1.
Yitzhak Rabin: a Biography
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Yitzhak Rabin, a Biography is a 2004 two-part documentary film that tells the life story of the former Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Laureates, Yitzhak Rabin. The documentary offers interviews with Rabins fellow politicians and family members and their insights along with historic film footage offers a history of modern Israel through Rabins biography. Part I of Rabin describes Rabins childhood in Israel, his service that began at sixteen. Part II follow the politician from an upsetting lull in his career, to the height of his popularity, Rabins dedication to his homeland and the Jewish people was consistent. The documentary offers a perspective of Rabin by touching briefly on his personal life. Family interviews reveal a side of Rabin that the public would otherwise be unaware of and it was at a young age that Rabin married his wife Leah Rabin, who jokes that she had, the sense to see potential in such a shy man. A recurring theme in Rabins life seems to be how his anti-war instincts bring him criticism for being hesitant, having experienced the horrors of battle, he was never eager to engage Israel in war. Just before the Six Day War, his biographer says that Rabin was smoking 120 cigarettes a day and getting little sleep, worried by looming hostility. Rabins critics read his anxiety as a sign that he was a feeble, unfit leader, when Rabins wife, Leah, was put under trial for having an illegal American bank account, he felt forced to resign as Prime Minister. Out of office, he published his memoirs, which were critical of Peres. He had hoped his book would boost his popularity, but it had the opposite effect and his shyness, which made him seem cold and aloof, only made matters worse. Rabin was convinced that hes days of political prestige were behind him, but, thanks to his wifes unwavering support and his own determination, Rabin worked back up the political ranks to find himself again as Israels Prime Minister. When all seemed lost, Leah would say, Dont worry, annoyed and disheartened, Rabin would respond, Woman, stop talking nonsense. He had lost hope, but she never did, close family friends confide that theres no doubt that Lea played a crucial role in Rabins political success because of charisma with the media and her unwavering support of her husband. As time passed his public image changed, and Rabin was seen as a warrior who was prepared to compromise for peace but wouldnt compromise Israels autonomy and strength. Part II of Rabin paints a picture of a leader who never shied away from the violence but worked diligently to promote peace, despite the criticism he received for it. When suicide bombers broke out in Israel, in response to the talks between Arafat and Rabin, Rabin insisted on being at the scene immediately to witness the horrors first hand. He was not afraid to confront violence, but wanted a future for Israel that didnt revolve around bloodshed, just before his death, his secret peace negotiations with Jordans King Hussein were announced to the public and his plan for peace with Yasser Arafat was about to be enacted
2.
Prime Minister of Israel
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The Prime Minister of Israel is the head of the Israeli government and the most powerful figure in Israeli politics. Although the President of Israel is the head of state, his powers are largely ceremonial. The official residence of the minister, Beit Rosh Hamemshala is in Jerusalem. The current prime minister is Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, the person to hold the position. Following an election, the president nominates a member of the Knesset to become prime minister after asking party leaders whom they support for the position, the nominee then presents a government platform and must receive a vote of confidence in order to become prime minister. In practice, the minister is usually the leader of the largest party in the governing coalition. Between 1996 and 2001, the minister was directly elected. The office of prime minister came into existence on 14 May 1948, the date of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, david Ben-Gurion, leader of Mapai and head of the Jewish Agency became Israels first prime minister. The position became permanent on 8 March 1949, when the first government was formed, Ben-Gurion retained his role until late 1953, when he resigned in order to settle in the Kibbutz of Sde Boker. He was replaced by Moshe Sharett, however, Ben-Gurion returned in a little under two years to reclaim his position. He resigned for a time in 1963, breaking away from Mapai to form Rafi. Levi Eshkol took over as head of Mapai and prime minister and he became the first prime minister to head the country under the banner of two parties when Mapai formed the Alignment with Ahdut HaAvoda in 1965. In 1968 he also became the party leader to command an absolute majority in the Knesset, after Mapam and Rafi merged into the Alignment. On 26 February 1969, Eshkol became the first prime minister to die in office, however, Allons stint lasted less than a month, as the party persuaded Golda Meir to return to political life and become prime minister in March 1969. Meir was Israels first woman minister, and the third in the world. Meir resigned in 1974 after the Agranat Commission published its findings on the Yom Kippur War, Yitzhak Rabin took over, though he also resigned towards the end of the eighth Knessets term following a series of scandals. Rabins wife, Leah, was found to have had an overseas bank account. Menachem Begin became the first right-wing prime minister when his Likud won the 1977 elections and he resigned in 1983 for health reasons, passing the reins of power to Yitzhak Shamir
3.
Chaim Herzog
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Major-General Chaim Herzog was an Israeli politician, general, lawyer and author who served as the sixth President of Israel between 1983 and 1993. In the British Army during World War II, latterly as an officer and he retired from the Israel Defence Forces in 1962 with the rank of Major-General. After leaving the military, Herzog practised law, in 1972 he was a co-founder of Herzog, Fox & Neeman, which would become one of Israels largest law firms. Herzog entered politics in the 1981 elections, winning a Knesset seat as a member of the Alignment, two years later, in March 1983, he was elected to the largely ceremonial role of President. He served for two terms before retiring in 1993. He died four years later and was buried on Mount Herzl and his son Isaac Herzog has led the Israeli Labour Party and the parliamentary Opposition in the Knesset since 2013. Herzog was born on 17 September 1918 in Cliftonpark Avenue in Belfast, Ireland, the son of Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who was Chief Rabbi of Ireland from 1919 to 1937, and his wife Sara. His father was born in Łomża, Poland, and his mother in Latvia, the family home from 1919 was at 33 Bloomfield Avenue, Portobello, Dublin. Herzogs father, a fluent speaker of the Irish language, was known as the Sinn Féin Rabbi for his support of the First Dáil and the Irish Republican cause during the Irish War of Independence. Herzog studied at Wesley College, Dublin and was involved with the Federation of Zionist Youth and Habonim Dror, the family emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935, Herzog subsequently served in the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah during the 1936–39 Arab revolt. He went on to earn a degree in law at University College London, Herzog joined the British Army during World War II, operating primarily in Germany as a tank commander in the Armoured Corps. There, he was given his nickname of Vivian because the British could not pronounce the name. A Jewish soldier had volunteered that Vivian was the English equivalent of Chaim and he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in 1943 and participated in the liberation of several Nazi concentration camps as well as identifying a captured German soldier as Heinrich Himmler. He left the army in 1947 with the rank of Major, immediately following the war, he returned to Palestine. After the establishment of the State of Israel, he fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, from 1950 to 1954, he served as defence attaché at the Israeli Embassy in the United States. He retired from the IDF in 1962 with the rank of Major-General, after leaving the army, Herzog opened a private law practice. He returned to life in 1967, when the Six-Day War broke out. Following the capture of the West Bank, he was appointed Military Governor of East Jerusalem, in 1972, he went into partnership with Michael Fox and Yaakov Neeman, and established the law firm of Herzog, Fox & Neeman, one of the largest law firms in Israel
4.
Ezer Weizman
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Ezer Weizman listen was the seventh President of Israel, first elected in 1993 and re-elected in 1998. Before the presidency, Weizman was commander of the Israeli Air Force, Weizman was born in Tel Aviv in the British Mandate of Palestine on 15 June 1924. His father, Yechiel, was an agronomist, Weizman was a nephew of Israels first president, Chaim Weizmann. He grew up in Haifa, and attended the Hebrew Reali School and he married Reuma Schwartz, sister of Ruth Dayan, wife of Moshe Dayan, and they had two children, Shaul and Michal. He received his training in the British Army in which he enlisted in 1942 during World War II and he served as a truck driver in the Western Desert campaigns in Egypt and Libya. In 1943, he joined the British Royal Air Force and attended school in Rhodesia. He served with the RAF in India in early 1944, Weizman ended his service in the RAF as a sergeant pilot. Between 1944 and 1946, he was a member of the Irgun underground in Mandatory Palestine, between 1946 and 1947, he studied aeronautics in England. After the establishment of the State of Israel, Weizman was a pilot for the Haganah in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and he was the commander of the Negev Air Squadron near Nir-Am. An RAF Hawker Tempest was shot down by the IAF, resulting in the death of the pilot, due to a failure by ground crewmen, most of the RAF aircraft were not armed. Weizman joined the Israel Defense Forces and served as the Chief of Operations on the General Staff, in 1951 he attended the RAF Staff College, Andover in England. Upon his return he became commander of Ramat David and he served as the commander of the Israeli Air Force between 1958 and 1966, and later served as deputy Chief of the General Staff. A total of 400 enemy planes were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force on the 1st day of the 6 Day War, in 1966, he oversaw the defection of an Iraqi fighter pilot and his MiG fighter which gave Israel vital intelligence information. Although he became the IDFs Deputy Chief of Staff in 1966, upon retiring from the military, Weizman joined the right-wing Gahal party. He served as Minister of Transportation in Levi Eshkols national unity government until Gahal left the coalition in 1970, Weizman quit Gahal in 1972, but returned in 1976, by which time it had become Likud. In 1977, he became Defense Minister under Menachem Begin, during his term, Israel developed the IAI Lavi fighter and launched the Litani Operation against the PLO in south Lebanon. During this operation his own son, Saul, suffered an injury from a snipers bullet which left him in a vegetive state. When the commission confirmed that the Beit Jala story was true he fired the military Governor of the West Bank, Brigadier General David Hagoel, over time, Weizmans views became more dovish
5.
Yitzhak Shamir
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Yitzhak Shamir was an Israeli politician and the seventh Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms, 1983–84 and 1986–1992. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, Shamir was a leader of the Zionist paramilitary group Lehi, after the establishment of the State of Israel he served in the Mossad between 1955 and 1965, a Knesset Member, a Knesset Speaker and a Foreign Affairs Minister. Shamir was the countrys third longest-serving prime minister after David Ben-Gurion and those close to Shamir noted that he often recalls his childhood and youth in Belarus. Shamir later moved to Białystok, Poland and studied at a Hebrew high school network, as a youth he joined Betar, the Revisionist Zionist youth movement. He studied law at the University of Warsaw, but cut his studies short to immigrate to what was then Mandatory Palestine, Shamir once stated that every Pole sucked anti-Semitism with his mothers milk. The comment caused controversy within Poland as being slanderous and libelous, the Polish writer and former resistance fighter Jan Nowak-Jeziorański commented, To conclude from the 1941 pogroms that the Holocaust was the common work of Poles and Germans is a libel. All who feel themselves to be Polish have the responsibility to defend themselves against such slander, the difference is that Poles were eyewitnesses, defenseless witnesses living in constant fear for their lives and the lives of their families. His parents and two died during the Holocaust. However this story has never confirmed by other sources. His mother and a sister died in the camps and another sister was shot dead. According to an obituary, he had dreamed of living in the Land of Israel since he was a boy, in 1935, Shamir emigrated to Palestine, where he worked in an accountants office. He later adopted as his surname the name he used on a forged underground identity card and he told his wife this was because Shamir means a thorn that stabs and a rock that can cut steel. In 1944 he married Shulamit, whom he met in a detention camp when she migrated to Mandate Palestine from Bulgaria by boat in 1941 and was incarcerated because she entered the territory illegally and they had two children, Yair and Gilada. Shulamit died on July 29,2011, Shamir joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Zionist paramilitary group that opposed British control of Palestine. When the Irgun split in 1940, Shamir joined the militant faction Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang. In 1941 Shamir was imprisoned by British authorities, Shamir, together with Giladi, Anshell Shpillman and Yehoshua Cohen, reorganized the movement into cells and trained its members. In 1943, he one of the three leaders of the group, serving with Nathan Yellin-Mor and Israel Eldad. Shamir sought to emulate the anti-British struggle of the Irish Republicans, Shamir plotted the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, British Minister for Middle East Affairs, and personally selected Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri to carry it out
6.
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
7.
Ephraim Katzir
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Ephraim Katzir was an Israeli biophysicist and former Israeli Labor Party politician. He was the fourth President of Israel from 1973 until 1978, Katzir was born Efraim Katchalski, son of Yehuda and Tzila Katchalski, in Kiev, in the Russian Empire. In 1925, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine with his family, in 1932, he graduated from Gymnasia Rehavia. Like his brother, Aharon, he was interested in science and he studied botany, zoology, chemistry and bacteriology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1938, he received an M. Sc, and in 1941, in 1939, he graduated from the first Haganah officers course, and became commander of the student unit in the field forces. He and his brother worked on development of new explosives, in May,1948, Ephraim was appointed commander of the Heyl Mada – scientific research and development corps. His brother, Aharon Katzir, chairman of the Department of Polymer Research at Weizmann Institute, was murdered in the Lod Airport Massacre, Katzir was married to Nina, born in Poland, who died in 1986. As an English teacher, Nina developed a method for teaching language. As the presidents wife, she introduced the custom of inviting children books authors and she established the Nurit Katzir Jerusalem Theater Center in 1978 in memory of their deceased daughter, Nurit, who died after inhaling gas and another daughter, Irit, killed herself. They had a son, Meir, and three grandchildren, Katzir died on 30 May 2009 at his home in Rehovot. In 1966–1968, Katzir was Chief Scientist of the Israel Defense Forces and his initial research centered on simple synthetic protein models, but he also developed a method for binding enzymes, which helped lay the groundwork for what is now called enzyme engineering. In 1973, Golda Meir contacted Katzir at Harvard University, asking him to accept the presidency and he hebraicized his family name to Katzir, which means harvest. On 10 March 1973, Katzir was elected by the Knesset to serve as the fourth President of Israel and he received 66 votes to 41 cast in favour of his opponent Ephraim Urbach and he assumed office on 24 May 1973. In November 1977, he hosted President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in the first ever visit of an Arab head of state. In 1978, he declined to stand for a term due to his wifes illness. After stepping down as President, he returned to his scientific work, in 1959, Katzir was awarded the Israel Prize in life sciences. In 2000, the Rashi Foundation established the Katzir Scholarship Program in honor of Katzir and he is also a recipient of the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation
8.
Golda Meir
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Golda Meir was an Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, stateswoman and politician and the fourth elected Prime Minister of Israel. Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel on March 17,1969, after serving as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion used to call Meir the best man in the government, she was portrayed as the strong-willed, straight-talking. Meir resigned as minister in 1974, the year following the Yom Kippur War. She died in 1978 of lymphoma, Golda Mabovitch was born on May 3,1898, in Kiev, Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine, to Blume Neiditch and Moshe Mabovitch, a carpenter. Meir wrote in her autobiography that her earliest memories were of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumours of an imminent pogrom and she had two sisters, Sheyna and Tzipke, as well as five other siblings who died in childhood. She was especially close to Sheyna, Moshe Mabovitch left to find work in New York City in 1903. In his absence, the rest of the moved to Pinsk to join her mothers family. In 1905, Moshe moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in search of higher-paying work, the following year, he had saved up enough money to bring his family to the United States. Blume ran a store on Milwaukees north side, where by age eight Golda had been put in charge of watching the store when her mother went to the market for supplies. Golda attended the Fourth Street Grade School from 1906 to 1912, a leader early on, she organised a fund raiser to pay for her classmates textbooks. After forming the American Young Sisters Society, she rented a hall and she went on to graduate as valedictorian of her class. At 14, she studied at North Division High School and worked part-time and her mother wanted her to leave school and marry, but she demurred. She bought a ticket to Denver, Colorado, and went to live with her married sister. The Korngolds held intellectual evenings at their home, where Meir was exposed to debates on Zionism, literature, womens suffrage, trade unionism, in her autobiography, she wrote, To the extent that my own future convictions were shaped and given form. Those talk-filled nights in Denver played a considerable role, in Denver, she also met Morris Meyerson, a sign painter, whom she later married on December 24,1917. In 1913 she returned to North Division High, graduating in 1915, while there, she became an active member of Young Poale Zion, which later became Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement. She spoke at meetings, embraced Socialist Zionism and hosted visitors from Palestine
9.
Ministry of Defense (Israel)
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The Ministry of Defense of the government of Israel, is the governmental department responsible for defending the State of Israel from internal and external military threats. Its political head is the Defense Minister of Israel, and its offices are located in HaKirya, the Ministry of Defense oversees most of the Israeli security forces, including the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Military Industries, and Israel Aerospace Industries. The MOD was established when the British Mandate of Palestine ended, and the British Army departed Palestine and this ended the rag-tag militia units during British rule and gave way to the formal defense of the Jewish state. The Defense Minister of Israel heads the ministry, the post is considered to be the second most important position in the Israeli cabinet, and usually has a Deputy Minister. The Defense Minister is also a permanent member of the Security Cabinet, avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu was sworn in on 31 March,2016 as Israels new Minister of Defense. Five of them are also former Chiefs of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, amongst the duties of the post, Defense Ministers can request administrative detention
10.
Moshe Arens
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Moshe Arens is an Israeli aeronautical engineer, researcher and former diplomat and Likud politician. A member of the Knesset between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens has also served as the Israeli ambassador to the U. S. and was professor at the Technion in Haifa, Moshe Arens was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, to a Jewish family. His father was an industrialist and his mother was a dentist, when he was a year old, his family moved to Riga, Latvia. In 1939, Arens and his family immigrated to the United States, the family settled in New York City, where Arens attended George Washington High School. As a youth, Arens was a leader in the Betar youth movement, during World War II, Arens served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers as a technical sergeant. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, Arens moved to the new State of Israel and joined the Irgun and he was sent to North Africa and Europe to help local Jewish communities establish self-defense groups. In March 1949, he returned to Israel, and became a member of the Herut party. After being denied a job in Israels military industries, he working as an engineer for an American company dealing in designing water systems for Tel Aviv. He returned to Israel in 1957, and became professor of aeronautics at the Technion, from 1962 until 1971 he was a Deputy Director General at Israel Aircraft Industries, where he was in charge of most major development projects, including the Kfir fighter jet project. In 1971, he won the Israel Defense Prize, after the Yom Kippur War he entered politics and was elected to the Knesset as a member of Likud in the 1973 elections. After being re-elected in 1977, he became chairman of the Foreign Affairs and he voted against the Camp David Accords and the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. In 1980, Prime Minister Menachem Begin offered Arens the post of Minister of Defense, Arens did not oppose peace with Egypt, but was opposed to certain aspects of the treaty, and thus did not want to have to oversee Israels evacuation from the Sinai. He was re-elected again in 1981, but resigned from the Knesset on 19 January 1982 when appointed ambassador to the United States, at this point, he brought his young protégé, Benjamin Netanyahu, then 32, to work for him in Washington. He was re-elected in 1984, but was only appointed Minister without Portfolio, after another re-election in 1988 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in 1990 returned to the Defense portfolio. After Likud lost the 1992 elections, Arens retired from politics and he returned in 1999, however, to challenge Binyamin Netanyahu for the Likud leadership. Although he failed in his challenge, winning only 18% of the vote, Netanyahu appointed him Minister of Defense, replacing Yitzhak Mordechai, although Arens returned to the Knesset after the 1999 elections, Likud lost the elections and he left the cabinet. He lost his seat for the time in 2003
11.
Jerusalem
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Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem
12.
Mandatory Palestine
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Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity under British administration, carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. British civil administration in Palestine operated from 1920 until 1948, further confusing the issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. At the wars end the British and French set up a joint Occupied Enemy Territory Administration in what had been Ottoman Syria, the British achieved legitimacy for their continued control by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922. The civil Mandate administration was formalized with the League of Nations consent in 1923 under the British Mandate for Palestine, the land west of the Jordan River, known as Palestine, was under direct British administration until 1948. The land east of the Jordan, a region known as Transjordan, under the rule of the Hashemite family from the Hijaz. The divergent tendencies regarding the nature and purpose of the mandate are visible already in the discussions concerning the name for this new entity. As a set-off to this, certain of the Arab politicians suggested that the country should be called Southern Syria in order to emphasise its close relation with another Arab State. During the British Mandate period the area experienced the ascent of two major nationalist movements, one among the Jews and the other among the Arabs, following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine was governed by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. In July 1920, the administration was replaced by a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner. The first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, a Zionist recent cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920, following the arrival of the British, Muslim-Christian Associations were established in all the major towns. In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem and its main platforms were a call for representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration. The Zionist Commission was formed in March 1918 and was active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine, on 19 April 1920, elections were held for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community. The Zionist Commission received official recognition in 1922 as representative of the Palestinian Jewish community, Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organizations, investors, and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British intended to favor Zionism, when Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Kamil al-Husayni died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist. As Grand Mufti, as well as the influential positions that he held during this period. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had created by Samuel in December 1921. The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, in addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine
13.
Tel Aviv
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Tel Aviv-Yafo is a major city in Israel, located on the countrys Mediterranean coastline. It is the center and the technology hub of Israel, with a population of 432,892. Tel Aviv is the largest city in the Gush Dan region of Israel, Tel Aviv is also a focal point in the high-tech concentration known as the Silicon Wadi. Tel Aviv is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, headed by Ron Huldai, Tel Aviv is a global city, and is the thirty eighth most important financial center in the world. Tel Aviv is known to have the third-largest economy of any city in the Middle East after Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City, the city receives over a million international visitors annually. Known as The City that Never Sleeps and a party capital, it has a lively nightlife, the city was founded in 1909 by Jewish immigrants on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa. It is named after the Hebrew translation of Theodor Herzls 1902 novel, Altneuland, the modern citys first neighbourhoods had already been established in 1886, the first being Neve Tzedek. Immigration by mostly Jewish refugees meant that the growth of Tel Aviv soon outpaced Jaffas, Tel Aviv and Jaffa were merged into a single municipality in 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel. Tel Avivs White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, Tel Aviv is the Hebrew title of Theodor Herzls Altneuland, translated from German by Nahum Sokolow. The name was chosen in 1910 from several suggestions, including Herzliya and it was found fitting as it embraced the idea of a renaissance in the ancient Jewish homeland. Aviv is Hebrew for spring, symbolizing renewal, and tel is a man-made mound accumulating layers of civilization built one over the other and symbolizing the ancient. Although founded in 1909 as a settlement on the sand dunes North of Jaffa. The marketing pamphlets advocating for its establishment in 1906, wrote, In this city we will build the streets so they have roads and sidewalks and electric lights. Every house will have water wells that will flow through pipes as in every modern European city. Since 1886, Jewish settlers had founded new neighborhoods outside Jaffa on the current territory of Tel Aviv, the first was Neve Tzedek, built on lands owned by Aharon Chelouche and inhabited primarily by Mizrahi Jews. Other neighborhoods were Neve Shalom, Yafa Nof, Achva, Ohel Moshe, Kerem HaTeimanim, once Tel Aviv received city status in the 1920s, those neighborhoods joined the newly formed municipality, now becoming separated from Jaffa. The Second Aliyah led to further expansion, in 1906, a group of Jews, among them residents of Jaffa, followed the initiative of Akiva Aryeh Weiss and banded together to form the Ahuzat Bayit society. The societys goal was to form a Hebrew urban centre in an environment, planned according to the rules of aesthetics
14.
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
15.
Alignment (Israel)
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The Alignment is the name of two political alliances in Israel. Each of these Alignment parties later merged into what is now the Israeli Labor Party, the first Alignment was a 1965 alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda. The two parties continued to exist independently, but submitted joint electoral lists, often called the Labor Alignment, the alliance lasted three years until a merger with Rafi in 1968 created the unitary Israeli Labor Party. The following year the Labor Party formed an alliance with Mapam, the two constituent parties remained separate, but with combined electoral campaigns and candidate lists. The second version of the Alignment lasted for more than two decades, at its formation in 1969, the second Alignment had 63 of 120 Knesset seats, the only time a parliamentary group in Israel has ever held a parliamentary majority. Although their majority was lost in the 1969 elections, the 56 seats won by the Alignment remains the highest seat total won in an Israeli election. The first incarnation of the Alignment, fully named the HaMaarakh LeAhdut Poalei Eretz Yisrael, was an alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda formed to contest the 1965 Knesset elections. Its formation was in response to the merger of the two major right-wing parties in Israel, Herut and the Liberal Party to form Gahal, and to try to preserve the lefts hegemony in Israeli politics. On 23 January 1968, Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda merged with Rafi to form the Israeli Labor Party, Rafi leader David Ben-Gurion refused to join the Labor Party, and left Rafi before the merger. He formed a new party, the National List, on 28 January 1969 the Labor Party entered into an alliance with Mapam. The Alignment name was still well-known, and was re-used for the new alliance, at the time, the Labor Party held 55 seats, and Mapam eight, giving the new Alignment a majority of 63 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The countrys success in the Six-Day War helped the partys popularity, although it lost its majority, the 46. 2% of the vote and 56 seats was the best electoral performance in Israeli political history. During the Knesset session, the party gained one seat as Meir Avizohar defected from the National List, the seventh Knesset also covered the event that played a major part in the partys downfall. On 6 October 1973, as Israelis were observing Yom Kippur, although Israel later recovered the ground initially lost, the war was generally considered to be a failure, and the government faced significant criticism. The Agranat Commission was set up to examine the circumstances that led to the war, before the Commission could publish its results, an election was held. Anger at the government was not significantly noticeable, as the Alignment still won 39. 6% of the vote and 51 seats, more significantly, the new major right-wing party, Likud, won 39 seats, and was now breathing down the Alignments neck. Meir formed a coalition with the National Religious Party and the Independent Liberals, however, ten days after the Agranat Commission published its findings on 1 April 1974, Meir resigned, despite the report clearing her and her Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan of all responsibility. Yitzhak Rabin took over the Labor party, beating Shimon Peres in a leadership contest and this battle led to a long-term falling out between the two, after Rabin described Peres as an indefatigable intriguer in his autobiography
16.
Israeli Labor Party
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The Israeli Labor Party, commonly known as HaAvoda, is a social democratic and Zionist political party in Israel. The Israeli Labor Party was established in 1968 by a merger of Mapai, Ahdut HaAvoda, until 1977, all Israeli Prime Ministers were affiliated with the Labor movement. The current party leader since 2013 is Isaac Herzog, the Labor Party is associated with supporting the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, pragmatic foreign affairs policies and social democratic economic policies. The party is a member of the Socialist International and Progressive Alliance, after the Six-Day War broke out, Rafi and Gahal joined the coalition. On 23 January 1968 Mapai, Ahdut HaAvoda and Rafi merged into one body, on 28 January 1969, the party allied itself with Mapam, the alliance becoming known as the Alignment. As the largest faction within the Alignment, Labor came to dominate it, Mapam left during the eighth Knesset, but rejoined shortly afterwards. In the 1977 elections, Labor for the first time ended up in opposition, in the 1984 elections, Labor joined a national unity government with Likud, with the post of Prime Minister rotating between the two parties. Mapam broke away again during the eleventh Knesset, angry at Shimon Peress decision to form a unity government with Likud. Although the Independent Liberals merged into the Alignment in the 1980s, on 7 October 1991 the Alignment ceased to exist, with all factions formally merged into the Labor Party. W. Led by Yitzhak Rabin, Labor won the 1992 elections and formed the government together with Meretz, in domestic policy, the Labor-led government introduced various measures to improve levels of social protection. Better provisions were introduced for single parents and people with disabilities, the 1994 Law to Reduce Poverty and Income Inequality increased income maintenance grants to needy families, particularly benefitting those sections of society most vulnerable to poverty. In 1995, a health insurance policy was implemented, making access to health care a right for all Israelis. Various measures were introduced to bring greater progressivity into the system of collection of national insurance contributions. A maternity grant for adopting mothers was introduced, together with insurance for housewives, a minimum unemployment allowance. The subsequent role of Labor became to a large extent tied to the Oslo Accords, the Oslo Accords led to a vote of confidence, which the Government won with a margin of 61–50. Several MKs from the Government parties declined to support the Government, but on the other hand, due to the lack of a constitution in Israel, the Government was able to implement the accords with a thin margin. Rabins decision to advance peace talks with the Palestinians to the point of signing the Oslo Accords led to his assassination by Yigal Amir in 1995, Peres decided to call early elections in 1996 to give him a mandate for advancing the peace process. However, his ploy failed, although Labor won the most seats in the Knesset election, Netanyahu and Likud were thus able to form the government
17.
Leah Rabin
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Leah Rabin was the widow of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. Leah was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany, to a family of Russian-born parents. Immediately after Adolf Hitlers election as Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and her father had bought a piece of property near Binyamina on his first trip to the area in 1927. She met her husband, Yitzhak Rabin, at school. They married in 1948, the year of Israels independence, Yitzhak became Prime Minister in 1974 following Golda Meirs resignation, but in 1977 a US Dollar bank account held by Leah was exposed by Haaretz journalist Dan Margalit. As a result, her husband decided to take responsibility, resigned from office and this came to be known as the Dollar Account affair. Leah supported the efforts of her husband in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. She wrote a book about her memories of her husband, which was released in 1997, under the name Rabin, Our Life and she supported Shimon Peres in the elections of 1996, calling people to vote for him so that her husbands death would not be in vain. She also expressed her disappointment after he lost the elections to Benjamin Netanyahu, in the election of 1999 she supported Ehud Barak. However, during Baraks term as minister she changed her opinions about him. She was especially disturbed by the fact that he was negotiating a compromise in Jerusalem. The couples daughter, Dalia was later a Knesset member for the Centre Party, New Way and the Labour Party, serving as Deputy Minister of Defense
18.
Dalia Rabin-Pelossof
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Dalia Rabin-Pelossof is a former Israeli politician. The daughter of former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, she served as a member of the Knesset for the Centre Party, New Way, born in 1950, Rabin-Pelossof gained an LLB and worked as an attorney. For the 1999 elections she was placed sixth on the Centre Party list and she was appointed chairwoman of the Ethics Committee. On 6 March 2001 she and two other Centre Party MKs broke away to establish a new faction, New Way, the day after, she was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense in Ariel Sharons new government. On 26 March the other two New Way members resigned from the Knesset and were replaced by Centre Party MKs, leaving Rabin-Pelossof alone in the faction, on 7 May 2001 she joined One Israel, which later became Labor-Meimad. She resigned from her ministerial post on 1 August 2002 and she lost her seat in the 2003 elections. Rabin-Pelossof is married with two children and she is chairperson of Yitzhak Rabin Center Dalia Rabin-Pelossof on the Knesset website
19.
Officer (armed forces)
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An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. In this sense, officers are not enlisted, but hold appointments from their government that typically remain in force indefinitely unless resigned, the proportion of officers varies greatly. Officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel, in 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13. 7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, historically, however, armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers, in the early twentieth century, the Spanish army had the highest proportion of officers of any European army, at 12. 5%. Within a nations armed forces, armies tend to have a proportion of officers. For example,13. 9% of British army personnel and 22. 2% of the RAF personnel were officers in 2013, having officers is one requirement for combatant status under the laws of war, though these officers need not have obtained an official commission or warrant. Commissioned officers are typically the only persons, in an armed forces environment, a superior officer is an officer with a higher rank than another officer, who is a subordinate officer relative to the superior. Non-commissioned officers in positions of authority can be said to have control or charge rather than command per se, many advanced militaries require university degrees as a prerequisite for commissioning, even from the enlisted ranks. In the Israel Defense Forces, a university degree is a requirement for an officer to advance to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the IDF often sponsors the studies for its majors, while aircrew and naval officers obtain academic degrees as a part of their training programmes. In the United Kingdom, there are three routes of entry for British Armed Forces officers, the first, and primary route are those who receive their commission directly into the officer grades following completion at their relevant military academy. The third route is similar to the second, in that they convert from an enlisted to a commission, but these are taken from the highest ranks of SNCOs. LE officers, whilst holding the same Queens Commission, generally work in different roles from the DE officers, in the infantry, a number of Warrant Officer Class 1s are commissioned as LE officers. For Royal Navy and Royal Air Force officer candidates, a 30-week period at Britannia Royal Naval College or a 30-week period at RAF College Cranwell, Royal Marines officers receive their training in the Command Wing of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines during a grueling 15-month course. The courses consist of not only tactical and combat training, but also leadership, management, etiquette, until the Cardwell Reforms of 1871, commissions in the British Army were purchased by officers. The Royal Navy, however, operated on a more meritocratic, or at least socially mobile, AOCS also also included the embedded Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate and Naval Aviation Cadet programs. NAVCADs were personnel who held associates degrees, but lacked bachelors degrees, nAVCADs would complete the entire AOCS program, but would not be commissioned until completion of flight training and receiving their wings. After their initial tour, they would be assigned to a college or university full-time for no more than two years in order to complete their bachelors degree
20.
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
21.
Israel Defense Forces
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The Israel Defense Forces, commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal, are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the forces, air force, and navy. It is the military wing of the Israeli security forces. The IDF is headed by its Chief of General Staff, the Ramatkal, subordinate to the Defense Minister of Israel, Lieutenant general Gadi Eizenkot has served as Chief of Staff since 2015. The number of wars and border conflicts in which the IDF has been involved in its history makes it one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world. The Israel Defense Forces differs from most armed forces in the world in many ways, differences include the mandatory conscription of women and its structure, which emphasizes close relations between the army, navy, and air force. Since its founding, the IDF has been designed to match Israels unique security situation. The IDF is one of Israeli societys most prominent institutions, influencing the economy, culture. In 1965, the Israel Defense Forces was awarded the Israel Prize for its contribution to education, the Uzi submachine gun was invented in Israel and used by the IDF until December 2003, ending a service that began in 1954. The Israeli cabinet ratified the name Israel Defense Forces, Tzva HaHagana LeYisrael, literally army for the defense of Israel, the other main contender was Tzva Yisrael. The name was chosen because it conveyed the idea that the role was defense, and because it incorporated the name Haganah. Among the primary opponents of the name were Minister Haim-Moshe Shapira, the IDF traces its roots to Jewish paramilitary organizations in the New Yishuv, starting with the Second Aliyah. The first such organization was Bar-Giora, founded in September 1907 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. The Haganah became a defense force after the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine with an organized structure. During World War II the successor to the Jewish Legion of World War I was the Jewish Brigade, the IDF was founded following the establishment of the State of Israel, after Defense Minister and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion issued an order on 26 May 1948. The order called for the establishment of the Israel Defense Forces, although Ben-Gurion had no legal authority to issue such an order, the order was made legal by the cabinet on 31 May
22.
Hebrew language
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
23.
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
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The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on 4 November 1995 at 21,30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. The assassin, an Israeli ultranationalist named Yigal Amir, radically opposed Rabins peace initiative, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the culmination of an anti-violence rally in support of the Oslo peace process. National religious conservatives and Likud party leaders believed that withdrawing from any Jewish land was heresy, rallies, organized partially by Likud, became increasingly extreme in tone. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu accused Rabins government of being removed from Jewish tradition, Netanyahu addressed protesters of the Oslo movement at rallies where posters portrayed Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform or being the target in the cross-hairs of a sniper. Rabin accused Netanyahu of provoking violence, a charge which Netanyahu strenuously denied, netanyahus advisor Zalman Shoval replied that Netanyahu had in fact tried to silence the anti-Rabin chants and had not seen the SS poster. The assassin was Yigal Amir, a former Hesder student and far-right law student at Bar-Ilan University, Amir had come to believe that Rabin was a rodef, meaning a pursuer who endangered Jewish lives. The concept of din rodef is a part of traditional Jewish law, Amir believed he would be justified under din rodef in removing Rabin as a threat to Jews in the territories. Secondly, the law of the pursuer is only intended to save a victim from imminent death. There is absolutely no proof that withdrawing from certain territories will directly lead to the death of any Jews. On the contrary, Prime Minister Rabin, over half the members of the Knesset, in other words, even according to the law of the pursuer, this act was totally futile and senseless since the peace process will continue. Another incident describing Amirs comments to a student about stating the vidui prior to an earlier. The source refused to name Amir by name but instead described him as a short Yemeni guy with curly hair. After the rally, Rabin walked down the city hall steps towards the door of his car. He was immediately subdued by Rabins bodyguards and arrested with the murder weapon, the third shot missed Rabin and slightly wounded security guard Yoram Rubin. Rabin was rushed to nearby Ichilov Hospital at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, where he died on the table from blood loss. The government shall convene in one hour for a session in Tel Aviv. The assassination of Rabin was a shock to the Israeli public, rallies and memorials took place near Kings of Israel Square—later renamed Rabin Square in his honor—as well as near Rabins home, the Knesset building, and the home of the assassin. Many other streets and public buildings around the country were named for Rabin as well, the funeral of Rabin took place on November 6, the day after the assassination, at the Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem, where Rabin was buried
24.
Labor Zionism
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Labor Zionism or Socialist Zionism is the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for years, the most significant tendency among Zionists. It saw itself as the Zionist sector of the historic Jewish labor movements of Eastern and Central Europe, Moses Hesss 1862 work Rome and Jerusalem. The Last National Question argued for the Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of settling the national question, ber Borochov, continuing from the work of Moses Hess, proposed the creation of a socialist society that would correct the inverted pyramid of Jewish society. Jewish society, he argued, would not be healthy until the pyramid was righted. This, he held, could only be accomplished by Jews in their own country, another Zionist thinker, A. D. Gordon, was influenced by the völkisch ideas of European romantic nationalism, and proposed establishing a society of Jewish peasants. Gordon made a religion of work and these two figures, and others like them, motivated the establishment of the first Jewish collective settlement, or kibbutz, Degania, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in 1909. Joseph Trumpeldor is also considered to be one of the icons of the Labor Zionist movement in Palestine. When discussing what it is to be a Jewish pioneer, Trumpeldor stated What is a pioneer, the pioneers should be workers but that is not all. We shall need people who will be everything – everything that the land of Israel needs, a worker has his labor interests, a soldier his esprit de corps, a doctor and an engineer, their special inclinations. A generation of iron-men, iron from which you can forge everything the national machinery needs, a nail, a screw, a block. You need a man to till the soil, policeman, doctor, lawyer, artist, teacher, water carrier. I have no feeling, no name. Ready to do everything, not bound to do anything, I have only one aim – creation. Trumpeldor, a Socialist Zionist, gave his life in 1920 defending the community of Tel Hai in the Upper Galilee, trumpeldors heroic death made him not only a martyr for Zionists Left but also for the Revisionist Zionist movement who named its youth movement Betar after the fallen hero. Albert Einstein was a prominent supporter of both Labor Zionism and efforts to encourage Jewish–Arab cooperation, instead, he preferred a bi-national state with continuously functioning, mixed, administrative, economic, and social organizations. However Ami Isseroff in his article Was Einstein a Zionist argues that Einstein was not opposed to the state of Israel given that Einstein declared it the fulfillment of our dreams. Perceiving its vulnerability after independence, he set aside his pacifism in the name of human preservation
25.
Palmach
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The Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach was established on 15 May 1941, by the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israels army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded and this and political reasons compelled many of the senior Palmach officers to resign in 1950. The Palmach contributed significantly to Israeli culture and ethos, well beyond its military contribution and its members formed the backbone of the Israel Defense Forces high command for many years, and were prominent in Israeli politics, literature and culture. The Palmach was established by the Haganah High Command on 14 May 1941 and its aim was to defend the Palestinian Jewish community against two potential threats. Firstly the occupation of Palestine by the Axis in the event of their victory over the British in North Africa, secondly, if the British army were to retreat from Palestine, Jewish settlements might come under attack from the Arab population. Yitzhak Sadeh was named as Palmach commander, initially the group consisted of around one hundred men. In the early summer of 1941 the British military authorities agreed to joint operations against Vichy French forces in Lebanon, the first action was a sabotage mission against oil installations at Tripoli, Lebanon. Twenty-three Palmach members and a British liaison officer set out by sea but were never heard of again, on 8 June mixed squads of Palmach and Australians began operating in Lebanon and Syria. The success of operations led the British GHQ to fund a sabotage training camp for three hundred men at Mishmar HaEmek. Since the Palmach consisted of volunteers, the funding was used to cover the needs of twice that number of men. When the British ordered the dismantling of Palmach after the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the organization went underground. Since British funding had stopped, Yitzhak Tabenkin, head of the kibbutz union HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, each kibbutz would host a Palmach platoon and supply them with food, homes and resources. In return the platoon would safeguard the kibbutz and carry out such as agricultural work. The proposal was accepted in August 1942, when it was decided that each month Palmach members would have eight training days,14 work days. The program of combined training, agricultural work and Zionist education was called Hachshara Meguyeset הכשרה מגויסת. Later, Zionist youth movements offered members aged of 18–20 an opportunity to join groups for agricultural settlement that became the basis for the Nahal. Basic training included physical fitness, small arms, mêlée and KAPAP, basic training, topography, first aid
26.
Commando
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A commando is a soldier or operative of an elite light infantry or special operations force often specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting or abseiling. Originally a commando was a type of unit, as opposed to an individual in that unit. In other languages, commando and kommando denote a command, including the sense of a military or a special operations unit. In the militaries and governments of most countries, commandos are distinctive in that they specialize in assault on unconventional high-value targets, however, the term commando is sometimes used in relation to units carrying out the latter tasks. In English, occasionally to distinguish between an individual commando and the unit Commando, the unit is capitalized, the word stems from the Afrikaans word kommando, which translates roughly to mobile infantry regiment. This term originally referred to mounted infantry regiments, who fought against the British Army in the first, the Dutch word has had the meaning of a military order or command since at least 1652, it likely came into the language through the influence of the Portuguese word comando. It is also possible the word was adopted into Afrikaans from interactions with Portuguese colonies. Less likely, it is a High German loan word, which was borrowed from Italian in the 17th century, the officer commanding an Afrikaans kommando is called a kommandant, which is a regimental commander equivalent to a lieutenant-colonel or a colonel. The Oxford English Dictionary ties the English use of the word meaning member of a body of picked men, directly into its Afrikaans origins,1943 Combined Operations i. Lt. Lieutenant-Colonel D. W. Clarke. produced the outline of a scheme, the men for this type of irregular warfare should, he suggested, be formed into units to be known as Commandos. Nor was the historical parallel far-fetched, after the victories of Roberts and Kitchener had scattered the Boer army, the guerrilla tactics of its individual units. His ideas were accepted, so also, with hesitation, was the name Commando. During World War II, newspaper reports of the deeds of the led to readers thinking that the singular meant one man rather than one military unit. After the Dutch Cape Colony was established in 1652, the word was used to describe bands of militia, the law compelled Burghers to equip themselves with a horse and a firearm when required in defense. The implementation of laws was called the Commando System. A group of mounted militiamen were organized in a known as a commando and headed by a Commandant. Men called up to serve were said to be on commando, British experience with this system lead to the widespread adoption of the word commandeer into English in the 1880s. During the Great Trek, conflicts with Southern African peoples such as the Xhosa, also, the word became used to describe any armed raid
27.
Yishuv
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The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv Ha-Ivri is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in the land of Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. The term is used in Hebrew even nowadays to denote the Pre-State Jewish residents in the Land of Israel. A distinction is drawn between the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv, The Old Yishuv refers to all the Jews living there before the aliyah of 1882 by the Zionist movement. The Old Yishuv residents were religious Jews, living mainly in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, smaller communities were in Jaffa, Haifa, Pekiin, Acre, Nablus, Shfaram and until 1779 also in Gaza. In the final centuries before modern Zionism, a part of the Old Yishuv spent their time studying the Torah and lived off Maamodot. The Old Yishuv were the Jewish communities of the southern Syrian provinces in the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah and the consolidation of the New Yishuv by the end of World War I. The Old Yishuv developed after a period of decline in Jewish communities of the Southern Levant during the early Middle Ages. The oldest group consisted of the Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish communities in Galilee, a second group was composed of Ashkenazi and Hassidic Jews who had emigrated from Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. A third wave was constituted by Yishuv members who arrived in the late 19th century. Apart from the Old Yishuv centres in the four cities of Judaism, namely Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed, smaller communities also existed in Jaffa, Haifa, Pekiin, Acre, Nablus. Petah Tikva, although established in 1878 by the Old Yishuv, Rishon LeZion, the first settlement founded by the Hovevei Zion in 1882, could be considered the true beginning of the New Yishuv. The Ottoman government was not supportive of the new settlers from the First and Second Aliyah, the Yishuv relied on money from abroad to support their settlements. In 1908 the Zionist Organization founded the Palestine Office, under Arthur Ruppin, for acquisition, agricultural settlement and training. The first Hebrew high schools were opened in Palestine as well as the Technion, hashomer, a Zionist self-defence group, was created to protect the Jewish settlements. Labor organizations were created along with health and cultural services, all coordinated by the Jewish National Council. By 1914, the old Yishuv was a minority and the new Yishuv began to express itself, the Zionist movement tried to find work for the new immigrants who arrived in the Second Aliyah. However, most were middle class and were not physically fit or knowledgeable in agricultural work, the Jewish plantation owners had previously hired Arab workers who accepted low wages and were very familiar with agriculture. The leaders of the Zionist movement insisted that plantation owners only hire Jewish workers, the conquest of labor was a major Zionist goal
28.
Chief of General Staff (Israel)
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The Chief of the General Staff, also known as the Commander-in-Chief of the Israel Defense Forces, is the supreme commander and Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. At any given time, the Chief of Staff is the only active officer holding the IDFs highest rank, rav aluf, which is translated into English as lieutenant general. The Israel Defense Forces is a force, its ranks are the same in all services. It has a slightly compacted rank structure, for instance, the Chief of Staff is seemingly only equivalent to a lieutenant general in other militaries, rav aluf means arch-general, which would be equal to a field marshal or five star general in other armies and equivalent to OF-10. As of 16 February 2015, the Chief of General Staff is Gadi Eizenkot, given the importance of the IDF in Israeli society, the Chief of Staff is an important public figure in Israel. Former Chiefs of Staff often parlay the prominence of their position into political life, two Chiefs of Staff have become Prime Minister of Israel and nine others have served in the Knesset. Of these, only Tzur did not get appointed to the Cabinet, moshe Dayan served also as Foreign Minister. Soon after his discharge, Dan Halutz became the CEO of a prestigious car importer, ehud Barak took a hiatus from politics twice after defeats for re-election and pursued successful international business ventures
29.
Operation Entebbe
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Operation Entebbe was a successful counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976. The hijackers had the objective to free 40 Palestinian and affiliated militants imprisoned in Israel and 13 prisoners in four other countries in exchange for the hostages. The flight, which had originated in Tel Aviv with the destination of Paris, was diverted after a stopover in Athens via Benghazi to Entebbe, the Ugandan government supported the hijackers, and dictator Idi Amin personally welcomed them. Over the following two days,148 non-Israeli hostages were released and flown out to Paris, ninety-four, mainly Israeli, passengers along with the 12-member Air France crew, remained as hostages and were threatened with death. The IDF acted on information provided by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, the hijackers threatened to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met. This threat led to the planning of the rescue operation and these plans included preparation for armed resistance from Ugandan military troops. The operation took place at night, Israeli transport planes carried 100 commandos over 2,500 miles to Uganda for the rescue operation. The operation, which took a week of planning, lasted 90 minutes, of the remaining hostages,102 were rescued. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and one, the unit commander, All the hijackers, three hostages, and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed, and thirty Soviet-built MiG-17s and MiG-21s of Ugandas air force were destroyed. Kenyan sources supported Israel, and in the aftermath of the operation Idi Amin issued orders to retaliate, Operation Entebbe, which had the military codename Operation Thunderbolt, is sometimes referred to retroactively as Operation Jonathan in memory of the units leader, Yonatan Netanyahu. He was the brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel. On 27 June 1976, Air France Flight 139, an Airbus A300B4-203, registration F-BVGG, departed from Tel Aviv, Israel, carrying 246 mainly Jewish and Israeli passengers and a crew of 12. The plane flew to Athens, Greece, where it picked up an additional 58 passengers and it departed for Paris at 12,30 pm. The hijackers diverted the flight to Benghazi, Libya, there it was held on the ground for seven hours for refuelling. During that time the hijackers released British-born Israeli citizen Patricia Martell who pretended to have a miscarriage, the plane left Benghazi, and at 3,15 pm on the 28th, more than 24 hours after the flights original departure, it arrived at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. At Entebbe, the four hijackers were joined by at least four others, supported by the forces of Ugandas President, the hijackers transferred the passengers to the transit hall of the disused former airport terminal where they kept them under guard for the following days. Amin came to visit the hostages almost on a basis, updating them on developments. They threatened that if these demands were not met, they would begin to kill hostages on 1 July 1976, as they did so, a Holocaust survivor showed Böse a camp registration number tattooed on his arm
30.
First Intifada
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The First Intifada or First Palestinian Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, the uprising began on 9 December, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli Defense Forces truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians. Israel, deploying some 80,000 soldiers and initially firing live rounds, in the first 13 months,332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Given the high proportion of children, youths and civilians killed, it adopted a policy of might, power. The global diffusion of images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets, in the intifadas first year, Israeli security forces killed 311 Palestinians, of which 53 were under the age of 17. Over the first two years, according to Save the Children, an estimated 7% of all Palestinians under 18 years of age suffered injuries from shootings, beatings, over six years the IDF killed an estimated 1, 162–1,204 Palestinians. Between 23, 600-29,900 Palestinian children required medical treatment from IDF beatings in the first 2 years. Among Israelis,100 civilians and 60 IDF personnel were killed often by militants outside the control of the Intifadas UNLU, intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of an estimated 822 Palestinians killed as alleged Israeli collaborators. At the time Israel reportedly obtained information from some 18,000 Palestinians who had been compromised, the ensuing Second Intifada took place from September 2000 to 2005. Israel opened its labor market to Palestinians in the occupied territories. Palestinians were recruited mainly to do unskilled or semi-skilled labor jobs Israelis did not want, by the time of the Intifada, over 40 percent of the Palestinian work force worked in Israel daily. At the time of the Intifada, only one in eight college-educated Palestinians could find degree-related work, the Israeli Labor Partys Yitzhak Rabin, the then Defense Minister, added deportations in August 1985 to Israels Iron Fist policy of cracking down on Palestinian nationalism. Referring to the developments, Israeli minister of Economics and Finance, Gad Yaacobi, a policy of deportation was introduced to intimidate activists in January 1987. Violence simmered as a schoolboy from Khan Yunis was shot dead by Israelis soldiers pursuing him in a Jeep. Over the summer the IDFs Lieutenant Ron Tal, who was responsible for guarding detainees at Ansar 11, was dead at point-blank range while stuck in a Gaza traffic jam. A curfew forbidding Gaza residents from leaving their homes was imposed for three days, during the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha. In two incidents on 1 and 6 October 1987, respectively, the IDF ambushed and killed seven Gaza men, reportedly affiliated with Islamic Jihad, who had escaped from prison in May. Some days later, a 17-year-old schoolgirl, Intisar al-Attar, was shot in the back while in her schoolyard in Deir al-Balah by a settler in the Gaza Strip
31.
Nobel Peace Prize
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Per Alfred Nobels will, the recipient is selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a five-member committee appointed by the Parliament of Norway. Since 1990, the prize is awarded on 10 December in Oslo City Hall each year, the prize was formerly awarded in the Atrium of the University of Oslo Faculty of Law, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and the Parliament. Due to its nature, the Nobel Peace Prize has, for most of its history. Alfred Nobels will further specified that the prize be awarded by a committee of five chosen by the Norwegian Parliament. Nobel died in 1896 and he did not leave an explanation for choosing peace as a prize category, as he was a trained chemical engineer, the categories for chemistry and physics were obvious choices. The reasoning behind the peace prize is less clear, some Nobel scholars suggest it was Nobels way to compensate for developing destructive forces. His inventions included dynamite and ballistite, both of which were used violently during his lifetime, ballistite was used in war and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an Irish nationalist organization, carried out dynamite attacks in the 1880s. Nobel was also instrumental in turning Bofors from an iron and steel producer into an armaments company and it is unclear why Nobel wished the Peace Prize to be administered in Norway, which was ruled in union with Sweden at the time of Nobels death. The Norwegian Nobel Committee speculates that Nobel may have considered Norway better suited to awarding the prize, the Norwegian Parliament appoints the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Each year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee specifically invites qualified people to submit nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, the statutes of the Nobel Foundation specify categories of individuals who are eligible to make nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nominations by committee members can be submitted up to the date of the first Committee meeting after this deadline. In 2009, a record 205 nominations were received, but the record was again in 2010 with 237 nominations, in 2011. Nominations from 1901 to 1956, however, have released in a database. Nominations are considered by the Nobel Committee at a meeting where a short list of candidates for review is created. Advisers usually have some months to complete reports, which are considered by the Committee to select the laureate. The Committee seeks to achieve a decision, but this is not always possible. The Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize in the presence of the King of Norway on 10 December each year, the Peace Prize is the only Nobel Prize not presented in Stockholm. The Nobel laureate receives a diploma, a medal, and a document confirming the prize amount, as of 2013, the prize was worth 10 million SEK
32.
Yasser Arafat
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Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa, popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 to 2004, ideologically an Arab nationalist, he was a founding member of the Fatah political party, which he led from 1959 until 2004. Arafat was born to Palestinian parents in Cairo, Egypt, where he spent most of his youth, while a student, he embraced Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist ideas. Opposed to the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, he fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, returning to Cairo, he served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students from 1952 to 1956. In the latter part of the 1950s he co-founded Fatah, an organisation seeking the disestablishment of Israel. Fatah operated within several Arab countries, from where it launched attacks on Israeli targets, in the latter part of the 1960s Arafats profile grew, in 1967 he joined the PLO and in 1969 was elected chair of the Palestinian National Council. Fatahs growing presence in Jordan resulted in clashes with King Husseins Jordanian government. There, Fatah assisted the Lebanese National Movement during the Lebanese Civil War and continued its attacks on Israel, from 1983 to 1993, Arafat based himself in Tunisia, and began to shift his approach from open conflict with the Israelis to negotiation. In 1988, he acknowledged Israels right to exist and sought a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In 1994 he returned to Palestine, settling in Gaza City and he engaged in a series of negotiations with the Israeli government to end the conflict between it and the PLO. These included the Madrid Conference of 1991, the 1993 Oslo Accords, in 1994 Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for the negotiations at Oslo. At the time, Fatahs support among the Palestinians declined with the growth of Hamas, in late 2004, after effectively being confined within his Ramallah compound for over two years by the Israeli army, Arafat fell into a coma and died. While the cause of Arafats death has remained the subject of speculation, investigations by Russian, the majority of the Palestinian people view him as a heroic freedom fighter and martyr who symbolized the national aspirations of his people. Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt and his father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza City, whose mother, Yassers paternal grandmother, was Egyptian. Arafats father battled in the Egyptian courts for 25 years to claim land in Egypt as part of his inheritance but was unsuccessful. He worked as a merchant in Cairos religiously mixed Sakakini District. Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi and his mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, was from a Jerusalem-based family. She died from an ailment in 1933, when Arafat was four years of age
33.
Yigal Amir
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Yigal Amir is an Israeli who assassinated Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin. The assassination took place on November 4,1995, at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv, Amir is serving a life sentence for murder plus six years for injuring Rabins bodyguard, Yoram Rubin, under aggravating circumstances. He was later sentenced to an additional 8 years for conspiracy to murder, Yigal Amir was born in Herzliya to an Israeli Yemenite Jewish family, one of eight children. His father, Shlomo, was a sofer, and held a post supervising the kosher slaughtering of chickens and he also taught Shabbat lessons at a local synagogue. His mother, Geula, was a teacher and ran a nursery school in family homes backyard. Amir attended a Haredi elementary school in Herzliya and a high school yeshiva in Tel Aviv and he did his military service in the Israel Defense Forces as a Hesder student, combining army service in a religious platoon of the Golani Brigade with religious study at Yeshivat Kerem BYavneh. Despite being in a unit, even his comrades considered him a religious fanatic. Following his military service, Amir was nominated by the religious-Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva to teach Judaism in Riga, Latvia, in 1993, Amir began studying at Bar-Ilan University as part of its kollel program, mixing religious and secular studies. Amir studied law and computer science, as well as Jewish law at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, Amir was heavily opposed to the Oslo Accords. He participated in protest rallies against the accords on campus, was active in organizing weekend bus outings to support Israeli settlers and he was especially active in Hebron, where he led marches through the streets. During his years as an activist, Amir became friendly with Avishai Raviv, while Raviv posed as a right-wing radical, he was working for Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service. Some rightists have accused the Shin Bet of having orchestrated the assassination to discredit them, in 1994, during his university studies, Amir met and began a relationship with Nava Holtzman, a law student from a religious Ashkenazi family. In January 1995, after five months, Holtzman ended the relationship after her parents objected due to Amirs Mizrahi background and she married one of his friends soon afterwards. Amir, who attended the wedding, went into a deep depression, there he shot Rabin twice with a Beretta 84F.380 ACP caliber semi-automatic pistol and injured Yoram Rubin, a security guard, with a third shot. Amir was immediately seized by Rabins bodyguards, Rabin was rushed to Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center where he died on an operating table 40 minutes later of blood loss and a punctured lung. According to the court, Yigal Amirs brother Hagai and his friend Dror Adani were his accomplices in the assassination plan, upon hearing that Yitzhak Rabin was dead, Amir told the police he was satisfied. At his trial, Amir said he did not care if the outcome was death or paralysis as long as Rabin was out of the way and he expressed no regret for his actions. The assassination was preceded by three unsuccessful attempts that same year, at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, at the Nof Yerushalayim Hotel and these plans fell through moments before implementation
34.
Life imprisonment
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Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted persons are to remain in prison for the rest of their lives or until paroled. Life imprisonment can, in cases, also be imposed for traffic offenses causing death. Canada and some U. S. states allow judges to impose life imprisonment for such offenses and this sentence does not exist in all countries. Portugal was the first country in the world to life imprisonment by the prison reforms of Sampaio e Melo in 1884. However, where life imprisonment is a sentence, there may also be formal mechanisms to request parole after a certain period of imprisonment. This means that a convict could be entitled to spend the rest of the sentence outside prison, early release is usually conditional depending on past and future conduct, possibly with certain restrictions or obligations. In contrast, when a term of imprisonment has ended. The United States leads in life sentences, at a rate of 50 people per 100,000 residents imprisoned for life, the length of time and the conditions surrounding parole vary greatly for each jurisdiction. In some places, convicts are entitled to apply for parole relatively early, in others, however, the time until being entitled to apply for parole does not necessarily tell anything about the actual date of parole being granted. The highest determined prison sentence that can be imposed in the ICC, after this period, the court will review the sentence to determine whether or not it should be reduced. Some technically finite sentences are handed out, especially in the U. S. that exceed the maximum life span and are therefore seen as de facto life sentences. He committed suicide in his cell one month later. Courts in South Africa have handed out at least two sentences that have exceeded a century and were thus symbolic life sentences, unlike other areas of criminal law, sentences handed to minors do not differ from those given to legal adults. A few countries worldwide allow for minors to be given sentences that have no provision for eventual release. Of these, only the United States currently has minors serving such sentences, as of 2009, Human Rights Watch had calculated that there were 2,589 youth offenders serving life without parole in the United States. Graham v. Florida was a significant case in juvenile justice, in Jacksonville, Florida, Terrence J. Graham tried to rob a restaurant along with three adolescent accomplices. During the robbery one of Grahams accomplices had a bar that he used to hit the restaurant manager twice in the head. Once arrested, Graham was charged with attempted armed robbery and armed burglary with assault/battery, the maximum sentence he faced from these charges was life without the possibility of parole, and the prosecutor wanted to charge him as an adult
35.
Sabra (person)
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Sabra is an informal slang term that refers to any Jew born on Israeli territory. The term first appeared in the 1930s, referring to Jews who had born in Ottoman or Mandatory Palestine. The term alludes to a tenacious, thorny desert plant, known in English as prickly pear, with a skin that conceals a sweet. The cactus is compared to Israeli Jews, who are tough on the outside. In 2010, over 4,000,000 Israeli Jews were sabras, in 2015, about 75% of Israels Jewish population was native-born. According to the The Dictionary of Slang by Israeli linguist Ruvik Rosenthal, the term was used by the Zionist movement, to celebrate the New Jew that emerged in the Holy Land. Unlike the bourgeois Old Jew born in the diaspora, the New Jew was a member or a farmer. The Old Jew often spoke broken Hebrew with a heavy accent, unlike the Old Jew who did not fight for his self-defense, the Sabra fought in the Jewish resistance movements, in the Palmach and after the establishment of Israel in the Israel Defense Forces. An important influence on the Sabra personality was considered the participation in youth movements. The sociological characteristics of the sabra were examined by Oz Almog in his book The Sabra - The Creation of the New Jew. According to Almog the term Tzabar originated from the insult Sabras directed towards migrants of the First Aliyah by migrants of the Second Aliyah, the prestige of the Sabra increased during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Israeli public, and especially the generation, tended to attribute the achievements of the war to the countrys sabras, while minimizing the part of the new immigrants. Even descriptions of the achievements of Operation Kadesh emphasized the image of the Sabra, the Sabra received an artistic and symbolic representation in the form of the illustrated character Srulik, created by cartoonist Dosh. Another character which became famous was that of the Israeli childrens TV program Kishkashta which was a speaking cactus, the English form of the word, Sabra, served Israeli manufacturers who wanted to brand their products as typical Israeli products, which was sold in the foreign markets. As a result, Sabra liqueur and Sabra sport were created, the worlds largest hummus manufacturer is a U. S. company called the Sabra Dipping Company. In popular culture, an episode of Saturday Night Live contained a skit entitled Sabra Price Is Right featuring Tom Hanks as the guest host. The skit was written by Robert Smigel and is a parody of Israel-born Jews making bargains with people who believe this show is The Price Is Right. In the skit, Hanks character Uri Shurinson and the other Sabra are swindling the contestants - conning them into purchasing shoddy products for which they guess the price rather than winning them
36.
Levi Eshkol
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Levi Eshkol served as the fourth Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister to die in office, Levi Eshkol was born in the shtetl of Oratov, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire. His mother came from a Hasidic background and his father came from a family of Mitnagdim, Eshkol received a traditional Jewish education in Vilna. In 1914, he left for Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire and he was a leading member of the Judea Workers Union in 1915–17. During World War I, he volunteered with the Jewish Legion and he played an important part in the Suez Canal Crisis 1956 by financing military outposts and was accused of funding the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt helping Israel survive through the time. Eshkol joined Kibbutz Degania Bet and married Rivka Maharshek and they had a daughter, Noa, born in 1924 and were divorced in 1927. Eshkol married his second wife Elisheva Kaplan in 1928, with whom he had three daughters, Dvora, Ofra, and Tama and his second wife died in 1959. In 1964 he married Miriam, a librarian at the Library of the Knesset 35 years his junior, from 1940 to 1948 Eshkol was a member of the Haganah high command. He engaged in arms acquisition for the Haganah prior to and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, after Israels victory, Eshkol was appointed Director-General of the Ministry of Defense, serving from 1950 to 1951. Eshkol was elected to the Knesset in 1951 as a member of Mapai party and he served as Minister of Agriculture until 1952, when he was appointed Finance Minister following the death of Eliezer Kaplan. He held that position for the following 12 years, during his term as Finance Minister, Eshkol established himself as a prominent figure in Mapais leadership, and was designated by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion as his successor. When Ben-Gurion resigned in June 1963, Eshkol was elected party chairman with a broad consensus, Ben-Gurion failed to challenge Eshkols leadership and split from Mapai with a few of his young protégés to form Rafi in June 1965. In the meantime, Mapai merged with Ahdut HaAvoda to form the Alignment with Eshkol as its head, Rafi was defeated by the Alignment in the elections held in November 1965, establishing Eshkol as the countrys indisputable leader. Eshkol formed Israels twelfth government in 1963 and his first term in office saw continuous economic growth, epitomized by the opening of the National Water Carrier system in 1964. His and Finance Minister Pinchas Sapirs subsequent soft landing of the economy by means of recessive policies precipitated a drastic slump in economic activity. Israels centralized planned economy lacked the mechanisms to self-regulate the slowdown, upon being elected into office, Levi Eshkol fulfilled Zeev Jabotinskys wish and brought his body and that of his wife to Israel where they were buried in Mount Herzl Cemetery. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister invited on a state visit to the United States in May 1964. Israels overwhelming victory allowed Eshkol to remain Prime Minister despite never receiving recognition for his role in achieving it, the March 10,1965, MOU, variously interpreted since, said Israel would not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East
37.
Shaare Zedek Medical Center
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The Shaare Zedek Medical Center is a major hospital in Jerusalem, Israel established in 1902. Shaare Zedek was the first large hospital to be located in the Western portion of Jerusalem and is today the citys fastest growing hospital and the only major medical facility in the citys center. After the Ottoman Turks gave permission in the 1890s, and with funding from European donors and its opening ceremony took place on January 27,1902. Dr. Moshe Wallach was the director from then until 1947, schwester Selma lived in the hospital and cared for abandoned children. The building in Bayit Vegan was inaugurated in 1980, in December 2012, Shaare Zedek assumed operational control over Bikur Cholim Hospital and merged many of its activities. Shaare Zedek Medical Center is located across two major campuses, the main campus is located on an 11. 5-acre site between the neighborhoods of Bayit VeGan in the south and Ramat Beit HaKerem in the north, east of Mount Herzl in southwest Jerusalem. The downtown campus, formerly known as Bikur Cholim Hospital, is located in the heart of Jerusalems downtown commercial zone, the hospital has 1000 beds and treats over 500,000 patients a year in its in-patient and out-patient facilities. As terrorist attacks in Jerusalem reached a peak in 2001–04, Shaare Zedek treated more victims than any hospital in Israel. The main hospital campus, completed in 1979, consists of ten interconnected buildings with the structure being a ten-story building which houses the in-patient departments. The bottom three floors are located underground so as to allow the hospital to continue to operate even during wartime under the threat of missile strike, Shaare Zedek is well known for its extensive decontamination facilities capable of responding to terrorist attacks. The hospital acts as the facility for the entire Jerusalem area to respond to chemical warfare attacks. Shaare Zedeks decontamination facilities served as an inspiration for New Yorks largest similar facility at the New York Downtown Hospital, Shaare Zedek is a private hospital that relies on fundraising for capital development projects. The director general of the hospital is Prof, the hospital maintains public relations offices in ten countries, among them England and the United States. An interesting fact is that a percentage of the hospitals physicians and other staff are immigrants. The unit is spread over two floors in the underground section. Nowadays this unit located in just one floor, other units in the hospital which offer consultation and treatment to pediatric patients include ophthalmology, ear nose and throat, psychiatry, orthopedics, and neuropsychology. The Next Generation Building will also see the expansion of the hospitals maternity facilities, two new additional mother and infant departments will be opened alongside an all new Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, which will be the largest and most advanced of its type in Israel. A third maternity department was opened in March 2009, the center includes over 100 maternity beds with significant expansion planned within The Next Generation Building
38.
Third Aliyah
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The Third Aliyah refers to the third wave—or aliyah—of Zionist immigration in modern times to Palestine from Europe. This wave lasted from 1919, just after the end of World War I, until 1923, approximately 40,000 Jews arrived in Palestine during the Third Aliyah. The Third Aliyah was triggered by the October Revolution in Russia, anti-semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe, the British occupation of Palestine, and the Balfour Declaration. The pioneers of the Third Aliyah originated mainly from Eastern European countries, 45% from Russia, 31% from Poland, 5% from Romania, and three percent from Lithuania. Most of the newcomers were young halutzim, who built roads and towns and commenced the draining of marshes in the Jezreel Valley, afterwards they became a smaller proportion of the immigrants. The importance of those pioneers was just as great as that of the pioneers of the Second Aliyah, the Histadrut Labor Federation was established at this time. Several factors motivated the immigrants, The Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War led to a wave of pogroms. An estimated 100,000 Jews were killed and 500,000 left homeless, upheaval in Europe after World War I with nationalist awakenings amongst the eastern European nations following the birth of nine new countries. In the new countries which were formed after World War I there was the problem of the minorities, battles erupted between small ethnic groups, with riots in divided countries like Poland. The official Zionist institutions were opposed to the immigration wave. They feared that the country would not be able to absorb such a number of people. They even requested that people who had enough economic resources come to the country. Many of the new immigrants of the Third Aliyah were affiliated with HeHalutz, yitzhak Lamdan and Uri Zvi Grinberg immigrated to Palestine during the Third Aliyah
39.
Shtetl
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Shtetlekh were small towns with large Jewish populations, which existed in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Shtetlekh were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, in Yiddish, a larger city, like Lwów or Czernowice, was called a shtot, a village was called a dorf. Non-Jews referred to the shtetl as Mestechko, the concept of shtetl culture describes the traditional way of life of Eastern European Jews. Shtetls are portrayed as pious communities following Orthodox Judaism, socially stable, the decline of the shtetl started from about the 1840s. Contributing factors included poverty as a result of changes in climate, repeated fires that destroyed wooden homes. Also the anti-Semitism of the Russian Imperial administrators and the Polish landlords, from the 1880s until 1915 up to 2 million Jews left Eastern Europe. At the time about three quarters of its Jewish population lived in a shtetl, the Holocaust resulted in the total extermination of shtetls. It was not uncommon for the entire Jewish population of a shtetl to be rounded up, some shtetl inhabitants did emigrate before and after the Holocaust, mostly to Israel and the United States, where some of the traditions were carried on. But, the shtetl as a phenomenon of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe was eradicated by the Nazis, the attitudes and thought habits characteristic of the learning tradition are as evident in the street and market place as the yeshiva. The popular picture of the Jew in Eastern Europe, held by Jew, the picture includes the tendency to examine, analyze and re-analyze, to seek meanings behind meanings and for implications and secondary consequences. It includes also a dependence on deductive logic as a basis for practical conclusions and actions, in life, as in the Torah, it is assumed that everything has deeper and secondary meanings, which must be probed. All subjects have implications and ramifications, moreover, the person who makes a statement must have a reason, and this too must be probed. Often a comment will evoke an answer to the reason behind it or to the meaning believed to lie beneath it. The process that such a response—often with lightning speed—is a modest reproduction of the pilpul process. The May Laws introduced by Tsar Alexander III of Russia in 1882 banned Jews from rural areas, in the 20th century revolutions, civil wars, industrialization and the Holocaust destroyed traditional shtetl existence. Both pictures are true, and both are characteristic of the yeshiva as well as the market places, when the scholar converses with his intellectual peers, incomplete sentences, a hint, a gesture, may replace a whole paragraph. The listener is expected to understand the meaning on the basis of a word or even a sound. Such a conversation, prolonged and animated, may be as incomprehensible to the uninitiated as if the excited discussants were talking in tongues, the same verbal economy may be found in domestic or business circles
40.
Ivankiv
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Ivankiv is an urban-type settlement in Kiev Oblast of Ukraine. It is situated on the bank of the Teteriv River. It is the center of Ivankiv Raion, and its population was 10. In 2001, the population had been 10,563, in the middle of the 15th century, the territory around modern Ivankiv was called Zemlya Trudinivska. It was a property of Kiev boyar Olehnja Juhnovich, in 1524 King of Poland Sigismund I the Old gave this land to Kiev Burgess Tishko Proskura. In 1589 Ivan Proskura became the owner of this land, the town was founded in 1589 and named after Ivan Proskura. At first it was called Ivaniv and Ivanivka but later changed to Ivankiv, at the beginning of the 17th century, Crimean Tatars made four military campaigns on Polesia, and as a result, many people in Ivankiv were killed, taken prisoner and sold into slavery. On 30 May 1645, the forces of Grand Crown Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski attacked Ivankiv, located in the middle of the southern area of its raion, Ivankiv lies between Kiev and Pripyat. It is located 42 miles south from the Chernobyl power plant, with the entrance to the zone being located 20 miles north. Ivankiv town was not as affected by the Chernobyl disaster compared to other towns, mykola Dzydzora, diplomatic Valentyn Feshenko, film director Chernobyl Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Ivankivs official website Ivankiv at imsu-kyiv. com
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Pale of Settlement
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The archaic English term pale is derived from the Latin word palus, a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary. The Pale of Settlement included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and Poland and it extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia and with Austria-Hungary. Furthermore, it comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia and largely corresponded to historical borders of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire in the period of the existence of the Pale was predominantly Orthodox Christian. The area included in the Pale, with its large Jewish and Catholic populations, was acquired through a series of conquests and diplomatic maneuvers. While the religious nature of the creating the Pale are clear, historians argue that the motivations for its creation. From 1791 to 1835, and until 1917, there were differing reconfigurations of the boundaries of the Pale, such that certain areas were open or shut to Jewish residency. At times, Jews were forbidden to live in communities, or certain cities. During World War I, the Pale lost its hold on the Jewish population when large numbers of Jews fled into the Russian interior to escape the invading German army. On March 20,1917, the Pale was abolished by the Provisional Government decree, a large portion of the Pale, together with its Jewish population, became part of Poland. Subsequently, most of population would perish in The Holocaust one generation later. Jewish life in the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement was hard, following the Jewish religious tradition of tzedakah, a sophisticated system of volunteer Jewish social welfare organizations developed to meet the needs of the population. These, along with the repressive May Laws, often devastated whole communities, one outgrowth of the concentration of Jews in a circumscribed area was the development of the modern yeshiva system. Until the beginning of the 19th century, each town supported its own advanced students who learned in the synagogue with the rabbinical head of the community. Each student would eat his meals in a different home each day, the quotas in the capitals, however, were increased slightly in 1908 and 1915. Amidst the difficult conditions in which the Jewish population lived and worked, because of the harsh conditions of day-to-day life in the Pale, some two million Jews emigrated from there between 1881 and 1914, mainly to the United States. However, this exodus did not affect the stability of the Jewish population of the Pale, the Pale of Settlement included the following areas
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Israel
Rav Aluf
listen); 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995.
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