About Jewishness

20th century

1903 St. Petersburg's Znamya newspaper publishes a literary hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the (Learned) Elders of Zion is one of many titles given to a text purporting to describe a plan to achieve by the Jewish people. Following its first public publication in 1903 in the Russian Empire, a series of articles printed in The Times in 1921 revealed that much of the material was directly plagiarized from earlier works of political satire unrelated to Jews. The forgery is also an early example of "Conspiracy Theory" literature. Written mainly in the first person plural, the text embodies generalizations, truisms and platitudes on how to take over the world: take control of the media and the financial institutions, change the traditional social order, etc. It does not contain specifics.

1903 First Kishinev Pogrom
The riot started after an incident on April 6 when a Christian Russian boy, Mikhail Rybachenko, was found murdered in the town of Dubossary, about 25 miles north of Kishinev. Although it was clear that the boy had been murdered by a relative (who was later found), the Russian-language anti-Semitic newspaper Bessarabetz insinuated that he was murdered by the Jews. Another newspaper, Ceem, used the ages-old blood-libel against the Jews (alleging that the boy had been killed to use his blood in preparation of matzo).The Kishinev pogrom spanned three days of rioting against the Jews. Forty-seven (some put the figure at 49) Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded, 500 slightly wounded and over 700 houses looted and destroyed. The Times published a forged dispatch by Plehve, the Minister of Interior, to the governor of Bessarabia, which supposedly gave orders not to stop the rioters, but, in any case, no attempt was made by the police or military to intervene to stop the riots until the third day. This non-intervention is an argument in support of the opinion that the pogrom was sponsored or, at least, tolerated by the state.

1904-1914 Second Aliyah
40,000 Jews immigrated mainly from Russia to Palestine following pogroms and outbreaks of anti-semitism in that country. This group, greatly influenced by socialist ideals, established the first kibbutz, Degania, in 1909 and formed self-defense organizations, such as Hashomer, to counter increasing Arab hostility and to help Jews to protect their communities from Arab bandits. The suburb of Jaffa, Ahuzat Bayit, established at this time, grew into the city of . During this period, some of the underpinnings of an independent nation-state arose: The national language Hebrew was revived; newspapers and literature written in Hebrew published; political parties and workers organizations were established. The First World War effectively ended the period of the Second Aliyah.

1905 Russian Revolution accompanied by pogroms
A pogrom on the 20th of July 1905, in Yekaterinoslav (present-day Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine), was stopped by the Jewish self-defence group (one man in the group killed). On July 31 1905 there was the first pogrom outside the Pale of Settlement, in the town of Makariev (near Nizhni Novgorod), where a patriotic procession led by the mayor turned violent.At a pogrom in Kerch in Crimea on 31 July 1905, the mayor ordered the police to fire at the self-defence group, and two fighters were killed (one of them, P.Kirilenko, was a Ukrainian who joined the Jewish defence group). The pogrom was conducted by the port workers, actively aided by a group of Gypsies apparently brought in for the purpose. After the publication of the Tsar's Manifesto of October 17 1905, pogroms erupted in 660 towns mainly in the present-day Ukraine, in the Southern and Southeastern areas of the Pale of Settlement. In contrast, there were no pogroms either in present-day Poland or Lithuania. There were also very few incidents in Belarus or Russia proper. There were 24 pogroms outside of the Pale of Settlement, but those were directed at the revolutionaries rather than Jews.The greatest number of pogroms were registered in the Chernigov gubernia in northern Ukraine. The pogroms there in October 1905 took 800 Jewish lives, the material damages estimated at 70,000,000 rubles. 400 were killed in Odessa, over 150 in Rostov-on-Don, 67 in Yekaterinoslav, 54 in Minsk, 30 in Simferopol - over 40, in Orsha — over 30. In 1906 the pogroms continued: January — in Gomel, June — in Belostok (ca. 80 dead), in August — in Siedlce (ca. 30 dead). The police and the military personnel were among the perpetrators.

1907 Call for new Zionist policy
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi writes, "An article by Yitzhak Epstein, published in Hashiloah in 1907 called for a new Zionist policy towards the Arabs after 30 years of settlement activity. Like Ahad-Ha'am in 1891, Epstein claims that no good land is vacant, so Jewish settlement meant Arab dispossession. Epstein 's solution to the problem, so that a new 'Jewish Question' may be avoided, is the creation of a bi-national, non-exclusive program of settlement and development. Purchasing land should not involve the dispossession of poor sharecroppers. It should mean creating a joint farming community, where the Arabs will enjoy modern technology. Schools, hospitals and libraries should be non-exclusivist and education bilingual. The vision of the non-exclusivist, peaceful cooperation to replace the practice of dispossession found few takers. Epstein was maligned and scorned for his faintheartedness."

1916 Louis Brandeis, on the first of June, is confirmed as the United States' first Jewish Supreme Court justice. Brandeis was nominated by American President Woodrow Wilson.

1917 The British defeat the Turks and gain control of Palestine
The British issue the Balfour Declaration 1917 which gives official British support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". Many Jews interpret this to mean that all of Palestine was to become a Jewish state.

1917 February The Pale of Settlement is abolished, and Jews get equal rights
The Russian civil war leads to over 2000 pogroms with tens of thousands murdered and hundreds of thousand made homeless.

1919-1923 Third Aliyah
Between 1919 and 1923, 40,000 Jews, mainly from the Russian Empire arrived in the wake of the assassination of World War I, the British conquest of Palestine; the establishment of the mandate, and the Balfour Declaration. Many of these were pioneers, known as , trained in agriculture and capable of establishing self sustaining economies. In spite of immigration quotas established by the British administration, the population of Jews reached 90,000 by the end of this period. The Jezreel Valley and the Hefer Plain marshes were drained and converted to agricultural use.

1920 At the San Remo conference Britain receives the League of Nations' British Mandate of Palestine
The preamble of the mandate declared: "Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

1921 British military administration of the Palestinian Mandate is replaced by civilian rule
Following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine was governed by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. In July 1920, the military administration was replaced by a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner. The first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920, and complied with a demand from the head of the military administration, General Sir Louis Bols, that he sign a receipt for ‘one Palestine, complete’: Samuel famously added the common commercial escape clause, ‘E&OE’ (errors and omissions excepted).

1921 Britain proclaims that all of Palestine east of the Jordan River is forever closed to Jewish settlement, but not to Arab settlement. The Mandate for Palestine, while specifying actions in support of Jewish immigration and political status, stated that in the territory to the east of the Jordan River, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' those articles of the Mandate concerning a Jewish National Home.

1921 Polish-Soviet peace treaty in Riga
Citizens of both sides are given rights to choose the country. Hundred thousands of Jews, especially small businesses forbidden in the Soviets, move to Poland.

1922, First British census of Palestine shows population of 757,182, with 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish and 9.6% Christian.

1923 Britain gives the Golan Heights to the French Mandate of Syria. Arab immigration is allowed; Jewish immigration is not.
The boundary between the British and French mandates was defined in broad terms by the Franco-British Boundary Agreement of December 1920. That agreement placed the bulk of the Golan Heights in the French sphere. The 1923 boundary between Mandate Palestine and the French Mandate of Syria was drawn with water in mind. Accordingly, it was demarcated so that all of the Sea of Galilee, including a 10-meter wide strip of beach along its northeastern shore, would stay inside Palestine. From the Sea of Galilee north to Lake Hula the boundary was drawn between 50 and 400 meters east of the upper Jordan River, keeping that stream entirely within the British Mandate.

1924-1925 Fourth Aliyah
Between 1924 and 1929, 82,000 Jews arrived, many as a result of anti-semitism in Poland and Hungary. The immigration quotas of the United States kept Jews out. This group contained many middle class families that moved to the growing towns, establishing small businesses and light industry. Of these approximately 23,000 left the country.

1930 World Jewry: 15,000,000. Main countries USA(4,000,000), Poland (3,500,000 11% of total), Soviet Union (2,700,000 2% of total), Romania (1,000,000 6% of total). Palestine 175,000 or 17% of total 1,036,000.

19 February 1934 - The first German Youth Aliyah group walking to Kibbutz Ein Haron

1930-1939 Fifth Aliyah
Between 1929 and 1939, with the rise of Nazism in Germany, a new wave of 250,000 immigrants arrived, the majority of these, 174,000, arrived between 1933–1936, after which increasing restrictions on immigration by the British made immigration clandestine and illegal, called Aliyah Bet. The Fifth Aliyah was again driven mostly from Eastern Europe as well as professionals, doctors, lawyers and professors, from Germany.Thousand of Jews were put in camps by the British rulers of Palestine.

1933 Hitler takes over Germany; his anti-Semitic sentiments are well-known, prompting numerous Jews to emigrate.

1933-1948 Aliyah Bet
The British government limited Jewish immigration to Palestine with quotas, and following the rise of Nazism to power in Europe, illegal immigration to Palestine commenced. The illegal immigration was known as Aliyah Bet ("secondary immigration"), or Ha'apalah, and was organized by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet, as well as by the Irgun. Immigration was done mainly by sea, and to a lesser extent overland through Iraq and Syria. Beginning in 1939 Jewish immigration was further restricted, limiting it to 75,000 individuals for a period of five years after which immigration was to end completely. The British made it illegal to sell land to Jews in 95% of the Mandate. During World War II and the years that followed until independence, Aliyah Bet became the main form of Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Following the war, Berihah ("flight"), an organization of former partisans and ghetto fighters was primarily responsible for smuggling Jews from Poland and Eastern Europe to the Italian ports from which they traveled to Palestine. Despite British efforts to curb the illegal immigration, during the 14 years of its operation, 110,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine. In 1945 reports of the Holocaust with its 6 million Jewish dead, caused many Jews in Palestine to turn openly against the British Mandate, and illegal immigration escalated rapidly as many Holocaust survivors joined the Aliyah.

1935 Nuremberg Laws
In 1935, Hitler introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which prohibited Jews from marrying Aryans, annulled existing marriages between Jews and Aryans (the Law for the protection of German blood and German honour,) prohibited Jews from serving as civil servants, stripped German Jews of their citizenship and deprived them of all civil rights. In his speech introducing the laws, Hitler said that if the "Jewish problem" cannot be solved by these laws, it "must then be handed over by law to the National-Socialist Party for a final solution (Endlösung)." The expression "Endlösung" became the standard Nazi euphemism for the extermination of the Jews.
In January 1939, Hitler said in a public speech: "If international-finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging the nations into yet another world war, the consequences will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (vernichtung) of the Jewish race in Europe."

1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine
The 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine was an uprising in protest against mass Jewish , which lasted from 1936 to 1939, by Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine. Despite the assistance of 20,000 additional British troops and several thousand Haganah men, the uprising continued for over two years. By the time it concluded in March 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 Britons had been killed and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded.
The revolt did not achieve its goals, although it is "credited with signifying the birth of the Arab Palestinian identity." It is generally credited with forcing the issuance of the White Paper of 1939 which renounced Britain's intent of creating a Jewish National Home in Palestine, as proclaimed in the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

Noam Chomsky writes, "In 1936-9, the Palestinian Arabs attempted a Nationalist revolt. David Ben-Gurion, eminently a realist, recognized its nature. In internal discussion, he noted that 'in our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us,' but he urged, 'let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.' The truth was that 'politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside'. The revolt was crushed by the British, with considerable brutality."

1938 Mahatma Gandhi on the Palestine conflict
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs...As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds."

1938 Évian Conference
The Évian Conference was convened at the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss the issue of increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. For eight days, from July 6 to July 13, representatives from thirty-one countries met at Évian-les-Bains, France. Twenty-four voluntary organizations also attended, as observers, many of whom presented plans orally and in writing.
By 1938, some 150,000 of about 600,000 German Jews had fled Germany, mostly to Palestine, but British immigration quotas prevented many from migrating. In March 1938, Hitler annexed Austria and made the 200,000 Jews of Austria stateless refugees. In September, Britain and France granted Hitler the right to occupy the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and in March 1939, Hitler occupied the remainder of the country, making a further 200,000 Jews stateless.
In 1939, the British White Paper capped Jewish immigration to Palestine at 75,000 over the next five years, after which the country was to become an independent state with an Arab majority. Jewish refugees could no longer find countries willing to admit them. Before the Conference, the United States and Great Britain made an agreement: the British promised not to bring up the fact that the U.S. was not filling its immigration quotas, and any mention of Palestine as a possible destination for Jewish refugees was excluded from the agenda.
Chaim Weizmann was quoted in The Manchester Guardian as saying: "The world seemed to be divided into two parts – those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."
However, John Quigley writes that, "In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on resettlement of the victims of Nazicism. The World Zionist Organization refused to participate; fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states would reduce the number available for Palestine," and Boas Evron recalls, "it was summed up in the meeting [of Jewish Agency's Executive on June 26, 1938] that the Zionist thing to do is ' belittle the [Evian] conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing... We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection efforts'...Ben-Gurion's statement at the same meeting: 'No rationalization can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.' "

1939 The British government issues the 'White Paper'
The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine, as recommended in the Peel Commission Report of 1937, was abandoned in favour of creating an independent Palestine governed by Palestinian Arabs and in proportion to their numbers in the population by 1949. A limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the five-year period 1940-1944, consisting of a regular yearly of 10,000, and a supplementary quota of 25,000, spread out over the same period, to cover refugee emergencies. After this cut-off date, further immigration would depend on the permission of the Arab majority. Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs.The White Paper was published on 9 November 1938, and approved by Parliament in May 1939.

Jews are rounded up by the Nazis in Warsaw ghetto

1938-1945 The Holocaust (Ha Shoah), resulting in the methodical extermination of nearly 6 million Jews across Europe.
The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Romani were confined in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were systematically killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Nazi Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal state".

1945-1948 Post-Holocaust refugee crisis.
British attempts to detain Jews attempting to enter Palestine illegally. The Holocaust and its aftermath left millions of refugees, including many Jews who had lost most or all of their family members and possessions, and often faced persistent anti-Semitism in their home countries. The original plan of the Allies was to repatriate these "Displaced Persons" to their country of origin, but many refused to return, or were unable to as their homes or communities had been destroyed. As a result, more than 250,000 languished in for years after the war ended.With most displaced persons unable or unwilling to return to their former homes in Europe and with restrictions to immigration to many western countries remaining in place, Palestine became the primary destination for many Jewish refugees. However, as local Arabs opposed the immigration, the United Kingdom refused to allow Jewish refugees into the Mandate, and many countries in the Soviet Bloc made emigration difficult. Former Jewish partisans in Europe, along with the Haganah in Palestine, organized a massive effort to smuggle Jews into Palestine, called Berihah, which eventually transported 250,000 Jews (both DPs and those who hid during the war) to the Mandate. By 1952, the Displaced Persons camps were closed, with over 80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, about 136,000 in Israel, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa.

1946-1948 The violent struggle for the creation of a Jewish state in the British mandate of Palestine is intensified by Jewish defense groups: Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi
November 29, 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for PalestineThe United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) Future Government of Palestine was a resolution adopted by the General Assembly. It was approved by a vote of 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions on November 29, 1947. The resolution recommended the division of the British Mandate of Palestine into two provisional states, one Jewish and one Arab, with a separate status for the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area (which would be under special international protection, belonging to neither of the two states), and an accompanying framework for overall economic union. The resolution sought to give partial satisfaction to two competing nationalisms, Zionism (Jewish nationalism) and local Arab nationalism, both of which had been accepted as legitimate a quarter century earlier by the UN precursor agency, the League of Nations. The resolution was passed to help resolve both the recent humanitarian disaster which had befallen the European Jews, as well as the long-running conflict between Zionist aspirations to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the competing “civil and religious rights of [the] existing non-Jewish” Arab majority there (quoting the Balfour Declaration). A transitional period under UN auspices was to begin with the adoption of the resolution, and was scheduled to last until the two states were established.The proposed plan was accepted by the leaders of the Jewish community (as organized into the Jewish Agency), but was rejected by leaders of the Arab community (the Palestine Arab Higher Committee etc.), who were supported in their rejection by the states of the Arab League. Therefore the partition plan was never implemented, and the gradual withdrawal of British forces and termination of the Mandate by August 1, 1948 (followed by a full independence of the new states by 1 October 1948) contemplated by the resolution did not happen. Instead, there was a civil war in Palestine, and the British ultimately withdrew — without handing over territory or authority to any successor — in May 1948, leading to Israel's Declaration of Independence and the invasion of of Palestine by five Arab armies (the first Arab-Israeli war).
Sami Hadawi writes, "Arab rejection was based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be only half Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling body-a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least. The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the rights of all peoples to self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own Charter."

May 14, 1948 State of Israel declares itself as an independent nation
Eleven minutes after the Declaration of Independence was signed, President Truman de facto recognized the State of Israel, followed by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's Iran (which had voted against the UN partition plan), Guatemala, Iceland, Nicaragua, Romania and Uruguay. The Soviet Union was the first nation to fully recognize Israel de jure on 17 May 1948, followed by Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Ireland and South Africa. The United States extended official recognition after the first Israeli election, as President Truman promised, on 31 January 1949.Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union's UN ambassador, calls for the UN to accept Israel as a member state. The UN approves.

May 15, 1948 Arab-Israeli War (War of Independence)
In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948. Palestinains in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a general strike against the partition. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem's streets almost immediately.Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out war. During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the Arab state. Arabs began to flee in terror. Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while other Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. Eye-witnesses recalled "massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention."

The second phase of the war: Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon and Egypt invade Israel. The attack fails. The declaration was followed by an invasion of the new state by troops from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known in Israel as the War of Independence, Milhamat HaAtzma'ut. Although a truce began on 11 June, fighting resumed on 8 July and stopped again on 18 July, before restarting in mid-October and finally ending on 24 July 1949 with the signing of the armistice agreement with Syria. By then Israel had retained its independence and increased its land area by almost 50% compared to the UN partition plan of 1947. About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled in the 1948 conflict.

1948-1949 Almost 250,000 Holocaust survivors make their way to Israel.
After Aliyah Bet, the process of numbering or naming individual aliyot ceased, but immigration did not. A major wave of immigration of over half a million Jews went to Israel between 1948 and 1950, many fleeing renewed persecution in Eastern Europe, and increasingly hostile Arab countries.
This period of immigration is often termed kibbutz galuyot (literally, ingathering of exiles), due to the large number of Jewish communities that made aliyah."Operation Magic Carpet" brings thousands of Yemenite Jews to Israel.In the course of Operation Magic Carpet (1949–1950), nearly the entire community of Yemenite Jews (about 49,000) immigrated to Israel. Most of them had never seen an airplane before, but they believed in the Biblical prophecy that according to the Book of Isaiah (40:31), God promised to return the children of Israel to Zion on "wings".In three and a half years, the Jewish population of Israel had doubled, inflated by nearly 700,000 immigrants, which was one of the causes of the austerity. Huge numbers of Jewish refugees were temporarily settled in "cities of tents" called Ma'abarot. As the residents were gradually absorbed into Israeli society, the Ma'abarot were phased out.Many Israeli immigrants were Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews who left Arab countries to move to Israel. In many of these cases they had been persecuted and sometimes forced to leave their homes. 114,000 Jews came from Iraq in 1951 in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.

1949 The Winter of the Palestinian refugees
The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven hundred fifty thousand Palestinians, was cold and hard. Families huddled in caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift tents, many of the starving were only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupies Palestine- the new state of Israel. At the end of 1949 the United Nations finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNARWA) to take over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed to keep people alive, but only barely.

David Ben-Gurion writes, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?"

Martin Buber's criticism of Zionism
"The first factor is that the time when we entered into an alliance (an alliance, I admit, that was not well defined) with a European state and we provided that state with a claim to rule over Palestine, we made no attempt to reach an agreement with the Arabs of this land regarding the basis and continuation of Jewish settlement. This negative approach caused those Arabs who thought about and were concerned about the future of their people to see us increasingly not as a group which desired to live in cooperation with their people but as something in the nature of uninvited guests and agents of foreign interests (at the time I explicitly pointed out this fact).
"The second fact is that we took hold of the key economic positions in the country without compensating the Arab population, that is to say without allowing their capital and their labor a share in our economic activity. Paying the large landowners for purchases made or paying compensation to tenants on the land is not the same as compensating a people. As a result, many of the more thoughtful Arabs viewed the advance of Jewish settlements a kind of plot designed to dispossess future generations of their people of the land necessary for their existence and development. Only by means of a comprehensive and vigorous economic policy aimed at organizing and developing common interests would it have been possible to contend with this view and its inevitable consequences. This we did not do.
"The third fact is that when a possibility arose that the Mandate would soon be terminated, not only did we not propose to the Arab administration be set up in its place, we went ahead and demanded rule over the whole country (the Baltimore program) as a fitting political sequel to the gains we had already made. By this step, we with our own hands provided our enemies in the Arab camp with aid and comfort of the most valuable sort- the support of public opinion- without which the military attack launched against us would not have been possible. For it now appears to the Arab populace that in carrying on the activities we have been engaged in for years, in acquiring land and in working and developing the land, we were systematically laying the ground work for gaining control of the whole country."

1956, 29 October, The Suez War (Sinai War)
Egypt blockades the Gulf of Aqaba, and closes the Suez canal to Israeli shipping. Egypt's President Nasser calls for the destruction of Israel. Israel, England, and France go to war and force Egypt to end the blockade of Aqaba, and open the canal to all nations.

1967 Prelude to the Six Day War

May 16, 1967 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser demands that the UN dismantle the UN Emergency Force I (UNEF I) between Israel and Egypt. The UN complies and the last UN peacekeeper is out of Sinai and Gaza by May 19.

May 16, 1967 President Nasser closes the strategic Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and states that Egypt is in a state of war with Israel. Egyptian troops group in the Sinai.

In his speech to Arab trade unionists on May 26, 1967 Nasser announced: "If Israel embarks on an aggression against Syria or Egypt, the battle against Israel will be a general one and not confined to one spot on the Syrian or Egyptian borders. The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel."

At the end of May 1967, Jordanian forces were given to the command of an Egyptian general, Abdul Munim Riad. On the same day, Nasser proclaimed: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of , Algeria, Kuwait, and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived."

At this time the situation was so explosive that thousands of young Jews from all over the world rushed to the nearest Jewish Agency offices to enlist and help Israel fight its enemies.

June 1967: Israeli troops entering Gaza

On the eve of the war, Egypt massed approximately 100,000 of its 160,000 troops in the Sinai, including all of its seven divisions (four infantry, two armored and one mechanized), as well as four independent infantry and four independent armored brigades. These forces had 950 tanks, 1,100 APCs and more than 1,000 artillery pieces. In the meantime, Nasser continued to take actions intended to increase the level of mobilization of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, in order to bring pressure on Israel.
Syria's army had a total strength of 75,000. Jordan's army had 55,000 troops, including 300 tanks, 250 of which were US M48 Patton, sizable amounts of M113 APCs, a new battalion of mechanized infantry, and a paratrooper battalion trained in the new US-built school. They also had 12 battalions of artillery and six batteries of 81 mm and 120 mm mortars. 100 Iraqi tanks and an infantry division were readied near the Jordanian border. Two squadrons of fighter-aircraft, Hawker Hunters and MiG 21 respectively, were rebased adjacent to the Jordanian border.

Noam Chomsky writes, ""The former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weizmann, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was 'no threat of destruction' but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could 'exist according to the scale, spirit and equality she now embodies.'...Menachem Begin had the following remarks to make: 'In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.' "

On the evening of June 1, 1967 Israeli minister of defense Moshe Dayan called Chief of Staff and the GOC, Southern Command Brigadier General Yeshayahu Gavish to present plans against Egypt. Rabin had formulated a plan in which Southern Command would fight its way to the Gaza Strip and then hold the territory and its people hostage until Egypt agreed to reopen the Straits of Tiran; while Gavish had a more comprehensive plan that called for the destruction of Egyptian forces in the Sinai. Rabin favored Gavish's plan, which was then endorsed by Dayan with the caution that a simultaneous offensive against Syria should be avoided.

On June 2, 1967 Jordan called up all reserve officers, and the West Bank commander met with community leaders in Ramallah to request assistance and cooperation for his troops during the war, assuring them that "in 3 days we'll be in Tel-Aviv".

On June 3, 1967, days before the war, Egypt flew to Amman two battalions of commandos tasked with infiltrating Israel's borders and engaging in attacks and bombings so as to draw IDF into a Jordanian front and ease the pressure on the Egyptians. Soviet-made artillery and Egyptian military supplies and crews were also flown to Jordan.

June 5-10, 1967 Six-Day War

Israel's first and most critical move was a surprise pre-emptive attack on the Egyptian Air Force. Egypt had by far the largest and the most modern of all the Arab air forces, consisting of about 450 combat aircraft, all of them Soviet-built and with a heavy quota of top-of-the line MiG-21 capable of attaining Mach 2 speed.
On June 5, 1967, at 7:45 Israeli time, as civil defense sirens sounded all over Israel, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched Operation Focus (Moked). All but 12 of its nearly 200 operational jets left the skies of Israel in a mass attack against Egypt's airfields. The attack was more successful than expected, catching the Egyptians by surprise and destroying virtually all of the Egyptian Air Force on the ground, with few Israeli casualties. The attack guaranteed Israeli air superiority for the rest of the war.
The number of Arab aircraft claimed destroyed by Israel were at first regarded as "greatly exaggerated" by the Western press. However, the fact that the Egyptian, Jordanian, and other Arab air forces made practically no appearance for the remaining days of the conflict proved that the numbers were most likely authentic. Throughout the war, Israeli aircraft continued strafing Arab airfield runways to prevent their return to usability. Meanwhile, Egyptian state-run radio had reported an Egyptian victory, falsely claiming that 70 Israeli planes had been forced down the first day of fighting.

The Egyptian forces consisted of seven divisions: four armored, two infantry, and one mechanized infantry. Overall, Egypt had around 100,000 troops and 900-950 tanks in the Sinai, backed by 1,100 APCs and 1,000 artillery pieces.
Major-General Ariel Sharon initiated an attack, precisely planned, coordinated and carried out. He sent two of his brigades to the north of Um-Katef, the first one to break through the defenses at Abu-Ageila to the south, and the second to block the road to El-Arish and to encircle Abu-Ageila from the east. At the same time, a paratrooper force was heliborne to the rear of the defensive positions and attacked the Egyptian artillery positions. Although the paratrooper force's plan quickly fell apart, the confusion sown among the artillery crews helped to slow but not quite stop artillery fire. Combined forces of armor, paratroopers, infantry, artillery and combat engineers then attacked the Egyptian position from the front, flanks and rear, cutting the enemy off. The breakthrough battles, which were in sandy areas and minefields, continued for three and a half days until Abu-Ageila fell.

The IDF's strategic plan was to remain on the defensive along the Jordanian front, to enable focus in the expected campaign against Egypt. However, on the morning of June 5, 1967, Jordan began shelling targets in west Jerusalem, Netanya, and the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The Royal Jordanian Air Force attacked Israeli airfields. Despite this, both air and artillery attacks caused little damage, and Israel sent a message promising not to initiate any action against Jordan if it stayed out of the war. Hussein replied that it was too late, "the die was cast". On the evening of June 5, 1967 the Israeli cabinet convened to decide what to do; Yigal Allon and Menahem Begin argued that this was an opportunity to take the Old City of Jerusalem, but Eshkol decided to defer any decision until Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin could be consulted.

False Egyptian reports of a crushing victory against the Israeli army and forecasts that Egyptian artillery would soon be in Tel-Aviv influenced Syria's willingness to enter the war. Syrian leadership, however, adopted a more cautious approach, and instead began shelling and conducting air raids on northern Israel. When the Israeli Air Force had completed its mission in Egypt, and turned around to destroy the surprised Syrian Air Force, Syria understood that the news it had heard from Egypt of the near-total destruction of the Israeli military could not have been true.
During the evening of June 5, 1967 Israeli air strikes destroyed two-thirds of the Syrian Air Force, and forced the remaining third to retreat to distant bases, without playing any further role in the ensuing warfare.

On June 6,1967 the second day of the war, King Hussein and Nasser declared that American and British aircraft took part in the Israeli attacks. These were false allegations.

On June 6, 1967 Israeli units were scrambled to attack Jordanian forces in the West Bank. In the afternoon of that same day, Israeli Air Force (IAF) strikes destroyed the Royal Jordanian Air Force. By the evening of that day, the Jerusalem infantry brigade moved south of Jerusalem, while the mechanized Harel and Gur's paratroopers encircled it from the north. The reserve paratroop brigade completed the Jerusalem encirclement in the bloody . Fearing damage to holy places and having to fight in built-up areas, Dayan ordered his troops not to go into the city itself.

On June 7, 1967 heavy fighting ensued. The infantry brigade attacked the fortress at Latrun, capturing it at daybreak, and advanced through Beit Horon towards Ramallah. The Harel brigade continued its push to the mountainous area of northwest Jerusalem, linking the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University with the city of Jerusalem. By the evening, the brigade arrived in Ramallah. The IAF detected and destroyed the 60th Jordanian Brigade en route from Jericho to reinforce Jerusalem.
Dayan had ordered his troops not to enter Jerusalem; however, upon hearing that the UN was about to declare a ceasefire, he changed his mind, and without cabinet clearance, decided to take the city. Gur's paratroopers entered the Old City of Jerusalem via the Lion's Gate, and captured the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. The intense battle for the Old City was fought mostly by paratroopers, who had to engage in heavy street fighting. The Israeli high command had ordered the IDF not to use heavy armor in the Old City - since this was an area holy to Judaism, the Israeli government wanted to leave it intact. The Jerusalem brigade then reinforced the paratroops, and continued to the south, capturing Judea, Gush Etzion and Hebron. The Harel brigade proceeded eastward, descending to the Jordan River. After the Old City was captured, Dayan told his troops to dig in to hold it. When an armored brigade commander entered the West Bank on his own initiative, and stated that he could see Jericho, Dayan ordered him back. It was only after intelligence reports indicated that Hussein had withdrawn his forces across the Jordan River that Dayan ordered his troops to capture the West Bank.

On June 8, 1967 Israel had completed the capture of the Sinai by sending infantry units to Ras-Sudar on the western coast of the peninsula. Sharm El-Sheikh, at its southern tip, had already been taken a day earlier by units of the Israeli Navy.

The officers of the Syrian army were poor military leaders and treated their soldiers poorly; often officers would retreat to escape danger leaving their men confused and ineffective. By the evening of June 9, 1967 the four Israeli brigades had broken through to the Golan plateau, where they could be reinforced and replaced.

On June 10, 1967 the central and northern Israeli groups joined in a pincer movement on the Golan plateau, but that fell mainly on empty territory as the Syrian forces fled.

"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, a Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for their farmland...[Dayan stated 'They didn't even try to hide their greed for their land... WE would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't' possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrian's, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.' "
The New York Times,
May 11, 1997.

1967-1970 War of Attrition
War between the Israeli military and forces of the Egyptian Republic, the USSR and the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1967 to 1970. It was initiated by the Egyptians as a way of recapturing the Sinai from the Israelis, who had been in control of the territory since the mid-1967s. The hostilities ended with a ceasefire signed between the countries in 1970 with frontiers remaining in the same place as when the war began.

September 1, 1967 Arab Leaders meet in Khartoum, Sudan
The Three No's of Khartoum: No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel. No peace with Israel.

Jordan boy trying to sell something to Israeli soldiers

1970-1971 Black September in Jordan
September 1970 is known as the Black September in Arab history and sometimes is referred to as the "era of regrettable events." It was a month when King Hussein of Jordan moved to quash the militancy of Palestinian organizations and restore his monarchy's rule over the country. The violence resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, the vast majority Palestinian. Armed conflict lasted until July 1971 with the expulsion of the PLO and thousands of Palestinian fighters to Lebanon.
The PLO attempted to take power in Jordan, backed by Syria. Israel backed up King Hussein, and launched an airstrike on the Syrian forces.

1972 The Munich massacre
Informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually murdered by Black September, a militant group with ties to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization. The commando operation was officially named "Ikrit and Biram", after two Palestinian villages whose inhabitants had been killed or expelled by the Hagannah in 1948.

1973 Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War, also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to October 26, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states backing Egypt and Syria. The war began with a joint surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, when Egypt and Syria respectively crossed cease-fire lines to enter the Israeli-held Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, which had been captured and occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. The conflict had all the elements of a severe international crisis, and ended with a near-confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, both of whom launched massive resupply efforts to their allies during the war.
In response to U.S. support of Israel, the Arab members of OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, decided to reduce oil production by 5% per month on October 17. On October 19, President Nixon authorized a major allocation of arms supplies and $2.2 billion in appropriations for Israel. In response, Saudi Arabia declared an embargo against the United States, later joined by other oil exporters and extended against the Netherlands and other states, causing the 1973 energy crisis.

1975 Jackson-Vanik amendment
President Gerald Ford signs legislation including the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which ties U.S. trade benefits to the Soviet Union to freedom of emigration for Jews.

1975 United Nations adopts resolution equating Zionism with racism. Rescinded in 1991.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on November 10, 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), "determine[d] that Zionism is a form of and racial discrimination". The resolution was revoked by Resolution 46/86 on December 16, 1991. In the history of the UN, this is the only resolution that has ever been revoked.
Statement of president George H.W. Bush: "We should take seriously the charter's pledge "to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors."UNGA Resolution 3379, the so-called "Zionism is racism" resolution, mocks this pledge and the principles upon which the United Nations was founded. And I call now for its repeal. Zionism is not a policy; it is the idea that led to the creation of a home for the Jewish people, to the State of Israel. And to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of Jews in World War II and, indeed, throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations.This body cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel's right to exist. By repealing this resolution unconditionally, the United Nations will enhance its credibility and serve the cause of peace."

1976 Operation Entebbe
Operation Entebbe was a counter-terrorism hostage-rescue mission carried out by the (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976. A week earlier, on June 27, an Air France plane with 300 passengers was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and flown to Entebbe, the capital of Uganda. Shortly after landing, all non-Jewish passengers were released.
The IDF acted on intelligence provided by Israeli secret agency Mossad. In the wake of the hijacking by members of the militant organizations Revolutionary Cells and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with the hijackers' threats to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met, the rescue operation was planned. These plans included preparation of armed resistance from Ugandan military troops.
Led by 30 year-old commander Yonatan Netanyahu, the operation took place under cover of darkness, as Israeli transport planes carried 100 elite commandos over 2,500 miles to Uganda for the rescue operation. The operation, which took a week of planning, lasted 90 minutes and 103 hostages were rescued. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and the only death was of commander Netanyahu. All the hijackers, three hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed, and 11 Russian-built MiG fighters of Uganda's air force were destroyed. A fourth hostage was murdered by Ugandan army officers at a nearby hospital.
The successful rescue, originally codenamed Operation Thunderball, was later renamed Operation Yonatan in memory of the units leader, Yonatan Netanyahu. He was the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, currently the Prime Minister of Israel. As a direct result of the successful operation, the United States military developed highly-trained rescue teams modeled on the Entebbe rescue. It's most visible, although unsuccessful effort, was the attempted rescue of U.S. embassy personnel held captive after the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980.

1978 Coastal Road massacre
On 11 March 1978, 11 Fatah members led by the 18-year old female Dalal Mughrabi travelled from Lebanon and killed an American tourist on the beach. They then hijacked a bus on the coastal road near Haifa, and en route to commandeered a second bus. After a lengthy chase and shootout, 37 Israelis were killed and 76 wounded. This, the Coastal Road Massacre, was the proximate cause of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon three days later.

1978 South Lebanon conflict
The 1978 South Lebanon conflict (code-named Operation Litani by Israel) was an invasion in Lebanon up to the Litani River carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in 1978. From 1968 on, the PLO, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other Palestinian groups established a quasi-state in southern Lebanon, using it as a base for raids on civilian targets in northern Israel. This was exacerbated by an influx of 3,000 PLO militants fleeing a defeat in the Jordanian civil war and regrouping in southern Lebanon. Israel responded with damaging attacks against PLO bases. On March 14, 1978, Israel launched Operation Litani, occupying the area south of the Litani River, excepting , with over 25,000 soldiers. Its stated goals were to push Palestinian militant groups, particularly the PLO, away from the border with Israel, and to bolster Israel's ally at the time, the South Lebanon Army because of the attacks against Lebanese Christians and Jews and because of the relentless shelling into Northern Israel. During the 7-day offensive, the Israeli Defence Forces first captured a belt of land approximately 10 kilometres deep, but later expanded north to the Litani river. 20 Israeli soldiers and 1,100–2,000 PLO fighters were killed. The PLO retreated north of the Litani River, continuing to fire at the Israelis. However, objections from the Lebanese government led to the creation of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force and a partial Israeli withdrawal.

1978 Camp David Accords
The Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States President Jimmy Carter. The Accords led directly to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty and Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai.

1978 Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer receives Nobel Prize
Isaac Bashevis Singer (November 21, 1902 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement. Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1902 in Leoncin village near Warsaw, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a Hasidic rabbi and his mother, Bathsheba, was the daughter of a rabbi. In 1908, the family moved to the Yiddish-speaking poor Jewish quarter of Warsaw, where Singer grew up. There his father acted as a rabbi — i.e., judge, arbitrator, religious authority and spiritual leader. In 1935, four years before the German invasion and the Holocaust, Singer emigrated from Poland to the United States due to the growing Nazi threat in neighboring Germany. Singer settled in New York, where he took up work as a journalist and columnist for the Forward, a Yiddish newspaper.

1979 Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Anwar Sadat are awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

1982 June-December First Lebanon War
Israel invades Southern Lebanon to drive out the PLO
The 1982 Lebanon War called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon. The Government of Israel decided to launch the military operation after the assassination attempt against Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, by the Abu Nidal Organization, a mercenary organization opposed to the PLO. After attacking the PLO, as well as Syrian, leftist and Lebanese forces, Israel occupied southern Lebanon and eventually surrounded the PLO and elements of the Syrian army. Surrounded in West Beirut and subjected to heavy bombardment, they negotiated passage from Lebanon with the aid of Special Envoy Philip Habib and the protection of international peacekeepers.
In January 1985, Israel started to withdraw most of its troops, leaving a small residual Israeli force and an Israeli-supported militia, the South Lebanon Army in southern Lebanon in a "security zone", which Israel considered a necessary buffer against attacks on its northern territory. The Israeli withdrawal to the security zone ended in June 1985.

Scene from Samuel Maoz' film Lebanon

Samuel Maoz, whose 2009 film 'Lebanon' won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, was 20 years old when he killed a man for the first time. It was 1982 and Israel had recently begun fighting a war against the PLO and Syria in Lebanon, a campaign which, although supposed to last for just three weeks, would continue, in various guises, for 18 bloody and horrifying years. Maoz, an Israeli soldier by dint of the fact that he was still doing his national service when the war began, was a member of the tank corps. Specifically, he was a gunner. At 6.15am on 6 June, in the stony hills of southern Lebanon, he looked down the sight of the gun of his rackety, ageing tank. In the crosshairs was a small truck. It was speeding down a dirt track towards him, its middle-aged Arab driver shouting and gesticulating wildly. Maoz did not know if this man was the enemy. How could he? "This war was different to others that Israel had fought," he says. "In the Six Day War, there were two armies, in two different uniforms, fighting over one strip of land. I'm not saying that was less horrible, but it was at least clear. In Lebanon, the war was fought in neighbourhoods, there were 10 kinds of enemies, and many of them were wearing jeans. It was… chaotic." He looked at the man. Was he driving at him, or was he driving away from someone, or something? No matter. In his ear, Maoz heard his orders, loud and clear. He fired. His life changed forever.
"There is a huge difference between serving in an army and in a war," says Maoz. "They can't prepare you. They can make sure you're in good shape. They can make sure that you know how to use a gun. But they can't prepare you emotionally and, in the end, they don't need to. This is the trick of war. It needs death in order to exist.
"Normal people can't kill. You need to be a psycho. So the trick of war is to take a human being and put him in this… situation. After that, it's a process. It takes 24 hours, maybe 48. It's a metamorphosis. Our most basic instinct, our survival instinct, starts to take control and it's like a drug: you can't resist it. The first step is that you almost lose your sense of taste, because you need to be able to eat everything without saying, 'I like it, I don't like it.' Then you start to hear and see very sharply. Then you find that you need only half an hour of sleep. You don't think about moral calls and this is the trick of war. You're not fighting for your country or for your family. You're fighting for your life.
"And this is why, when people around me start talking about war and morals, it's ridiculous to me. I'll give you an example. In Lebanon, every time we found ourselves entering a small town, they told us that on 50% of its balconies there were snipers with missiles and on the other 50% there were families. Now, if you're going to check balcony after balcony, you won't survive beyond three or four. So what are your options? I mean your options to be moral? Am I a pacifist? Am I not? It doesn't work like that. It's like blinking and, yes, these acts afterwards fuck your life."
In some ways, reaction to Lebanon has been wholly predictable. "In Israel, the younger the audience, the more positive the response," says Maoz. "The older generation has been more negative. I suppose I understand it. As I said, many of them came from the camps. I remember my teacher, her camp number on her arm, shouting in the class that we must fight for our country, even die for it, because everyone wants to terminate us. But when we were growing up, the only things in our heads were the Tel Aviv beach and girls. When our parents had their wars, they felt it was the only choice and they won. When we had our wars… well, it's no longer the only choice and, even with the best army, we lost."
In Europe, the response has been more baffling. Prizes aside, anti-Israel feeling among audiences is high and it seems to have blinded some both to Lebanon's obvious artistic virtues and to its righteous intentions. "The fact that I put the focus on the soldiers, not the victims, upset them. In Norway, people started to shout at me. 'Don't talk to us until your soldiers leave Gaza!' they said, as if I were a representative of the government. That was too much for me! No one likes the situation in Gaza, but still… missiles are fired at Israeli cities from Gaza. Sometimes, I don't know if these people really want peace. They have all these opinions, but they don't really know anything… they just want to feel intelligent and left wing and artistic."
He looks wan, momentarily exhausted. What about him? Does he feel peace will come? "I feel it will, but for capitalist reasons rather than humanist ones. People are definitely tired, their motivation for war is low, but money also plays a part, like when it was revealed that every Israeli citizen paid the equivalent of 170% on their electricity bill to fund Gaza." He grins. "We don't have to be good friends. We just have to be at peace. Like the British and the French. You hate each other, but you are at peace."

1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was a massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese Muslim civilians carried out between 16 and 18 September 1982 by the Kataeb Party, a Christian Lebanese Forces militia group, following the assassination of Phalangist leader and president-elect Bachir Gemayel. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF), who surrounded Beirut's Palestinian refugee camps after having invaded Lebanon, allowed the Lebanese Forces militia to enter two of these refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. The exact number killed by the Lebanese Forces militia is disputed, with estimates commonly in the neighborhood of 3,500.
300,000 demonstrating Israelis put pressure on their government to investigate on the massacre. The Kahan Commission, chaired by the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Yitzhak Kahan, concluded in February 1983 that Israel bore part of the "indirect responsibility" for the massacres, advised Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon to be dismissed from his post and not to hold public office again. Sharon was found to bear personal responsibility "for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge" and "not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed". Sharon's negligence in protecting the civilian population of Beirut, which had come under Israeli control amounted to a non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defence Minister was charged.
Initially, Sharon refused to resign, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin refused to fire him. However, following a peace march against the government, as the marchers were dispersing, a grenade was thrown into the crowd, killing Emil Grunzweig, a reserve combat officer and peace activist, and wounding half a dozen others, including the son of the Interior Minister. Although Sharon resigned as Defence Minister, he remained in the Cabinet as a Minister without Portfolio. Years later Sharon would be elected Israel's Prime Minister.

1986 Elie Wiesel wins the Nobel Peace Prize
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel (born September 30, 1928) is a writer, professor at Boston University, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, the best known of which is Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. His diverse range of other writings offer powerful and poetic contributions to literature, theology, and his own articulation of Jewish spirituality today.
When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind," noting that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in 's death camps," as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace," Wiesel had delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity.

1986 Natan Sharansky, Soviet Jewish dissident, is freed from prison
Born in Stalino, Soviet Union (now Donetsk, ) to a Jewish family, he graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. After being denied an exit visa to Israel on the grounds of national security in 1973, he became an activist in the human rights movement led by prominent physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, and became internationally known as the spokesperson for the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. "Once the world's most famous incarcerated Soviet dissident", Sharansky was one of the founders of, and spokesmen for, the Jewish and Refusenik movements in Moscow.
In March 1977, he was arrested, and in July 1978 convicted on charges of treason and spying for the United States, and sentenced to 13 years of forced labor. After 16 months of incarceration in Lefortovo prison, he was sent to Perm 35, a Siberian labour camp, where he served for nine years. The fate of Sharansky and other political prisoners in the USSR – repeatedly brought to international attention by Western human rights groups and diplomats – was a cause of embarrassment and irritation for the Soviet authorities. As a result of increasing pressure of a mounting international campaign led by his wife, Avital Sharansky and that included assistance from people as diverse as East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, New York Congressman and Rabbi Ronald Greenwald, in 1986, he was released to East Germany and led across the Glienicke Bridge to West Berlin where he was exchanged for a pair of Soviet spies: Karl Koecher and his wife, Hana Koecher. Famed for his resistance in the Gulag, he was told upon his release to walk straight towards his freedom; Sharansky instead walked in a zigzag in a final act of defiance. Sharansky made aliyah to Israel, adopting the Hebrew name Natan.

1987-1993 First Intifada
The First Intifada (1987–1993) (also "intifada") was a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule in the . The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Palestinian actions primarily included civil disobedience and resistance movement. In addition to general strikes, boycotts on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, graffiti, and barricades, Palestinian demonstrations that included stone-throwing by youths against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) defined the violence for many. The violence was directed at both Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of alleged Israeli collaborators. Over the course of the first intifada, an estimated 1,100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and 164 Israelis were killed by Palestinians. In addition, an estimated 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians as alleged collaborators, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.

1989 Perestroika in Russia leads to the end of the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall between East and West Germany.

1990 The Soviet Union opens its doors to the three million Soviet Jews who had been held as virtual prisoners within their own country. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews choose to leave the Soviet Union and move to Israel.

1990-1991 Gulf War
Iraq invades Kuwait, triggering a war between Iraq and Allied United Nations forces. Israel is hit by 39 Scud missiles from Iraq. Five hours after the first attacks, Iraq's state radio broadcast a voice identified as Saddam Hussein declaring that "The great duel, the mother of all battles has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins." Iraq responded by launching eight Iraqi modified Scud missiles into Israel the next day. These missile attacks on Israel were to continue throughout the six weeks of the war.
The Iraqis hoped that, by attacking Israel, they would be drawn into the war. It was expected that many Arab nations would withdraw from the coalition, as they would be reluctant to fight alongside Israel. Israel, at the request of the United States, did not join the war, and all Arab states remained in the coalition. The Scud missiles generally caused light damage, although their potency was felt in a Dhahran missile attack, which killed 28 U.S. soldiers.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Palestinians cheered as Iraqi Scud missiles crashed into Israeli cities.
Although far from all Palestinians supported him, militants marched to back Saddam ahead of the U.S.-led invasion in March and Palestinian protesters were often heard chanting: "Oh, Saddam. Oh, Saddam. Bomb, bomb Tel Aviv".

1991 Madrid Peace Conference
The Madrid Conference was hosted by the government of Spain and co-sponsored by the USA and the USSR. It convened on October 30, 1991 and lasted for three days. It was an early attempt by the international community to start a peace process through negotiations involving and the Palestinians as well as Arab countries including Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The Israeli-Jordan negotiations eventually led to a peace treaty signed in 1994, while the Israeli-Syrian ones led to several series of negotiations, which came quite close on some reports, but did not result in a peace treaty.

1993 Israel and PLO sign the Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords,officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles (DOP) became a milestone toward the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one of the major continuing issues within the wider Arab-Israeli conflict. It was the first direct, face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was intended to be the one framework for future negotiations and relations between the Israeli government and Palestinians, within which all outstanding "final status issues" between the two sides would be addressed and resolved.
Negotiations concerning the agreements, an outgrowth of the Madrid Conference of 1991, were completed secretly in Norway on 20 August 1993; the Accords were subsequently officially signed at a public ceremony in on 13 September 1993, in the presence of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and US President Bill Clinton. The documents themselves were signed by Mahmoud Abbas for the PLO, foreign Minister Shimon Peres for Israel, Secretary of State Warren Christopher for the United States and foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev for Russia.
In Israel, a strong debate over the accords took place; the left wing supported them, while the right wing opposed them. After a two-day discussion in the Knesset on the government proclamation in the issue of the accord and the exchange of the letters, on 23 September 1993 a vote of confidence was held in which 61 Knesset members voted for the decision, 50 voted against and 8 abstained.
Palestinian reactions were also divided. Fatah, the group that represented the Palestinians in the negotiations, accepted the accords. But Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine objected to the accords because their own charters refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist in Palestine. On both sides there were fears of the other side's intentions. Israelis suspected that the Palestinians were entering into a tactical peace agreement, and that they were not sincere about wanting to reach peace and coexistence with Israel.
(A fact is that Palestinians are dramatically worse off than they were before the Oslo process began. Their annual income is less then half of what it was in 1992; they are unable to travel from place to place; more of the land has been taken then ever before; more settlements exist; and Jerusalem is practically lost.)

October 26, 1994 Israel and Jordan sign an official peace treaty
The treaty normalized relations between the two countries and resolved territorial disputes between them. The conflict between them had cost roughly 18.3 billion dollars. Its signing is also closely linked with the efforts to create peace between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization representing the Palestinian Authority. It was signed at the southern border crossing of on October 26, 1994, and made Jordan only the second Arab country, after Egypt, to normalize relations with Israel.
Israel cedes a small amount of contested land to Jordan, and the countries open official diplomatic relations, with open borders and free trade.

December 10, 1994 - Arafat, Rabin and Peres share Nobel Peace Prize
Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres share the Nobel Peace Prize, "to honour a political act which called for great courage on both sides, and which has opened up opportunities for a new development towards fraternity in the Middle East."

November 4, 1995 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated
Yitzhak Rabin (1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–1977 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995. In 1994, Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. He was assassinated by right-wing Israeli radical Yigal Amir, who was opposed to Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords. Rabin was the first native-born prime minister of Israel, the only prime minister to be assassinated and the second to die in office after Levi Eshkol.

1996 Peres loses election to Benyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu (Likud party)
The first ever election for Prime Minister was held in Israel on 29 May 1996 alongside simultaneous Knesset elections. There were only two candidates, Shimon Peres of the Labour Party and Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud. The result was a surprise win for Netanyahu by just 29,000 votes, less than 1% of the total number of votes cast. This came after the initial exit polls had predicted a Peres win, spawning the phrase "went to sleep with Peres, woke up with Netanyahu." The election was Peres' fourth and last election defeat. Netanyahu's campaign was helped by Australian mining magnate Joseph Gutnick, who donated over $1 million to Likud.
The election was a result of a change in the law during the thirteenth Knesset which was intended to strengthen the position Prime Minister given the Knesset's fragmentary nature.

1999 Ehud Barak elected Prime Minister of Israel
The Likud-Gesher- alliance had fallen apart, with more members leaving Likud to set up Herut – The National Movement and the Centre Party. Netanyahu's government finally gave up the ghost due to difficulties in passing the state budget and in January 1999 passed a bill calling for early elections.
Before the elections, Ehud Barak's Labour Party formed an alliance with Gesher and Meimad called in the hope that a united front on the centre-left would give them enough seats to form a more stable coalition.
After winning the Prime Ministerial elections, Ehud Barak formed the 28th government of Israel on 6 July 1999. His coalition included One Israel, Shas, Meretz, Yisrael BaAliyah, the Centre Party, the National Religious Party and United Torah Judaism, and initially had 16 ministers, though the number later rose to 24.