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Israel
Expedition to Judean Desert Caves
1960 – 5720 Bronze Medal 59mm (118.11 grams)
BAR KOKHBA WAR, Documents in bundle, ancient Bar Kochba revolt coin below.
EXPEDITION TO THE JUDAEAN DESERT CAVES 1960, Men working with rope ladder to cross hills, caves within.
Edge Lettering:
STATE OF ISRAEL
Medal Notes:
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 Simon ben Koseba or Cosiba (Hebrew: שמעון בן כוזיבא, romanized: Shimʻon ben Koziba; died 135 CE), commonly known as Bar Kokhba (Hebrew: שמעון בר כוכבא, romanized: Shimʻon bar Kokhba), was a Jewish military leader who led the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. The revolt established a three-year-long independent Jewish state discuss] in which Bar Kokhba ruled as nasi (“prince”). Some of the rabbinic scholars in his time imagined him to be the long-expected Messiah. Bar Kokhba fell in the fortified town of Betar.
The second Jewish rebellion took place 60 years after the first and established an independent state discuss] lasting three years. ] For many Jews of the time, this turn of events was heralded as the long hoped for Messianic Age. The Romans fared very poorly during the initial revolt facing a unified Jewish force, in contrast to the First Jewish-Roman War, where Flavius Josephus records three separate Jewish armies fighting each other for control of the Temple Mount during the three weeks after the Romans had breached Jerusalem’s walls and were fighting their way to the center. ] Being outnumbered and taking heavy casualties, the Romans adopted a scorched earth policy which reduced and demoralised the Judean populace, slowly grinding away at the will of the Judeans to sustain the war.
During the final phase of the war, Bar Kokhba took up refuge in the fortress of Betar. The Romans eventually captured it after laying siege to the city.
The Jerusalem Talmud makes several claims considered as non-historical by modern scholarship. One such claim is that the duration of the siege was of three and half years, although the war itself lasted, according to the same author, two and half years. Another part of the Talmudic narrative is that the Romans killed all the defenders except for one Jewish youth, Simeon ben Gamliel, whose life was spared. According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed in overall war operations across the country, and some 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed to the ground, while the number of those who perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. Outcome and aftermath
So costly was the Roman victory, that the Emperor Hadrian, when reporting to the Roman Senate, did not see fit to begin with the customary greeting “If you and your children are healthy, it is well; I and the legions are healthy.”
In the aftermath of the war, Hadrian consolidated the older political units of Judaea, Galilee and Samaria into the new province of Syria Palaestina, which is commonly interpreted as an attempt to complete the disassociation with Judaea. Archaeological findings Over the past few decades, new information about the revolt has come to light, from the discovery of several collections of letters, some possibly by Bar Kokhba himself, in the Cave of Letters overlooking the Dead Sea. These letters can now be seen at the Israel Museum.
 Israel (Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל), officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest. The country contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel’s economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state’s sovereignty over Jerusalem has only partial recognition.
Israel has evidence of the earliest migration of hominids out of Africa. Canaanite tribes are archaeologically attested since the Middle Bronze Age, while the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age. The Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel around 720 BCE. Judah was later conquered by the Babylonian, Persian and Hellenistic empires and had existed as Jewish autonomous provinces. The successful Maccabean Revolt led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom by 110 BCE, which in 63 BCE however became a client state of the Roman Republic that subsequently installed the Herodian dynasty in 37 BCE, and in 6 CE created the Roman province of Judea. Judea lasted as a Roman province until the failed Jewish revolts resulted in widespread destruction, expulsion of Jewish population and the renaming of the region from Iudaea to Syria Palaestina. Jewish presence in the region has persisted to a certain extent over the centuries. In the 7th century the Levant was taken from the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs and remained in Muslim control until the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Ayyubid conquest of 1187. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the Levant in the 13th century until its defeat by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 19th century, national awakening among Jews led to the establishment of the Zionist movement in the diaspora followed by waves of immigration to Ottoman and later British Palestine.
 In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency, and rejected by Arab leaders. The following year, the Jewish Agency declared the independence of the State of Israel, and the subsequent 1948 Arab-Israeli War saw Israel’s establishment over most of the former Mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by neighboring Arab states. Israel has since fought several wars with Arab countries, and it has since 1967 occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip (still considered occupied after 2005 disengagement, although some legal experts dispute this claim). It extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is the world’s longest military occupation in modern times. Efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have not resulted in a final peace agreement. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have been signed.
In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state. Israel is a representative democracy disputed] with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature. Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 32nd-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2017. The country benefits from a highly skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East, and has one of the highest life expectancies in the world.
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