GAZA: A history most of a benighted world does not know or care.
By Victor Sharpe | August 22, 2025
Samson Carries away the Gates of Gaza (Jud. 16:1-13). Painting by Gustave Doré – Doré’s English Bible, Public Domain, Wikipedia
The nearly four-thousand-year-old association of Jewish life in Gaza is little remembered or known in today’s world. Of course, those who have read the Hebrew Bible know of the Biblical story of Samson being blinded by the now extinct Philistines and how he brought down the temple to their gods in Gaza. But very few others have any idea of the deep Jewish history in the following millennia. In the Second millennium BCE, Gaza served as an administrative city and residence of the Egyptian governor of Canaan. The Bible tells us that the Jewish patriarch, Isaac, dug wells in Gerar, an ancient site between Beer Sheba and Gaza, and in the 13th century BCE the Philistines or Caphorites (Cretans) annihilated the Avite inhabitants of Gaza and made the city the largest of their five centers.







