Yarmouk River

On the east the ground rises abruptly to a height of about three thousand feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions.

Behind this extends an immense table-land slightly undulating and intersected in all directions by the affluents of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, the Yarmuk[Footnote: The Yarmuk does not occur in the Bible; but we meet with its name in the Talmud, and the Greeks adopted it under the form Hieromax.], the Jabok Footnote: Genesis chapter thirty-two, verse twenty-two; Numbers chapter twenty-one, verse twenty-four.

The name has been Greekized under the forms Lobacus, Labacos, Aiambakes.

It is the present Nahr Zerka.

End footnote.

On the Mediterranean, while others had settled in the neighborhood of the southern Hittites in such numbers that their name in the Hebrew scriptures was at times employed to designate the western mountainous region about the Dead Sea and the valley of the Jordan.

Their presence was also indicated on the table lands bordering the desert of Damascus, in the districts frequented by Bedouin of the tribe of Terah, Ammon, and Moab, on the rivers Yarmuk and Jabbuk, and at Edrei and Heshbon.

Footnote.

It started all the way back in the seventh century.

In the year 636, at the Yarmouk River, in what's now the border between Syria and Jordan, an Arab army destroyed the field army of the Byzantine Empire.

That's the eastern half of Rome, which was still standing, still Christian, and still the most powerful state in the Mediterranean world.

Within a year, Jerusalem had fallen.

It transcends, yes, yes.

You visited the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, where there was a siege in 2013.

I wonder how important empathy is to the stories you tell, and whether you have to try not to get too emotional.

I've often tried to make a distinction between emotion and empathy.

It's too much for me to bear." And one of the places where I felt the huge responsibility in trying to convey that was during the Syrian civil war, when one of the worst weapons used by the Assad, uh, regime was a medieval tactic, surrender or- Or starve.

A siege.

And Yarmouk was one of the many places which was sealed off in such a way that not a piece of bread could get in, and not a person, not even a child, could get out.

And I worked really, really hard.

The Syrian Golan Heights are right there.

And we control the entire area, from the Hermon Crown to the Yamuk River, and from here to the Mediterranean Sea.

Absolute control have never seen before.

We will not allow any terrorist to establish itself on our borders.

And it was one of the most amazing stories of military conquest in the history of the human race.

The Byzantine army was smashed by the Arabs at the Battle of the Yarmouk in 634.

That's a tributary of Jordan.

Next, they conquered Syria, Damascus, Palmyra, Antioch, Jerusalem, and the rest.

And that clash was about to take place on the most terrifying ground in history.

The Battle of Yarmouk.

Do you really think that you can win against us? The land on which you have set foot, no one has ever returned alive here.

You people are hungry for Sehera.

Because the place was very crowded, thousands of Roman soldiers began to fall into the ravine.

They were pushing each other down.

On that day, 70,000 Roman soldiers were killed in the field of Yarmouk.

In the greatest clash of the century, Khalid bin Walid i.a. had broken the back of the Roman Empire.

Speaking from Mount Hermon, he declared, "We will not allow any terror army to establish itself on our border.

We are committed to defeating the terror regime in Iran, and we will do it." He added that Israel maintains absolute control of the area from the Hermon to the Yarmouk and to the Mediterranean Sea.

These remarks coincide with assessments by the Israeli establishment that Iran may be preparing for a broad, coordinated attack against Israel on multiple fronts, involving proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and militias in Iraq.

In Syria, an explosion at a weapons depot near Sarmada in Idlib killed at least fourteen people and wounded eleven, according to Syrian state television.

On the east the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3,000 feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions.

Behind this extends an immense table land slightly undulating and intersected in all directions by the affluence of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, the Yarmuk.

Footnote.

The Yarmuk does not occur in the Bible, but we meet with its name in the Talmud, and the Greeks adopted it under the form Hieromax.

End footnote.

The Jabuk.

End footnote.

On the Mediterranean, while others had settled in the neighborhood of the southern Hittites in such numbers that their name in the Hebrew scriptures was at times employed to designate the western mountainous region about the Dead Sea and the valley of the Jordan.