An Author's Pride

I wondered what it would be like to walk into a bookstore and see your books neatly filed on a shelf with a little blurb beneath it, saying 'manager's choice' and a short synopsis of the book? Today I found out. Believe it or not, there is a similar feeling to when you hold your newborn baby in your arms for the first time. Far more intense when you look down into the eyes of your baby staring back up into yours, but similar I would say. You look upon the shelf with pride and a sense of accomplishment. You are tempted to stand beside the book and hope that someone in the store will pick it up and then you can say something like, "that's my book, you know." They'd probably be so shocked they'd replace the book and run from the store thinking you're some kind of nutcase but it would still feel good.
Above the rows of shelves was the sign 'New Releases' and they were given the premier wall where everyone first looks to see what's available. Local author writes terrifying horror novel 'Shadows of Trinity' the manager's blurb stated. It's a small start, a humble beginning but it's a moment that will always be remembered and cherished. With a sigh and a silent 'life is good' comment you turn and walk away. And suddenly you can smile the rest of the day knowing nothing will bring you down.

Explaining Karaite Teachings (A Short History)

Karaites are an oddity unto themselves. Whereas my adherance stems from the Karaite families located around the Black Sea, from Romania all the way into the Ukraine, you also had similar parcels of families in other locations such as the Baltic, Egypt, Turkey and Byelorussia. You would think being as small as we are, that there'd be uniformity in beliefs and customs, but that is hardly the case. In reading an interesting blog from a Latvian Karaite, I found that besides believing that her community was one of the last outposts of Karaim in the world, that her community had also adopted some Christian and Muslim teachings into their customs. I guess that this is to be expected considering the isolation of the communities and the fact that as a paternal hereditary society, the effects of intermarriage would be more pronounced.

During the nineteenth century, from the printing presses in Turkey there were printed a beautiful edition of the Karaite bible, consisting of the five Books of Moses or the Chumash. This edition was printed in Hebrew with a Turkish Tatar translation in parallel columns. It was arranged and paid for by the Karaite community in Ortakoi, a town near Constantinople, around 1835. To undertake such a project would indicate that barely 170 years ago, the Tatar influence on Karaite history would have been extremely strong. The reasons behind this will be touched upon briefly in my novel ZUTRA, a book that I hope to have released in the near future as soon as I find a new literary agent.
As Karaites, we also refer to ourselves as the B'nai Mikra (Children of Scripture), and as I had mentioned in previous blogs we attribute are beginnings to the imprison Exilarch, Anan ibn David (Kahana family) around 769 AD. The main differentiating point to Rabbinic Judaism is that the only authority accepted is that of the Bible but we reject the Talmudic rabbinic tradition. The major reason for this can also be viewed in some of my blogs but the overriding principle is that the Talmud is nothing but the contentions and impressions of men whom basically wished to enforce their beliefs of scriptural analysis above the direct word of God. Or put even in simpler terms, as soon as God needs an interpreter there's a problem. From its onset, Karaism constituted a serious challenge to traditional rabbinic Judaism, and as time went on Rabbinic Judaism felt it had to react in order to stem the flow and one of these was the slaughter of Karites instituted by Saadiah Gaon around 940AD which is touched upon in Shadows of Trinity http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html . Following the dispersal of this catastrophic event, the numbers dwindled and were concentrated in a few centers. If the main body of Jews and the Karaites differed in matters of faith, they shared the persecutions and pogroms until the incorporation of the Crimea and Lithuania into the Russian Empire at the end of the eighteenth century, when the situation began to change. In 1795, the Empress Catherine 11 permitted the Karaites to purchase land and relieved them of the double taxation imposed upon rabbinic Jews. In 1827, Karaites were not only exempted from the military draft, which meant twenty-five years of military service but also permission to circulate freely in centres of Russian culture. This situation only furthered the animosity that existed between the two Jewish communities and it was only prudent that Karaites distanced themselves as far as possible from Rabbinic Judaism. Fortunately when it came to the Czarist government all you had to dow was emphasize that there were fundamental differences between us and the Rabbic Jews, not only in beliefs and in history, but also from the genetic makeup as well. There is some truth to this n that phenotypically, there are quite a few differences between Ashekenazi Jews of Europe and Karaite Jews with their origins from Mesopotamia. They argued that they were not Jews but "Russian Karaites of the Old Testament Faith," which became their official designation according to the Czarist government. In 1840 they were granted equality of status with the Muslims, and in 1863 with native Russians, a considerable achievement which led to the appointment in 1843 of my ancestor Jakob Goldenthal as the Principal of the Jewish Districts around the Black Sea and based in Kishinev. Unfortunately this appointment did not go over very well, since it meant not only was Jakob in charge of those districts with large Karaite populations but also those with rabbinic populations. What the Rabbinic Jews viewed as his cosmopolitan assimilated makeup, his bastardized Judaism, and his tendency to write commentaries that emphasized the univerasility of Jewish beleifs within a Christian world led to his departure to greener fields in 1846, when he took a position at the University of Vienna and private tutor to the Empress Elisabeth. A position he would not have gained if not for his Karaite beliefs.
During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Russian Karaites increased in The Tatar translation of this Chumash was obviously for a select population of Karaites only. The group of Karaite scholars who edited the text and prepared the translation was headed by Abraham Firkowitz (1786-1874), an antiquarian scholar and bibliographer who as a leader of the separation campaign wrote messages to the Czarist government and collected documents to bolster the Karaite position.
It is rumoured that on occasion Firkowitz doctored the written record to support the Karaite claims of being a distinct ethnic group. So in retrospect the printing of this Chumash was a message being sent to the Czarist authorities that would have proclaimed, "We are very different from the Jews, even having our own veresion of the Bible which is a completely different language." For the intent and purpose of relieving the persecutions suffered by Jewish communities you can hopefully appreciate the motivation behind such an act.

The Trial of Jesus: Toldoth Jeshua

You're probably wondering what am I talking about this time. Well, it's pretty simple. I'm going to talk about another book I happen to have in my collection. You guessed it, it's called “Toldoth Jeshua". But what's it mean. Translated, it means the Generations of Jesus. Odd title you'd think since according to the New Testament, Jesus didn't have any generations to speak of. But this book that was written in about the 14th century and based on material from the second century had a lot of interesting things to say. I came into possession of this document after I wrote and published Caiaphas Letters, so its quite amazing that it confirms many of the statements I make as fact in my book.
One of the most serious libels made against the Jews was the blame for killing Jesus. Pope John Paul II fortunately condemned this libel and expunged it from the Roman Catholic teachings, and this should be appreciated, but it was long in coming and over the last two thousand years the number of Jews that died because of this libel was astronomical, especially when one considers it as a premise to the Nazi holocaust.
Now this may sound a little controversial coming from me but what if I was to say that it wasn’t really all the Church’s fault for fostering this belief in the first place? What if I was to say that the great sages of Judaism in the second century,the Tannim or these Rabbis of reverence that put together the Talmud were responsible for the libel themselves! That in an effort to show the world how strict they were as enforcers of God’s will, they were willing to spread a lie that either because their brains were too addled with age, or as a Karaite I beleive they were only interested in hearing the sounds of their own voices and were more than too happy to tell everyone a lie.”
What most people don't realize is that these so called paragons of virtue and Judaism actually wrote a section into the Talmud concerning their role in Jesus’ death! Let me tell you quickly what it said:
“It is taught that for all others liable for the death penalty, except for the enticer to idolatry, we do not hide witnesses. They light a lamp for him in the inner chamber and place a witness in the outer chamber so that they can see and hear him while he cannot see or hear them. One says to him,” Tell me again what you said to me in private.” If the prisoner repents, then good, but if he says, ‘This is our obligation and what we must do,’ then he is to be brought into the courtroom and stoned. And then they hung him on the eve of Passover.”
If you're trying to follow the connection let me explain that these Rabbis were trying to recall a very special meeting of the Sanhedrin that happened a couple of hundred years earlier. I'll point out some of their controversial comments. It was a night meeting, hence the need for the lamp. The courts of the Sanhedrin were held in buildings that relied on natural light, therefore it was prohibited to meet at night unless it was an emergency. In this case it obviously was one. But they got it wrong. The witnesses placed outside were there to come in and defend the accused. They already had their numbers to make up the tribunal inside. They were the judges, not the witnesses. As we know from the stories about that night, Jesus's witness refused to enter into the chamber and three times Peter denied not knowing him. Without his second witness, (it took two to prove you innocent of the charges), Jesus was condemned. Now the rabbis in this particular paragraph never refer to Jesus, only to an idolator, so the question should be how do I know they’re not talking about another case? Because they refer back in the Toldoth Jeshua to this section of the Talmud as being the trial of Ben Stada. Now I probably have you completely confused. It would have been more correct to refer to what is a Ben Stada in order to understand their play on words. The Rabbis loved to do that back then. They thought they were quite funny. They did it with the next messiah too, Simon Bar Kochba. As soon as he lost the war, they referred to him as Simon Bar Kosiba, or ’the son of lies’. Somehow they forgot that it was one of their own that proclaimed him as the messiah in the first place. So they did the same thing to Jesus as well. He would have been referred to as Jesus Ha Stadlan. The intercessor by his followers. Because that’s what he did. He was the intercessor for people to reach God. Remember that he said everyone seeking God must come through him.
So, now that you have an appreciation for their sense of humor, these rabbis don’t refer to him as an intercessor for God but instead call him Ben Stota or Stada in an alternate dialect; the ‘son of absolute utter nonsense’ or as we would say today, the son of bullshit.”
Also remember that in the Talmud is says that he was taken out and stoned and then hung from a tree on the eve of Passover.”
There are three important things you should notice right there. Firstly, if he was stoned to death, why were they bothering to hang him on a crucifix? Couldn’t kill him twice. And then secondly there’s the matter that the Roman authorities only let the Sanhedrin stone people, they didn’t have the authority to crucify a prisoner. And lastly, notice how it was the eve of the Passover. Just as I described it in Caiaphas Letters. The Gospels all say the crucifixion happened on the Passover. So this passage from the Talmud is in harmony with what I've written.
In another passage of Toldoth Jeshua it is written: ‘On the eve of the Passover they hung Yeshu and the crier went forth for forty days beforehand declaring that Yeshu is to be stoned for practicing witchcraft, for enticing and leading Israel astray. Anyone who knows something to clear him should come forth and exonerate him. But no one came forward in his defense and they hung him on the eve of Passover. Yeshu was different because he was close to government.’ So now you have the Toldoth Jeshua in harmony with that passage from the Talmud and both confirming it was the eve of the Passvoer and that this individual was named Jeshua or Jesus.
Once again the Toldoth Jehsua is providing some interesting aspects that other than in Caiaphas Letters, no one else has ever mentioned. For almost a month and a half there’s this attempt to try and create a case so that he can’t be touched. The emphasis in Toldoth Jeshua was they they tried to prove him innocent asking people to come forward to clear and exonerate him. Very different from the condemning version in the Talmud. But when it came to the night of the trial, those that were supposed to exonerate him never came through. In other words, Peter didn’t do his part of the plan. The writer of the Toldoth Jeshua tries to explain this special treatment of trying to save him was due to the fact that he was close to government. Well, they might as well have said because he was related to the High Priest because the only Jewish government at the time was the High Priest, and to be close was another way of implying a familial relationship. It also says that he was being helped by the High Priest at the time who just happened to be Caiaphas. Again this confirms the High Priest family connection I described in Caiaphas Letters.

The question one has to answer is why, if as in the Toldoth Jeshua there is recorded a definite attempt by the officials in Judea to save Jesus, and this book was based on original documentation from much earlier times, why would a group of supposedly educated men, paragons of virtue write such a stupid and inaccurate thing in the Talmud that actually suggests the Sanhedrin wanted to kill Jesus. The answer is simple; they couldn’t stop themselves. The whole idea behind the Talmud was to write as much down as they could remember because there was no central stores or archives left following the destruction of the Temple. Then they would analyze and embellish what they had written. But in a lot of the cases, this embellishment was merely the addition of hearsay and innuendo. Their memories of events may have been poor, but their imaginations certainly were not. They were in overdrive. They didn’t even try to be accurate. By the time the Talmud was being written, Christianity was already becoming the new power and Jews were already being persecuted by this new religion. So why not tell a very disparaging story and gloat about the death of the Christian messiah. Human nature has remained a constant throughout history. And this was one way of saying, “in your face, buddy! Stupid, yes, but then these supposedly intelligent men never thought the Talmud would be read by anyone that wasn't Jewish.
In their minds they were disproving the claims of Christianity by saying they were responsible for the death of Jesus. After all, how could he be the son of God, or for that matter, even the messiah, if they could kill him? So this invented story of theirs became our own undoing. We suffered because they gloated. But worst of all, they gloated over an entirely false and ludicrous story that they created for their own personal egos.”
Now one might point out that as a Karaite, I have no fondness for the Rabbis of old, I certainly don't give any credence to the Talmud and therefore I view them in a negative light. True, I admit it. We suffered for two thousand years because of their misguided beliefs. Had they only stayed to the facts, I think they would have found that most educated people would have understood what occurred in the framework of the time and circumstances. I'm not naive and saying that the early Church would not have pursued its policy of deicide if they hadn’t written the inaccurate story of Jesus into the Talmud but I don’t believe the persecutions would have been conducted as vehemently as they were. What you have in the Gospels is the story of Caiaphas sending Jesus to Antipas, and then to Pilate. Pilate pronounced sentence and Roman soldiers performed the execution. You actually have evidence of the Jewish authorities abdicating their responsibility and handing it over to these other powers. Therefore the role of the Jewish authorities is minimalized.
When you read about the confrontation between the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew, and the Nasi, Yakov Kahana in Shadows of Trinity, you are seeing the two worlds of Karaism and Judaism clash. The former regarding the Talmud as the work of foolish men and the latter that deemed themselves worthy of interpreting Gods words, convinced that there were hidden meanings, detailed instructions, and numerous restrictions behind every word. But as the above story has pointed out, words can be very dangerous when they used improperly. Less would have definitely been better!

Fighting Windmills

Why should we bother to challenge the accepted historical beliefs if it only means that we in turn become the target of those offended that we 'dared' to confront the established truths? Why is it that in order to protect the established historical beliefs, threats and prejudice are perfectly acceptable? Is it that accepted history is built on so fragile a platform that those dedicated to preserving it know that at any given moment it could crumble to dust?
Those familiar with my writing, blogs and books know that I am classified as an alternative historian. It doesn't mean that my material is any less factual, it only indicates that I'm constantly challenging the norm. And why not? I'm the one in possession of the facts,the dates, the material that demonstrates what they classify as alternative history is in most probability actual history and that which is being taught in many respects is the glorified hype of those that held the reigns of power to make their version the standard. It happens every day. In Japan, you will never hear of the atrocities committed by their army in World War II, though you can read of what occurred on my friend Patrick's blogspot http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=112016879904&h=5F36D&u=70E45&ref=nf to read of some ot these horrible deeds. In Germany one year my friend Hans Hildebrand gave me a completely different version of the holocaust in much of it was laid at the feet of the Poles as their doing, and even now as I speak, the Arab world and Russia are busily rewriting their national histories in order "educate" their populations in the truth. It's common practice. History is a political tool and always has been.
So when I write from a Karaite perspective of events in Jewish history, I expect to feel the backlash. A minority within a minority has no real authority at all. In fact,how little it registers was made perfectly clear in a conversation with an Israeli girl that I had yesterday. She was down here in New Zealand marketing a product and was surprised when I began to speak a little Hebrew to her. It was the limit of my vocabulary so even describing it as a little Hebrew may be too generous It was the first she heard from anyone in this country and wanted to know where I had picked it up. When I explained that I was Karaim, her eyes lit up and she told me how she once dated an Egyptian Jew. In her mind, all Egyptian Jews were Karaites and that was the definition of the word. And then she commented that I didn't look Egyptian.
I could have taken the time to explain that the roots of the Karaim were in Mesopotamia. That the Egyptian population was only one little segment. I could have explaiined the migration history of how we were slowly pushed further and further from centres like Baghdad and Mahoza after Anan ibn David established the tenents of Karaite Judaism in 769 and how in 940 we were attacked and driven from our homes by Saadiah Gaon to the North West to take up residence in the lands around the Black Sea. I even could have spoken of how the Crimean Peninsula became one of the larger population centres of Karaites to be seconded by Bessarabia and Romania. I even could have spoken of how the Rabbinate forbade marriages between rabbinate Jews and Karaite Jews unless the latter abandoned its beliefs and declared them to be false. During World War II, there were recorded findings by the Nazis as they invaded Romania of their enounter with the Karaite population and a request from Berlin to send orders as to whether they should be treated no differently from the rabbinate Jewish populations. You see, the Karaites presented a problem. As the Nazi's were ingrained with their stereotypical version of what Jews should look like, they were not prepared to find a subpopulation that were six feet tall, some with blonde hair and more eastern features. Berlin's final decision was to not include them in it's persecution as it had determined they were actually Tartars and not Jews at all. How ironic that Hitler's final solution would never have been final at all. As Karaites we would have survived.
But, there wasn't the time to try and explain this, and considering that her entire exposure to Karaite history was that she had an Egyptian Jewish boyfriend and that was the only defining point made me realize that even in Israel there is a failure to provide the 'alternative history'. There is no intention to highlight the differences; the goal being that you melt and blend everyone and everything into a singualar pot.
So in answer to my initial questions of why do we do it? Why do we challenge the windmills only to know that we will be beaten back again and again? We do it because it is right or should I say 'write'. Even Don Quixote had his moments of victory.

Vampires, Monsters and a Sadistic Pope

There are times I really have to wonder what was actually transpiring in that latter part of the 16th century. For those that have had the opportunity to read Shadows of Trinity you're already aware of the situation in Prague and have a good insight into the personality of Pope Sixtus V, whom was already recongised as a butcher by the time the story took place. But it would appear that he was not alone in his desire to shed blood in the most horrific fashions. In fact, there were those performing acts that defy imagination and yet they were in positions of power and social esteem that renders the atrocities inconceivable. Whatever the Golem did, as explained in the novel, paled in comparison to these paragons of Church and Society.
One such paragon was the Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614. Residing in her castle in Slovakia,even though she was referred to as being Hungarian, she was not to distant from the events taking place in Shadows of Trinity. With her inherited wealth, she was one of Hungary's wealthiest women and I wouldn't be surprised if she visited Prague on a regular basis. Like many of the aristocracy in Europe, the inbreeding of families left a genetic imprint that disable young Elizabeth from time to time. From the age of four and a half she began suffering from epileptic fits. Despite being arrogant and spoiled, she was still regarded as intelligent and a suitable prize in marriage.
Therefore it was no surprise when Count Fernencz Nadasdy came knocking on the castle door to ask for the then fifteen year old Elizabeth's hand in marriage. They wed and took up residence in Csjethe Castle in Transylvania. Never one to stay at home, Fernencz left Elizabeth on her own frequently but made certain that he was home long enough to father several children. His long absences drove his wife though to the bring of madness.
In the early 1580's, Elizabeth could no longer deal with the loneliness and the boredom and sought entertainment by torturing her servants. Not just any servants. She exhibited a predilection for young teenage females. The level of the torture which I'm about to describe exceeds even what we would consider sadistic. By all accounts, her tastes were monstrous. She enjoyed playing with fire and this translated into placing combustible wads between the toes of the girls and then setting them alight. As the wads burned, the Countess watched the girls do their frantic dance in an attempt to dislodge them. If she was really bored, Elizabeth would just set the girls on fire and burn them alive. Applying red-hot pincers to various body parts was also a common passtime. Not one to keep the entertainment all to herself, the Countess would force the girls to perform their household duties in full view of male guests that she would invite to her castle. Even her husband would participate in the torture of the girls whenever he returned from his travels.
Fortunately for their son and two daughters they were never involved in witnessing the tortures and their nannies made certain to keep them far enough away from their mother that they were never the victims either.
Some will say that as the Countess's sadistic tastes grew wilder and more extreme, not even her husband could stomach them any longer and his absences grew more frequent. By the time the events of Shadows of Trinity were taking place, Elizabeth already had a string of young men that satisfied her sexual needs but like a black widow spider they never had the opportunity to brag about their conquests of the Countess in the castle. Oddly, even though these crimes were quite evident, as young girls and men disappeared from the countryside, this never became a concern for the Pope that summoned the three heroes to stop the Golem's rampage without even a thought of what was happening nearby. Perhaps this was because the Countess never turned her attentions to the clergy and unlike the Golem wasn't responsible for the death of his nephew.
With the continuous absences of her husband the Countess grew steadily convinced that perhas it was because she was no longer young enough or pretty enough to keep him interested. Her victims of her tortures became as a result girls that were younger and whom she considered prettier. The vanity of the stepmother/witch of Snow White couldn't hold a candle to Elizbeth as she invented new forms of torture in which to delight. One day while having her hair combed, he maidservant accidentally pulled her hair and Elizabeth slapped the girl hard across the face cutting her lip. A few droplets of blood had splashed on to the back of her hand and the Countess became convinced that where it had contacted her skin it was now smoother and softer. At that point she consulted with Ana Darvulia, a local witch that provided potions to the Countess for various ailments and Darvulia explained that the blood of virgins had magical properties one of which was the restoration of youth. No sooner did Elizabeth hear that when she ordered the handmaid's throat cut and her blood drained into her bath. Thus began the end for many a young girl in the community as hundreds were kidnapped and used to fill the bath with blood. Rumour had it that Elizabeth would bite their necks and drink the blood that flowed from the puncture marks she made.
Elizabeth continued her sadistic ritual unabated for years. By the time it ended the number tallied over 600, confirmed by the record book that the Countess kept in her writing desk. The bodies had been burned, buried beneath the castle floors, or tossed into the forests to be devoured by wolves.
Not a word was said and especially not by the clergy who's Pope had a tally of closer to thirty thousand victims of his "so called" freeing the highways of bandits campaign. It wasn't until Elizabeth turned her attentions to young noble girls that the cries of murderer were actually made. Desperate to seek new blood, the Countess stablished a boarding school for girls of noble birth. In this case finishing school meant exactly what it claimed.
Emperor Matthias sent Count Thurzo, to conduct a raid of the castle. What he found horrified them all. One dead girl in the central foyer, one whose body had been pierced with holes barely alive. Several more hanging from the basement rafters their blood draining into the Countess's vat.
In 1610, the Countess and her accomplices were placed on trial. Her husband had been dead for six years already thus escaping justice. They were all found guilty and executed except for the Countess whom was ordered to be imprisoned in a small room of her castle until she died.
This real life Dracula finally died in 1614. Her legancy remains in our legends of Vampires and the haunting of Transylvania. Since my ancestors resided in Peatra Neamt for several generations, the stories of Transylvania were quite well known to them. But what is most remarkable is that for a period of fifty years, some of the most horrific evils were being perpretrated under the reign of Emperor Rudolf II. By comparion, the Golem of Prague, later to become Mary Shelly's Frankenstein monster was not even worth considering to be a monster when standing along side Countess Elizabeth Bathory. But the fact that these two distinct and separate episodes occurred almost simultaneously points to the comments made by Pope Sixus V when he summoned the three, Caesar de Nostradame, Giordano Bruno and Yakov Kahana to stop the murders in Prague, that Armegeddon was upon them. And there is no reason to doubt that in the span of years from 1580 to 1600 there was every reason to believe that Pope Sixtus, a monster in his own right was correct.

Shadows of Trinity on the Shelf

Nothing heavy to write about today. Just good news that Shadows of Trinity has made it on to its first bookshelf. That's a big day as any author who's books are sold through elecronic web based outlets can tell you. Mind you, it's only one local store but it is part of the Take Note chain and Paper Plus chain so there's always the potential if it does well in one store it will start spreading through the chain until it's in hundreds of stores around the country. Every book has to begin its life somewhere and now that Shadows of Trinty has had its baptism, we will have to watch and see what a little publicity can do.

The Curse: War Of The Amelekites

Now one might presume from the title that I’m going to write a discourse on an ancient people that are nothing more than a speck on the tapestry of history and exist only as a footnote to the pages of antiquity. But there in itself lies the anomaly because as an ancient people they were never eradicated as had been commanded by God (see Exodus and Samuel I)and therefore became part of an eternal curse upon the Children of Israel. To those whom have heard my discourses upon this subject in the past, they are well aware of not only how God’s promises are everlasting, but so are His curses if he intends them to be so. It would be naïve of us to presume that He only issues positive utterances and the opposite cannot be true. As He clearly states to Moses, He is both the merciful God as well as the wrathful God. The Lord of redemption and the Lord of vengeance.
First we must examine who were these Amelekites that are mentioned several times in the pages of the Old Testament and why would they be of any significance today. We first encounter the Amelekites through the wanderings of the Children of Israel through the wilderness. They are the semi-nomadic inhabitants of the desert. Those areas that comprise the Negev, the Sinai and Saudi Arabia. They do have some cities under their control, as is mentioned in the Bible and there is also a king that reigns over them. In other words, they are the forerunners of the Bedouin and Arab populations of what was once referred to as the Trans-Jordan.
Now, the Amelekites were a fierce and warlike people that given a choice between peace and battle, tended to choose the latter as it was part of their psyche. When Moses and the Children of Israel requested to pass through the land, promising not to turn left nor right, but to march towards Canaan without disturbing the Amelekites’s existence, they were refused. This refusal earned these desert people the anger and retribution of God, and he made it very clear that he would put an end to their violent ways. There would be a day of reckoning for the Amelekites.
That day came once Saul was anointed as King of Israel. The prophet Samuel advises Saul, that God will hand the Amelekites over to Israel and it would be Saul’s responsibility following the battle to ensure that they are obliterated from the face of the earth. Such was to be their punishment. Not to be reduced, not to become enslaved, not even absorbed. Total elimination, down to every last man, woman and child. Extremely harsh, when you first examine the judgement, but one that was not open for debate or question. Unlike his dealings with Abraham, God was not willing to negotiate with Saul. As one reads through the book of Samuel I, the impression is given that Saul did eliminate the population after defeating their army in battle. But we know this is not true, because as its described in Samuel II, David had to meet the Amelekites in battle much later, and although he defeated them, they continue to appear in the history of the Kings of Israel and Judah. Whenever there appears to be an opposing force united for the purpose of defeating the Jews, the Amelekites are there.
So why then does it say that they were eliminated? Therein lies one of the problems with setting oral tradition into written scripture. It can be influenced by the personal leanings of the editor or redactor. As religiously scrupulous as they may have been, it would have been difficult to accept that God, whom is love and mercy, could also be wrath and vengeance. Yet God tells us that himself in the Bible. He openly admits it. He’s prepared to make the tough decisions when He knows that ultimately it would be to the benefit and safety of those He loves. Would not any father be prepared to defend his child by whatever means was necessary even if it meant killing the attacker? And in this case, He knew very well what the future would bring if the Amelekites were permitted to continue to exist.
It tells us in the Bible that when Samuel came to see Saul after the battle, he heard the bleating of the sheep taken from the Amelekites and he was filled with rage at Saul’s defiance of the instructions from God. “Not one sheep, nor cattle beast, nor possession of the Amelekites was to be taken from them and kept alive,” he screamed at Saul. The King defended himself by saying that the animals were taken to be a sacrifice to God to celebrate the victory and that there was no intention to keep the animals alive, which may have been very true, but the editor of the story took Samuel completely literally, and the prophet was anything but literal. What Samuel had heard were the wails of the children of the Amelekites, the cries of their woman, and the moaning of their men from within the camps of the Israelites. Taking prisoners from what remained of the enemy for household servants was quite common back then. It was part of what was referred to as the spoils of the victors, and it was the presence of these ‘spoils’ for which Samuel condemned Saul and his family. It was never about the bleating of sheep!
And the curse was quite clear as it is expressed in the Book of Samuel. Saul’s reign over Israel would come to an end for himself and his family and the Kingdom of Israel would be handed over to its neighbour. Most commonly, this was seen as a prophetic statement alluding to David as the future King. But what kind of prophecy would this be, considering that it was Samuel, himself, that had the authority to anoint a new king if he so desired. If it was that simple, then it really wouldn’t be a prophecy at all, but merely a political decision made by Samuel to demonstrate his displeasure in Saul’s disobedience. And why use the reference to neighbour? Yes, we can argue that the tribe of Benjamin was surrounded by its Judahite neighbours, but this doesn’t make sense in a monarchical structure which had unified the tribal confederacy into a single people. Benjaminites and Judahites were Israelites at this point and not neighbours since the borders were now gone.
No, it is clear that the intent of this curse was to be far more reaching and severe than a mere change of ruling family would suggest. It wasn’t a punishment to be borne by the House of Saul alone; all of Israel was guilty of the sin. In its entirety, the victorious Israelite army had committed the affront to God by disobeying his orders and taking into their households prisoners of war that they intended to keep as part of the share of the spoils of victory. Therefore any curse would have to be a punishment for all of Israel.
Israel’s neighbours were the Amelekites; the same people that were supposedly defeated. We can also state that this would apply to the Amorites and the Moabites, and the Philistines, etc., but in this particular instance, it was only the Amelekites that God was referring to. They would be the instruments of his punishment. In the same way they were intended to be part of the reward for Israel’s faith, by which their armies were handed over to be decimated and the security of Israel would have been secured everlasting had they done as they had been instructed. Now that same people would become the bane of Israel’s existence. The Kingdom of Israel would be plagued by constant overthrow, attacks and acts of terror by the neighbours they had let survive. We have our first instance of the mirror policies of God. Where the reverse reflection can be as real as the actual entity standing in front of the mirror. The failure of one is to the advantage of the other.
The presence of this curse is clearly evident. Throughout its entire existences as the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the territorial provinces of Galilee, Samaria, Judea, or Idumaea, this neighbour has surfaced time and time again to wreak havoc upon the Jews. In fact, it was during the reign of the Herodian family that we witnessed the pinnacle of this ancient curse. When Amelekites, then referred to as Idumeans, had risen so high within the political arena of Judaea, that Herod and his descendants actually wore the crown of Israel upon their heads. Now, you should be able to see how prophetic the words of Samuel truly were. After all, he was Samuel the Prophet, not Samuel the king-maker, and unless we recognise that the Books of Samuel truly are prophetic, then his title wouldn’t make too much sense since the books in his name on first appearance seem to be merely chronicles.
Understanding the prophetic nature of this curse then explains much of what has transpired in the Land of Israel for the past two thousand years. Exactly as it was foretold, it has come to pass. The land would seesaw between Israel and its neighbour. The neighbour would be a constant and perpetual thorn in Israel’s side. Whenever, a Kingdom of the Jews would rise to power, or attempt to do so, this neighbour would continually try to upset the balance and attempt to seize the kingdom for itself. In essence, the Amelekites are doing nothing more than following the path that God had set for them three thousand years ago when Israel failed to carry out their instructions and obliterate them as a people.
Once more a Kingdom of Israel exists in the world. Certainly, we don’t refer to it as a kingdom in its current existence. It’s a state, a democratic country, which stands alone in a sea of hostile Arab kingdoms. But political reality and religious reality don’t have to be perfectly aligned. State, kingdom, republic, or principality, it really doesn’t matter when it comes to curses. The fact remains that its very existence means that the Amelekites are duty bound to try and deconstruct Israel for no other purpose than it exists.
Rather than refer to the other indigenous people of the Middle east as Palestinians, it would be far more appropriate to refer to them by their true origins, as descendants of those semi-nomadic people of the wilderness areas of the Trans Jordan that had infiltrated over the centuries into the Land of Israel during those times when a population vacuum was created by the dispersion of the Jews into foreign lands by the conquering powers. They are Amelekites. They have been so for thousands of years, and they will forever remain so.
Therefore it is imperative that we understand, who these people are. The actual rationale for their belligerence and persistent hatred of the Jewish people. This unnatural detestation of Jews, since it must be remembered that their acts of terrorism have not been isolated to Israelis, but to Jews the world over. And when they talk of destroying Israel it is the intentional driving the Jews in the sea not Israelis that they make allusion to. An abhorrence that goes far beyond land control issues, since the desire is not merely have governance over the land but to eliminate the presence of Jews from the land itself and the world over. Those that may try to suggest now that their expressions of ‘driving the Jews into the sea’ were merely rhetoric and not based on actual intent have little understanding of their motivation. Recognising that they are the descendants of the Amelekites makes everything perfectly clear. They have no other options but to act in the manner in which they do. Their actions are predetermined by a curse that has been infused into the core of their existence since the days of Saul and Samuel. And not until they become reconciled with their past can this vicious circle be broken. Either they must let the Children of Israel pass safely into the land of Canaan unmolested, thereby rectifying the original curse that had been placed upon their heads, or they must bear the consequence of God’s demand to Saul to eliminate them from the face of the earth, and in so doing, the curse becomes lifted from Israel once and for all. Clearly the choice of how this is to end is in the hands of the Amelekites.

Curses are a funny thing. You try not to beleive in them, but the reality is that you can't escape them. As I write the stories, those published such as Blood Royale and Shadows Of Trinity, and those hopefully soon to be published such as Deliverance and Zutra, I realize that just as there exists this perpetual curse on Israel and the Palestinian or Arab neighbours, there is also one that has existed on my family history as well. No matter how far we have risen, whether in Southern France or Mesopotamia, or Galicia, etc., we, being the Kahana, never fully achieve the freedom that we are destined to fight for. Everyone of those ancestors died in their efforts to achieve that particular goal for their people. How does one break the curse? As with the Amelekite Curse it can only be achieved when a completely different approach is taken. I'll let you know if I find it!