Friday, October 15, 2010

The Mesha Stele and President Ahmadinejad

THE MESHA STELE is invoked by Arutz Sheva in response to President Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon:
Ahmadinejad spoke before thousands of supporters in the afternoon at Bint Jbeil, the scene of a battle between the IDF and Iranian puppet militia Hizbullah in the Second Lebanon War. As predicted by expert Mordechai Kedar on Arutz Sheva, Ahmadinejad told the audience: “You fought at the front line against the aggressors and Zionist occupiers,” adding: “You proved that no country will succeed in breaking the Lebanese resistance.”

He predicted that “the Zionists will go back to the place they came from.”

Bint Jbeil, he said, “is “the capital of freedom, the capital of resistance.” The town, he said, “holds its head high and will hold out until the last moment” whereas “the Zionists will not last long.”

[...]

The nation of Israel has a long history of facing enemies who swear to annihilate it, as Ahmadinejad does. The Passover Hagaddah recounts that “in every generation, they arise to destroy us, and the Holy One, Blessed Be He saves us from them.”

In the Mesha stele, a tablet discovered in what is now Jordan, the king of ancient Moab declares that he fought against a Jewish king, but was victorious, adding: “And Israel suffered everlasting destruction.” The tablet dates from the 9th century BCE. There are no traceable Moabites in the world today..
The article might also have noted a similar premature claim in the thirteenth-century BCE Merneptah Stele, which says, "Israel is laid waste, its seed is not."