MOUNT TABOR

view of Mount Tabor, courtesy, Wikipedia

Mount Tabor is located in Lower Galilee, Israel, at the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley, about 11 miles west of the Sea of Galilee. Today situated off Highway 65, in ancient times, it lie on the road of the Via Maris, an ancient trade route, which stretched from the Jezreel Valley to Damascus. Shaped almost like half a sphere, it is an independent-standing mountain, suddenly rising from rather flat surroundings and reaching a height of 1,886 feet above sea level, overlooking the town of Kfar Tavor. At its base it is almost fully surrounded by the Arab and Bedouin villages of Daburiyya, Shibli, and Umm al-Ghanam. Its summit is accessible by road via Shibli. A hiking track, as part of the Israel National Trail, starts from Shibli and is about three miles long. Its location on the road junction and its bulgy formation above its environment gave Mount Tabor a strategic value resulting in wars that were fought for its possession in different periods in history. The mountain was a major factor in the defeat of Napoleon’s armies in 1799 that halted his Middle Eastern ambitions and eventually drove him back to Europe.

The mountain is mentioned for the first time in the Bible in the Book of Joshua, 19:22, as the border of three tribes: Zebulun, Issachar and Naphtali. According to the Book of Judges, Mount Tabor was the location of the Battle of Mount Tabor between the Israelite army under the leadership of Barak and the army of the Canaanite king of Hazor, Jabin, commanded by Sisera. Deborah the Jewish prophetess had summoned Barak of the tribe of Naphtali and gave him God's command, "Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun" (Judges 4:6). This resulted in the Canaanites’ total defeat. A cave near the top of the mountain may have been the original sanctuary of the Greek god Zeus Atabyrios (from which, the name “Tabor” supposedly derived). Centuries later, this sanctuary was revived by the Israelites, calling forth the wrath of the prophet Hosea (5:1). In the days of the Second Temple (c. 516 BCE – 70 CE), Mount Tabor was one of the mountain peaks on which it was the Jewish custom to light beacons in order to inform the northern villages of the start of the holy days and of the beginning of the new months. In 55 BCE, during a Hasmonean rebellion against the Roman proconsul of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, Alexander of Judaea and his army of 30,000 Judeans was defeated in battle at Mount Tabor. As many as 10,000 Jewish fighters were killed in the battle and Alexander was forced to flee, apparently to Syria. In Christian tradition, Mount Tabor is the site of the transfiguration of Jesus. In 66 CE, during the First Jewish-Roman War, the Galilean Jews retrenched on the mountain under the command of Yosef Ben Matityahu, better known as Josephus Flavius, the later historian, whence they defended themselves against the Roman assault. Itabyrium, as Josephus called it, was one of the 19 sites fortified by the rebels in Galilee under his very orders. According to what is written in his book The Wars of the Jews, Vespasian sent an army of 600 riders, under the command of Placidus, who fought the rebels. Placidus understood that he could not reach the top of the steep mountain with his forces, and therefore called the fortified rebels to walk down the mountain in order to negotiate. Figuring it was a trick, a group of Jewish rebels did so supposedly for that reason, but instead, they attacked him. The Roman forces initially retreated, but while they were in the valley, they returned towards the mountain, attacked the Jewish rebels, killed many of them, and blocked the road for the remaining rebels who tried to flee back to the top of the mountain. The remaining rebels on the mountain surrendered after their water ran out. They then handed it over to Placidus. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jewish settlement on Mount Tabor was renewed. Several centuries later, the Jewish inhabitants left, for various reasons, for other parts of the Levant and the site was subsequently fought over between Christians and Muslims as well as between various Arab tribes. At the end of the 19th and the beginning the 20th centuries, the Bedouin tribe Arab Al-Sabehi settled on the mountain and became one of the strongest tribes in the region. Eventually, other branches of the tribe were formed, most notably the Shibli, and they settled around the base of the mountain. Jews first returned to the region in 1901 with the establishment of Kefar Tavor. In 1933, the Kadoorie Agricultural High School was founded north of the village by the monies of the legacy of Sir Ellis Kadoorie, a Baghdadi Jewish merchant from China. The Jewish inhabitants had fostered good relations with many (but not all) of the Arab tribes in the region, like the Arab-Al Heib, who began their military cooperation with the Jewish underground forces since the late 1930s. In 1944, the kibbutz Beit Keshet was founded on the northern base of the mountain.

During the War of Independence (1947-1949), members from the Al-Sabehi fought in the Arab Liberation Army under the Syrian Arab Fawzi al-Qawuqji and among other atrocities, they murdered seven members of Beit Keshet in cold blood. At the start of May 1948 the Israeli Golani Brigade occupied the mountain itself. Most of the Sabehi were forced out to Arab-occupied Syria and Jordan, except for the Shibli branch. After the war, the surrounding property of the Kadoorie School became the Kadoorie Regional Center and the local Jewish and Arab towns came under its administration. Since 1953, the regional council of Lower Galilee holds a 12-kilometer race around Mount Tabor, held in April each year, in memory of Yitzhak Sadeh, the first commander of the Palmach and one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.

Meanwhile, the Shibli village of Arab al-Shibli was established and today, it is part of the village of Shibli-Umm al-Ghanam.  It was admitted as a tourist village by the Israeli government and the locals are famous for being hospitable and very friendly to visitors. Since the late 1960s many of the tribesmen joined the Israeli security forces (such as the IDF, Border Guards Unit and police, etc.).

As part of the Jewish National Fund's efforts to recreate the Biblical landscapes of the country, during the 1960s and 1970s the area was reforested with trees which were similar to its original vegetation such as Mount Tabor Oak, “Palestine” oak, the Persian lily, Mt. Tabor larkspur, and Galilean alkanet. The woodland vegetation provides a good habitat for such fauna as wolves and jackals, foxes, porcupines, hyraxes, mongooses and the broad-toothed field mouse. In addition, reptiles and birds of various species have also settled in the woodland areas.