Here is a BBC account of excavations in Gaza.
These were the bones of the ancient Greek city of Antidon. And they were testimony to the extraordinary richness of Gaza’s past.
Not only the Greeks passed this way. The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Turks, the British and many others left their mark on Gaza.
Missing anyone?
Now I don’t pretend to know whether Israel should have disengaged from Gaza, but to write a piece on the history of that area and and talk as if Jews were never there is downright sinister. This article describes the history of Jews in Gaza.
Keep reading Alan Johnston’s BBC piece. Napoleon gets a mention, but you won’t find Judah, who “took Gaza with the coast threof” somewhat earlier in history (Judges 1:18). You won’t find Jews mentioned at all.
All you’ll find is this piece of BBC boilerplate:
In line with Israel’s plan to “disengage” [What are the scare quotes for? – NS] from the Gaza Strip, it abandoned the settlements that it had built here in breach of international law.
In case you forgot.
Hat tip: My Right Word.
I’m amazed they didn’t use quotes for Israel.
Don’t give them any ideas!
It’s the BBC putting the holes in holy.
Seems like they will be rewriting the bible to match their version of events. Probably call it “The Holey Beeble”
The article even has the cheek to say
Heritage ‘overlooked’
It is a heritage almost entirely overlooked.
There is another face of Gaza – there is culture and archaeology and history
Khalid Abdul Shafi, UNDP in Gaza
Around the world, Gaza is seen only as a deeply troubled place – a bloody arena in the Palestinians’ confrontation with Israel.
But efforts are being made now to present a fuller picture.
The Palestinian Authority has approved a plan to build a national archaeological museum in Gaza.
Land has been set aside, and the United Nations is helping to develop the project.
Something’s certainly being overlooked, and we don;t have to look further than the BBC to see whos doing it. What’s the bet that the PA’s museum will omit any reference to Jewish archaeological remains there?
Yes, that’s Alan Johnston, master propagandist. He’s adept at the emotional, dramatic subtext. He never claims that the Palestinians have a right to Gaza – because he would have to do the impossible and prove it – but implies it by breathing new life into that tired old theme of ‘illegal’ Israeli ‘occupation’.
On reading his article, someone with no knowledge of the history of Gaza will get the impression that, after its turbulent past, it’s now been returned to its rightful inhabitants.
About a year ago I listened to a World Service report of Johnston’s on an IDF incursion into Gaza. It revolved around a sixteen-year-old Palestinian girl who had been killed by a bullet fired through the window of the family home. Utilising the emotional, anti-Israeli outburst of the girl’s father, Johnston skilfully steered his audience towards the inevitable conclusion that the girl had been killed, perhaps even deliberately, by the Israelis, without offering a shred of evidence that the bullet had come from an Israeli weapon rather than a Palestinian one.
Johnston is good. Very good.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4429608.stm
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri has reportedly died.
Apparently he “was diagnosed with leukaemia several years ago – but his subsequent recovery enabled him to pursue a challenging domestic and foreign work schedule.”
Makes him sound like Jack Straw!
Yep – it must be tough to fit in all those chemical weapon deployments in Kurdistan and the supression of the Shia in the south into one’s schedule when one is Saddam’s right-hand man!
O/T
Carol Gould links to another article including references to blatantly biased remarks by a former BBC Middle East bureau chief – Tim Llewellyn, in a debate at Trinity College, Dublin.
Blaming America First
…Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East bureau chief, began by charging that in Iraq there have been “more casualties of civilians by Americans than by insurgents.” He announced: “George Bush is a threat to world peace on so many levels we can’t begin to discuss it.”
So he didn’t try. Instead he turned to the topic that really fires him up: Israel. Yasser Arafat, he said, had been correct to reject the offer of statehood made at the Camp David peace summit of 2000 because it was “a pro-Zionist type of approach.” In other words, it would have allowed the Jewish state to survive. He clearly found that a distasteful prospect.
I was not surprised. At dinner prior to the debate, he’d noted that he had heard a BBC host cut off a caller who wanted to discuss Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.” The caller didn’t see what was so terrible about this idea and didn’t understand why Prime Minister Tony Blair had felt obliged to denounce it. Llewellyn lamented that there now seems to be a taboo against expressing such opinions.
Charlie was so flabbergasted by Llewellyn’s anti-Israeli diatribe that he detoured from the arguments he had planned to make regarding the resolution on global stability. Instead, he attempted to rebut such inaccuracies as Llewellyn’s assertion that Israel “was stealing more Palestinian land every day” • pointing out that Israel had just withdrawn from every inch of Gaza.
Reading that report from the debate at Trinity College Dublin, I am amazed that so many apparently intelligent people can convince themselves of such lies. In fact, what it reminded me of was a revivalist meeting (“Damn that Bush!” “Hallelujah!”) or perhaps a meeting of alcoholics anonymous, e.g. “I am American and I am ashamed” (cue gales of self-righteous laughter or sympathetic applause).
After all, 2,000 media studies students who can barely spell can’t all be wrong, surely?
Re Tim Llewellyn, this article
The story TV news won’t tell
For 10 years Tim Llewellyn was the BBC’s Middle East correspondent. In this passionately argued polemic he accuses British broadcasters, including his former employer, of systematic bias in covering the Arab-Israeli conflict, giving undue prominence to the views of Jerusalem while disregarding the roots of the crisis
Sunday June 20, 2004
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1242833,00.html
Orla Guerin, the BBC’s fearless and candid Middle East correspondent, drew on herself not for the first time unwarranted Israeli wrath recently when she reported how the Israeli army had kept a Palestinian boy in a bomb belt waiting at his, and everyone else’s, peril while the camera crews showed up. She told viewers, ‘these are the pictures the Israelis wanted the world to see’. The Israelis did, of course, but they did not want such frank exposure of their cynicism.
Fancy putting a would be suicide bomber “at peril”.
Total lunacy.
According to the book of Judges, Gaza was the city where Samson defeated the Philistines.Why was there no mention of this fact in the article? Was it because the Jew won?
It was an event which inspired artists, a poem by Milton, and musical works by Handel and others. What does all that matter to the Beeb?
Nice one, Teddy Bear. I’m pleased to see so many people at last recognising al-beeb’s brand of revisionism.
Yesterday on News 24 Paul Adams, the son of CAABU founder,the late Michael Adams, came up against one Mr Regev from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The well-spoken and fluent Israeli had Adams on the run as the beeboid tried unsuccessfully to steer the “interview” along pro-Palestinian lines. Regev simply mouthed the facts about many aspects of Arab violence, and Adams in the end had no choice but to keep quiet and end the discussion.
Send the jerk an email at alan.johnson@bbc.co.uk
I just did..
Dear My Johnson
“For more than 3,500 years Gaza’s history has been shaped by its location.”
Oh really?
“The chariots of the armies of the Pharaohs and Alexander the Great, the cavalry of the Crusaders, and even Napoleon Bonaparte all rode this route, which is now named after the famous Muslim General, Salah al-Din. ”
Oh really?
But wait a minute; I sense something or someone, ahem, missing here. Oh yeah, I have it.
The Jews. You cover 3,500 years of “Gaza” without mentioning the Jews. Except in some throwaway remark about a so called “occupation”.
Though you did manage to mention “Muslims,” who cover a mere 1500 years. Oh yeah, and some famous Muslim mass-murderer.
You know what, some people might think there was a hint of “racism” here. I mean, talk about trying to remove an entire race from history.
Or maybe you’re just so ignorant it never crossed your mind that unlike the made up, bogus “Palestinians”, the Jews have been around since, well it all began. Maybe your audience is so dumb from Al-BBC indoctrination they have no idea that Jews have actually lived here for 4000 years, so why mention it and confuse them.
And if you think for one moment that the Arab tribe currently occupying that piece of land is the original owner, you really do need a wake up call.
Try reading the Bible (Old Testament). Ever heard of it, jerk?
Note from NS: We do not endorse the use of the word “jerk” or similar terms in letters of complaint to the BBC.
Edited By Siteowner
I personally cant see any merit in the Bible as a reliable historic document, certainly not one to go for for factual information without providing supporiting evidence from elsewhere.
That’s not to say that the Jews were not in present day Israel for thousands of years, but Id be more interested in archeological and scientific evidence than that from the rather dodgy assmbly of myth, fable and sheer barbarism that is the Bible.
If Tim Llewellyn thinks the BBC is systematically biased in favour of Israel he is seriously off his trolley. In fact he probably was never on a trolley, his or anyone else’s.
Dont fret guys, you still have until 25th November to submit your comments to the BBC Govenors ‘independent’ review of it’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN IMPARTIALITY REVIEW
http://www.bbcgovernors.co.uk/docs/rev_israelipalestinian.html
email: israelipalestinian.review@bbc.co.uk
Nick. Don’t be a moron. But if you insist, please do it in private.
This is orwellian “ministry of truth” fiddling at its best.
Well done to all of you for bringing it to light – I’m gonna blog this and pimp it for all it’s worth.
People have to know what’s going on
Deepdiver
Is “punk” acceptable?
Anonymous, don’t be a moron. But if you insist, please do it in public!
BBC News24 giving regular reports on the thoughts of that policing giant David Westwood on the subject of the police selling their 90 day proposal to MPs.
Meanwhile, the former chief constable of Humberside, David Westwood, said a damaging perception had arisen that police were trying to influence the parliamentary process.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4430822.stm
This is the same PC PC who ensured that Huntley wasn’t hampered in his murderous pursuits –
The findings of the Bichard Inquiry were published in June 2004. Humberside and Cambridgeshire police forces were heavily criticised for their failings in maintaining intelligence records on Huntley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soham_murders
One would have expected Westwood to keep his head down & enjoy his retirement rather than rush to provide quotes for the BBC.
Andrew/Old Nick
I suspect Jack Bauer has thrown in the reference to the Bible as a starting point for a Beeboid hack who’s Clueless in Gaza.
Be that as it may… I’m not going to go off topic here to put forward a right and proper defence of the Jewish and Christian Bible from Old Nick’s gratuitous and offensive sliming like, “myth, fable and sheer barbarism.”
If you don’t think that’s moronic “Andrew”, that’s your problem pal.
However as Old Nick doesn’t think much of the Bible in giving chapter and verse on precisely how the Jews in Gaza predate any current “tribe” for the past few millenia, here’s some suggested reading…
History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
Wanderings: History of the Jews
Chaim Potok
Well… just try amazon your self and you’ll find lots of books that chart eaxactly where the Jews have been.
It isn’t a secret, except to people like Alan Johnson, Old Nick and the BBC.
Next the lefties will be claiming the Bible is ‘fake but accurate’…..
What the BBC failed to mention, too, is that the 6th century Gazan synagogue has been mainly destroyed. Here’s one place for resources on Gaza’s Jewish archeological history
http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=23&Issue=2&ArticleID=11 and here’s another summary:
http://www.ahavat-israel.com/eretz/gaza.php
Big Mouth – Thank You
Anonymous, the problem is not whether we think Nick is a moron or not. But generally it is only those who have no recourse to logic and reason that resort to those sort of epithets. Since we have far more logic and reason than shown by him adn others of his ilk, and I include you in ‘we’ as well, why not just show where he’s a moron, and leave it to others to judge for themselves?
Andrew Gilligan in The Spectator
One afternoon last month, TV viewers who receive the daily email trailing the contents of that evening’s BBC Newsnight were promised a treat. ‘We have a big Newsnight investigation tonight,’ revealed Jeremy Paxman. ‘Some of the tightest laws in the world have been drafted to prevent British subjects and residents sending prohibited military goods to countries ravaged by war. But when an Indian company announced it had struck a deal to sell army trucks to the Sudanese government, Newsnight decided to look into it. Did the British-based businessmen involved in that deal break the embargo? We’ll bring you Mark Thomas’s investigation….’
Sadly, however, what Newsnight actually brought us that night was a fascinating in-depth report on the important new phenomenon of singing grannies, an item with ‘emergency filler’ written on every frame. Between the writing of the email and the broadcast of the programme, the ‘big investigation’ about the British-based military goods dealers was removed from the Newsnight running order and carefully placed in a TV Centre cupboard.
Mr Paxman’s email didn’t say this, but the dealers in the report were the Hindujas, whose British-based representative, Anders Spare, had been secretly taped by Newsnight admitting his involvement in supporting the Sudan military trucks deal. Mr Spare also said that Dheeraj Hinduja, a British citizen, was very much involved in the deal. In a separate, secretly recorded phone call Dheeraj himself admitted that he was part of the deal’s strategy and structuring. The transaction had been explicitly described as for ‘army trucks …to the Sudan Defence Ministry’ in a press release on the Hinduja Group’s own website.
Newsnight appeared to have a reasonably good story — backed by enough prima facie evidence to satisfy any normal libel lawyer. But in the post-Hutton BBC, things still aren’t quite back to normal. The Corporation took the remarkable step of inviting the Hindujas into its editorial process, giving them a private screening of the film before it was broadcast. The Hindujas’ lawyers said that Mr Spare had been wrong to say that he knew anything about the deal. And Dheeraj? He was wrong, too. The trucks were for civilian, not military, use. But what about the company’s own press release? That, said the lawyers, was also wrong, an unfortunate ‘clerical error’.
Any other media organisation would have included these absurd denials in the report and invited the Hindujas to sue. But, to the disgust of some of its own staff, the BBC simply canned the film. It now says that the story has ‘become too technical to tell meaningfully’.
Using anonymous sources, the distinguished editor of Another Weekly Magazine recently charged that BBC journalism had lost its nerve. He reported that the corporation’s chairman, Michael Grade, had demanded the sacking of my former Today colleague, John Humphrys, for making mildly disobliging remarks about ministers in an after-dinner speech. I believe this story, and believe it to be well sourced. But the trouble, as many of us have learnt, is that anonymous-source stories can be denied. So for my researches into the same issue I decided to adopt a simpler expedient — actually watching BBC news programmes and reading the website over a 24-hour period last month.
The first programme I saw, the flagship 10 o’clock bulletin on 17 October, had, incredibly, as its lead story something that would have mildly shamed Pathé News — a gung-ho piece from the crew-room of RAF Coningsby about how our brave boys in light blue were ceaselessly on alert, ready and waiting to shoot down hostile aircraft. The RAF, though certainly brave, has in fact been performing this role for the last 60 years. While it might have been a topical feature just after 11 September, it simply could not be described in any sense whatever as news, let alone as the most important news in Britain that day. (The BBC said, ‘We gained access that no one else had. It is a subject that is clearly in the public interest.’)
The next day’s bulletin continued the punishment, with a glowing report on how the Eurofighter, the most expensive, over-budget and disputed military project in decades, was really a jolly good thing. Everyone interviewed was an RAF officer saying how wonderful it was.
Then there was the BBC website report announcing that the privatised railways ‘are turning into a quiet success story’, something which would certainly have come as news to any rail traveller, were it true. It turned out to be a claim, adopted as fact by the reporter, from a body called the Railway Forum, wrongly described as ‘a group which represents a range of interests on the railway’. In fact, the Railway Forum represents only the privatised rail companies, plus Network Rail; the other ‘interests on the railway’, the passengers and the taxpayers, have no voice in it, or in the piece.
Then there was the six o’clock news the next evening, and a report on child poverty which somehow failed to mention that that day, the then Work and Pensions Secretary, David Blunkett, admitted that the government had failed to meet several of its key child poverty objectives. The report contained no political content of any description.
None of these examples shows, as is so often claimed, that the BBC is ‘biased’ towards New Labour; the problem is wider than that. What they do show is how often the Corporation’s journalism is prepared to take authority at its word, without checking.
In an extraordinary interview with the Guardian in September, the director of news, Helen Boaden, actually seemed proud of the fact that BBC News 24 got the biggest story of the year — the London bombings — wrong. For hours on the morning of July 7, long after everybody else, News 24 stuck with the initial line from London Underground that there had merely been a ‘power surge’ on the network. ‘There was a moment where that was what the story was,’ she said. ‘We continued to go with that until we had verifiable evidence [of terrorism].’ And what was the ‘verifiable evidence’ for the power surges, exactly?
What this suggests is that the BBC is happier to report untrue information from official sources than to report true information from wholly reliable wire services and its own equally reliable correspondents. The Tube was still open for part of that morning; News 24’s errors could actually have risked lives, by telling viewers that it was safe to travel on.
There is, of course, ambitious and challenging journalism at the BBC — the consistently outstanding radio documentary show, File on 4; the occasional Panorama, although its record is distinctly patchy; sometimes Newsnight. But there is simply not enough of it. I asked the BBC for a list of its scoops over the last year, and was given a tally of about 20 stories, not all of which were really scoops. But the striking thing was how very few of those stories were broken by the most mainstream news programmes, such as the BBC1 bulletins and Today.
Mr Grade is right to say that impartiality, objectivity and accuracy should be at the heart of what the BBC does, and must be policed sharply, even for the likes of John Humphrys. But what he fails to understand is that it is the BBC’s viewers and listeners, not the government, or backbench toadies, or pro-Blair newspapers, who are at the centre of the impartiality debate. The BBC is not accountable to ministers, but to the public. Politicians’ opinion do not matter. The only people whose opinions count are the licence-fee payers.
There is no evidence that those licence-fee payers have any concerns whatsoever that the BBC is too aggressive towards New Labour, or any of its subjects. In fact, the real threat to the BBC’s impartiality comes from the reverse direction: that it is seen by the public as too soft, too accommodating. Very little of the BBC’s journalism in the last two years has lost the government any sleep.
It may be argued that ignoring the views of politicians is all very well in theory, but in practice they are the people with their hands loosely adjacent to the BBC’s throat. Actually, what the fall-out from the Hutton report shows us is that no politician can act against a BBC that is supported by the public, much as I am sure they would love to.
The only way the BBC can be undermined by politicians is if it loses public trust; and the best way to lose it is to jump when authority shouts.
Andrew Gilligan is defence and diplomatic editor of The Spectator, and is a feature writer for the London Evening Standard
O/T
Melanie Phillips gives a more credible account of what is going on vis a vis the Islamification of France than the BBC would have you believe
On BBC Radio Four’s Today programme this morning (0810), I listened to the acclaimed French thinker Bernard-Henri Levy declare that it was a great mistake to assume that the French riots are about Islam. They are merely an outbreak of nihilism, apparently. This article from 2003 by Olivier Guitta about the inroads made by radical Islamism in France puts B-HL in un peu de perspective:
Article continues here
O/T
According to AP, “thousands of Jordanians rallied in the capital and other cities shouting ‘Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!'”:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051110/ap_on_re_mi_ea/jordan_explosion
I cannot find a specific report on this story (which was surely newsworthy; after all they are usually so keen to tell us what the ‘Arab Street’ thinks) on BBC Online, just a mention of it in a piece headlined “Jordan mourns victims of bombing”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4427518.stm
There, they say “At least several hundred Jordanians marched in Amman on Thursday”.
That sentence is so BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/11/newsid_4292000/4292998.stm
The “In Context” sidebar on Arafat’s demise naturally includes the Palestinian speculation that he was poisoned by Israel, but more credible speculation by other parties that Arafat dies of AIDS is, of course, not mentioned.
I’m not sure what Socialism is Necrotizing is trying to say, but this bit from Gilligan:
“The BBC is not accountable to ministers, but to the public. Politicians’ opinion do not matter. The only people whose opinions count are the licence-fee payers.”
points to the utter cluelessness of Gilligan, and helps explain his arrogance when he was in the corporation.
The BBC is in no way accountable to the public, be they licence fee payers or otherwise. The public have no say whatsoever in the running of the BBC. The licence fee is purely and simply a legal permission from the state to install and use television reception equipment. It is not a payment for services nor any kind of “stake-holding”. It is the state that chooses to direct all of that public money to the BBC; and it is the state that chooses to exclude itself from any direct editorial oversight of the BBC.
Therefore it is clear that the BBC is accountable only to itself. This is the bleak reality of the “impartiality” that BBC supporters eulogise. The only opinions that count are those of the prevailing mindset at the BBC.
Gilligan is a symptom of the problem of BBC bias, not a cure. His blasé reference to a post-Hutton BBC is astonishing gall, since it is his arrogant and clumsy lie (and the BBC’s blind support of it) that led to the Hutton enquiry. I’ve no doubt that Gilligan feels his infamous piece was “fake but accurate”, and I’ve little doubt most of the British public feel the same. That’s the success of the BBC’s bias.
There is a segment of the “right-wing” in Britain that is politically shallow and opportunistic in its stand against the (New Labour) government regarding the Iraq war and surrounding issues. That Gilligan has found a home in a publication by that segment is no surprise at all.
.
PJF I think you are quite right. I thought the article did at least reveal some extent of the institutional obfuscation at the BBC.
It is indeed a strange comment by Gilligan. If a citizen expresses his “opinion” of the BBC by withholding payment he can be imprisoned. So what “opinions” are permissible, what is the mechanism for expressing them and how do they control what the BBC does? That is, after all, what being “accountable” actually means.
Some “journalist” were very quick to jump on reports that the Israeli’s knew about the jordanian attacks from beforehand (usual twaddle).
I fisked a local moonbat “journalist” here: http://www.gardjola.org/#Jumping_to_Conclusions
You can see that the beeb brand of journalism is quite infectious.
Thank heaven’s for the blogosphre
Deepdiver
AQ have named HM The Queen as an enemy of Islam in a 27 minute video message on the very day we mourn our war dead ….yet not a sausage on the BBC. Oh apart from yet another ‘Muslim communities living in fear etc’ article which actually shows that compared to the likes of what happens to Christians in Muslim countries then not a lot is actually happening to make Muslims fear for their lives….
BBC – all the news thats fit to print (according to our twisted logic…)
Al-Beeb has not covered the death threat against the Queen? That is unbelievable! (Well, no, not really.)
My god, she’s your head-of-state, and your official state media does not even care that she’s been declared a target of the Islamofascists!
Perhaps she has been found to be a sneaky beaky member of the SAS at weekends and in fact has the blood of hundreds of AQ fighters/ insurgents/best mates of the Beeb and Reuters on her hands…..go Queenie!
Mind you having met her on several occasions (swank swank) I can tell you she scares me more than Wimpy Charlie Boy the Boy Pretender!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1869849,00.html
has the article where HM is accused of leading crusades etc.
O/T
CNN reports on a documentary about North Korea, “Undercover in the Secret State”.
http://us.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/11/13/nkorea.hiddenvideo/index.html
They also do an interview with the producer and director of this work, Sarah McDonald on “Friday from London, England.”
Strange how another well-funded media organisation that happens to be based in London can’t seem to run any stories on this.
Nick,
I personally cant see any merit in the Bible as a reliable historic document, certainly not one to go for for factual information without providing supporiting evidence from elsewhere.
I wouldn’t personally disagree with you, but the trouble is, of al-BBC’s list of former occupants of the Gaza region, at least two – the Egyptians and the Persians – are also known only from the Old Testament.
So it seems that for the BBC it’s an acceptable authority on history, as long as it’s not ancient Jewish history.
Personally I am agnostic about the existence of Samson, (in fact I rather hope my people were never dumb enough to elect such a person a Judge of Israel) but Judah Maccabee is undeniably historical.
Deepdiver – couldn’t access your link, but I had a look at BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ on the bombing in Jordan and found a comment revealing that Ha’aretz had published the false claim that Israelis were evacuated before the blasts. I pointed out that Ha’aretz had since retracted the claim.
I’ve since quickly scanned all the comments, and I suspect that the BBC’s tactic was to delete the original comment and not publish my response!
If I discover that’s not the case, I’ll let you know.
Roxana, the judges weren’t generally elected in the sense we would understand the term. More often than not they were proclaimed as “judges” after the fact. Deborah, for example, was proclaimed a judge merely for killing an enemy king with a tent peg. Samson appears in judges almost entirely because he destroyed the temple of Dagon. The rest of the story is simply establishing who he is so that it has some historical context for the audience.
Dear Camp Commandant,
A simple Google search will find dozens of references to Ancient Egypt and Ancient Persia conquering Gaza.
Thutmose III is believed to have conquered Gaza about 1450 BC.
Alexander the Great conquered Gaza from the Persians in 332 BC.
He had the Persian GovernGaza, Batis tied to his chariot and dragged around the city.r of
If you check out the BBC Country Profile for Israel and the Palestinian Territories you will find not only no reference to the Jews in Ancient Israel. There were no Christians, either.