1.
Shimon Peres
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Shimon Peres was an Israeli politician who served both as ninth President of Israel, and Prime Minister of Israel, as well as Interim Prime Minister. He was a member of twelve cabinets in a career spanning 70 years. At the time of his retirement in 2014, he was the worlds oldest head of state and he was considered the last link to Israels founding generation. From a young age, he was renowned for his oratorical brilliance and he began his political career in the late 1940s, holding several diplomatic and military positions during and directly after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. His first high-level government position was as Deputy Director-General of Defense in 1952 which he attained at the age of 28, in 1956, he took part in the historic negotiations on the Protocol of Sèvres described by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden as the highest form of statesmanship. In 1963, he held negotiations with U. S. President John F. Kennedy, which resulted in the sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, the first sale of U. S. military equipment to Israel. On October 26,1994, Jordan and Israel signed the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, Peres won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for the peace talks that he participated in as Israeli Foreign Minister, producing the Oslo Accords. During his career, he represented five political parties in the Knesset, Mapai, Rafi, the Alignment, Labor and Kadima, and led Alignment and Labor. In July 2016, he founded the Israel innovation center in the Arab neighbourhood of Ajami, Jaffa, Peres was polyglot, speaking Polish, French, English, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, although he never lost his Polish accent when speaking in Hebrew. In his private life, he was a poet and songwriter, writing stanzas during cabinet meetings, as a result of his deep literary interests, he could quote from Hebrew prophets, French literature, and Chinese philosophy with equal ease. After suffering a stroke, Peres died on September 28,2016 near Tel Aviv, Shimon Peres was born Szymon Perski, on August 2,1923, in Wiszniew, Poland, to Yitzhak and Sara Perski. The family spoke Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian at home, and he then learned to speak English and French. His father was a timber merchant, later branching out into other commodities. Peres had a brother, Gershon, and was a relative of American film star Lauren Bacall. Peres told Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson that he had been born as a result of a blessing his parents had received from a chassidic rebbe, Peres grandfather, Rabbi Zvi Meltzer, a grandson of Rabbi Chaim Volozhin, had a great impact on his life. In an interview, Peres said, As a child, I grew up in my grandfathers home, … My grandfather taught me Talmud. It was not as easy as it sounds and my home was not an observant one. My parents were not Orthodox but I was Haredi, at one point, I heard my parents listening to the radio on the Sabbath and I smashed it
2.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
3.
Haifa
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Haifa, is the third-largest city in the State of Israel, with a population of 278,903 in 2015. The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area and it is also home to the Baháí World Centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a destination for Bahai pilgrims. Built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, the settlement has a history spanning more than 3,000 years, the earliest known settlement in the vicinity was Tell Abu Hawam, a small port city established in the Late Bronze Age. In the 3rd century CE, Haifa was known as a dye-making center, over the centuries, the city has changed hands, being conquered and ruled by the Phoenicians, Persians, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, British, and the Israelis. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Haifa Municipality has governed the city, as of 2016, the city is a major seaport located on Israels Mediterranean coastline in the Bay of Haifa covering 63.7 square kilometres. It lies about 90 kilometres north of Tel Aviv and is the regional center of northern Israel. According to researcher J. Kis-Lev Haifa is considered a haven for coexistence between Jews and Arabs. Two respected academic institutions, the University of Haifa and the Technion, are located in Haifa, in addition to the largest k-12 school in Israel, the city plays an important role in Israels economy. It is home to Matam, one of the oldest and largest high-tech parks in the country, Haifa also owns the underground rapid transit system located in Israel. Haifa Bay is a center of industry, petroleum refining. Haifa formerly functioned as the terminus of an oil pipeline from Iraq via Jordan. With locals using it to refer to a tell at the foot of the Carmel Mountains that contains its remains. The name Efa first appears during Roman rule, some time after the end of the 1st century, Haifa is also mentioned more than 100 times in the Talmud, a work central to Judaism. Hefa or Hepha in Eusebius of Caesareas 4th-century work, Onomasticon, is said to be another name for Sycaminus, references to this city end with the Byzantine period. Following the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Haifa was used to refer to a site established on Tel Shikmona upon what were already the ruins of Sycaminon. Haifa is mentioned by the mid-11th-century Persian chronicler Nasir Khusraw, the Crusaders, who captured Haifa briefly in the 12th century, call it Caiphas, and believe its name related to Cephas, the Aramaic name of Simon Peter. Other spellings in English have included Caipha, Kaipha, Caiffa, Kaiffa and Khaifa.5 miles to the east. The new village, the nucleus of modern Haifa, was first called al-imara al-jadida by some, but others residing there called it Haifa al-Jadida at first, the ultimate origin of the name Haifa remains unclear
4.
Sand
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Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. It is defined by size, being finer than gravel and coarser than silt, Sand can also refer to a textural class of soil or soil type, i. e. a soil containing more than 85% sand-sized particles by mass. The second most common type of sand is calcium carbonate, for example aragonite, for example, it is the primary form of sand apparent in areas where reefs have dominated the ecosystem for millions of years like the Caribbean. Sand is a non renewable resource over human timescales, and sand suitable for making concrete is in high demand, in terms of particle size as used by geologists, sand particles range in diameter from 0.0625 mm to 2 mm. An individual particle in this size is termed a sand grain. Sand grains are between gravel and silt, a 1953 engineering standard published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials set the minimum sand size at 0.074 mm. A1938 specification of the United States Department of Agriculture was 0.05 mm. Sand feels gritty when rubbed between the fingers. ISO14688 grades sands as fine, medium and coarse with ranges 0.063 mm to 0.2 mm to 0.63 mm to 2.0 mm. In the United States, sand is commonly divided into five sub-categories based on size, very fine sand, fine sand, medium sand, coarse sand, and very coarse sand. These sizes are based on the Krumbein phi scale, where size in Φ = -log2D, on this scale, for sand the value of Φ varies from −1 to +4, with the divisions between sub-categories at whole numbers. The composition of sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources. The gypsum sand dunes of the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico are famous for their bright, arkose is a sand or sandstone with considerable feldspar content, derived from weathering and erosion of a granitic rock outcrop. Some sands contain magnetite, chlorite, glauconite or gypsum, Sands rich in magnetite are dark to black in color, as are sands derived from volcanic basalts and obsidian. Chlorite-glauconite bearing sands are typically green in color, as are sands derived from basaltic with a high olivine content, many sands, especially those found extensively in Southern Europe, have iron impurities within the quartz crystals of the sand, giving a deep yellow color. Sand deposits in some areas contain garnets and other resistant minerals, the study of individual grains can reveal much historical information as to the origin and kind of transport of the grain. Quartz sand that is weathered from granite or gneiss quartz crystals will be angular. It is called grus in geology or sharp sand in the trade where it is preferred for concrete. Sand that is transported long distances by water or wind will be rounded, people who collect sand as a hobby are known as arenophiles
5.
Book of Joshua
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The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian exile. Almost all scholars agree that the book of Joshua holds little value for early Israel. Although Rabbinic tradition holds that the book was written by Joshua, transfer of leadership to Joshua A. Joshuas instructions to the people II, entrance into and conquest of Canaan A. Entry into Canaan 1. Reconnaissance of Jericho 2, establishing a foothold at Gilgal 4. Failure and success at Ai 3, renewal of the covenant at Mount Ebal 4. Other campaigns in central Canaan 5, summary list of defeated kings III. Division of the land among the tribes A, cities of refuge and levitical cities D. Summary of conquest E. De-commissioning of the eastern tribes IV, conclusion A. Joshuas farewell address B. Methodist writer Joseph Benson suggests that Gods revelation to Joshua comes either immediately after, God commissions Joshua to take possession of the land and warns him to keep faith with the Covenant. The Israelites cross the Jordan River through the intervention of God. The conquest begins in Canaan with Jericho, followed by Ai, after which Joshua builds an altar to Yahweh at Mount Ebal, the covenant ceremony has elements of a divine land-grant ceremony, similar to ceremonies known from Mesopotamia. The narrative then switches to the south, the Gibeonites trick the Israelites into entering into an alliance with them by saying they are not Canaanites, this prevents the Israelites from exterminating them, but they are enslaved instead. An alliance of Amorite kingdoms headed by the Canaanite king of Jerusalem is defeated with Yahwehs miraculous help of stopping the sun and the moon, the enemy kings were eventually hanged on trees. With the south conquered the narrative moves to the northern campaign, a powerful multi-national coalition headed by the king of Hazor, the most important northern city, is defeated with Yahwehs help and Hazor captured and destroyed. Chapter 11, 16–23 summarises the extent of the conquest, Joshua has taken the land, almost entirely through military victories. Joshua 11,18 asserts that the conquest took a long time - the Amplified Bible, anglican churchman Charles Ellicott thinks the war seems to have lasted seven years. The land then had rest from war, the list of the 31 kings is quasi-tabular, the king of Jerusalem, one, the king of Hebron, one, the king of Jarmuth, one, the king of Lachish, one
6.
Jaffa
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Jaffa or Yafo, is the southern and oldest part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, an ancient port city in Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the stories of Jonah, Solomon and Saint Peter as well as the mythological story of Andromeda. The town was mentioned in Egyptian sources and the Amarna letters as Yapu, mythology says that it is named for Japheth, one of the sons of Noah, the one who built it after the Flood. The Hellenist tradition links the name to Iopeia, or Cassiopeia, an outcropping of rocks near the harbor is reputed to have been the place where Andromeda was rescued by Perseus. Pliny the Elder associated the name with Iopa, daughter of Aeolus, the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi referred to it as Yaffa. The tell of Jaffa rises to a height of 40 metres, with a view of the coastline. The accumulation of debris and landfill over the centuries made the even higher. Archaeological evidence shows that Jaffa was inhabited roughly 7500 BCE, the natural harbour of Jaffa has been in use since the Bronze Age. The city is mentioned in the Amarna letters under its Egyptian name Ya-Pho. The city was under Egyptian rule until around 800 BCE, Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the territorial border of the Tribe of Dan, hence the modern term Gush Dan for the center of the coastal plain. The tribe of Dan did not manage to dislocate the Philistines from Jaffa, in the Song of Deborah the prophetess asks, דן למה יגור אוניות, Why doth Dan dwell in ships. After Canaanite and Philistine dominion, King David and his son King Solomon conquered Jaffa, the city remained in Israelite hands even after the split of the united Kingdom of Israel. In 701 BCE, in the days of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, after a period of Babylonian occupation, under Persian rule, Jaffa was governed by Phoenicians from Tyre. Alexander the Greats troops were stationed in Jaffa and it later became a port of the Seleucid Empire until it was taken over by the Maccabees and ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty. During the First Jewish–Roman War, Jaffa was captured and burned by Cestius Gallus, the Roman Jewish historian Josephus writes that 8,400 inhabitants were massacred. Pirates operating from the rebuilt port incurred the wrath of Vespasian, the New Testament account of Saint Peter bringing back to life the widow Dorcas (recorded in Acts of the Apostles,9, 36–42, takes place in Jaffa, then called in Greek Ἰόππη. Peter retells the story of his vision in Acts 11, 4-17, in Midrash Tannaim in its chapter Deuteronomy 33,19, reference is made to Jose ben Halafta traveling through Jaffa. Jaffa seems to have attracted serious Jewish scholars in the 4th and 5th century, the Jerusalem Talmud in Moed Ketan references Rav Acha of Jaffa, and in Pesachim chapter 1 refers to Rav Phineas of Jaffa
7.
Yazur
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Yazur was a Palestinian Arab town located 6 kilometers east of Jaffa. Mentioned in 7th century BCE Assyrian texts, the village was a site of contestation between Muslims and Crusaders in the 12th-13th centuries, during the Fatimid period in Palestine, a number of important people were born in Yazur. In modern times the town was the birthplace of Ahmed Jibril, the Israeli town of Azor now stands on the former town lands of Yazur, which was depopulated and mostly destroyed during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine. The village is mentioned in the annals of the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib as Azuro, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, Muslim and Crusader forces fought for control of the village and it changed hands several times, before finally falling under the control of the Mamluks. In 1586, the Maqam Imam ´Ali in Yazur was seen by Zuallart, across the road there is a well or cistern. In 1596, Yazur was a village in the nahiya of Ramla, villagers paid taxes to the authorities for the crops that they cultivated, which included wheat, barley, fruit, and sesame as well as on other types of property, such as goats and beehives. In 1602, Seusenius described the Maqam Imam ´Ali as a mosque with nine cupolas the one in the middle being the highest, while still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in 1870, Charles Netter from Alliance Israélite Universelle founded the Mikveh Israel southeast of Jaffa. Through a firman of the sultan, he received land for the school which then had been worked by the fellahin of the village of Yazur. The peasants therefore became bitter enemies of the school farm, in the late summer of 1870, the governor of Damascus visited Jaffa. The Pasha, riding on the side, asked Ernst for his riding crop. The Wali accepted a petition handed him by a shaykh, incidentally, modern Yazur was divided into four quarters, one for each of four clans that lived there. The houses were made of stone or adobe brick and straw and were built in groups called ahwash, each house in such a group opened onto a common courtyard that had a single entrance, often an arched gate. The village had two schools, one for boys and another for girls. The boys´school occupied 27 dunums and had its own artesian well, in 1947,430 boys and 160 girls were registered in these schools. The remains of an old Crusader church built by Richard the Lionheart in 1191, called Castel des Plaines, were visible on a hill inside the village. The Crusader church had been rebuilt to serve as Yazurs mosque. According to a census conducted in 1931 by the British Mandate authorities, Yazur had a population of 2,337 inhabitants in,419 houses. According to a 1945 census conducted by the Mandatory authorities in Palestine, Yazur had a population of 4,030, agriculture constituted the backbone of the economy, in 1944, citrus was planted on 6,272 dunums and 1,441 dunums were allocated to cereals. Agriculture was both rainfed and irrigated,1,689 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, during World War II, the villagers also started raising Holstein cows, and by 1947 numerous artesian wells were being used for irrigation
8.
Haganah
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Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in the British Mandate of Palestine, which became the core of the Israel Defense Forces. The evolution went step by step from Bar-Giora, to Hashomer, to Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organisations in the New Yishuv started with the Second Aliyah. The first such organization was Bar-Giora, founded in September 1907 and it consisted of a small group of Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. At no time did Bar-Giora have more than 100 members and it was converted to Hashomer in April 1909, which operated until the British Mandate of Palestine came into being in 1920. Hashomer was an elitist organization with narrow scope, and was created to protect against criminal gangs seeking to steal property. During World War I, the forerunners of the Haganah/IDF were the Zion Mule Corps, after the Arab riots against Jews in April 1920, the Yishuvs leadership saw the need to create a nationwide underground defense organization, and the Haganah was founded in June of the same year. During World War II the successor to the Jewish Legion of World War I was the Jewish Brigade, at the beginning of the ensuing 1948-49 full-scale conventional war against regular Arab armies, the Haganah was reorganised to become the core of the new Israel Defense Forces. Believing that they could not rely on the British administration for protection from these gangs, in addition to guarding Jewish communities, the role of the Haganah was to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs. In the period between 1920–1929, the Haganah lacked a central authority or coordination. Haganah units were very localized and poorly armed, they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim, following the 1929 Palestine riots, the Haganahs role changed dramatically. It became a larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment, many Haganah fighters objected to the official policy of havlagah that Jewish political leaders had imposed on the militia. Fighters had been instructed to defend communities and not initiate counterattacks against Arab gangs or their communities. This policy appeared defeatist to many who believed that the best defense is a good offense, in 1931, the more militant elements of the Haganah splintered off and formed the Irgun Tsvai-Leumi, better known as Irgun. During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Haganah worked to protect British interests and to quell Arab rebellion using the FOSH, at that time, the Haganah fielded 10,000 mobilized men along with 40,000 reservists. The battle experience gained during the training was useful in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, by 1939, the British had issued the White Paper, which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, deeply angering the Zionist leadership. In reaction to the White Paper, the Haganah built up the Palmach as the Haganahs elite strike force, approximately 100,000 Jews were brought to Palestine in over one hundred ships during the final decade of what became known as Aliyah Bet. The Haganah also organized demonstrations against British immigration quotas, in 1940 the Haganah sabotaged the Patria, an ocean liner being used by the British to deport 1,800 Jews to Mauritius, with a bomb intended to cripple the ship
Israel
Tel Aviv
(audio) (help·info); Arabic: حُولُون Ḥūlūn) is a city on the central coastal strip south of Tel Aviv, Israel. Holon is part of the metropolitan Gush Dan area. In 2017 it had a population of 192,624.[1] Holon has the second-largest industrial zone in Israel, after Haifa.[citation needed]
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Andong, South Korea
