There was a Jewish revolt in Judea. Looking back into history more than 2000 years, there was a forced population transfer.
When many in the world are at loggerheads about a voluntary relocation, not expulsion, of Arabs from the Gaza Strip in order to make a better life for them than living under the rule of terrorism and squalor and ruins, we must ask this question: who was forcibly expelled from Israel in 70 AD?
The answer is, many Jews were expelled by force and against their will from Judea, in 70 AD, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple.
The Jews revolting against the Roman Empire invader, in 66 CE, was ferocious but a chance taking. After four years of fighting, in 70 C.E., the Romans crushed the rebellion and destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The Romans massacred much of the population. Today, that would be called genocide.
Jewish Revolt and Its Sequence
Though some Jews remained in the land of Israel, most were exiled or fled the country, thus beginning a two-thousand year odyssey in the Diaspora, until the 3rd Jewish Commonwealth was established in 1948, called the State of Israel.
The forced population transfer of Jews from the land of Israel in 70 C.E. is referred to as the beginning of the “Jewish Diaspora.”
It occurred following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the First Jewish-Roman War, causing a widespread forced dispersal of Jewish people across the Roman Empire and beyond, primarily to regions like Mesopotamia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean basin, and some to Rome itself.
Rome Occupied the Land of Israel
From almost the beginning of the Common Era, Roman procurators ruled over Judea. Their chief responsibility was to collect and deliver an annual tax to the empire. Not surprisingly, they often imposed confiscatory taxes. To add to already injurious rule over the Judeans, Rome took over the appointment of the High Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem. The result was that the High Priests, whose work was to represent the Jews before God, increasingly came from the ranks of Jews who collaborated with Rome.
At the beginning of the Common Era, a new group of anti-Roman rebels who were called Zealots (in Hebrew, Ka-na-im), arose among the Jews.
These rebels, who were active for more than six decades, wanted to attain political and religious liberty in the land of Israel.
Roman Emperor Caligula Self-Aggrandized
In the year 39 C.E., the half-crazed Roman Emperor Caligula declared himself to be a deity and ordered his statue to be set up at every temple in the Roman Empire.
Jews’ anti-Roman feelings were seriously exacerbated during his reign.
The Jews refused Caligula’s command. They would not defile their God’s Temple with a statue of a pagan, Rome’s self-declared newest deity.
In return, Caligula threatened to destroy the Temple. A delegation of Jews was sent to pacify him, to no avail. Caligula raged and his sudden, violent death saved the Jews from wholesale massacre and their Temple from desecration.
The Judeans realized that they had no assurance that another Roman ruler would not arise and try to defile their Temple, or destroy Judaism altogether; if not simply turn their country into ashes.
The Zealots believed that if they courageously confronted Rome, God would fight alongside them.
After Caligula’s death, Jews witnessed Judaism being a subject of periodic Roman gross indignities.
The revolt was the outcome of the combination of financial exploitation, Rome’s appalling contempt for Judaism, and the unabashed favoritism that the Romans extended to gentiles living in the land of Israel.
Temporary Win
As fuzzy history tells us, in the year 66, Julius Florus, the last Roman procurator in the land of Israel, stole vast quantities of silver from the Temple. Outraged Jews rioted and wiped out the small Roman garrison stationed in Jerusalem. Cestius Gallus, the neighboring Roman ruler in Syria, sent in a larger force of soldiers to help Florus. The Jewish insurgents routed them.
This victory had a terrible consequence. Many Jews suddenly became convinced that they could defeat Rome. The Zealots’ ranks grew geometrically, yet, never again did the Jews achieve so decisive a victory until the State of Israel was established in 1948.
The Romans Returned
The Romans returned with 60,000 heavily armed and highly professional troops. They vanquished the Galilee, the Jewish state’s most radicalized area, and an estimated 100,000 Jews were killed or captured and sold into slavery.
While the Romans conquered the Galilee territory, the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem did little to help their beleaguered brothers. They probably figured out – too late unfortunately – that the revolt was not winnable. They wanted to minimize Jewish deaths.
Jerusalem became the last major Jewish stronghold for the embittered refugees who managed to escape the Galilean massacres.
During that time Jews killed the Jewish leadership who were not as radical as they were. All the more moderate Jewish leaders who headed the Jewish government at the revolt’s beginning in 66 C.E. were dead by 68 C.E.
The Revolt’s Final Catastrophe
The scene was now set. Outside Jerusalem the Roman troops prepared to put a siege on the city. Inside the city, the Jews were engaged in a civil war.
History tells us that years later rabbis declared that the revolt’s failure, and the Temple’s destruction, were due to causeless hatred (sin’at Chinam) among the Jews, not the Roman military superiority.
However, while the Romans’ win was of no doubt, the Jewish civil war both hastened their victory and immensely increased Jewish casualties.
As history tells us, while expecting the Roman siege, Jerusalem’s Jews stockpiled a supply of dry food that could have fed the city for many years. Then one of the combatant Zealot factions burned the entire supply, foolishly hoping that destroying this survival “security blanket” would compel all Jews to participate in the revolt.
The starvation that ensued caused suffering as great as anything the Romans inflicted.
The Roman Siege Climax
During the summer of 70 C.E., the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem and violence and destruction were the theme. Shortly thereafter, they destroyed the Second Temple, the last standing Temple till today. This was the final and most devastating Roman blow against Judea and the Jewish people.
It is estimated that some million Jews died in the Great Revolt against Rome.
When people speak of their almost two-thousand-year span of Jewish homelessness and exile, they date it from the failure of the revolt and destruction of the Temple. That was not the end of the story.
The Great Revolt of 66-70 was followed some sixty years later by the Bar Kokhba – 132-135 C.E. – a revolt that brought about the greatest calamities in Jewish history prior to the Holocaust.
Saving Judaism
We do know that some great figures of ancient Israel opposed the revolt, most notably Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, an important Jewish sage during the late Second Temple period during the transformative post-destruction era.
Since the Zealot leaders ordered the execution of anyone advocating surrender to Rome, Rabbi Yochanan arranged for his disciples to smuggle him, disguised as a corpse, out of Jerusalem’s walls. Once safe, he personally surrendered to the Roman general Vespasian, who granted him concessions that allowed Jewish life – communal and religious – to continue.
Diaspora Jews
While more than a million Jews were killed, the two failed rebellions against Rome caused the total loss of Jewish political authority in Israel until 1948. That loss in itself exacerbated the magnitude of later Jewish catastrophes, since it precluded the land of Israel from being used as a refuge for the large numbers of Jews fleeing persecution elsewhere.
While in exile from their ancestral land, literally dispersed to all four corners of the world, Jews faced forced conversion, mainly to Christianity. They were held as 2nd class citizens in the host countries and faced anti-Semitism and blood libels and loss of life. Often they were exiled from a host country at the will of the ruler. For example, Britain’s 1290 expulsion, and Spain’s 1492 Inquisition were both the result of centuries of persecution and antisemitism.
The Diaspora Jews were the constant target of bias and the local communities’ trampling. They were landless people with no way to return, until the Zionist movement, headed by Theodore-Zeev Herzl took root at the end of the 19th century. It culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel.
The loss of Jews over the last 2000 years could be estimated at 100 million Jews who we can say evaporated into thin air.
Hamas Volunteer Population Transfer vs Jews’ Forced Expulsion
Hamas has been ruling Gaza since 2007. The pathetic lie of “Israeli occupation” of Gaza is the terrorist mantra. The world misses the point that Hamas and its minions see the state of Israel as territory occupied by Jews, which Hamas wants to destroy and kill each Jew living there.
Their main aim is not only to occupy the land, but to occupy it free of Jews.
The same situation exists in Judea and Samaria. In 1967 Israel was forced to fight the Six Day War launched by the surrounding Arab nations. In this war one participant, Jordan, the illegal occupier of the area, to which it had assigned the name “West Bank,” lost the war. Israel liberated the Judea and Samaria regions from where Jordan maintained constant hostilities toward Israel for 19 years.
After the 1967 war, it was appropriate to transfer the hostile Arab population from Judea and Samaria. However Israel did the opposite. It generously gave these Arabs land on which they established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and from where they have been launching murderous terrorism ever since. These PA Arabs also believe that the Jews are occupying the land of Israel which belongs to them and they would like to see Israel destroyed and all Jews living there killed.
Neither Gaza nor the PA area have as much as one Jew living there.
When the world is appalled by and rejects the notion of giving the Gazans a better life in some peaceful parts of the world, by voluntary relocation, they call it forced population transfer by the Jews. I strongly suggest they first learn about the forced expulsion of Jews 2000 years back in history.
