Arch of Titus, Rome
Arch of Titus, RomeCorutesy

Gerald A. Honigman -is a senior contributing writer and columnist for Ekurd.net since 2007. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral work in Middle Eastern and National Security Policy Studies.

I just finished watching the spectacular movie, Gladiator II, and was again reminded of the pain and anguish Rome brought to millions of different peoples in its quest for glory and power.

This, of course, hit home regarding the plight of my own beleaguered people, the Jews, due to the insatiable hunger of the Roman Eagle.

Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Pliny, and Josephus were Roman and Roman sponsored historians who left an enormous record regarding the two major wars of the Jewish People to rid their land of these cruel, pagan occupiers.

Several other significant revolts of the Jews occurred as well, clear up until the eve of the jihadi Arab invasions of Muhammad’s imperialist, colonizing Caliphal successor armies when they burst out of the increasingly desiccated Arabian Peninsula in search of, quite literally, greener pastures. Scores of thousands of Judaean warriors joined their Persian allies in fighting the hated Byzantine successors to the Roman occupying power:
The Winckler-Caetani Theory was one way of describing this desiccation phenomenon and its effects on the entire region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Of course, Arabs have used this to help promote their “purely Arab patrimony” claims for all of this area as well.

So, countless millions of Kurds, Amazigh/Kabyle/“Berbers,” Copts, black Africans, Mizrahi and Sefardi kilab yahud “Jew dogs,” various Indian Subcontinent peoples, Assyrians, and others simply don’t matter in this supremacist Arab mindset… and hence, no amount of Israeli concessions will ever be enough to achieve peace with such folks.

More Jews fled “Arab”/Muslim lands during Israel’s War of Independence in May 1948 than Arabs did in the opposite direction due to the attack of a half dozen Arab nations on Israel on the eve of its rebirth.

Anyway, back to the Roman occupation of Judaea…

Open here to see a Roman coin of conquest: http://q4j-middle-east.com
Note, it’s an Iudaea (Judaea) Capta coin, not a Palaestina Capta one.
There is absolutely no corroborating evidence of ANY Arab attachment to the ancient, historical land of the Jewish People.
Visit the Colosseum in Rome today, so prominent in both Gladiator movies, and just a few blocks away you’ll find standing the Arch of Titus, showing Roman soldiers carrying away the giant Menorah and other spoils of the destroyed Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem—what many Arabs and other Arabized jihadis claim never existed.
Arch of Titus
Arch of TitusiStock

Historical accounts of these revolts against Roman tyranny and oppression by JEWS, not Arabs, and certainly not the artificially invented people who were Arabs mostly from surrounding countries that are poured into the Mandate of Palestine due to the economic development occurring because of the return of forcibly exiled Jews to the only land they have really claimed as their own for over three millennia, Eretz Yisrael.

Unlike Arabs, they don’t have almost two dozen others— due to the jihadi conquests of mostly other NON-Arab peoples’s lands from the 7th century C. E. onwards.

Exploring some other modern sources, please note that the author here refers to Judaeans fighting Roman oppression as “radicals” and in other troubling terms, instead of heroic patriots fighting the conqueror of much of the known world for their freedom and independence.

Ridley Scott always does an amazing job with his films, and Gladiator II did what too many other sequels don’t: proved itself a worthy successor to the first amazing movie.
The only thing that I found historically troubling was when the Denzel Washington character says that crucifixion was reserved mostly for thieves and Christians.
Wrong…
Rome didn’t waste time, manpower, and expense using timber to dispatch petty thieves, and before any Christians existed, the historical records list tens of thousands of Judaeans/Jews crucified for suspected acts of patriotism/revolt against the Empire.
“Thieves” was a mistranslation of “robbers.”
“Robbery” was a form of guerrilla warfare against Rome. He who engaged in such things was a “robber” or “brigand”— in many cases wherever Rome conquered, native patriots caught fighting their oppressors. Remember the movie “Spartacus?”
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Thus, Yehoshua ( aka Jesus), who lived as a Judaean in these horrendous times. was also seen as a potential “troublemaker” by Rome and some of its Judaean collaborators, and was crucified alongside two Judaean “robbers”… most likely freedom fighters.