And finally, the last of a “little” about Israel

In case you haven’t been refreshing this blog page hourly since it was first published in November 2013, this is the third post on Israeli history.  See below for parts 1 and 2.

Part two left off on May 19, 1948 where the British left, Israel declared itself a state, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union had both formally recognized it as such.  The Arab league, which had previously rejected the UN resolution, marched into the new State of Israel the next day, launching the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the fighting between Arabs and Jews continued on and off throughout the remainder of 1948, much as it seemingly has all through history.

Peace talks were held on the Greek isle of Rhodes beginning in January of 1949 and Israel signed armistices with Egypt in February, Lebanon in March, Jordan in April, and Syria in July.  In between those agreements, Britain officially recognized the state of Israel and they were admitted as a member of the United Nations in May 1949.

Straying briefly from history for a bit, the Jewish legislative government is unicameral (one-house) and called the Knesset.  It has 120 members and is responsible for the passage of all laws, as well as electing the Prime Minister and President.  In Israel, the President is mainly a ceremonial position.  The Prime Minister is considered the head of government and holds the real power.  David Ben-Gurion was elected the first Prime Minister in May 1948 and 32 others have served since then with Benjamin Netanyahu currently serving in that position since March of 2009.  With the Knesset and their role in government established, let's get back to history.

The Knesset passed The Law of Return in 1950.  They granted all Jews, those with Jewish ancestry and their spouses the right to come back to Israel and gain citizenship.  Not surprisingly, the population of Israel rose from 800,000 to two million by 1958.  Many of these were Jewish Holocaust survivors from Arab and Muslim countries who faced persecution or expulsion.

The quick influx of people led to a nationwide shortage of food and other items.  This led to a period called Austerity which lasted from 1949 to 1959.  Initially, the Israeli government established control and distribution of staple foods like oil, sugar, and margarine but control and rationing was later expanded to include furniture and even shoes.  Each citizen received coupons each month and families were given a certain amount of foodstuffs.  The food rationing allowed for a mere 1,600 calories per day for adults, although children, pregnant women, and the elderly were given more.

Although officially lasting until 1959, much of the rationing was cancelled in 1953 after Germany agreed to pay Israel 3 billion marks over the next 14 years for the persecution suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust.

Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, a major organizer of the Holocaust and in charge of deporting Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe, fled to Argentina using a fake passport in 1950 after World War II and was living there under a false identity.  He was captured by the Israeli Mossad in May 1960 and taken back to Israel.  He was put on trial in 1961 where testimonies of Holocaust survivors led to him being found guilty and sentenced to death.  The testimony provided at the Eichmann trial was considered a turning point in public awareness of the Holocaust.  His hanging in 1962 is the only recorded death sentence by an Israeli court. 

Since then, Israel has had numerous conflicts with its neighboring countries as well as internal conflicts.  The Palestine Liberation Organization, known better as the PLO, is responsible for most of the internal struggles.  The PLO was established in 1964 and has attacked Jewish targets all over the world.  Probably the most notable was the murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

The conflicts continue to the present day.  Israel must remain ever vigilant and on guard due to a continued intolerance from most Middle Eastern countries for their beliefs.  Sad really, when you consider the four predominant religions of the region are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baha’i faith and each of them include Abraham in their early histories.  It’s also sad when you consider Israel’s size in relation to its neighbors.

This was an eye-opening exercise for me.  I was certainly aware of the conflict the Israeli’s have dealt with during modern history but the details have been very interesting to learn and wound up being much more extensive than I’d originally planned them to be.  Thanks for sticking it out to the end.  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as well.  

Until next entry,

Tim

A little more about Israel

As you can probably tell by the third word of my clever title, this is part 2 about Israel.  The first part is just below this one and starts with some geography, mentions Israel’s early history and in relatively quick fashion gets us through a period of Turkish rule over the area that lasted until 1920.  This next period is described as the British Mandate of Palestine and extends from 1920 until 1948.  The British Mandate was originally supposed to be British rule over the area until it could stand on its own.  The Mandate also formally divided Palestine to include a national homeland for the Jewish people (but still under British rule). 

Nearly 40 years before this in 1881, the first wave of migration began as the Jews fled persecution from Eastern Europe.  (I understand this migration technically started within the period of the first post but it is more relevant to this period since it continued throughout this period and continued after Israel had been officially declared a state.)  These waves, each called an Aliyah, continued with some 40,000 in a second wave beginning in 1904 and lasting until 1914.  The Third and Fourth Aliyahs covering the periods 1919 – 1923 and 1924 – 1929 brought an additional 100,000 Jews to Palestine.  Increased persecution of the Jews in the 1930s, primarily due to the rise in Nazism, led to the Fifth Aliyah resulting in the migration of 250,000 Jews.  Over this time, the influx of over 400,000 Jews led the Arabs to a revolt lasting from 1936 to 1939.  In an attempt to appease the Arabs, the British (still ruling, remember?) introduced restrictions on Jewish immigration.  However, because many countries around the world were turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, a secret illegal immigration movement was begun in violation of the British restrictions.  It was called Aliyah Bet and eventually resulted in the Jewish population of Palestine being 33% of the total population by the end of World War II.

After World War II was over the British found themselves in nearly constant conflict with the Jewish community primarily due to the restrictions that the British had imposed on Jewish immigration.  By 1947, the British government (who appear to have had enough) announced it would withdraw from the Mandate, stating it was unable to arrive at a solution acceptable to both Arabs and Jews.

In May 1947, the newly formed United Nations proposed a plan to replace the British Mandate with an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish state, and the City of Jerusalem.  The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to implement the plan in late November, 1947.  Although accepted by the Jews, the Arabs rejected it and by December had begun to attack Jewish targets.  The civil war initially had Jews on the defensive but gradually turned the tide of the conflict in their favor, resulting in 250,000 Palestinian-Arabs fleeing the country.

On May 14, 1948, the last of the British forces left Israel through the northern city of Haifa.  The same day in Tel-Aviv, David Ben-Gurion read the Israeli Declaration of Independence in a public ceremony and declaring the establishment of the State of Israel.  President Harry Truman and Soviet leader Josef Stalin immediately recognized the new state.

Hey, so Israel is a state.  Smooth sailing, right?  You’d be wrong if you thought that.  Stay tuned for (what I believe will be) the last part of a “little” about Israel.

 
Tim

A little about Israel

Starting with some raw numbers, the country of Israel is about 10,425 square miles in size and stretches 263 miles from north to south and ranges in width from 71 miles to just 9.3 miles at its narrowest point.  In relative terms that most reading this blog will understand, Israel is just slightly smaller than Massachusetts. 

Getting a little off topic, it’s always interesting* to compare the sizes of countries I visit to the various states in the United States.  Israel, a country smack dab in the middle of almost everything that goes on in the Middle East is smaller than the 44^th largest state in the U.S.

Israel makes up for their lack of size somewhat in the number of people living there.  A 2013 estimate indicated just over 8 million residents.  In comparison, Massachusetts counted 6.6 million people in their 2012 population estimate.  That’s a little surprising to me given the amount of desert and how intense the summer heat can be.

Getting back to geography, Israel is smaller than 10 of the 18 countries that make up the Middle East.  In case you’re wondering, Bahrain, Cyprus, Northern Cyprus, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, and Qatar are smaller than Israel.  The Middle Eastern countries larger than Israel are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

The country is considered to be a part of Western Asia and is on the south-eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.  In addition to the water on its west, it shares land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and Palestine in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south.

Early human tool artifacts dating back over 1 million years have been discovered in what is the current state of Israel.  The earliest written evidence of classical Hebrew dates to about 1000 BCE** and written using a Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.  Around the 5^th century BCE, the Jews began to adopt the Aramaic alphabet, which eventually led to the present day Hebrew alphabet, which consists of 22 consonants and is written from right to left.

Throughout history, Israel has fallen under the ruling authority of numerous dynasties – the Babylonians, Persians, and Romans being among the early big names.  During the Middle Ages the Arabs ruled a while then of course the Crusaders stopped by for a bit until the region was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.  The area came under Turkish rule in 1517 and lasted until 1920.

That gets us to the early 20^th century.  I’ll add another post shortly with more history that will get us a bit closer to present day.  See you soon.

Tim

*Interesting to me.  Remember this is my blog

**BCE stands for Before Christian/Common Era and is an alternative to BC