BLOG 364 September 11, 2017
For those who follow the archaeological expeditions in Israel, there is always something new and exciting to report. The Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered remains of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians more than 2,600 years ago. Remains of shattered jugs and an ivory image of a woman were unearthed at the Jerusalem Walls National Park in the ancient City of David. Pottery with rosette-like stamps on the handles reflected the end of the First Temple period. The wealth of the Judean capital is demonstrated in these finds as well as the growth of the city at the end of the 8th century BCE.
Speaking of interesting… here’s another one for you.
The world’s oldest man died in Haifa at the age of 113. Yisrael Kristal, a Holocaust survivor, was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest living person. After the Nazi invasion of Poland, Kristal and his family were forced into the Lodz Ghetto. His two children died in the ghetto while he and his wife were sent to Auschwitz. She was murdered there but Yisrael survived. In 1950, he and his new wife made aliya and settled in Haifa where he opened a candy factory that he ran for the rest of his life.
Always an optimist, Kristal attributed his extreme longevity to God and believed his old age was a divine form of divine grace.
The recent racial clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, did not go unnoticed in Israel. Having a terrorist drive his car into a crowd of people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer flashed across Israel. White supremacists and neo-Nazis always have placed Jews up there near the top of their hate crimes list. Israelis recognized that the town’s mayor Mike Signer was a Jew.
Israel caught the fact that President Trump did not name the Ku Klux Klan and the Neo-Nazis until well after the event and he had been scripted to do so. His pandering of the elements of the most extreme right-wing did not go unnoticed. The conclusion in The Jerusalem Post was, “President Donald Trump failed miserably.”
Israeli Justice Minister Avelet Shaket wrote, “Neo-Nazis in the US must be put on trial.” He criticized the strict interpretation of the right of free speech saying, “This was not the intention of the American Constitution. A democratic state cannot show tolerance toward such phenomena.”
Amen.
Dr. Robert L. Wise 