If you enjoy the history of all things aromatic, the incense route through the Middle East is sure to tempt you with its stories of legendary caravans transporting incense, myrrh, gold and nearly everything of any value from Yemen to the Gaza port in Israel.
History of the Incense Route
The incense route, as it was nearly 2000 years ago, was a series of different routes extending from Egypt, Northeast Africa, India, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The predominant traffic coursed through these areas and provided a connection between the spice and silk trade of India, African gold and woods, along with myrrh and frankincense of the Middle East. Most of which eventually sailed from the port at Gaza toward the markets of the Roman Empire.
During its busiest period, from roughly the 3rd century BCE until the 2nd century CE, the route flourished and was the hub of nearly all trade related to incense and spice over a more than 2400 km span of the Middle East, the northern coast of Africa and India.
Four cities, Avdat, Haluza, Mamshit and Shivta, located in the Negev Desert, all played important roles in the development of the Mediterranean terminus of the incense route. Because of the wealth derived from the trade and sale of goods along this trade route, these four cities flourished and were much more technologically advanced than most during that time period. These areas featured the most advanced irrigation systems, fortresses and luxurious roadside inns for weary travellers. Many of these structures are still in place today and are worthwhile to look at as well as study for their historical value.
As you can well imagine life along the trade route, especially if you were part of a caravan carrying priceless valuables, was extremely dangerous on a day-to-day basis. There was the constant chance of ambush and robbery, not to mention the harsh environment of the desert. Anyone travelling with a caravan taking this route had to be alert at all times and have the ability to survive long days in desert heat and even longer freezing nights. However, the monetary gain was well worth these dangers and the demands it put upon those who travelled with these caravans. To be sure, it was literally, a hard road to travel.
The Incense Route Today
Today, many of the landmarks along the incense road have vanished. There are, however, a few examples of the opulence that once gained its wealth from the goods that were traded along it. These ruins feature fortresses, churches, merchant storefronts, bathhouses and guard towers, as well as man other interesting sites. Many of these areas are accessible by jeep or bus and can still be toured.
Today, we can find the incense and most of the exotic items that we’ve come to love at the local retail store or international specialty store. It’s hard to imagine those items travelling through dangerous kingdoms or caravans being plagued by ominous thieves in antiquity. But even then, our distant ancestors knew what we know today: There are some things in life that are worth the risk.
Archive for the ‘israel history’ Category
I recently had my senses assaulted by a pro-Intifada, letter-to-the-editor in my local newspaper. By now, most of us have been subjected to our unfair share of anti-Semitic rants condemning the tiny State of Israel to the trash heap of history, for having the audacity to defend herself against relentless attacks from every nook and cranny of its northern and southern borders. Yet, as these venomous letters continue to come fast and furious, the all too common response by all too many is no response at all. However, after mulling the thought over, under, sideways and down again, I could not let this particular letter go unchallenged.
In suggesting that “Palestine” has been “militarily occupied for over 40-years”, the writer failed to mention that the Arab nations rejected the Palestine “Partition Plan” which was created through U.N. Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. This two-state solution to the crisis between the so-called Palestinians and Jews received the support of thirty-three nations, including the United States, France and the U.S.S.R. It guaranteed both the Jews and the Palestinians, living under British-rule at the time, their own independent and internationally recognized state. The Partition Plan was accepted by the Jews, which is one reason there exists a Jewish State in the Middle East today, but it was rejected by the Palestinians, and the Arab states, which is essentially why a Palestinian state does not exist today.
However, even before the historic U.N. vote, according to Emanuel A. Winston, a Middle East Analyst & Commentator, Arab political leaders were declaring their resolve to destroy a Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East. In November of 1947, according to Winston, Dr. Hussein Halide of the Palestine Higher Committee, called for a “holy war to be waged on the Jews”, promising that partitioning the land would lead to an Islamic crusade against the Jews. The same month, according to a November 30th New York Times article, and cited by Winston in a 2002 commentary, key members of the Arab League announced a Program for the “occupation of Palestine by the armies of the League and the forcible prevention of the establishment of a Jewish State”. A few months later, in April of 1948, the United Nations Security Council released the following statement: “Armed Arab bands from neighboring Arab lands have infiltrated the territory of Palestine and, together with local Arab forces, are defeating the purpose of the Partition Resolution by acts of violence”.
Winston goes on to point out that it was just a few months later, on the same day Israel proclaimed her independence; Azzam Pasha of the Arab League announced “Arab intention to wage a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” Twenty-four hours later, a full-scale invasion of Israel by the armies of Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Yemen began and the Jews have been fighting for their very existence ever since. Yet, even now, it is the Jews who are constantly accused of engaging in criminal and terrorist acts. This is revisionist history writ-large and head in the sand par excellence.
Never in the history of the world, has a nation ceased to exist for over two-thousand years and then been reestablished in a single day. Israel is the exception. Since declaring its independence on August 14, 1948, the Jewish State has needed to be in a constant “state of war” readiness. In spite of this turbulent existence, Israel has been a blessing to the United States and the rest of the free world. With Israel, America is allied to a militarily adroit and economically vibrant western-style democracy. It is of course true that we help Israel through economic aid and other important non-monetary commitments, but this is a small price to pay for what we receive from this tiny nation in return. Not the least of which includes Israeli technological innovations.
According to Alan Caruba, of the National Anxiety Center, in a recent column published on the Free-Market News Network, cell phone technology was developed in Israel by Motorola, as were most of the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The Pentium NMX Chip technology was also designed in Israel according to Caruba, and AOL’s Instant Messenger application was developed ten years ago by four young Israelis. And that’s not all, Caruba goes on to point out that, on a per capita basis, Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees than any other nation in the world and except for the United States, Israelis file more patents on new inventions and processes than any other nation on the planet.
Over the past 100 years, the Jewish people, who represent barely 0.02% of the global population, have produced eight Nobel Peace Prize winners, fifty-three Nobel winners in physics, ten in literature, thirteen in economics and forty-three in medicine. In 2004, according to Caruba, two Israelis received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “having discovered a process that will lead the way to DNA repair”. This is an incredible accomplishment by any measurable standard.
Why the world insists on begrudging these amazing people the right to live peacefully in their ancient, biblical, homeland, even when that means living adjacent to an angry race of people who hate them and are hell-bent on liquidating them, is curious at best, sinister at worst. And regardless of how you actually feel about the crisis between Israel and the Arabs, and even assuming you believe there is more blame on the part of the Jewish state, the following two sentences really should say it all:
If the Arabs laid down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews were to lay down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
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The author is a member of the Carpinteria City Council which is a small coastal city located in Santa Barbara County, California
What if I told you that I am acquainted with a person of a certain nationality that is automatically and thoroughly searched at a particular airport, said airport being in the same country mentioned in the cover of the very passport he carries? What is I told you as well this country calls itself tolerant? What if I told you that this happens only because of the name on his passport, and his native language? And… what if I told you that this country, on a yearly basis, indiscriminately kills thousands of people fitting my acquaintance’s profile? Anybody can already assume, arriving at this country’s airport, that they are entering a nation which preaches one thing and does another. A nation based on discrimination, injustice and violence. Sadly, this place exists, and it is called Israel.
This was not always so. Israel has a long history and tradition, with a few splatterings of war and violence here and there. It can be agreed that they generally have no differences with other countries’ trajectories. What sets them apart, started almost half a century ago, and has yet to finish: the end of tolerance and the beginning of violence against their neighbors, the Palestinians. At this point, compared with other nations that carry a history of thousands of years such as them, they have stepped back into an underdeveloped mindset, strewn with ignorance and malice. Such a society could possibly not be self-sufficient economically: only look at the state the US is in after waging war, for a much shorter time, against Afghanistan and Iraq. So what keeps Israel going? The forceful influx of money from Germany, and the voluntary donations from the US. While the Palestinian nation receives world-wide moral support for their cause, Israel is a financially supported terrorist state. In today’s world, sadly money is stronger than morals.
Basically, they are an undercover based-on-donations economy. Germany, to this day, has given to Israel more than 70 billion dollars in reparations for the Third Reich. Then, they must turn their backs and pretend they are not seeing how their money is reinvested in a holocaust against the Palestinians. Of course that, after what they did to Israel, they have no right to say anything. Oh, wait. They DID NOT do anything to Israel. To my knowledge, being a Jew and being an Israeli are two completely different things. Being one, does not necessarily make you the other. And, most Jewish victims of the holocaust, to my knowledge, where of German, Polish, Austrian, Czech and other European nationalities: NOT Israeli. Of course that everybody forgets about the “other” victims, such as homosexuals, catholics, or even the roma (gypsy) population. Perhaps, their lives just don’t matter as much. Otherwise, why isn’t Germany paying reparations to the Vatican for all the catholics they also exterminated? Or the gay rights organizations? Or the roma? Opportunistic Israel just could not pass up the chance to cash in the situation, by taking advantage of money that could have been used to provide survivors of the holocaust with more income, or maybe even provide “reparation” to all the other victims. That would just involve them attempting to be fair and do good, and would just drive them away from their path to repeating a holocaust against the Palestinians. Does anybody remember how it started in the Third Reich? Small, almost unnoticeable. Israel is already at a medium-sized indiscriminate extermination. You want torture? How about creating ghettos and camps for the Palestinians to live under their watchful eye, and cutting off the water, gas or other basic public services when Palestinians “misbehave?” You want suffering? How about digging out your family’s remains after a bomb destroyed your home? This sounds faintly familiar to what we all learned in history class. The questions is: Who will stop this?
Definitely not the US. According to the 2008 US budget “Israel, long since the US’ top recipient of foreign aid, will receive USD 2.4 billion. Since 1979 and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Israel has annually received up to USD 3 billion in aid. As part of with an initiative by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the civilian aid has been steadily decreased over the course of the past 10 years, going from USD 1.2 million to being completely canceled this year. At the same time military aid to Israel has increased from USD 1.8 billion to USD 2.4 billion.” The blame for the availability of bombs, weapons and soldiers ready to threaten Palestinian lives can easily be pinpointed to the US, and their attempts to take diplomatic steps to stop the situation have been amazingly fruitless. The US is doing nothing more than playing the role of “mediator” to reflect a certain image in the international realm, caring little about a solution. Their main goal is to protect their image, and to keep the only “friend” they have in the Middle East, as a stepping stone for them to wage war against their chosen victims. Otherwise, they would simply cut off the aid and, although Israel might not be very happy with them, they would have no more mediums to wage this unfair war.
Unfair? Well, yes. Still, one cannot pretend that both parties are not at fault in their own ways. Yet, in the case of two children, when you find them fighting, what do you say? You tell the bigger one to stop picking on the little one, because 1) It’s not fair, they’re smaller and less capable of fighting at the big one’s level 2) The big one should stop it first, even if the little one started, and set an example. With the obvious recent display of Israel’s military capabilities, and the aforementioned “free money” they receive, it is obvious to see who the big one is.
As a retort to this and the matter of all the civilian lives sacrificed in the conflict, I was recently told that “There are no rules when in war”. Since when is this so? Actually, in the 7th century it was the Muslim army which decided to set rules for law, involving fairness and the protection of civilian lives. Nowadays we have humanitarian and international law dictating the proceedings for war. But, since the Israel-Palestine situation is a “conflict” and not an all-out “war”, apparently there are no rules to abide by.
Now, let us see the other side of the matter concerning the last (but most likely not “the last”) Israeli attack. According to Israel, the last campaign in Gaza (that mysteriously ended days before the US presidential inauguration. Suspicious? I daresay) was started to make the Palestinians stop launching rockets and other such weaponry into Israel, and to restore Israel’s “image” in the world after their failed campaign with the Lebanon incident and other international power struggles. Since when is it a solution to kill thousands of civilians, and yes, children and women at that? Through their actions they prove they are not more than a third-world country in serious need of development, exhibiting tremendous ignorance, in particular in the social, educational and international relations spheres.
Israel has become a self-righteous, oppressive and violent nation, with a superiority complex and forgetting their own original values and morals in an aim to demonstrate their power, and by doing so, repeating a holocaust against the Palestinians. A flashback of the Third Reich? Certainly.
Have we all learned nothing from history? Why is it repeating itself? If Germany is repaying Israel only because they are the cradle of Judaism, believers having been the main target during the WWII holocaust, and if Judaism is a religion that encourages kindness and forgiveness and Israel is supposed to be the very reflection of it: Why we cannot find a solution? And, if Israel can make peace with Germany, why not with the Palestinian nation?
Maybe the Palestinians should learn from the Germans, and pay the harlot’s fees.