Metzada 2: The Siege

Continued from a previous post:

Metzada 1: To the Top

Looking out onto the Dead Sea from Metzada. These canals carry brine from the northern section of the Dead Sea to the southern, where the water is evaporated to extract valuable Potash by the Dead Sea Works.

Looking towards the enormous evaporation ponds.

Our tour guide's father was involved in local excavations. Often the local Bedouin would loot archaeological sites before they could be excavated. They would then sell the items they found back to collectors, or archaeologists. Her father was able to buy back some coins, most of which he gave to the Israel Antiquities Authority, per the law. But they let him keep a few.

A coin minted during the Bar Kochba Revolt.
Rebuilt storehouses.
Another local resident.

With the benefit of elevation, the Jewish rebels were able to prevent the entire Roman Legion from ascending the steep path. The Romans changed strategy and began building a ramp to penetrate the fortress' defenses.

The Roman ramp up the west side of Metzada.

Eventually, after three years of siege, the Romans reached the top. The night before the breach of the wall, the rebels knew the game was up. They drew lots and committed mass suicide rather than be taken prisoner. To this day, the site is seen as a symbol of resistance, and the last bastion of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel until modern times.

Moshe Dayan, when he was Army Chief of Staff, understood the symbolism of Metzada, and, upon their completion of basic training, he had IDF units to ascend the snake path by night to take the Oath of Allegiance, with soldiers swearing upon induction that, "Metzada shall not fall again!"

The flag on Metada.

Well, the hike down is going to be a cinch. After all, it's all downhill from here.

Now I have to go all that way back down.

Back at the bottom. Bet your [] I climbed that mountain!

Metzada 1: To the Top

Time for another tour! This time, it's off to Masada on a tour organized by Nefesh B'Nefesh.

Metzada, "The Fortress," was one of the many massive building projects initiated by King Herod, also known as "Herod the Great," although his memory is still reviled by most Jews. From an Edomite family (traditional enemies of the Jews,) his family had been forcibly converted to Judaism by the Hasmoneans (a dynasty of Jewish kings of Israel who took power after the Maccabean revolt until the Roman conquest.) He was appointed Tetrarch, a minor ruler, of the Galillee region by the Romans. Antigonus, the Hasmonean heir to the throne, attempted to overthrow Herod and establish his own kingdom, so Herod fled to Rome. And returned wit the Roman Legions, who subdued the province of Judea and ended the Hasmonean dynasty quite violently.

Driving to Metzada, we pass the shores of the Dead Sea.

Some guy selling lemonade at a checkpoint.

Looking through the date palms at the oasis of Ein Gedi towards Metzada.

Metzada rises over the wasteland.
And we're here!

Herod's oppressive policies, including the execution of masses of both Jewish leaders and humble subjects, left him in constant fear of revolt. The paranoia that typically develops from megalomania didn't help much either. To keep himself safe and sound, he built Metzada, a desert fortress standing on a massive mesa with sheer cliffs all around. Here, he withstand a siege for years, giving plenty of time for reinforcements to arrive from Rome.

A little red line indicates the Snake Path up Metzada.

Some of the wildlife. An Ibex, or something like that. I don't know the fauna here.
I played with the contrast and color saturations in Paint Shop Pro and I think this version is much cooler.

The hike up the snake path is something of a "high profile" hike.

There is a cable car for those who don't want to hike all the way up.

It has a reputation of being quite strenuous, but really, I didn't find it so difficult. It took me about 45 minutes at an easy pace.

Gettin' high.

Metzada is considered a major landmark not because of Herod, a run-of-the-mill oppressor of Jews who was thrown on the ash heap of history five minutes after his death, but because of another drama that unfolded here.

Made it, no sweat!

Herod's design was, in fact, so defensible that it was used by the Jews during the revolt against the Romans. In 70 CE, as the Romans wiped out the last Jewish strongholds, a surviving band of 936 rebels fled to Metzada. The Romans laid siege.

A current resident of Metzada. In the background, the remains of one of several camps of the 10th Roman Legion which besieged the city.

A model of what Herod's palace looked like.

The remains of Herod's Palace today.

To be continued...

Five Weeks

I'm on my fifth week of Weight Watchers, and I seem to be back on track.
My weight is dropping almsot as fast as the Dow Jones this week, and I've discovered the true secret to weight loss. No, it's not diet or exercise, but disease! I had a cold over the weekend, and boy did my body liberate the fat reserves to fight it. I figured all the time I missed exercising would make me put on the pounds, but I ended up losing about 2 per day while I was sick! I'm now down about 13 lbs from January 1st.

I'm thinking of patenting this. Perhaps I could market a new "Typhoid Treatment" series of diet pills. "Take two of these, and the hunger pangs will be the least of your worries!"

But seriously, I am still working hard on this, and hoping to get into the 210's within a few weeks here. Wish me luck!

The Republicans, Part 2

Previous relevant posts:
Dual Loyalties?
The Democrats
Barry'O and Hillary
The Republicans Part I

There isn't much left to say about the Republicans, since two of them dropped out since my last post, I'm fast running out of candidates to review.

Giuliani

How strange that this man was once considered the front-runner. I suppose he was just more recognizeable than any other candidate. The fact is, his greatest feat during 9-11 was knowing how to manage things but also how to get out of the way. I think his greatest moment was turning down $10 Million from Saudi Prince Alweed Bin Talal, "There is no moral equivalent for this [terrorist] act. There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people." This is in marked contrast the "Root Cause" junkies amongs the left, who can't talk about the slaughter on September 11th without linking it to Arab opposition to Israel's "policies," which everyone knows really means, "existance." He demonstrated a decent knowledge on the basics of the conflict here, "And one of the reasons I think [the 9-11 attacks] happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism."



Unfortunately, I think he was just to "Yankee" to fit in with the more socially conservative elements in the Republican party.

Fred Thompson

He just mosied on out of the race as lazily as he mosied on in. He had typical conservative policies, and his lethargic drawl was going to hypnotize us into rallying behind him. It didn't work.

And so, my vote has been cast, or in my case faxed into the Contra Costa County Elections Office. Planet Israel endorses...

John McCain

One month ago, this guy's campaign was a lost cause. Out of money, sometimes his press corps would consist of only one reporter.

Well, they're singing a different tune now.

Conservatively, despite complaints, he fits the bill. He has a 100% pro-life record, pro-military, and demands UN-reform. A few issues where he's at variance with republicans include immigration, government reform, and the environment.

As far as immigration, which he got in big trouble with in his party for trying to loosen legal requirements; the fact is, that there's no way around it. America is suffering a minor version of the suicidal demographics of European states. Europe is experiencing rapid decline, with only one child per family in Spain, Italy, and other traditionally fertile nations. This results in the native population being cut in half in every generation. The massive immigration of Muslims who come to fill the jobs that the unborn Europeans would have taken will, in the year 2040 or so, result in an islamic majority in Denmark and Holland. OTher states will soon follow. America has a similar problem, as the birth rate among native-born Americans has now declined to below the replacement number of 2.1 children per family. In order to continue growing, America HAS to boost its population with immigrants. I don't think Mexican or other immigration is such a problem. I went to a high school that was 55% Mexican, and seemed to get along just fine. Besides, I like enchiladas and churros (although I can skip the cow brain burritos.)

His actions toward Israel have been consistantly solid. During the previous Lebanon war, he said:
"My dear friends, you have probably seen our European friends say, 'Well, the Israelis have got to stop,' " McCain told about 120 people during the fund-raiser at a golf course in this St. Louis suburb.
"What would we do if somebody came across our borders and killed our soldiers and captured our soldiers? Do you think we would be exercising total restraint?"

To be honest, I still prefer Huckabee's more accurate appraisal of the true situation in the middle east, but the fact is that with a tanking economy and an unpopular war in Iraq, the Republicans will have an extremely hard time getting elected this cycle. McCain is the only Republican who has a chance of winning. Obama has charisma, but McCain has an affable personality, a long record of integrity, and he actually fought for his country (something no president for the last sixteen years can say honestly.)

There's no telling how his Presidency would go, but I suspect that a man who survived the depravities of a communist torture camp can understand on a much deeper level that some people are simply evil, which is the first step in understanding how to to real good in the region.

Painting with Moish

I had a chance to do a few more paintings with Moish recently.

Moish preps for painting.

I was trying to make a cabin with a cute little gun shed attached to the front end. I put the window directly on the front end facing the viewer. Unfortunately, the window didn't come out right, so I scraped it off and tried again. And again. And again. Now, each time you scrape off paint and redo it, it comes out a little bit bigger to cover up the previous attempts, so by now it's a real mess and I didn't know how to fix it.

So I threw a giant tree right over where the window would have gone.

So now the cabin has no windows. Wonderful. And how are the people inside supposed to burn a fire in their wood-burning stove without asphyxiating themselves? Come to think of it, it doesn't have a chimney either, so the CO2 would probably get them first. But wait a minute... pump stations don't have windows or anything, they're just little structures designed to protect the expensive turbine lift pumps from exposure to the elements. So, I dubbed it, "Pump Station in the Woods."

Moish's version. His windows came out fine.

A couple of weeks later, I came back and did a waterfall.

The waterfall came out quite nicely. Except, of course, I forgot to put in the rock at the top of the waterfall which would split it into the two cascades we see here. D'oh! You always catch these things once you look at it again after having not seen it for a week. But I'm learning technique and getting comfortable with the concept, which is the important part.

More Jerusalem Snow Pics

It snowed even harder on Wednesday night, but Thursday was finally sunny enough to wander around the city for a while. The snow was already beginning to melt, so I had to move fast.




I went down to Emek Refaim...

...and ended up across from Gan Hapeamon, photographing some of the public spaces in the Yemin Moshe neghborhood.

Eventually, I came to the walls of the old city.

Migdal David (the Tower of David, at the Jaffa gate.)

Yours truly, on the roof over Kever David, the grave of David. BTW He's not REALLY buried there.
A snow-student in the Diaspora Yeshivah.

Looking towards Har Hazeitim (The Mount of Olives.)
The Chuvra Synagogue, destroyed by the Arab Legion in 1948, is finally being rebuilt.

The Western Wall, still some snow around.

Ancient burial caves near the King David Hotel.

Yemin Mosheh.