Samaria (), or the Shomron (, Standard '''' Tiberian ''''; ; , '''' or , – also known as , ) is a mountainous region in the northern part of the geographical area to the west of the Jordan River, roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank. The name derives from the ancient city Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. During the 1967 Six-Day War, the entire West Bank was captured by Israel. Jordan ceded its claim to the area to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in November 1988. In 1994, control of Areas 'A' and 'B' were transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

Etymology

The name Samaria is of biblical origin, derived from the individual [or clan] ''Shemer'', from whom Omri purchased the site. (1 Kings 16:24). It was the only name used for this area from ancient times until the Jordanian conquest of 1948, at which point the Jordanians coined the term ''West Bank''.

Geography

To the north, Samaria is bounded by the Jezreel Valley; to the east by the Jordan Rift Valley; to the west by the Carmel Ridge (in the north) and the Sharon plain (in the west); to the south by the Jerusalem mountains. In Biblical times, Samaria "reached from the [Mediterranean] sea to the Jordan Valley", including the Carmel Ridge and Plain of Sharon. The Samarian hills are not very high, seldom reaching the height of over 800 metres. Samaria's climate is more hospitable than the climate further south.

History

Ancient city

The city Samaria was established as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Omri circa 884 BC. Prior to the Omride period the site appears to have been the center of an extensive wine and oil production area, which may have accounted for its choice as the new capital. Apparently the origin of the name of the site was from Shemer the eponymous owner of the land that Omri purchased for two talents of silver (). The city is built on the summit of a rocky hill. The earliest remains consist of extensive rock cut installations, initially thought to date to the Early Bronze Age by Kenyon, these have recently been re-evaluated, first by Stager and then by Franklin, and are now recognized to be the remains of an extensive early Iron Age oil and wine industry (designated Building Period 0).

In 1908-1910, Harvard’s Committee on Exploration in the Orient conducted an expedition to excavate the site of Samaria-Sebaste. Remains of the royal palace built by Omri and Ahab during the Israelite period were discovered along with buildings constructed by the Babylonian, Greeks and Romans. Among the pottery fragments unearthed were ostraca bearing Hebrew inscriptions in carbon ink citing Biblical names and memoranda of commercial shipments.

Approximately 27 CE, the city was rebuilt by Herod the Great who named it Sebaste after the emperor Augustus. Herod surrounded the city with a large wall and included within it a smaller walled component that featured a temple.

Post World War II

The modern history of Samaria begins when the territory of Samaria, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, was entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a British Mandate of Palestine, by the League of Nations. As a result of the 1948 Palestine War, most of the territory was unilaterally incorporated as Jordanian-controlled territory in the West Bank and residents would later receive Jordanian passports.

The Jordanian-held majority of Samaria came under the control of Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Jordan ceded its West Bank claims to the PLO in November 1988, later confirmed by the Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace of 1994. Jordan recognizes the Palestinian Authority as sovereign in the territory. In the 1994 Oslo accords, responsibility for the administration over some of the territory of Samaria (Areas 'A' and 'B') was transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

Samaria is one of several standard statistical districts utilized by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. "The Israeli CBS also collects statistics on the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza District. It has produced various basic statistical series on the territories, dealing with population, employment, wages, external trade, national accounts, and various other topics." The Palestinian Authority however use Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Salfit, Ramallah and Tubas Governorates as administrative centres for the same region.

The Shomron Regional Council administers the Israeli population and settlements throughout the Samaria area.

New Testament reference

The New Testament mentions Samaria in Luke chapter 17:11-20, in the miraculous healing of the ten lepers, which took place on the border of Samaria and Galilee. John 4:1-26 records Jesus' encounter at Jacob's well with the woman of Sychar, in which he declares himself to be the Messiah. In Acts 8:5-14, it is recorded that Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached there. In the time of Jesus, ''Iudaea'' of the Romans was divided into three toparchies, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. Samaria occupied the centre of ''Iudaea'' (John 4:4). (''Iudaea'' was later renamed ''Syria Palaestina'' in 135, following the Bar Kokhba revolt.) In the Talmud, Samaria is called the "land of the Cuthim".

Samaritans

The Samaritans are an ethnoreligious group named after and inhabiting Samaria after the beginning of the Assyrian Exile of the Israelites. Religiously the Samaritans are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism. Based on the Samaritan Torah, Samaritans claim their worship is the true religion of the ancient Israelites prior to the Babylonian Exile, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which they assert is a related but altered and amended religion brought back by those returning from exile. It is commonly, though inaccurately, accepted that Samaritans are mainstream Jews.

Their temple was built at Mount Gerizim in the middle of fifth century BC and was destroyed by the Macabbean (Hasmonean) John Hyrcanus late in 110 BC, although their descendants still worship among its ruins. The antagonism between Samaritans and Jews is important in understanding the Christian Bible's stories of "Parable of the Good Samaritan" and the "Samaritan woman at the well".

See also

Archevites

Samaritan Revolts

List of burial places of biblical figures

Judea and Samaria area

Israeli settlements

References

Bibliography

Tappy, R. E. (2206). “The Provenance of the Unpublished Ivories from Samaria,” Pp. 637–56 in “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times” (Ps 78:2b): Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, A. M. Maeir and P. de Miroschedji, eds. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Tappy, R. E. (2007). “The Final Years of Israelite Samaria: Toward a Dialogue between Texts and Archaeology,” Pp. 258–79 in Up to the Gates of Ekron: Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin, S. White Crawford, A. Ben-Tor, J. P. Dessel, W. G. Dever, A. Mazar, and J. Aviram, eds. Jerusalem: The W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Israel Exploration Society.

External links

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica">Entry for Samaria in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

Shomron National Park (Sebastia) at Israel Nature and Parks Authority site

Pictures of the ruins of Shomron

Category:Geography of Palestine Category:Geography of the West Bank Category:Geography of Israel Category:Hebrew Bible places Category:New Testament places Category:Samaritan culture and history

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name	Caroline Glick
birth place	Chicago, Illinois
education	Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Master of Arts in Public Policy
occupation	deputy managing editor
ethnicity	Jewish
credits	Author of "Shackled Warrior"
url	http://www.carolineglick.com/e/ }}

Caroline Glick is an American-Israeli journalist for Makor Rishon and is the deputy managing editor of ''The Jerusalem Post''. She is also the Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy.

Life

Glick was born in Chicago and grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood, and graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She immigrated to Israel in 1991 and joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

She worked in the IDF's Judge Advocate General division during the First Intifada in 1992, and while there edited and co-authored an IDF-published book, ''Israel, the Intifada and the Rule of Law''. Following the Oslo Accords, she worked as coordinator of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. She retired from the military with the rank of captain at the end of 1996. She worked for about a year as the assistant to the director general of the Israel Antiquities Authority. She then served as assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She returned to the US to get her Master of Arts in Public Policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, in 2000.

Upon her return to Israel, she became, and remains, the chief diplomatic correspondent for the ''Makor Rishon'' newspaper, for which she writes a weekly column in Hebrew. She is also the deputy managing editor of ''The Jerusalem Post'' for which she writes two weekly syndicated columns. Her writings have appeared in ''The Wall Street Journal'', the ''National Review'', ''The Boston Globe'', the ''Chicago Sun-Times'', ''The Washington Times'', ''Maariv'', ''Moment'', and other newspapers found worldwide. She has also contributed to many online journals. Along with Israel’s major television networks, she has appeared on US television programs seen on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel. She makes frequent radio appearances both in the US and Israel.

In 2003, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Glick was embedded with the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and filed front-line reports for ''The Jerusalem'' Post and the ''Chicago Sun-Times''. She also reported daily from the front lines, via satellite phone, for the Israeli Channel 1 news. Glick was on the scene when US forces took the Baghdad International Airport. She was awarded a distinguished civilian service award from the U.S. Secretary of the Army for her battlefield reporting.

She is the Senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and is one of several co-authors of the Center’s latest book, ''War Footing''. She has been a senior researcher at the IDF’s Operational Theory Research Institute (the Israel Defense establishment’s most prestigious think tank). She has also worked as an adjunct lecturer in tactical warfare at the IDF’s Command and Staff College.

In its Israeli Independence Day supplement in 2003, Israeli newspaper ''Maariv'' named her the most prominent woman in Israel. She was the 2005 recipient of the Zionist Organization of America’s Ben Hecht award for Outstanding Journalism (previous recipients have included A. M. Rosenthal, Sidney Zion and Daniel Pipes). She has also been awarded the Abramowitz Prize for Media Criticism by Israel Media Watch. A representative for the organization praised Glick’s high degree of professionalism and her critical reporting after Glick wrote a series of articles accusing the Israeli media of blatantly rallying support for carrying out the disengagement plan. On May 31, 2009 she received the Guardian of Zion Award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar Ilan University.

She is an editor of the political satire website Latma TV.

Controversy

In June 2010, Glick co-produced and appeared in ''We Con the World,'' a satirical video by Latma TV about the Gaza flotilla attempt to breach the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The video clip quickly garnered over 3,000,000 hits from YouTube viewers before being abruptly removed by the online hosting site due to alleged copyright concerns, though some have speculated that its removal was prompted by considerations other than legitimate copyright concerns. The video drew both criticism and praise. Writing for the Guardian, Meron Rapoport said the video was "anti-Muslim," while Eileen Read, in ''The Huffington Post'' described the mocking of the flotilla crew as "tasteless and blatantly racist." Glick has dismissed claims that the video is offensive, saying "The point of satire is to make people uncomfortable. We’re not trying to be fair and balanced, we’re trying to make a point."

Documentaries

Glick is featured as a speaker in the documentaries ''Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East'' and ''Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West''.

Articles

Glick's articles and papers can be found on the websites of ''The Jerusalem Post'', the Center for Security Policy, www.carolineglick.com, and Townhall.com. A few of the articles that have been published by the Post have been titled "The world according to Olmert", "Column One: Anatomy of a massacre", and " prayer for 5767".

Glick has voiced support in her columns for Dutch politician Geert Wilders who was acquitted of "the alleged 'crime' of inciting hatred against Muslims" through his film ''Fitna''.

Books

Yahav, David; Amit-Kohntitle, Uzi (1993). Edited and wrote several chapters. ''Israel, the Intifada and the Rule of Law''. Israel Ministry of Defense Publications. ISBN 978-965-05-0693-3.

Gaffney Jr., Frank J.; et al. (2005). Contributions to "Part IV: Waging the 'War of Ideas'". ''War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World''. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-301-7

Glick, Caroline (2008). ''Shackled Warrior. Israel and the Global Jihad?''. Gefen Publishing House. ISBN 978-965-229-415-9

References

External links

Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:American journalists Category:Israeli journalists Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:American emigrants to Israel Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:The Jerusalem Post people Category:Israeli women journalists

he:קרוליין גליק ru:Глик, Кэролайн