Some 4,500 years ago, Canaanites residents of Gath ate figs, olives, wheat, barley, grapes, and many other species that have been considered symbols of the land of Israel from the time of the Bible to today.
The ecology of the crops suggests exploitation of gentle slopes for cereals, the open slopes in the vicinity of water sources as prime locations for fig cultivation, the well-drained soil pockets among rocks for olives and grapevine, while the lowermost alluvial river plain habitats could have been used for flax, reads the journal article.
Frumin said there was no evidence of irrigation systems, suggesting that rain and a nearby stream provided enough water. 'Everything was very simple and ecological.'
As often happened in dry climates, animal dung was used as fuel. 'This way, the city was clean, the food was cooked, and the houses were warmed,' she said.
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3. International Trade Connections in Ancient Times
Sky's the limit: how Bronze Age people travelled and traded much further afield than commonly thought
The Nebra Sky disc, the oldest surviving representation of the cosmos, will be one of the star artefacts in an exhibition exploring Unetice culture and its far reaching links
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/preview/sky-s-the-limit-uk-europe-and-beyond-for-bronze-age-people
CATHERINE HICKLEY
Extracts:
Buried in the heart of Europe 3,600 years ago, the Nebra Sky Disc is an archaeological find unlike any other. It was excavated illegally in 1999 by two metal detectorists who at first thought they had stumbled on a bucket lid. The State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Germany, acquired the artefact following a Swiss police sting operation in a Basel hotel in 2002.
The Nebra Sky Disc is now indisputably the jewel of the museum's collection. Crafted in bronze and gold, it is the oldest surviving representation of the cosmos, and its discovery has unlocked the doors for archaeological research into a prehistoric realm that can be described as the first European state. That Bronze Age civilisation, known as the Unetice culture, survived for centuries before vanishing around 1600BC and slipping away from human memory.
Researchers have discovered that the gold and bronze of the Sky Disc originated in Cornwall, southwest England, while scientific studies have shown that Britain's best-known early Bronze Age man, the Amesbury Archer, buried 4,300 years ago near Stonehenge, may have originally come from Germany. This shows how far 'connections extended, and that not only did objects travel but people too,' says a spokesperson for the State Museum for Prehistory.
Among the most important loans from the British Museum will be the Mold Gold Cape (around 1600BC-1900BC), which was excavated in Wales in 1833 from the grave of a high-ranking woman. Other exhibits in the Halle show will include blue Bronze Age glass beads from Mesopotamia that were uncovered in a woman's grave west of Halle in 2004. 'Europeans didn't know how to make blue pigments at that time, so these beads were presumably very desirable,' says the spokesperson. Bronze Age amber from the Baltic region has been found as far afield as Iraq, but also in the area of Germany that was once part of the Un tice culture, and in England, further evidence of a variant of globalisation in existence more than 3,000 years ago.