The Ashkenazi Revolution

27people was enough to force the king of Assyria to lay siege to the small cityof Samaria for three years, and Nebuchadnezar to lay a similar siege uponthe small city of Jerusalem.The struggle between prophetic pacifism and the rebellious spirit of thePeople of Israel, during the days of the First Temple, is a subject thatcommentators and historians have written much about. A large majority ofthem are counted among those who take a moderate stance, who makeefforts to fit the People of Israel into the congregation of peoples, as aworthy people. This is the goal that the prophet Isaiah strived to attain. Inaddition to this, later generations are dazzled by the glitter and power of thewords of the prophets. In contrast, only a few documents remain thatrepresent the opinions and feelings of the other side, the kings, the priests,the military and the masses. It seems to me that the cult of scribes andprophets preferred the burial of such documents. Had they wished them toremain, they would have come down to us. Under these circumstances,history and biblical commentary are biased toward the prophets and theyportray the other side as mistaken. But this approach, which seeks topresent the prophesy of Israel as greater than the history of Israel, has noscientific basis. The history of Israel during the First Temple, an amazingepisode of a small people fighting against the giants of the ancient world, isunique in its kind and its value is much greater than the wonderful literaryand spiritual products of the cult of prophets. Furthermore: Only theJewish wars and only the Jewish rebellions, gave strength and weight toprophesy, for if this were not so, its words would be the literarydocumentation of a subjugated and downtrodden people. Regarding theseachievers of the First Temple, the fighters and the rebels who confoundedthe plans of great empires, it is fitting that the official stance toward themin the State of Israel, within its education and research establishments,undergo a fundamental change and be entirely different from what it istoday.As for prophesy being, to a large extent, also a propaganda tool for theintellectual class, which was composed of scribes and prophets, thesurprising scarcity of biographical material about the prophets testifies to