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Barbarian

A barbarian is a member of a people who are not part of one of the ancient 'great nations'. The designation is usually applied as a generalization based on a popular stereotype; barbarians can be members of any nation judged by some to be less civilized or orderly (such as a tribal society) but may also be part of a certain "primitive" cultural group (such as nomads) or social class (such as bandits) both within and outside one's own nation.

A similar term, savage, has historically Indigenous connotations.

In idiomatic or figurative usage, a "barbarian" may also be an individual reference to a brutal, cruel, warlike, and insensitive person.

The term originates from the βάρβαρος ( βάρβαροι ). In Ancient Greece, the Greeks used the term not only towards those who did not speak Greek and follow classical Greek customs, but also towards Greek populations on the fringe of the Greek world with peculiar dialects. In Ancient Rome, the Romans adapted and used the term towards tribal non-Romans such as the Germanics, Celts, Iberians, Helvetii, Thracians, Illyrians, and Sarmatians. In the early modern period and sometimes later, the Byzantine Greeks used it for the Turks in a clearly pejorative manner.

The Greek word was borrowed into Arabic as well, under the form بربر, and used as an exonym by the Arab conquerors to refer to the indigenous peoples of North Africa, known in English as Amazigh or Berbers, with the latter thereby being a cognate of the word "barbarian".

Etymology
The Ancient Greek name βάρβαρος 'barbarian' was an antonym for πολίτης  'citizen', from πόλις   'city'. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀞𐀞𐀫,, written in Linear B syllabic script.

The Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking people, including  the Egyptians, Persians, Medes and Phoenicians, emphasizing their otherness. According to Greek writers, this was because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar..bar..;" the alleged root of the word, which is an echomimetic or  onomatopoeic word. In various occasions, the term was also used by Greeks, especially the Athenians, to deride other Greek tribes and states (such as Epirotes, Eleans, Boeotians and Aeolic-speakers) and also fellow Athenians in a pejorative and politically motivated manner. The term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning. The verb βαρβαρίζω (barbarízō) in ancient Greek meant to behave or talk like a barbarian, or to hold with the barbarians.

Plato (Statesman 262de) rejected the Greek–barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on just such grounds: dividing the world into Greeks and non-Greeks told one nothing about the second group. Yet Plato used the term barbarian frequently in his seventh letter. In Homer's works, the term appeared only once (Iliad 2.867), in the form βαρβαρόφωνος (barbarophonos) ("of incomprehensible speech"), used of the Carians fighting for Troy during the Trojan War. In general, the concept of barbaros did not figure largely in archaic literature before the 5th century BC. It has been suggested that the "barbarophonoi" in the Iliad signifies not those who spoke a non-Greek language but simply those who spoke Greek badly.

A change occurred in the connotations of the word after the Greco-Persian Wars in the first half of the 5th century BC. Here a hasty coalition of Greeks defeated the vast Persian Empire. Indeed, in the Greek of this period 'barbarian' is often used expressly to refer to Persians, who were enemies of the Greeks in this war. The Romans used the term barbarus for uncivilised people, opposite to Greek or Roman, and in fact, it became a common term to refer to all foreigners among Romans after Augustus age (as, among the Greeks, after the Persian wars, the Persians), including the Germanic peoples, Persians, Gauls, Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

The Greek term barbaros was the etymological source for many words meaning "barbarian", including English barbarian, which was first recorded in 16th century Middle English.

A word barbara- (बर्बर) is also found in the Sanskrit of ancient India, with the primary meaning of "cruel" and also "stammering" (बड़बड़), implying someone with an unfamiliar language. The Greek word barbaros is related to Sanskrit barbaras (stammering). This Indo-European root is also found in Latin balbutire / balbus for "stammer / stammering" (leading to Italian balbettare, Spanish balbucear and French balbutier) and Czech blblati "to stammer". The verb baṛbaṛānā in both contemporary Hindi (बड़बड़ाना) as well as Urdu (بڑبڑانا) means 'to babble, to speak gibberish, to rave incoherently'.

In Aramaic, Old Persian and Arabic context, the root refers to "babble confusedly". It appears as barbary or in Old French barbarie, itself derived from the Arabic Barbar, Berber, which is an ancient Arabic term for the North African inhabitants west of Egypt. The Arabic word might be ultimately from Greek barbaria.

Semantics

The Oxford English Dictionary gives five definitions of the noun barbarian, including an obsolete Barbary usage. The OED barbarous entry summarizes the semantic history. "The sense-development in ancient times was (with the Greeks) 'foreign, non-Hellenic,' later 'outlandish, rude, brutal'; (with the Romans) 'not Latin nor Greek,' then 'pertaining to those outside the Roman Empire'; hence 'uncivilized, uncultured,' and later 'non-Christian,' whence 'Saracen, heathen'; and generally 'savage, rude, savagely cruel, inhuman.'"
 * 1. Etymologically, A foreigner, one whose language and customs differ from the speaker's.
 * 2. Hist. a. One not a Greek. b. One living outside the pale of the Roman Empire and its civilization, applied especially to the northern nations that overthrew them. c. One outside the pale of Christian civilization. d. With the Italians of the Renaissance: One of a nation outside of Italy.
 * 3. A rude, wild, uncivilized person. b. Sometimes distinguished from savage (perh. with a glance at 2). c. Applied by the Chinese contemptuously to foreigners.
 * 4. An uncultured person, or one who has no sympathy with literary culture.
 * †5. A native of Barbary. [See Barbary Coast.] Obs. †b. Barbary pirates & A Barbary horse. Obs.

Historical developments
Greek attitudes towards "barbarians" developed in parallel with the growth of chattel slavery – especially in Athens. Although the enslavement of Greeks for non-payment of debts continued in most Greek states, Athens banned this practice under Solon in the early 6th century BC. Under the Athenian democracy established ca. 508 BC, slavery came into use on a scale never before seen among the Greeks. Massive concentrations of slaves worked under especially brutal conditions in the silver mines at Laureion in south-eastern Attica after the discovery of a major vein of silver-bearing ore there in 483 BC, while the phenomenon of skilled slave craftsmen producing manufactured goods in small factories and workshops became increasingly common.

Furthermore, slave-ownership no longer became the preserve of the rich: all but the poorest of Athenian households came to have slaves in order to supplement the work of their free members. The slaves of Athens that had "barbarian" origins were coming especially from lands around the Black Sea such as Thrace and Taurica (Crimea), while Lydians, Phrygians and Carians came from Asia Minor. Aristotle (Politics 1.2–7; 3.14) characterises barbarians as slaves by nature.

From this period, words like barbarophonos, cited above from Homer, came into use not only for the sound of a foreign language but also for foreigners who spoke Greek improperly. In the Greek language, the word logos expressed both the notions of "language" and "reason", so Greek-speakers readily conflated speaking poorly with stupidity. Further changes occurred in the connotations of barbari/barbaroi in Late Antiquity, when bishops and catholikoi were appointed to sees connected to cities among the "civilized" gentes barbaricae such as in Armenia or Persia, whereas bishops were appointed to supervise entire peoples among the less settled.

Eventually the term found a hidden meaning through the folk etymology of Cassiodorus (c. 485 – c. 585). He stated that the word barbarian was "made up of barba (beard) and rus (flat land); for barbarians did not live in cities, making their abodes in the fields like wild animals".

Hellenic stereotypes
From classical origins the Hellenic stereotype of barbarism evolved: barbarians are like children, unable to speak or reason properly, cowardly, effeminate, luxurious, cruel, unable to control their appetites and desires, politically unable to govern themselves. Writers voiced these stereotypes with much shrillness – Isocrates in the 4th century B.C., for example, called for a war of conquest against Persia as a panacea for Greek problems.

However, the disparaging Hellenic stereotype of barbarians did not totally dominate Hellenic attitudes. Xenophon (died 354 B.C.), for example, wrote the Cyropaedia, a laudatory fictionalised account of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, effectively a utopian text. In his Anabasis, Xenophon's accounts of the Persians and other non-Greeks who he knew or encountered show few traces of the stereotypes.

In Plato's Protagoras, Prodicus of Ceos calls "barbarian" the Aeolian dialect that Pittacus of Mytilene spoke.

Aristotle makes the difference between Greeks and barbarians one of the central themes of his book on Politics, and quotes Euripides approvingly, "Tis meet that Greeks should rule barbarians".

The renowned orator Demosthenes (384–322 B.C.) made derogatory comments in his speeches, using the word "barbarian".

In the Bible's New Testament, St. Paul (from Tarsus) – lived about A.D. 5 to about A.D. 67) uses the word barbarian in its Hellenic sense to refer to non-Greeks (Romans 1:14), and he also uses it to characterise one who merely speaks a different language (1 Corinthians 14:11). In the book of Acts, the natives of Malta – who were kind to Paul and the others who were shipwrecked with him – are called barbarians (Acts 28:2).

About a hundred years after Paul's time, Lucian – a native of Samosata, in the former kingdom of Commagene, which had been absorbed by the Roman Empire and made part of the province of Syria – used the term "barbarian" to describe himself. Because he was a noted satirist, this could have indicated self-deprecating irony. It might also have suggested descent from Samosata's original Semitic-speaking population – who were likely called "barbarians by later Hellenistic, Greek-speaking settlers", and might have eventually taken up this appellation themselves.

The term retained its standard usage in the Greek language throughout the Middle Ages; Byzantine Greeks used it widely until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, (later named the Byzantine Empire) in the 15th century (1453 with the fall of capital city Constantinople).

Cicero (106–43 BC) described the mountain area of inner Sardinia as "a land of barbarians", with these inhabitants also known by the manifestly pejorative term latrones mastrucati ("thieves with a rough garment in wool"). The region, still known as "Barbagia" (in Sardinian Barbàgia or Barbàza), preserves this old "barbarian" designation in its name – but it no longer consciously retains "barbarian" associations: the inhabitants of the area themselves use the name naturally and unaffectedly.

The Dying Galatian statue

The statue of the Dying Galatian provides some insight into the Hellenistic perception of and attitude towards "Barbarians". Attalus I of Pergamon (ruled 241–197 BC) commissioned (220s BC) a statue to celebrate his victory (ca 232 BC) over the Celtic Galatians in Anatolia (the bronze original is lost, but a Roman marble copy was found in the 17th century). The statue depicts with remarkable realism a dying Celt warrior with a typically Celtic hairstyle and moustache. He sits on his fallen shield while a sword and other objects lie beside him. He appears to be fighting against death, refusing to accept his fate.

The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus demonstrating the might of the people who defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. As H. W. Janson comments, the sculpture conveys the message that "they knew how to die, barbarians that they were".

Utter barbarism, civilization, and the noble savage
The Greeks admired Scythians and Galatians as heroic individuals – and even (as in the case of Anacharsis) as philosophers – but they regarded their culture as barbaric. The Romans indiscriminately characterised the various Germanic tribes, the settled Gauls, and the raiding Huns as barbarians, and subsequent classically oriented historical narratives depicted the migrations associated with the end of the Western Roman Empire as the "barbarian invasions".

The Romans adapted the term in order to refer to anything that was non-Roman. The German cultural historian Silvio Vietta points out that the meaning of the word "barbarous" has undergone a semantic change in modern times, after Michel de Montaigne used it to characterize the activities of the Spaniards in the New World – representatives of the more technologically advanced, higher European culture – as "barbarous," in a satirical essay published in the year 1580. It was not the supposedly "uncivilized" Indian tribes who were "barbarous", but the conquering Spaniards. Montaigne argued that Europeans noted the barbarism of other cultures but not the crueler and more brutal actions of their own societies, particularly (in his time) during the so-called religious wars. In Montaigne's view, his own people – the Europeans – were the real "barbarians". In this way, the argument was turned around and applied to the European invaders. With this shift in meaning, a whole literature arose in Europe that characterized the indigenous Indian peoples as innocent, and the militarily superior Europeans as "barbarous" intruders invading a paradisical world.

In non-Western historical contexts
Historically, the term barbarian has seen widespread use in English. Many peoples have dismissed alien cultures and even rival civilizations, because they were unrecognizably strange. For instance, the nomadic Turkic peoples north of the Black Sea, including the Pechenegs and the Kipchaks, were called barbarians by the Byzantines.

Middle East and North Africa

The native Berbers of North Africa were among the many peoples called "Barbarian" by the early Romans. The term continued to be used by medieval Arabs (see Berber etymology) before being replaced by "Amazigh". In English, the term "Berber" continues to be used as an exonym. The geographical term Barbary or Barbary Coast, and the name of the Barbary pirates based on that coast (and who were not necessarily Berbers) were also derived from it.

The term has also been used to refer to people from Barbary, a region encompassing most of North Africa. The name of the region, Barbary, comes from the Arabic word Barbar, possibly from the Latin word barbaricum, meaning "land of the barbarians."

Many languages define the "Other" as those who do not speak one's language; Greek barbaroi was paralleled by Arabic ajam "non-Arabic speakers; non-Arabs; (especially) Persians."

India
In the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata, the Sanskrit onomatopoeic word barbara- referred to the incomprehensible, unfamiliar speech (perceived as "babbling", "incoherent stammering") of non-Vedic peoples ("wretch, foreigner, sinful people, low and barbarous".)

China
The term "Barbarian" in traditional Chinese culture had several aspects. For one thing, Chinese has more than one historical "barbarian" exonym. Several historical Chinese characters for non-Chinese peoples were graphic pejoratives. The character for the Yao people, for instance, was changed from yao 猺 "jackal" to yao 瑤 "precious jade" in the modern period. The original Hua–Yi distinction between Hua ("Chinese") and Yi (commonly translated as "barbarian") was based on culture and power but not on race.

Historically, the Chinese used various words for foreign ethnic groups. They include terms like 夷 Yi, which is often translated as "barbarians." Despite this conventional translation, there are also other ways of translating Yi into English. Some of the examples include "foreigners," "ordinary others," "wild tribes," "uncivilized tribes," and so forth.

History and terminology
Chinese historical records mention what may now perhaps be termed "barbarian" peoples for over four millennia, although this considerably predates the Greek language origin of the term "barbarian", at least as is known from the thirty-four centuries of written records in the Greek language. The sinologist Herrlee Glessner Creel said, "Throughout Chinese history "the barbarians" have been a constant motif, sometimes minor, sometimes very major indeed. They figure prominently in the Shang oracle inscriptions, and the dynasty that came to an end only in 1912 was, from the Chinese point of view, barbarian."

Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC) oracles and bronze inscriptions first recorded specific Chinese exonyms for foreigners, often in contexts of warfare or tribute. King Wu Ding (r. 1250–1192 BC), for instance, fought with the Guifang 鬼方, Di 氐, and Qiang 羌 "barbarians."

During the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC), the meanings of four exonyms were expanded. "These included Rong, Yi, Man, and Di—all general designations referring to the barbarian tribes." These Siyi 四夷 "Four Barbarians", most "probably the names of ethnic groups originally," were the Yi or Dongyi 東夷 "eastern barbarians," Man or Nanman 南蠻 "southern barbarians," Rong or Xirong 西戎 "western barbarians," and Di or Beidi 北狄 "northern barbarians." The Russian anthropologist Mikhail Kryukov concluded. "Evidently, the barbarian tribes at first had individual names, but during about the middle of the first millennium B.C., they were classified schematically according to the four cardinal points of the compass. This would, in the final analysis, mean that once again territory had become the primary criterion of the we-group, whereas the consciousness of common origin remained secondary. What continued to be important were the factors of language, the acceptance of certain forms of material culture, the adherence to certain rituals, and, above all, the economy and the way of life. Agriculture was the only appropriate way of life for the Hua-Hsia."

The Chinese classics use compounds of these four generic names in localized "barbarian tribes" exonyms such as "west and north" Rongdi, "south and east" Manyi, Nanyibeidi "barbarian tribes in the south and the north," and Manyirongdi "all kinds of barbarians." Creel says the Chinese evidently came to use Rongdi and Manyi "as generalized terms denoting 'non-Chinese,' 'foreigners,' 'barbarians'," and a statement such as "the Rong and Di are wolves" (Zuozhuan, Min 1) is "very much like the assertion that many people in many lands will make today, that 'no foreigner can be trusted'." "The Chinese had at least two reasons for vilifying and depreciating the non-Chinese groups. On the one hand, many of them harassed and pillaged the Chinese, which gave them a genuine grievance. On the other, it is quite clear that the Chinese were increasingly encroaching upon the territory of these peoples, getting the better of them by trickery, and putting many of them under subjection. By vilifying them and depicting them as somewhat less than human, the Chinese could justify their conduct and still any qualms of conscience."

This word Yi has both specific references, such as to Huaiyi 淮夷 peoples in the Huai River region, and generalized references to "barbarian; foreigner; non-Chinese." Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage translates Yi as "Anc[ient] barbarian tribe on east border, any border or foreign tribe." The sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank says the name Yi "furnished the primary Chinese term for 'barbarian'," but "Paradoxically the Yi were considered the most civilized of the non-Chinese peoples.

Idealization
Some Chinese classics romanticize or idealize barbarians, comparable to the western noble savage construct. For instance, the Confucian Analects records: The translator Arthur Waley noted that, "A certain idealization of the 'noble savage' is to be found fairly often in early Chinese literature", citing the Zuo Zhuan maxim, "When the Emperor no longer functions, learning must be sought among the 'Four Barbarians,' north, west, east, and south." Professor Creel said, "From ancient to modern times the Chinese attitude toward people not Chinese in culture—'barbarians'—has commonly been one of contempt, sometimes tinged with fear ... It must be noted that, while the Chinese have disparaged barbarians, they have been singularly hospitable both to individuals and to groups that have adopted Chinese culture. And at times they seem to have had a certain admiration, perhaps unwilling, for the rude force of these peoples or simpler customs."
 * The Master said, The [夷狄] barbarians of the East and North have retained their princes. They are not in such a state of decay as we in China.
 * The Master said, The Way makes no progress. I shall get upon a raft and float out to sea.
 * The Master wanted to settle among the [九夷] Nine Wild Tribes of the East. Someone said, I am afraid you would find it hard to put up with their lack of refinement. The Master said, Were a true gentleman to settle among them there would soon be no trouble about lack of refinement.

In a somewhat related example, Mencius believed that Confucian practices were universal and timeless, and thus followed by both Hua and Yi, "Shun was an Eastern barbarian; he was born in Chu Feng, moved to Fu Hsia, and died in Ming T'iao. King Wen was a Western barbarian; he was born in Ch'i Chou and died in Pi Ying. Their native places were over a thousand li apart, and there were a thousand years between them. Yet when they had their way in the Central Kingdoms, their actions matched like the two halves of a tally.  The standards of the two sages, one earlier and one later, were identical."

The prominent (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi character dictionary, defines yi 夷 as "men of the east" 東方之人也. The dictionary also informs that Yi is not dissimilar from the Xia 夏, which means Chinese. Elsewhere in the Shuowen Jiezi, under the entry of qiang 羌, the term yi is associated with benevolence and human longevity. Yi countries are therefore virtuous places where people live long lives. This is why Confucius wanted to go to yi countries when the dao could not be realized in the central states.

Pejorative Chinese characters
Some Chinese characters used to transcribe non-Chinese peoples were graphically pejorative ethnic slurs, in which the insult derived not from the Chinese word but from the character used to write it. For instance, the Written Chinese transcription of Yao "the Yao people", who primarily live in the mountains of southwest China and Vietnam. When 11th-century Song dynasty authors first transcribed the exonym Yao, they insultingly chose yao 猺 "jackal" from a lexical selection of over 100 characters pronounced yao (e.g., 腰 "waist", 遙 "distant", 搖 "shake"). During a series of 20th-century Chinese language reforms, this graphic pejorative 猺 (written with the 犭"dog/beast radical") "jackal; the Yao" was replaced twice; first with the invented character yao 傜 (亻"human radical") "the Yao", then with yao 瑤 (玉 "jade radical") "precious jade; the Yao." Chinese orthography (symbols used to write a language) can provide unique opportunities to write ethnic insults logographically that do not exist alphabetically. For the Yao ethnic group, there is a difference between the transcriptions Yao 猺 "jackal" and Yao 瑤 "jade" but none between the romanizations Yao and Yau.

Cultural and racial barbarianism
According to the archeologist William Meacham, it was only by the time of the late Shang dynasty that one can speak of "Chinese," "Chinese culture," or "Chinese civilization." "There is a sense in which the traditional view of ancient Chinese history is correct (and perhaps it originated ultimately in the first appearance of dynastic civilization): those on the fringes and outside this esoteric event were "barbarians" in that they did not enjoy (or suffer from) the fruit of civilization until they were brought into close contact with it by an imperial expansion of the civilization itself." In a similar vein, Creel explained the significance of Confucian li "ritual; rites; propriety". "The fundamental criterion of 'Chinese-ness,' anciently and throughout history, has been cultural. The Chinese have had a particular way of life, a particular complex of usages, sometimes characterized as li. Groups that conformed to this way of life were, generally speaking, considered Chinese. Those that turned away from it were considered to cease to be Chinese. ... It was the process of acculturation, transforming barbarians into Chinese, that created the great bulk of the Chinese people. The barbarians of Western Chou times were, for the most part, future Chinese, or the ancestors of future Chinese. This is a fact of great importance. ... It is significant, however, that we almost never find any references in the early literature to physical differences between Chinese and barbarians. Insofar as we can tell, the distinction was purely cultural." Dikötter says, "Thought in ancient China was oriented towards the world, or tianxia, 'all under heaven.' The world was perceived as one homogenous unity named 'great community' (datong) The Middle Kingdom [China], dominated by the assumption of its cultural superiority, measured outgroups according to a yardstick by which those who did not follow the 'Chinese ways' were considered 'barbarians.' A Theory of 'using the Chinese ways to transform the barbarian' as strongly advocated. It was believed that the barbarian could be culturally assimilated. In the Age of Great Peace, the barbarians would flow in and be transformed: the world would be one."

According to the Pakistani academic M. Shahid Alam, "The centrality of culture, rather than race, in the Chinese world view had an important corollary. Nearly always, this translated into a civilizing mission rooted in the premise that 'the barbarians could be culturally assimilated'"; namely laihua 來化 "come and be transformed" or Hanhua 漢化 "become Chinese; be sinicized."

Two millennia before the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote The Raw and the Cooked, the Chinese differentiated "raw" and "cooked" categories of barbarian peoples who lived in China. The shufan 熟番 "cooked [food eating] barbarians" are sometimes interpreted as Sinicized, and the shengfan 生番 "raw [food eating] barbarians" as not Sinicized. The Liji gives this description. "The people of those five regions – the Middle states, and the [Rong], [Yi] (and other wild tribes around them) – had all their several natures, which they could not be made to alter. The tribes on the east were called [Yi]. They had their hair unbound, and tattooed their bodies. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked with fire. Those on the south were called Man. They tattooed their foreheads, and had their feet turned toward each other. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked with fire. Those on the west were called [Rong]. They had their hair unbound, and wore skins. Some of them did not eat grain-food. Those on the north were called [Di]. They wore skins of animals and birds, and dwelt in caves. Some of them did not eat grain-food."

Dikötter explains the close association between nature and nurture. "The shengfan, literally 'raw barbarians', were considered savage and resisting. The shufan, or 'cooked barbarians', were tame and submissive. The consumption of raw food was regarded as an infallible sign of savagery that affected the physiological state of the barbarian."

Some Warring States period texts record a belief that the respective natures of the Chinese and the barbarian were incompatible. Mencius, for instance, once stated: "I have heard of the Chinese converting barbarians to their ways, but not of their being converted to barbarian ways." Dikötter says, "The nature of the Chinese was regarded as impermeable to the evil influences of the barbarian; no retrogression was possible. Only the barbarian might eventually change by adopting Chinese ways."

However, different thinkers and texts convey different opinions on this issue. The prominent Tang Confucian Han Yu, for example, wrote in his essay Yuan Dao the following: "When Confucius wrote the Chunqiu, he said that if the feudal lords use Yi ritual, then they should be called Yi; If they use Chinese rituals, then they should be called Chinese." Han Yu went on to lament in the same essay that the Chinese of his time might all become Yi because the Tang court wanted to put Yi laws above the teachings of the former kings. Therefore, Han Yu's essay shows the possibility that the Chinese can lose their culture and become the uncivilized outsiders, and that the uncivilized outsiders have the potential to become Chinese.

After the Song dynasty, many of China's rulers in the north were of Inner Asia ethnicities, such as the Khitans, Juchens, and Mongols of the Liao, Jin and Yuan dynasties, the latter ended up ruling over the entire China. Hence, the historian John King Fairbank wrote, "the influence on China of the great fact of alien conquest under the Liao-Jin-Yuan dynasties is just beginning to be explored." During the Qing dynasty, the rulers of China adopted Confucian philosophy and Han Chinese institutions to show that the Manchu rulers had received the Mandate of Heaven to rule China. At the same time, they also tried to retain their own indigenous culture. Due to the Manchus' adoption of Han Chinese culture, most Han Chinese (though not all) did accept the Manchus as the legitimate rulers of China. Similarly, according to Fudan University historian Yao Dali, even the supposedly "patriotic" hero Wen Tianxiang of the late Song and early Yuan period did not believe the Mongol rule to be illegitimate. In fact, Wen was willing to live under Mongol rule as long as he was not forced to be a Yuan dynasty official, out of his loyalty to the Song dynasty. Yao explains that Wen chose to die in the end because he was forced to become a Yuan official. So, Wen chose death due to his loyalty to his dynasty, not because he viewed the Yuan court as a non-Chinese, illegitimate regime and therefore refused to live under their rule. Yao also says that many Chinese who were living in the Yuan-Ming transition period also shared Wen's beliefs of identifying with and putting loyalty towards one's dynasty above racial/ethnic differences. Many Han Chinese writers did not celebrate the collapse of the Mongols and the return of the Han Chinese rule in the form of the Ming dynasty government at that time. Many Han Chinese actually chose not to serve in the new Ming court at all due to their loyalty to the Yuan. Some Han Chinese also committed suicide on behalf of the Mongols as a proof of their loyalty. The founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, also indicated that he was happy to be born in the Yuan period and that the Yuan did legitimately receive the Mandate of Heaven to rule over China. On a side note, one of his key advisors, Liu Ji, generally supported the idea that while the Chinese and the non-Chinese are different, they are actually equal. Liu was therefore arguing against the idea that the Chinese were and are superior to the "Yi."

These things show that many times, pre-modern Chinese did view culture (and sometimes politics) rather than race and ethnicity as the dividing line between the Chinese and the non-Chinese. In many cases, the non-Chinese could and did become the Chinese and vice versa, especially when there was a change in culture.

Modern reinterpretations
According to the historian Frank Dikötter, "The delusive myth of a Chinese antiquity that abandoned racial standards in favour of a concept of cultural universalism in which all barbarians could ultimately participate has understandably attracted some modern scholars. Living in an unequal and often hostile world, it is tempting to project the utopian image of a racially harmonious world into a distant and obscure past."

The politician, historian, and diplomat K. C. Wu analyzes the origin of the characters for the Yi, Man, Rong, Di, and Xia peoples and concludes that the "ancients formed these characters with only one purpose in mind—to describe the different ways of living each of these people pursued." Despite the well-known examples of pejorative exonymic characters (such as the "dog radical" in Di), he claims there is no hidden racial bias in the meanings of the characters used to describe these different peoples, but rather the differences were "in occupation or in custom, not in race or origin." K. C. Wu says the modern character 夷 designating the historical "Yi peoples," composed of the characters for 大 "big (person)" and 弓 "bow", implies a big person carrying a bow, someone to perhaps be feared or respected, but not to be despised. However, differing from K. C. Wu, the scholar Wu Qichang believes that the earliest oracle bone script for yi 夷 was used interchangeably with shi 尸 "corpse". The historian John Hill explains that Yi "was used rather loosely for non-Chinese populations of the east. It carried the connotation of people ignorant of Chinese culture and, therefore, 'barbarians'."

Christopher I. Beckwith makes the extraordinary claim that the name "barbarian" should only be used for Greek historical contexts, and is inapplicable for all other "peoples to whom it has been applied either historically or in modern times." Beckwith notes that most specialists in East Asian history, including him, have translated Chinese exonyms as English "barbarian." He believes that after academics read his published explanation of the problems, except for direct quotations of "earlier scholars who use the word, it should no longer be used as a term by any writer."

The first problem is that, "it is impossible to translate the word barbarian into Chinese because the concept does not exist in Chinese," meaning a single "completely generic" loanword from Greek barbar-. "Until the Chinese borrow the word barbarian or one of its relatives, or make up a new word that explicitly includes the same basic ideas, they cannot express the idea of the 'barbarian' in Chinese.". The usual Standard Chinese translation of English barbarian is yemanren, which Beckwith claims, "actually means 'wild man, savage'. That is very definitely not the same thing as 'barbarian'." Despite this semantic hypothesis, Chinese-English dictionaries regularly translate yemanren as "barbarian" or "barbarians." Beckwith concedes that the early Chinese "apparently disliked foreigners in general and looked down on them as having an inferior culture," and pejoratively wrote some exonyms. However, he purports, "The fact that the Chinese did not like foreigner Y and occasionally picked a transcriptional character with negative meaning (in Chinese) to write the sound of his ethnonym, is irrelevant."

Beckwith's second problem is with linguists and lexicographers of Chinese. "If one looks up in a Chinese-English dictionary the two dozen or so partly generic words used for various foreign peoples throughout Chinese history, one will find most of them defined in English as, in effect, 'a kind of barbarian'. Even the works of well-known lexicographers such as Karlgren do this." Although Beckwith does not cite any examples, the Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren edited two dictionaries: Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese (1923) and Grammata Serica Recensa (1957). Compare Karlgrlen's translations of the siyi "four barbarians": The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Project includes Karlgren's GSR definitions. Searching the STEDT Database finds various "a kind of" definitions for plant and animal names (e.g., you 狖 "a kind of monkey," but not one "a kind of barbarian" definition. Besides faulting Chinese for lacking a general "barbarian" term, Beckwith also faults English, which "has no words for the many foreign peoples referred to by one or another Classical Chinese word, such as 胡 hú, 夷 yí, 蠻 mán, and so on."
 * yi 夷 "barbarian, foreigner; destroy, raze to the ground," "barbarian (esp. tribes to the East of ancient China)"
 * man 蛮 "barbarians of the South; barbarian, savage," "Southern barbarian"
 * rong 戎 "weapons, armour; war, warrior; N. pr. of western tribes," "weapon; attack; war chariot; loan for tribes of the West"
 * di 狄 "Northern Barbarians – "fire-dogs"," "name of a Northern tribe; low servant"

The third problem involves Tang dynasty usages of fan "foreigner" and lu "prisoner", neither of which meant "barbarian." Beckwith says Tang texts used fan 番 or 蕃 "foreigner" (see shengfan and shufan above) as "perhaps the only true generic at any time in Chinese literature, was practically the opposite of the word barbarian. It meant simply 'foreign, foreigner' without any pejorative meaning." In modern usage, fan 番 means "foreigner; barbarian; aborigine". The linguist Robert Ramsey illustrates the pejorative connotations of fan. "The word 'Fān' was formerly used by the Chinese almost innocently in the sense of 'aborigines' to refer to ethnic groups in South China, and Mao Zedong himself once used it in 1938 in a speech advocating equal rights for the various minority peoples. But that term has now been so systematically purged from the language that it is not to be found (at least in that meaning) even in large dictionaries, and all references to Mao's 1938 speech have excised the offending word and replaced it with a more elaborate locution, 'Yao, Yi, and Yu.'" The Tang dynasty Chinese also had a derogatory term for foreigners, lu "prisoner, slave, captive". Beckwith says it means something like "those miscreants who should be locked up," therefore, "The word does not even mean 'foreigner' at all, let alone 'barbarian'."

Christopher I. Beckwith's 2009 "The Barbarians" epilogue provides many references, but overlooks H. G. Creel's 1970 "The Barbarians" chapter. Creel descriptively wrote, "Who, in fact, were the barbarians? The Chinese have no single term for them. But they were all the non-Chinese, just as for the Greeks the barbarians were all the non-Greeks." Beckwith prescriptively wrote, "The Chinese, however, have still not yet borrowed Greek barbar-. There is also no single native Chinese word for 'foreigner', no matter how pejorative," which meets his strict definition of "barbarian.".

Barbarian puppet drinking game
In the Tang dynasty houses of pleasure, where drinking games were common, small puppets in the aspect of Westerners, in a ridiculous state of drunkenness, were used in one popular permutation of the drinking game; so, in the form of blue-eyed, pointy nosed, and peak-capped barbarians, these puppets were manipulated in such a way as to occasionally fall down: then, whichever guest to whom the puppet pointed after falling was then obliged by honor to empty his cup of Chinese wine.

Japan
When Europeans came to Japan, they were called nanban (南蛮), literally Barbarians from the South, because the Portuguese ships appeared to sail from the South. The Dutch, who arrived later, were also called either nanban or kōmō (紅毛), literally meaning "Red Hair."

Pre-Columbian Americas
In Mesoamerica the Aztec civilization used the word "Chichimeca" to denominate a group of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes that lived on the outskirts of the Triple Alliance's Empire, in the north of Modern Mexico, and whom the Aztec people saw as primitive and uncivilized. One of the meanings attributed to the word "Chichimeca" is "dog people".

The Incas of South America used the term "purum awqa" for all peoples living outside the rule of their empire (see Promaucaes).

European and American colonists frequently referred to Native Americans as "savages".

Barbarian mercenaries
The entry of "barbarians" into mercenary service in a metropole repeatedly occurred in history as a standard way in which peripheral peoples from and beyond frontier regions interact with imperial powers as part of a (semi-)foreign militarised proletariat. Examples include:
 * nomadic frontier tribes serving in pre-modern China
 * mainly Germanic soldiery in the armies of the declining Roman Empire
 * Viking Varangian guards in imperial Byzantium
 * Turkic mercenaries in the Abbasid Caliphate
 * Widespread use of ethnic mercenary forces in pre-historic Mesoamerica
 * Cossack units in the armies of (for example) Poland-Lithuania and of pre-Soviet Russia
 * Gurkhas in the colonial and postcolonial Indian military

Early Modern period

Italians in the Renaissance often called anyone who lived outside of their country a barbarian. As an example, there is the last chapter of The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, "Exhortatio ad Capesendam Italiam in Libertatemque a Barbaris Vinsicandam" (in English: Exhortation to take Italy and free her from the barbarians) in which he appeals to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino to unite Italy and stop the "barbarian invasions" led by other European rulers, such as Charles VIII and Louis XII, both of France, and Ferdinand II of Aragon.

Spanish sea captain Francisco de Cuellar, who sailed with the Spanish Armada in 1588, used the term 'savage' ('salvaje') to describe the Irish people.

Marxist use of term
In her 1916 anti-war pamphlet The Crisis of German Social Democracy, the Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg writes: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism."Luxemburg attributed it to Friedrich Engels, but as was shown by Michael Löwy, Engels had used not the term "Barbarism" but a less resounding formulation: "If the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place." The case has been made that Luxemburg had remembered a passage from the "Erfurt Program," written in 1892 by Karl Kautsky, and mistakenly attributed it to Engels:"As things stand today capitalist civilization cannot continue; we must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism."Luxemburg went on to explain what she meant by "Regression into Barbarism": "A look around us at this moment [i.e., 1916 Europe] shows what the regression of bourgeois society into Barbarism means. This World War is a regression into Barbarism. The triumph of Imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of Imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of Socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the International Proletariat against Imperialism and its method of war."

Modern popular culture
Modern popular culture contains such fantasy barbarians as Conan the Barbarian. In such fantasy, the negative connotations traditionally associated with "Barbarian" are often inverted. For example, "The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932), the first of Robert E. Howard's "Conan" series, is set soon after the "Barbarian" protagonist had forcibly seized the turbulent kingdom of Aquilonia from King Numedides, whom he strangled upon his throne. The story is clearly slanted to imply that the kingdom greatly benefited by power passing from a decadent and tyrannical hereditary monarch to a strong and vigorous Barbarian usurper.

title: Barbarian


text:
Frederick I of Württemberg

Frederick I (Friedrich Wilhelm Karl; 6 November 1754 – 30 October 1816) was the ruler of Württemberg from 1797 to his death. He was the last Duke of Württemberg from 1797 to 1803, then the first and only Elector of Württemberg from 1803 to 1806, before raising Württemberg to a kingdom in 1806 with the approval of Napoleon I. He was known for his size, at 2.12 m and about 200 kg.

In Prussia

Born in Treptow an der Rega, today Trzebiatów, Poland, Frederick was the eldest son of Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, and Sophia Dorothea of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Frederick's father was the third son of Charles Alexander, Duke of Württemberg, and Frederick was thus the nephew of the long-reigning Duke Charles Eugene (Karl Eugen). Since neither Duke Charles Eugene nor his next brother, Louis Eugene (Ludwig Eugen), had any sons, it was expected that Frederick's father (also named Frederick) would eventually succeed to the duchy, and would be succeeded in turn by Frederick.

That eventuality was, however, many years in the future, and the birth of a legitimate son to either of his uncles would preempt Frederick's hopes conclusively. Further, his uncle the Duke was not disposed to give any member of his family any role in affairs of government. Frederick therefore determined—like his father—on a military career at the court of Frederick the Great. This later drew Frederick and his family into the Prussian king's network of marriage alliances—in 1776 his sister Sophie would marry to Tsesarevich Paul, future Emperor of Russia and son of Empress Catherine II. These family ties to Russia had immediate consequences for Frederick and far-reaching ones for Württemberg during the reorganisation of Europe in the wake of the 1814 Congress of Vienna.

In June 1774 he entered the Prussian Army as an oberst in the Kürassierregiment Lölhöffel, rising to a commander in the same unit in December 1776. He fought with it in the War of the Bavarian Succession. In 1780 he took over the 2nd Dragoon Regiment (Krockow).

Frederick married Duchess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (sixteen years old and thus ten years his junior) on 15 October 1780 at Braunschweig. She was the eldest daughter of Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg and Princess Augusta of Great Britain, and thus a niece of George III of Great Britain and sister to Caroline of Brunswick, the future wife of George IV. The marriage was not a happy one—even during her first pregnancy in 1781 she wished to separate but was persuaded to stay with Frederick by her father. Though they had four children, Frederick was rumoured to be bisexual, with a coterie of young noblemen.

He had a good relationship with the King of Prussia and regularly took part in cabinet meetings, though this was clouded by his sister Elizabeth's 1788 marriage to Francis of Austria, later the last Holy Roman Emperor and the first Emperor of Austria. Frederick the Great feared that Prussia would become isolated by a closer relationship between Russia and Austria, whose heirs were both married to Frederick of Württemberg's sisters and (probably wrongly) blamed him for Francis's marriage.

In Russia
In 1781 Frederick resigned from the Prussian Army as a major general and the following year he accompanied his sister Sophie and her husband Paul to Russia, after a Grand Tour of Europe that the imperial couple had undertaken in France and Italy. Pleased with the well-spoken and confident young man, Catherine II appointed Frederick Governor of Eastern Finland, with his seat at Viipuri. From June to October 1783 he was also in command of a 15,000- to 20,000-strong corps in Kherson during the Russo-Turkish War, but he was not significantly involved in combat.

Frederick's relationship with his wife became more and more strained. He was reportedly violent towards her and after a play during a visit to Saint Petersburg in December 1786, Augusta asked for protection from Empress Catherine. She gave Augusta asylum and ordered Frederick to leave Russia. When Sophie protested at the treatment of her brother, Catherine replied, "It is not I who cover the Prince of Württemberg with opprobrium: on the contrary, it is I who try to bury abominations and it is my duty to suppress any further ones." Catherine's relationship with Frederick's brother-in-law, her own son Paul, had also broken down and so Frederick had to help protect his sister Sophie as she came under fire from Catherine. Augusta was sent to live at Lohde Castle in Western Estonia but died on 27 September 1788 from complications of amenorrhea, which she had been suffering from for several years, and although rumours were spread about a death from miscarriage they were disproven through an exhumation later. In the same year, Frederick sold his residence in Vyborg, known as Monrepos.

In the meantime, Frederick's succession to the throne of Württemberg had become more and more likely. In June 1789 he traveled to Paris to see the first stages of the French Revolution at first hand, before moving to Ludwigsburg the following year, much to the displeasure of his uncle Carl Eugen, who was still on the throne. His father came to the throne in 1795 and finally Frederick gained his long-wished political influences. His Brunswick-born father helped him make contact with the British royal family—Frederick's first wife had been a niece of George III. On 18 May 1797, Frederick married George's eldest daughter Charlotte at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace.

Duke and Elector
On 23 December 1797, Frederick's father, who had succeeded his brother as Duke of Württemberg two years before, died, and Frederick became Duke of Württemberg as Frederick III. He was not to enjoy his reign undisturbed for long, however. In 1800, the French army occupied Württemberg and the Duke and Duchess fled to Vienna. In 1801, Duke Frederick ceded the enclave of Montbéliard to the French Republic, and received Ellwangen in exchange two years later.

In the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, which reorganized the Empire as a result of the French annexation of the west bank of the Rhine, the Duke of Württemberg was raised to the dignity of Prince-elector. Frederick assumed the title Prince-Elector (Kurfürst) on 25 February 1803, and was thereafter known as the Elector of Württemberg. The reorganization of the Empire also secured the new Elector control of various ecclesiastical territories and former free cities, thus greatly increasing the size of his domains.

King

In exchange for providing France with a large auxiliary force, Napoleon allowed Frederick to raise Württemberg to a kingdom on 26 December 1805. Friedrick was formally crowned king at Stuttgart on 1 January 1806, and took the regnal name of King Frederick I. Soon after, Württemberg seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and joined Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine. Once again, the assumption of a new title also meant territorial expansion, as the territories of various nearby princes were mediatized and annexed by Württemberg. As a symbol of his alliance with Napoleon, Frederick's daughter, Princess Catharina, was married to Napoleon's youngest brother, Jérôme Bonaparte.

The newly elevated king's alliance with France technically made him the enemy of his father-in-law, George III. However, the king's dynastic connections would enable him to act as a go-between with Britain and various continental powers. In 1810, Frederick banished the composer Carl Maria von Weber from Württemberg on the pretext that Weber had mismanaged the funds of Frederick's brother, Louis, for whom Weber had served as secretary since 1807.

During the German campaign of 1813, Frederick changed sides and went over to the Allies, where his status as the brother-in-law of the British Prince Regent (later George IV) and uncle to the Russian emperor Alexander I helped his standing. After the fall of Napoleon, he attended the Congress of Vienna and was confirmed as king. At Vienna, Frederick and his ministers were very concerned to make sure that Württemberg would be able to retain all the territories it had gained in the past fifteen years. Frederick's harsh treatment of the mediatized princes within his domain made him one of the principal targets of the organization of dispossessed princes, which hoped to gain the support of the Powers in regaining their lost sovereignty. In the end, however, Austria, which was seen as the natural ally of the princes, was more interested in alliance with the medium-sized German states like Württemberg than in asserting its traditional role as protector of the smaller sovereigns of the old Empire; and Frederick was allowed to retain his dubiously acquired lands. Frederick, along with the other German princes, joined the new German Confederation in 1815. He died in Stuttgart in October of the next year.

When he became king, he granted his children and further male-line descendants the titles Princes and Princesses of Württemberg with the style Royal Highness, and he styled his siblings as Royal Highnesses with the titles Dukes and Duchesses of Württemberg.

He was very tall and obese: behind his back he was known as "The Great Belly-Gerent". Napoleon remarked that God had created the Prince to demonstrate the utmost extent to which the human skin could be stretched without bursting. In return, Frederick wondered how so much poison could fit in such a small head as Napoleon's.

Marriages and issue
He married twice:
 * Firstly on 15 October 1780, to Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, by whom he had four children:
 * King William I of Württemberg (1781–1864), who succeeded his father as king.
 * Princess Catharina of Württemberg (1783–1835), who on 22 August 1807 married Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, youngest brother of Emperor Napoleon I of France, and had issue.
 * Duchess Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg (1783–1784), died in infancy.
 * Prince Paul of Württemberg (1785–1852), whose grandson was King William II of Württemberg.
 * Secondly on 18 May 1797 he married Charlotte, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of King George III of Great Britain, by whom he had only one child, a stillborn daughter delivered on 27 April 1798.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Frederick I of Württemberg


text:
Ben Gurion Airport

Ben Gurion International Airport, commonly known by the Hebrew-language acronym  , is the main international airport of Israel. Situated on the northern outskirts of the city of Lod, it is the busiest airport in the country. It is located 45 km to the northwest of Jerusalem and 20 km to the southeast of Tel Aviv. It was known as Lod Airport until 1973, when it was renamed in honour of David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), the first prime minister of Israel. The airport serves as a hub for El Al, Israir Airlines, Arkia, and Sun d'Or, and is managed by the Israel Airports Authority.

In 2023, Ben Gurion Airport handled 21.1 million passengers that makes it one of the busiest airports in the Middle East. It is considered to be among the five best airports in the Middle East due to its passenger experience and its high level of security; while it has been the target of several terrorist attacks, no attempt to hijack a plane departing from Ben Gurion Airport has ever succeeded.

The airport is of great importance to Israel as it is one of the few convenient entry points into the country for most travellers. As it was Israel's only international airport, it was regarded as a single point of failure, which led to the opening of Ramon Airport in 2019.

British Mandatory period (1934–1948)
The airport began during the British Mandate for Palestine as an airstrip of two unpaved runways on the outskirts of the town of Lydda (now Lod), near the Templer colony of Wilhelma. It was built in 1934, largely at the urging of Airwork Services. The first passenger service at the new airport was the Misr Airwork route Cairo—Lydda—Nicosia, inaugurated on 3 August 1935. Subsequently, Misr flew via Lydda to Haifa and Baghdad. The first continental European airline with a regular service to Lydda was LOT Polish Airlines since 4 April 1937. By that time, Lydda Airport boasted four fully operational concrete runways. Holland's KLM, which had since 1933 stopped at Gaza en route to Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), moved the service to Lydda in 1937. Imperial Airways, too, used Lydda as a refueling stop en route to India.

During World War II, Imperial Airways and later British Overseas Airways Corporation continued the service to Lydda until the fall of France in June 1940. When the Japanese military advanced into Burma and Malaya in February 1942, KLM curtailed its route to Batavia and made Lydda the eastern terminus of the route. Misr Airwork, which had suspended flights upon the British declaration of war, resumed the weekly Cairo—Lydda—Nicosia service in May 1940.

In 1943, the airport was renamed "RAF Station Lydda" and continued to serve as a major airfield for military air transport and aircraft ferry operations between military bases in Europe, Africa, the Middle East (mainly Iraq and Persia) and South/Southeast Asia. In 1944, as the German threat in the Middle East subsided, Aviron Aviation Company initiated service four times a week between Lydda and Haifa.

The first civilian transatlantic route, New York City to Lydda Airport, was inaugurated by TWA in 1946. The British gave up the airport at the end of April 1948.

Israel's first decades (1948–1973)
Soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces captured the airport on 10 July 1948, in Operation Danny, transferring control to the newly declared State of Israel. In 1948 the Israelis changed the official name of the airport from Lydda to Lod (the nearby town's name in Hebrew), the airport's name becoming Lod Airport. Flights resumed on 24 November 1948. That year, 40,000 passengers passed through the terminal. By 1952, the number had risen to 100,000 a month. Within a decade, air traffic increased to the point where local flights had to be redirected to Tel Aviv's other airport, the Sde Dov airfield (SDV) on the city's northern coast. By the mid-1960s, 14 international airlines were landing at the airport.

The airport's name was changed from Lod to Ben Gurion International Airport in 1973 to honour Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who died that year.

Terrorist incidents (1972)
While Ben Gurion Airport has been a target of Palestinian attacks, the adoption of strict security precautions has ensured that no aircraft departing from Ben Gurion airport has ever been hijacked. On the other hand, airliners hijacked from other countries have landed at Ben Gurion, contributing to two major incidents in the airport's history.

In the first incident, on 8 May 1972, four Palestinian Black September terrorists hijacked a Sabena flight en route from Vienna and forced it to land at Ben Gurion airport. Sayeret Matkal commandos, including Benjamin Netanyahu, led by Ehud Barak (both future Israeli Prime Ministers) stormed the plane, killing two of the hijackers and capturing the other two. One passenger was killed.

Later that month, on 30 May 1972, in an attack known as the Lod Airport massacre, 24 people were killed and 80 injured when three members of the Japanese Red Army sprayed machine gun fire into the passenger arrival area. The victims included Aharon Katzir, a prominent protein biophysicist and brother of Israel's 4th president. Those injured included Efraim Katzir and a group of twenty Puerto Rican tourists who had just arrived in Israel. The only terrorist who survived was Kozo Okamoto, who received a life sentence but was released in 1985 as part of a prisoner exchange with the PFLP-GC.

Since the 1980s
More buildings and runways were added over the years, but with the onset of mass immigration from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union in the 1980s and 90s, as well as the global increase of international business travel, the existing facilities became painfully inadequate, prompting the design of a new state-of-the-art terminal that could also accommodate the expected tourism influx for the 2000 millennium celebrations. The decision to go ahead with the project was reached in January 1994, but the new terminal, known as Terminal 3, only opened its doors a decade later, on 2 November 2004.

During the 2014 conflict with Gaza, several airlines banned their flights to the airport for a couple of days. In October 2023, with the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war, the number of airlines that flew into the airport dropped to just 7. By February 2024, only 45 airlines flew into the airport.

The furthest nonstop flight to have departed the airport was a private Airbus A340-500 owned by billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson who flew on 2 January 2017 to Honolulu on a route over the Arctic Ocean. The flight was projected to last 17 hours and 40 minutes.

Ramon Airport, an international airport near the southern Israeli city of Eilat, serves as a diversion airport for Ben Gurion Airport.

History
Prior to the opening of Terminal 3, Terminal 1 was the main terminal building at Ben Gurion Airport. At that time, the departures check-in area was located on the ground floor. From there, passengers proceeded upstairs to the main departures hall, which contained passport control, duty-free shops, VIP lounges, one synagogue and boarding gates. At the gates, travelers would be required to descend a flight of stairs to return to the ground floor where waiting shuttle buses transported them to airplanes on the tarmac. The arrivals hall with passport control, luggage carousels, duty-free pick-up and customs was located at the south end of the building. The apron buses transferred passengers and crews to and from the terminal to airplanes which were parked on the tarmac over 500 m away. After Terminal 3 opened, Terminal 1 was closed except for domestic flights to the airport in Eilat and government flights such as special immigrant flights from North America and Africa. Chartered flights organised by Nefesh B'Nefesh carrying immigrants from North America and England use this terminal for their landing ceremonies several times a year.

Although Terminal 1 was closed between 2003 and 2007, the building served as a venue for various events and large-scale exhibitions including the "Bezalel Academy of Arts Centennial Exhibition" which was held there in 2006. The renovations for the terminal were designed by Yosef Assa with three individual atmospheric themes. Firstly, the public halls have a Land-of-Israel character with walls painted in the colors of Israel's Judean, Jerusalem and Galilee mountains. The Departure Hall is given an atmosphere of vacation and leisure, whilst the Arrivals Hall is given a more urban theme as passengers return to the city.

In February 2006, the Israel Airports Authority announced plans to invest 4.3 million NIS in a new VIP wing for private jet passengers and crews, as well as others interested in avoiding the main terminal. VIP ground services already exist, but a substantial increase in users has justified expanding the facilities, which will also boost airport revenues. The IAA released figures showing significant growth in private jet flights (4,059, a 36.5% increase from 2004) as well as private jet users (14,613, a 46.2% increase from 2004). The new VIP wing, operated by an outside licensee, will be located in an upgraded and expanded section of Terminal 1. All flight procedures (security check, passport control and customs) will be handled here. This wing will include a hall equipped for press conferences, a deluxe lounge, special meeting rooms equipped with state-of-the-art business facilities and a designated lounge for flight crews who spend time at the airport between flights. It was announced in January 2008, however, that the IAA planned to construct a new 1000 m2 VIP terminal next to Terminal 3.

International low-cost and domestic terminal

Terminal 1 was closed in 2003 and reopened in 2007 as the domestic terminal following extensive renovations, and in July 2008, to cater for summer charter and low-cost flights. It remained open for these charter and low-cost flights for the 2008 summer season then temporarily closed in October 2008, when it underwent further renovation and reopened again in the summer of 2009, when it was expected to reach a three-month capacity of 600,000 passengers on international flights. As of 2010, several low-cost carriers' international flights were operating out of Terminal 1 year-round including Vueling flights to Barcelona and easyJet flights to London (Luton), Manchester, Geneva, and Basel. In 2015, due to increased demand and following another expansion of the terminal, the Israel Airports Authority made Terminal 1 available to all low-cost carriers under certain conditions. Flights operating out of Terminal 1 are charged lower airport fees than those operating out of Terminal 3.

Until the summer of 2017 Terminal 1 was used for flight check-in, security screening and passport-control for international flights for passengers of certain low-cost airlines, but following passport control passengers were bussed to the departures concourse of Terminal 3 from which they boarded their flights. All incoming flights for airlines operating out of Terminal 1 were handled in Terminal 3. However, beginning on 19 June 2017 and following several months of renovations, Terminal 1 passengers began being bussed directly to their flights from Terminal 1, although incoming passengers continue to be handled in Terminal 3. The renovations to Terminal 1's boarding area included adding duty-free shops, restaurants and cafes. The terminal was also equipped with advanced checked-baggage handling and screening systems, similar to those in Terminal 3.

A free public shuttle from Terminal 3 and the railway station to and from Terminal 1 operates approximately every 15 to 30 minutes (depending on the time of day).

Terminal 3
Terminal 3, which opened on 28 October 2004, replaced Terminal 1 as the main international gateway to and from Israel. The building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Moshe Safdie & Associates and TRA (now Black and Veatch) designed a linking structure and the airside departure areas and gates. Ram Karmi and other Israeli architects were the local architects of record. The inaugural flight was an El Al flight to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

Work on Natbag 2000, as the Terminal 3 project was known, was scheduled for completion prior to 2000 in order to handle a massive influx of pilgrims expected for the Millennium celebrations. This deadline was not met due to higher than anticipated costs and a series of work stoppages in the wake of the bankruptcy of the main Turkish contractor. The project eventually cost an estimated one billion US dollars. Due to the proximity of the airport to the country's largest population centres and the problem of noise pollution, another international airport is being considered to be built elsewhere in the country, such as the new Ilan and Assaf Ramon Airport in Southern Israel.

The overall layout of Terminal 3 is similar to that of airports in Europe and North America, with multiple levels and considerable distances to walk after disembarking from the aircraft. The walk is assisted by escalators and moving walkways. The upper level departures hall, with an area of over 10000 m2, is equipped with 110 check-in counters and as well as flight information display systems. A small shopping mall, known as Buy & Bye, is open to both travellers and the general public. The mall, which includes shops, restaurants and a post office, was planned to be a draw for non-flyers too. On the same level as the mall, passengers enter passport control and the security check. Planes taking off and landing can be viewed from a distinctive tilted glass wall. The arrivals hall is located on the ground floor where there are also 20 additional check-in counters (serving Star Alliance airlines). Car rental counters are located in an intermediate level situated between the departing and arriving passenger halls. Terminal 3 has two synagogues.

After the main security check, passengers wait for their flights in the star-shaped duty-free rotunda. A variety of cafes, restaurants and duty-free shops are located there, open 24 hours a day, as well as a synagogue, banking facilities, a transit hall for connecting passengers and a desk for VAT refunds.

Terminal 3 has a total of 40 gates divided among four concourses (B, C, D, and E), each with 8 jet bridge-equipped gates (numbered 2 through 9), as well as two stand gates (bus bays 1 and 1A) from which passengers are ferried to aircraft. Two gates in concourse E utilize dual jet bridges for more efficient processing of very large widebody aircraft. Concourses B, C, and D were opened when terminal 3 opened in 2004, while concourse E was completed in 2018. Space exists for one additional concourse (A) at Terminal 3.

Free wireless internet is provided throughout the terminal. The terminal has three business lounges—the exclusive El Al King David Lounge for frequent flyers and three Dan lounges for either privileged or paying flyers.

In January 2007, the IAA announced plans for a 120-bed hotel to be located about 300 m west of Terminal 3. The tender for the hotel was published by the IAA in late 2017.

When the terminal was built, it was said to have a capacity for up to 12 million passengers a year. In 2023, 25 million passengers are expected to pass through Ben Gurion Airport.

Terminal 2
Terminal 2 was inaugurated in 1969 when Arkia resumed operations at the airport after the Six-Day War. Terminal 2 served domestic flights until 20 February 2007 when these services moved into the refurbished Terminal 1. Due to increased traffic in the late 1990s and over-capacity reached at Terminal 1, an international section was added until Terminal 3 was opened. After the transfer of domestic services to Terminal 1, Terminal 2 was demolished in order to make room for additional air freight handling areas.

Terminal 4
This terminal, built in 1999, was meant to handle the crowds expected in 2000, but never officially opened. To date, it has only been used as a terminal for passengers arriving from Asia during the SARS epidemic. Another use for the terminal was for the memorial ceremonies upon the arrival of the casket of Col. Ilan Ramon after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in February 2003 and the arrival of Elhanan Tannenbaum and the caskets of three Israeli soldiers from Lebanon in January 2004.

Development plans
In December 2017, the IAA announced a long-term expansion plan for Ben Gurion Airport estimated to cost approximately NIS 9 billion. Plans include further expansion of Terminal 1, a new dedicated domestic flights terminal, a major expansion of Terminal 3's landside terminal which would add approximately 90 additional check-in counters, construction of Concourse A, and additional aircraft parking spaces and ramps. In addition, air cargo facilities would be relocated to a large, currently-unused tract of land in the northern part of the airport's property (north of runway 08/26) where additional aircraft maintenance facilities would also be built.

In the meantime, to ease immediate overcrowding problems at Terminal 3's landside terminal, in the spring of 2018 a temporary large, air-conditioned tent was erected adjacent to Terminal 3 housing 25 check-in counters and security screening facilities. This tent was used for compulsory COVID-19 testing for all arriving passengers between 2020 and 2022.

In August 2018, the IAA published a tender for the construction and operation of a new terminal, dedicated to handling private and executive aircraft traffic.

In late 2021 construction began on a new interchange that will provide additional access to the airport from Highway 1. The new interchange significantly reduced the distance vehicles must travel to access the airport's main terminal from the direction of Tel Aviv and other points north and west of the airport.

Office buildings
The Airport City development, a large office park, is located east of the main airport property. It is at the junction of the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv metropolitan areas.

The head office of El Al is located at Ben Gurion Airport, as is the head office of the Israel Airports Authority.

The head offices of the Civil Aviation Authority and Challenge Airlines IL are located in the Airport City office park nearby the airport.

Israel Aerospace Industries maintains its head office on airport grounds as well as extensive aviation construction and repair facilities.

Main runway
The closest runway to terminals 1 and 3 is 12/30, 3112 m in length, and is followed by a taxiway. Most landings take place on this runway from West to East, approaching from the Mediterranean Sea over southern Tel Aviv. During inclement weather, it may also be used for takeoffs (Direction 12). A 17 million NIS renovation project was completed in November 2007 which reinforced the runway and made it suitable for future wide-body aircraft. In September 2008, a new ILS serving the runway was activated. The main runway was closed from 2011 until early 2014 in order to accommodate the extension of runway 03/21 and other construction activity in the vicinity of the runway.

Short runway
When it was originally built, the short runway (direction 03/21) was 1780 m long, making it too short to accommodate most mainline passenger jets. At the time it mainly served cargo aircraft of the Israeli Air Force and as a taxiway for runway 26. However, by late 2011, the runway was closed and most of the activity in the military apron to the east of the runway was permanently relocated to the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. In late May 2014 the runway was reopened after having been rebuilt and lengthened to 2772 m, allowing it to handle most types of aircraft. It is equipped with an ILS and mostly handles landings from north to south.

Quiet runway
The longest runway at the airfield, 4062 m, and the main take off runway from east to west (direction 08/26), is referred to as "the quiet runway" since jets taking off in this direction produce less noise pollution for surrounding residents. A 24 million NIS renovation project completed in February 2006 reinforced the runway and made it suitable for wide-body aircraft such as Airbus A380.

History and development
The original layout of the airfield as designed by the British in the 1930s included four intersecting 800 m runways suitable for the piston engined aircraft of the day. However, none of this original layout is visible nowadays since as usage increased and aircraft types and needs changed over the years various runways on the airport's premises were built and removed.

The main runway (12/30) is the oldest surviving runway in the airport, with the quiet (08/26) and short (03/21) runways having been built in the late 1960s and 1970s. Since very little commercial traffic could operate on the short runway, for approximately forty years, the airport mostly relied on runways 12/30 and 08/26. This presented a problem, however: the fact that these two runways intersect near their western end creates a crisscross pattern between aircraft landing and taking off. This pattern reduces the number of aircraft which can arrive to and depart from the airport and has detrimental safety implications as well.

With passenger traffic projected to increase, plans were drawn in the 1980s and 90s for the extension of runways 03/21 and 08/26 as a means of alleviating some of Ben Gurion's safety and capacity concerns. These plans were approved in 1997 and construction began in 2010. The extension of runway 03/21 allows the airport to operate in an "open V" configuration, allowing for simultaneous landings and take offs on runways 08/26 and 03/21 and thus more than double the number of aircraft movements which can be handled at peak times, while increasing the overall level of air safety in and around the airport. Construction took four years and cost 1 billion NIS (financed from the Israeli Airports Authority budget) and was completed 29 May 2014. It included paving 22 km of runways and taxiways, using more than 1.5 million tons of asphalt, laying one million meters of runway lighting cables, 50000 m of high-voltage power lines and 10,000 light fixtures. The construction of several new taxiways between the existing runways and terminals also significantly reduced taxi times at the airport.

Israel-Hamas War (2023- )
Due to the threat of missiles, the runway directions are restricted to avoid flying over the war zone in Gaza. 08/26 is restricted to departing flights, and 03/21 is restricted to arriving flights.

Overview
Security at Ben Gurion International Airport operates on several levels.

All cars, taxis, buses and trucks go through a preliminary security checkpoint before entering the airport compound. Armed guards spot-check the vehicles by looking into cars, taxis and boarding buses, exchanging a few words with the driver and passengers. Armed security personnel stationed at the terminal entrances keep a close watch on those who enter the buildings. If someone arouses their suspicion or looks nervous, they may strike up a conversation to further assess the person's intent. Plainclothes armed personnel patrol the area outside the building, and hidden surveillance cameras operate at all times. Inside the building, both uniformed and plainclothes security officers are on constant patrol. Departing passengers are personally questioned by security agents even before arriving at the check-in desk. This interview can last as little as a minute, or as long as an hour if a passenger is selected for additional screening. Luggage and body searches may be conducted.

Until August 2007, there was a system of color codes on checked baggage but the practice was discontinued after complaints of discrimination. In the past, checked baggages were screened following the personal interview and before passengers arrived at the check-in desks. Occasionally, if security assessed a person as a low risk, they were passed straight through to the check-in desks, bypassing the main X-ray machines, a practice which also drew some discrimination complaints. This process ceased in April 2014 when the main X-ray machines were removed from the passenger queuing area in terminal 3 and baggage screening began being performed after the baggage was checked-in by airline representatives (as is common in most airports around the world). Terminal 1 began using the same procedure in the summer of 2017.

Baggage screening
After check-in, all checked baggage are screened using sophisticated X-ray and CT scanners and put in a pressure chamber to trigger any possible explosive devices which have a trigger dependent on air pressure. Following the check-in process, passengers continue to personal security and passport control. Before passing through the metal detectors and putting carry-on baggage through the X-ray machine at the security checkpoint, passports and boarding passes are re-inspected and additional questions may be asked. Before boarding the aircraft, passports and boarding passes are verified once again. Security procedures for incoming flights are not as stringent, but passengers may be questioned by passport control depending on country of origin, or countries visited prior to arrival in Israel. Passengers who have recently visited Arab countries are subject to further questioning.

Passenger
The following airlines serve regular scheduled and charter destinations at Ben Gurion Airport.

Statistics
Commercial flights from Sde Dov Airport which, until its closure in July 2019, handled more domestic passengers annually than TLV have been moved to Ben Gurion.

Ground transportation
The airport is located near Highway 1, the main Jerusalem–Tel Aviv Highway and Highway 40. The airport is accessible by car or public bus. Israel Railways operates train service from the airport to several parts of the country and taxi stands are located outside the arrivals building. A popular transportation option is a share taxi van, known in Hebrew as a monit sherut (service cab), going to Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beersheba.

Public transport
Israel has an integrated nationwide public transport payment system covering multiple transit options (train, bus, and light rail) run by various operators using a single payment card: the Rav-Kav. It features flexible tariff arrangements and offers free transfers between transit methods within certain geographical zones and time periods. A public transport information office which also issues Rav-Kav cards is located in the arrivals hall of Terminal 3. With a few exceptions, most public transport options (except for taxis and service cabs) do not operate on the Sabbath (i.e., from early Friday evenings to late Saturday evenings as well as certain Jewish holidays).

A new app payment system was introduced in December 2020. The app has a different, simpler fare system (that can be more expensive in some cases and cheaper in others) and it's post pay (The Rav Kav is a pre-paid card that you need to top up). The charge is at the end of each month (so a registration and a payment method are required). There are four available apps: the government-owned app called "The Station" (Hataḥana) and three private ones—RavPass (by HopOn), ANYWAY (by Isracard) and Moovit (by Moovit and Pango).

Rail
Israel Railways operates the Ben Gurion Airport Railway Station, located in the lower level of Terminal 3. From this station passengers may head northwest to Tel Aviv, Haifa and other destinations in the north, or southeast to Modi'in and Jerusalem. The journey to Tel Aviv Savidor Central railway station takes about 18 minutes and to Jerusalem's Yitzhak Navon station about 25 minutes. There is also late night/early morning train service to and from the airport terminating at Beersheba Center via Lod, Ashkelon, and selected destinations in between. Almost 3.3 million passengers used the railway line to and from the airport in 2009. The service does not operate on Shabbat and Jewish holidays but on all other days it runs day and night. The line to Nahariya through Tel Aviv and Haifa operated 24 hours a day on weekdays, but these services were suspended following the COVID-19 pandemic and put on hold until railway electrification works are completed in the mid-2020s, following which the line would run from Jerusalem and terminate at Karmiel instead of Nahariya (though it would continue to service Tel Aviv and Haifa).

Bus or taxi
The airport is served by regular inter-city bus lines, limousine and private shuttle services, Sherut "shared" door to door taxi vans and regular taxis. Afikim bus company provides 24 hours a day, on the hour, direct service to Jerusalem with line 485. the line departs from Terminal 3 on the 2nd floor and passes through Terminal 1. Egged bus number 5 ferries passengers between the terminals and a small bus terminal in the nearby Airport City business park near El Al junction just outside the airport where they can connect to regular Egged bus routes passing through the area. Passengers connecting at Airport City can pay for both rides on the same ticket, not having to pay an extra fare for bus No. 5. Other bus companies directly serve Terminal 3, and the airport also provides a free shuttle bus between terminals. On Shabbat, when there is no train service, a shared shuttle service is available between the airport and Tel Aviv hotels.

Car
Located on Highway 1, the Jerusalem – Tel Aviv highway, the airport has a total of approximately 20,000 parking spaces for short and long-term parking. The spaces for long-term parking are situated several kilometres from the terminal, and are reached by a free shuttle bus. Car rental at the airport is available from Avis, Budget, Eldan, Tamir Rental, Thrifty, Hertz, and Shlomo Sixt.

Passenger rankings
In December 2006, Ben Gurion International Airport ranked first among 40 European airports and 8th out of 77 airports in the world, in a survey, conducted by Airports Council International, to determine the most customer-friendly airport. Tel Aviv placed second in the grouping of airports which carry between 5 and 15 million passengers per year behind Japan's Nagoya Airport. The survey consisted of 34 questions. A random sampling of 350 passengers at the departure gate were asked how satisfied they were with the service, infrastructure and facilities. Ben Gurion received a rating of 3.94 out of 5, followed by Vienna, Munich, Amsterdam, Brussels, Zürich, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. The airport retained its title as the best Middle Eastern airport in the 2007, 2008, and 2009 surveys.

Accidents and incidents

 * On 13 February 1939, a Fokker F.XVIII (VQ-PAF) of the newly founded Commercial Aviation Company Ltd. was being flown around the airport for an inaugural celebration. While landing the pilot lost control and veered off into the mud, damaging it beyond repair.
 * On 5 February 1950, a Douglas C-54A-10-DC (4X-ACD) of El Al skidded off during takeoff, caught fire, and was damaged beyond repair. All 50 occupants survived.
 * On 15 May 1953, a Douglas C-47 of the USAF as part of a US military attaché in Israel caught fire standing at night and was burned out. Sabotage was suspected.
 * On 26 October 1969, a Vickers 833 Viscount (4X-AVC) of Arkia crashed during a nighttime training flight and was damaged beyond repair. All three occupants survived.
 * On 30 November 1970, a Boeing 707-373C (N790TW) of TWA was taking off for a cargo flight to Frankfurt at 02:00 on runway 30 when an empty, unlit IAF Stratocruiser (4X-FPS/037) was towed across the runway; the 707 hit the Stratocruiser and both aircraft caught fire. Both planes were damaged beyond repair, and all three crew on the 707 survived. However, two persons were killed on the ground.
 * On 8 May 1972, a Boeing 707-329 (OO-SJG) of Sabena was hijacked en route to Tel Aviv from Vienna and landed here (the intended destination); the four hijackers demanded prisoner releases. Two were shot and killed by military personnel in ground engineer uniforms the same day, and a passenger died eight days later from injuries sustained in the gun battle.
 * On 16 August 1973, a Boeing 720-023B (OD-AFR) of MEA was hijacked en route from Benghazi to Beirut over Cyprus by a male hijacker with two guns who demanded to be flown here; he was overpowered by ground police upon arrival.
 * On 31 July 1980, a Boeing 707-358C (4X-ATX) of El Al had a fire erupt in the rear lavatory prior to departure here; the aircraft was evacuated and fire services had to cut a hole in the fuselage to put out the flames. The aircraft was later repaired.
 * On 16 February 1987, a Convair CV-240-24 (N93218) of IAI was destroyed in a hangar fire.
 * On 1 December 1988, five men in Ordzhonikidze hijacked a school bus, demanding 2,000,000 rubles and an airplane to fly them to Israel. The bus went to Mineralnye Vody Airport and the hijackers boarded an Ilyushin Il-76T of Aeroflot in exchange for 30 hostages. The plane arrived here the following day, and the hijackers surrendered.
 * On 18 June 2001, a ATR 42-320 (4X-ATK) of Israir could not lower its starboard main undercarriage and had to land without it; none of the 42 occupants were injured. The plane was written off and converted into a training rig.
 * On 8 April 2015, a British Aerospace BAe 125-800A (4X-CZO) of Arrow Aviation aborted a takeoff from runway 26 due to a swerve issue, and after stopping a fire broke out in the right main gear wheel area. The plane, an air ambulance, was substantially damaged.
 * On 28 March 2018, a Boeing 737-76J (WL) (D-ABLB) on Germania Flight 4915 to Berlin collided with a Boeing 767-300ER (4X-EAK) on El Al Flight 385 to Rome while both aircraft were in the pushback/towing phase at 06:22. The 737's tail fin hit the right horizontal stabilizer of the 767 after ground controllers cleared both for pushback without realizing they were blocking each other. The 737 was later repaired, but the 767 was written off.

title: Ben Gurion Airport