From Bar Kochba to the 'Gaza Metro'

Hamas aren't the first to use tunnel warfare in the land.

The ‘Gaza Metro,’ as it has become popularly known, describes more than 500 kilometers of tunnels used by Hamas to transport people and goods, to store rockets and ammunition, and to house Hamas command and control centers. Using tunnels in modern warfare isn’t a new idea: the Viet Cong did it to great effect during the Vietnam War, it played a key role in World War I, and was also used intermittently during the American Civil War. In this case, though - ironically, given their commitment to Israel’s destruction - Hamas’s use of underground warfare taps into an ancient Jewish tradition in the Land of Israel, albeit with some important qualifications

The most famous example of tunnel warfare by Jews is the Bar-Kochba Revolt against the Roman Empire. This is less well known than the First Revolt against the Romans (66-74 CE), mainly because little was recorded about what happened. Unlike the First Revolt, there was no Josephus to write everything down; all we can go on are a few lines by the Roman historian Cassius Dio, rabbinic literature, and some architectural findings.

The immediate cause of the revolt was the decision by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to build a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina, over the ruins of Jerusalem, and to build a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount (previously it was wrongly believed that this took place after the revolt). According to rabbinic literature, Hadrian had initially planned on rebuilding the Temple, but a Samaritan (who often take a villainous role in rabbinic texts) convinced him not to. Either way, another Roman legion was sent to keep order, and work on the new city began in 131 CE. Revolt soon followed.

Jewish leaders aimed to avoid the mistakes of the First Revolt. Led by Simon bar Kochba and Eleazar of Modi’im, they quickly cut off the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. Bar Kochba means ‘Son of the Star,’ a reference to the belief – which was shared by Rabbi Akiva and others – that he was the messiah (Numbers 24:17: “There shall come a star out of Jacob”). In reality, his real name, as shown in documents found in the Cave of Letters, a cave in the Judean Desert that included letters between Bar Kochba and his subordinates, was Simon Bar Koseva, possibly a reference to his hometown. The name Bar Kokhba is not even mentioned in rabbinic literature, perhaps because the rabbis were disappointed by his eventual failure.

Following the rebels’ early success, additional Roman reinforcements were sent from neighboring countries. According to Cassius Dio, “[The Jews] did not dare try conclusions with the Romans in the open field, but they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved underground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light.”

These tunnel-caves can still be seen and explored in present-day Israel, although we now understand that the phenomenon begun much earlier than the Bar-Kochba Revolt. As explained in a recent story in Haaretz, the first underground shelters date to the Hasmonean period in the first century BCE. According to a 2022 study by Dr. Dvir Raviv and Prof. Boaz Zissu, 530 hiding complexes have been found in 300 sites in central/southern Israel, the Galilee, and the West Bank. Geography is the mother of history, and the most important reason for their popularity is the soft chalkstone that makes up large sections of the bedrock, surrounded by a hard outer shell. This makes them perfect for excavation, as can be seen most spectacularly at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Beit Guvrin. Nowhere else in the Roman World were man-made caves used so extensively. This phenomenon even continued into the Muslim period, with the Bell Caves near Beit Guvrin used to provide building materials for the new city of Ramla.

The primary use of the ancient caves wasn’t military. The Jews used their knowledge of rock-hewing techniques to build cisterns, ritual baths, oil presses, and tombs, but when war broke out, they served a dual purpose. In this sense, they were more akin to the safe rooms installed in contemporary Israeli homes than Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza.

As head of the rebellion, Bar Kochba ruled over the virtually independent entity for over two years. Many believed the messianic era had arrived, and coins were issued with reference to Bar Kochba and images including the Temple façade with a rising star. Soon, though, the Romans pushed back, and the population was forced to use the cave-tunnels for military-defensive purposes. Like Gaza, the previously isolated caves were linked to one another through tunnels, creating a single labyrinth that facilitated people’s movement. One example of this can be seen at Horvat ‘Ethri in the Judean lowlands. The most spectacular example of the military use of tunnels, meanwhile, can be seen at Herodion, today located in the West Bank just southeast of Bethlehem, where there were wider access tunnels leading to Roman encampments, allowing for the sort of hit-and-run attacks Hamas have been using against the IDF in Gaza. But these were exceptions. The Mishnah refers to them as “hiding places,” allowing the rebels to live and fight another day. This is of course also the case for the ‘Gaza Metro,’ but crucially the Bar Kochba tunnels were also places of refuge for civilians, which is not the case in Gaza.

Eventually, inevitably, the rebels were defeated. The Roman army that faced off against Bar Kochba’s men was significantly larger than Titus’s army that had crushed the First Revolt. According to one estimate, nearly one third of the Roman army was involved, with soldiers from at least 10 legions. This suggests that Bar Kochba had achieved great early success (some argue that the rebels destroyed an entire Roman legion – Legio IX Hispana), and of course, the IDF is using a similar chunk of its resources to try to defeat Hamas in Gaza. Bar Kochba lost control of territory, the Romans smoking the rebels out of the tunnels, before making a final stand at the fortress of Betar, today located in the Palestinian village of Battir (which preserves its name) just outside Bethlehem, where it is known in Arabic as Khirbet al-Yahud (‘Ruin of the Jews’). According to the Jerusalem Talmud, the Romans “went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils.”

Cassius Dio (Roman History 69.14) writes that the Romans destroyed 985 villages, 50 fortresses, and killed 580,000 rebels, not to mention those killed by fire, disease, and famine. The numbers are obviously an exaggeration, but they give an indication of the scale of the destruction. What is beyond doubt is that Jewish life in Judea was virtually wiped out, with the centre of Jewish life in the land shifting to the Galilee, and beyond. The Romans now changed the name of the province to Palestine.

For reasons which hopefully don’t need to be expanded on, there is of course no analogy to be drawn between Hamas and the Bar-Kochba rebels, at least beyond the superficial. But it is interesting – and poignant – to note the recurrence of certain themes in the history of the land. There’s something particularly moving about crawling around in the ‘Bar-Kochba Caves,’ imagining the rebels and recalling this occasionally forgotten history. Indeed, this is one of the ironies when discussing the debate about indigeneity. The Bar-Kochba Revolt would be an obvious historical memory to draw upon for an indigenous people fighting a foreign usurper here, and yet no such memory exists among the Palestinians. Instead, it is preserved by the alleged colonisers, the Jews, most notably on Lag BaOmer, which in modern Israel commemorates the Bar-Kochba Revolt and the loss of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.