SAMARIA

the region of Samaria, courtesy, Shalom Israel Tours

Samaria (the Shomron) is both an ancient town and region in the northern half of Israel. Considered Israel’s heartland, it is traversed in the center from north to south by a mountain ridge running as far south as Judea. It was an area rich in Biblical Jewish history. During the time of Joshua, it formed the bulk of the western half of the tribal territory of Menasheh. (The eastern half lie east of the Jordan River.) For over 400 years, Shiloh served as capital of the Israelites and it was here where the Tabernacle had rested during that time. When the Kingdom of Israel split in two, the region of Samaria became a major component of the northern Kingdom of Israel. As Jerusalem remained the capital of the southern Kingdom of Judah, the capitals of the northern kingdom were invariably Shechem (Nablus), Penuel, Tirzah, and finally the city of Samaria. This city was built by King Omri, in the seventh year of his reign, on a mountaintop. He had bought this mountain for two talents of silver from a vintner named Shemer, after whom the mountain and later the city, and then the surrounding region, was named (I Kings 16:24). In 722 BCE, the inhabitants were driven into exile by the Assyrian Empire and the land was then resettled by other peoples who would come to adopt the religion of Israel. These would become the Samaritans, after the region in which they now lived. (This Old Testament assertion has been hotly contested. Recent DNA studies of the Samaritans show that they are the remnant descendants of the tribes of Menasheh and Ephraim.) After the return from the Babylonian Captivity, the returning Judeans (Jews) rejected the Samaritans and the two groups remained hostile to each other ever since, until a ruling by the rabbis in Jerusalem in 1842 which recognized the Samaritans as belonging to the House of Israel.   

Under Herod, the city of Samaria became the capital of the district of Samaria, the city itself being known as Sebaste, the Greek equivalent of the Latin "Augusta", so named in honor of Augustus Cæsar. Josephus speaks of the soldiers of Sebaste who served in the army of the House of Herod and who later sided with the Romans resulting in the city being attacked by Jews at the outbreak of the war against Rome. Sebaste is also mentioned in the Mishnah where its orchards are praised. Jerome, an early Christian and church father, records the tradition that the city was the burial-place of the prophets Elisha and Obadiah, as well as of John the Baptist. However, during the Crusader occupation, the 12^th century Jewish traveler from Spain, Benjamin of Tudela, does not relate to these tombs at all but states only that traces of the palace of King Ahab of Israel were still visible, and that in his day, he found no Jewish community in the city. Beginning in 1931, a major international archaeological expedition there involved Professor Eliezer Sukenik of the Hebrew University who worked conjointly with John Winter Crowfoot of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and Kathleen Kenyon of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Since the Crusader occupation, the region of Samaria played a significant part in the history of the Jews in Israel. Shechem was home to an ancient Jewish community as well as a Samaritan community. The Jewish community waxed and waned over the centuries depending on the security situation. The same with the town of Anin near Umm el Fahm. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the Turkish authorities settled Arab migrants from Yemen in Anin which eventually drove the Jews away.

In 1831, the Arab settlers of the region in and around the fortress of Sanur had rebelled against the rule of Abdalla Pasha. A renowned band of Jewish warriors from the Lebanon were called to subdue the rebellion which they did successfully, and the Pasha ordered the fortress and town levelled to the ground, in which state they remained for many years afterward. Later, an Arab settlement was built on the site. By the late 70s, a Jewish community was established adjacent to the Arab settlement.

In c. 1904, the last Jews left Shechem, fleeing from the high taxes that were imposed only on Jews. The Samaritan presence remained constant (see Mount Gerizim). In nearby Awarta, a Jewish community had long ago sprung up but was expelled by the Arabs in 1912. By the beginning of the British Mandatory period, the city of Tulkarm had a small Jewish population in the midst of a majority Arab population. In 1925, an agricultural school was established there by a Jewish businessman from China, Sir Ellis Kadoorie, specifically to teach the local Arabs modern methods in farming. The later Arab riots throughout the country ethnically cleansed Tulkarm of its Jews.

During the War of Independence in 1948, Samaria came under Arab occupation, remaining so until liberated by Israel in 1967. The Samaritans were left alone but, since the Israeli army and government were led by Zionists, Jews were banned from returning to the area. After several attempts to reestablish a Jewish community in the town of Samaria, a compromise was reached and the Jews were given land at the army base at nearby Kadum. A community was established and the town of Kedumim came into being – the first Jewish town in the Samaria region since Biblical times. Kedumim was soon followed by other towns throughout Samaria: Elkana, Reihan, Sal’it, Shavei Shomron, Ariel (which grew into a city of some 20,000 and was designated the capital of Samaria), Karnei Shomron, Sanur, Kfar Tapuah, Mevo Dotan, Elon Moreh (where Abraham first rested upon entering the Promised Land), and many others. During the so-called “Second Intifada”, the entire Samaritan community in Shechem was forced by the Arabs to move out. They settled in the nearby village of Kiryat Luza, built for them by the Israeli government. Today, the closest to Shechem the Arabs and Zionists will allow a Jew or Samaritan, are in the Jewish community of Har Bracha and the Samaritan community of Kiryat Luza. Both lie on top of Mount Gerizim just outside, and overlooking, the city. Meanwhile, the community of Sanur, along with 3 others including Homesh, was violently ethnically cleansed in 2005 by the Zionists led by Ariel Sharon. Soon after, Homesh became a flashpoint in the effort to rebuild these illegally destroyed communities.

The many Jewish holy sites in Samaria had been places of Jewish pilgrimages for thousands of years (access now severely restricted by the Zionists): the Tomb of Joseph in Shechem; the Tombs of Eleazar and Ittamar in Awarta; the Tombs of Joshua and his father Nun and the Tomb of Caleb in Kifl Hares; the Tomb of the High Priest Eli in Shiloh. The Samaria National Park was created by the Israeli government (!) and is today under authority of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. It is considered to be the largest national park in Israel today.

In 2014, the first “Bible Marathon” took place in Samaria, stretching the mandated 26 miles, from Rosh Haayin to Shiloh. It follows the path taken in Biblical times when a messenger went from the site of Israel’s defeat at the hands of the Philistines (today Rosh Haayin) to the High Priest Eli in Shiloh. It was the first recorded marathon in history, predating the Greek.