I – The place all eyes are set upon
On May 14th of 1948, during an armed conflict that had begun six months previously, and which would continue for one more year, the Jewish government of Palestine declared the independence of the new State of Israel. Thus began the story of a new country, which, though not accepted by all, was quickly integrated into the countries of the world. The history of the State of Israel, however, began long before. We would have to go back at least another sixty years in order to begin to understand why the Jewish state forever changed the identity, references, and customs of the majority of Jews in all four corners of the globe.
Up until the present day the majority of Jews in the world live outside Israel. Why then is it such a central point of reference for all of us? What is, what was, what would continue to be the difference between the existence and non-existence of a Jewish state for Jews who are citizens of other states?
In responding to these questions, a good starting point would be a world very different to the one we know today.
II - The Jewish question—like new arrivals (in Europe)
The beginnings of the idea of a Jewish state need to be located in the middle of the nineteenth century. At that time, as in the present, Jews were geographically dispersed. The majority of them were to be found in Europe, where only recently they had been accepted as equal citizens before the law, with the same rights as non-Jewish citizens. Some families had been living in Europe for centuries. In terms of the laws, and in many sectors of society, it was as if they had just arrived.
Indeed, since the early Diasporic communities, in the times of the Roman Empire, European Jews had been subject to special legal regimes: foreigners, property of the King, temporary residents, are only some of the formulas by which Jews were allowed to reside in European countries. And in times of crisis, of hunger, of war, or of plagues, they were very commonly the main victims of popular rage, being accused of poisoning water wells, murdering Christians, or conspiring with the enemies of the Church, with Satan even, in the attempt to exterminate Christianity. From England to Russia, Jews were frequently subject to massacre, expulsion, and confinement in certain quarters of the cities throughout the history of the European Middle Ages and modernity.
However, in the course of the nineteenth century, everything seemed to be changing. After the Enlightenment and the spread of its ideas through the French Revolution, the Christian religion was relegated, increasingly, to the private realm. If religion ceased to occupy a central place, if people’s point of reference no longer included their religious faith, then the otherness that made Jews different was no longer so evident. In other words, Jews began, very slowly, in the course of more than a century, to be considered members of the societies in which they resided. On their part, Jews were delighted with this possibility: they went from being foreigners to being citizens with full rights, like everyone else.
The first European countries to grant rights of citizenship to Jews, were Prussia (chief among the German states), and France. Although social prejudice against Jews continued to exist, the laws were increasingly granting them more rights. By the middle of the nineteenth century, nearly all the states of Western and Central Europe had granted Jews full citizenship. The only European countries to reach the last third of the nineteenth century without granting these rights to Jews were Romania and the Russian Empire.
European Jews integrated very rapidly into the new societies that received them. In France, England, Germany, and other countries, many of them noticeably improved their economic, political, and social circumstances. Indeed, they could work and invest as they pleased, participate in public debates and elections, and had access to practically all social circles from which they had previously been barred: journalism, universities, the arts, industry, among others.
However, all throughout Europe nationalist ideologies were developing and the national identities of the inhabitants of certain states were strengthening, and the notion that the Jews did not belong in those places became increasingly more commonplace. Among many Jews, similar thoughts began to crop up: If all the peoples have the right to claim their homeland, are not the Jews members of a people also? Many, Jewish and non-Jewish, thought they did. On the other side of the debate, others still thought that Jews would be able to integrate definitively as equal citizens, although their religion, and only their religion, was different.
Many factors in the final decades of the nineteenth century precipitated this debate, both within and outside of Jewish communities. One of the main ones that led the Jews of Eastern Europe to feel the need to stake their claim for a state like the other nations was the worsening of the Jewish situation in the Czarist Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. The decadence of that empire, its economic crises, its constant financial indebtedness, its industrial and military backwardness with respect to the rest of Europe, and the growing social tension that sprang up within its borders, led to an increase in state repression against Jews. One of the gravest moments of this situation occurred after the assassination Czar Alexander II in 1881.
Yet anti-Jewish repression was experienced not only in Eastern Europe. In 1894, in France, one of the first countries to integrate Jews, the Dreyfus Affair exploded: In a case of espionage right in the bosom of the general staff of the army, the only Jewish member of the French military high command was quickly accused. Proofs against Dreyfus were fabricated and an attempt was made to justify the scandal by means of the argument that the spy was not a Frenchman, but a foreigner. The political debate that ensued (the case was reopened several times, until, finally, Dreyfus was pardoned and later absolved in 1906) brought up the question anew of whether the Jews could truly be integrated.
These events, added to the nationalist currents sweeping through all the European states, lent strength to the currents of Judaism claiming that Jews had a right to their own state on their own land. This political movement is called Zionism, and the land in question was Palestine, a remote province of the, by then, decadent Ottoman Empire, which had been the place where, two thousand years beforehand, the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah had unfolded.
III - The return to the land—building independence
The movement for the return of Jews to the land of Palestine began in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. First the Jews of Eastern Europe, and later those of the rest of the world, gave up all they had, their families, their work, even their languages, in order to gather in what had been the ancient Land of Israel. There, they forged a new country, tilled the land, and overcame the climate, the arid ground, and hostility of the local population. In the first years, and with the help of the Jewish communities of Western Europe, they bought land from landowning Arabs, on which they began to form the new Jewish society. In time, the Jewish colonies started to expand, and a common language gradually evolved, Hebrew. The colonies organized their own defense against local bandits, along with health and education networks for all the Jews still arriving.
By the end of World War One, the Ottoman Empire had disintegrated. Its Arab provinces were from then on administrated by the victor nations. The case of Palestine was such that it was integrated into the British Empire as a mandate, which meant that Great Britain was to administrate it until the local population could declare its independence.
It was at that time that the conflict originated between Zionist Jews and the Palestinian Arab population, which did not look favorably upon the erection of a Jewish state there. This conflict manifested itself on occasion in attempts at negotiation, in pressure on the British Authority, or in armed clashes between the Jewish colonists and the Palestinian Arab population. However, Great Britain managed more or less to maintain order, negotiating, making concessions or suppressing, a times on one side, a times on the other, as a function of their own interests.
One of the concessions the British made to the Palestinian-Arab representatives was the publication of the White Papers. These concerned laws that limited the immigration of Jews to Palestine. The last of these White Papers was issued in 1939, the year World War Two broke out, and for many Jews the last opportunity to flee from Nazism. At that time, the Jewish community in Palestine, known as the Yishuv (settlement), organized vast illegal immigration movements, by which they succeeded in clandestinely introducing numerous Jews into the Land of Israel, most of whom were from Europe. Illegal immigration was an extremely dangerous act, since suppressive British measures had it that Jews who were caught were sent to concentration camps on the Isle of Cyprus.
At the end of World War Two, the world learned of the terrible events that had befallen European Jews. Millions had died, murdered by the machinery of Nazism. The survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, who had lost their families, their homes, and all their possessions, still had to bear, particularly in some of the Eastern European territories, the aggressions of local populations, which had hoped for the Jews’ never returning.
In Palestine, relations between Jews and Arabs turned grave, and after six years of war in Europe, Great Britain was no longer in a position to continue maintaining order. Thus it was that in November of 1947, the United Nations organization approved the partition of Palestine into two States, one Jewish, the other Arab. The Yishuv accepted the partition, while the Palestinian population and the governments of the Arab nations rejected it. From this moment on, open warfare broke out between the two populations, growing fiercer as the date approached on which the British would pull out of the region. Indeed, in May of 1948 the British declared their mandate concluded. On the 14th of that month, the day on which the British flag was hauled down for the last time, the leader of the Yishuv, David Ben-Gurion, declared the independence of the State of Israel. At that moment, the armies of five Arab nations invaded the new state.
The War of Independence lasted until early 1949. By the end of it, and despite a great number of victims, the Jewish state was able to defend and consolidate its independence. From that moment forward, and still without having definitively resolved relations with its immediate neighbors (four Arab states who refused to recognize the State of Israel), began the no less arduous task of developing and strengthening the new state.
IV - The reunion—a people of many languages
The State of Israel was recognized immediately by nearly all the countries in the international community, with the exception of the Arab nations or those of Islamic majority. One of its main priorities after the War of Independence was to reunite Jews from all over the world within its territory. Thus began an active campaign in promotion of the aliyah (literally, ascent), as the migration of Jews with a view to settling in Israel was known. For the first time in two thousand years, it was possible to make aliyah freely and without political obstacles.
To favor this campaign, in 1950 the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, enacted the Law of Return. According to it, any Jew, from anywhere in the world, who decided to immigrate to Israel would automatically receive full rights of citizenship, with all the privileges this would imply. Thus, Jews from over a hundred states answered the call, turning Israel into a genuine nation of immigrants, who had to integrate into the new nationality quickly, including their having to learn a new language. The Law of Return continues to be in force in the present day, having undergone several amendments. One of these, from 1970, extends the right of citizenship automatically also to the non-Jewish relatives of Jewish immigrants.
Between 1948 and 1951 more than one million Jews arrived in Israel, doubling the population of the country in this short time. Those first years entailed the immigration of survivors of the European Holocaust, Jews from the camps in Germany, Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. Furthermore, practically the entire Jewish communities of Libya, Yemen and Iraq emigrated. Throughout the 1950s, immigrants from Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia also arrived.
During the first years, this put enormous demands on the new state. At the same time, young Israel had to face the construction efforts of any other state, but with the additional mass immigration of new populations of different cultures and languages, and under concrete threats to the security of its inhabitants, even the continuity of its independence being at risk. In the beginning, many immigrants had to live in maabarot camps or temporary housing before being able to install themselves in their definitive dwellings.
So as to promote the effective occupation of the country, boost its economy, and guarantee its security, development towns were created, which in time and with the efforts of the State and the new citizens behind it would grow to become large cities. Some of these are Ashdod, Ophakim, Dimona and Kiryat Gat.
In the 1980s, an extensive network of non-agricultural rural towns was created in the North of Israel. Known as mitzpim, they were small towns created for young families. 1989 saw the start of new waves of immigration. In the first years of the 1990s, over half a million immigrants, the majority of them from the ex Soviet Union arrived in Israel. At the same time, some thirty thousand Jews from Ethiopia were brought to Israel in two operations, called “Operation Moses,” in 1984, and “Operation Shlomo,” in 1991. Today, over a hundred thousand Ethiopians live in Israel.
At the present time, the largest immigration still comes from the ex-Soviet republics (of Israel’s nearly 35% immigrant population, more than a million were born in the ex Soviet Union), followed by Ethiopians, North Americans, and the French.
V - The political conflict—neighbors and enemies
During the 1950s, Israel, still busy with the task of consolidating the new Jewish society, had to face the hostility of Arab Nationalism, above all that stemming from Egypt, which represented a constant threat to its security. Both countries entered into armed conflict in 1956 and in constant clashes at the borders. However, a great change took place in 1967, when, in what is known as the Six-Day War, Israel confronted the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In less than a week, Israel not only defeated the armed forces of the three countries, but also occupied the Golan Heights territories (of Syria, with its fundamental reservoirs of freshwater), the West-Bank (of Jordan, including the eastern part of the holy city of Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
The Israeli victory in the Six-Day War changed the map of the Middle East. In the first place, it demonstrated that no combination of Arab states could endanger the existence of Israel. Secondly, it drew the Jewish state into a tight alliance with the West in general and with the United States in particular, which has persisted until the present day. From that moment on, Israel entered into a period of economic, industrial, scientific, and cultural expansion without precedent in the Middle East. However, with the exception of the Sinai territory, handed over to Egypt in the peace accords between the years 1977 and 1979, the occupation of the remaining territories brings with it unresolved conflicts—especially in the West-Bank and Gaza, which are inhabited in the majority by a Palestinian population claiming the right to its own state.
Fifteen years after the accords with Egypt, Israel and Jordan signed another peace treaty in 1994. Around the same time, the Israeli government led by Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace treaty with the main Palestinian organization, headed by Yasser Arafat. Despite the great expectations surrounding this accord, the conflict involving Israelis and Palestinians continues unresolved.
As for Israel’s northern border, i.e. with Syria and Lebanon, formulas have yet to be found for approaching a peaceful situation. Relations with Syria are non-existent, since the latter demands the return of the Golan Heights as a preliminary step towards any negotiation, while Israel seeks to include Golan as part of broader negotiations, which are to guarantee the pacification of its northern border. As for Lebanon, very much under the influence of Syria, Israel is still in conflict with an organization called Hezbollah, armed clashes being frequent, some of them particularly serious, such as those leading to the war of 2006.
VI - Israel today
Despite the hostility of the surroundings, the lack of resolution of the Palestinian problem, and the numerous armed conflicts in these sixty years, the State of Israel was not only able to consolidate, but to develop as a modern society with democratic values and economic and technological growth exceptional in the Middle East.
Currently, Israel has approximately 7.2 million inhabitants, of which 75% are Jewish. In the course of 2007 eighteen thousand people settled in the country. Like other modern countries, more than 90% of its population is urban, and resides in cities such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Rishon leZion, Be’er Sheva, and Holon, among many others. Approximately 150,000 people live on kibbutzim, communitarian rural or semi-rural establishments set up before the State’s independence, although today less than 15% of their membership is engaged in agricultural work.
Israel has a national health service and an advanced and modern education system. Over 96% of the population is literate, education being free and compulsory between the ages of five and eighteen. There are many different types of schools in Israel: secular and religious state schools, Arab and Druze, as well as private. Municipal authorities and the central government finance 80% of education, offering programs for students with special needs, both for the extremely gifted and those with learning difficulties. Handicapped students are guaranteed by law free education under favorable conditions from the age of three to 21.
As for higher education, Israel has a very advanced university system. The main universities are located in Jerusalem (since 1925), Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Be’er Sheva. In addition, one has the Technion Institute of Technology; the University of Bar-Ilan, in Jerusalem, which attempts to reconcile the religious traditions with the sciences; and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehoboth. There is also the prestigious Open University, which offers higher education at a distance. The universities are 70% funded by public funds, the remaining financing coming both from tuitions and the contributions of private foundations. The Israeli university system affords an extensive program of grants, covering even 100% of tuition for recent immigrants.
VII - Technology, growth and tradition
The State of Israel has managed to develop its economy through sustained investment in various branches of high technology. Large intervention on the part of the state, benefitting furthermore from great assistance from abroad, mainly from the United States, has placed Israel at the vanguard of research and development in many industries and in the development of new products.
Immigration from the ex Soviet Union, since the 1990s, has included a great number of highly qualified professionals, who have contributed to the evolution of high-tech industries: electronic circuitry, aviation, information technology, telecommunications, highly complex medical procedures, solar energy, among others. Thus, Israel maintains its export levels of machinery, software, and military equipment, chemical products, in addition to diamonds, food, and agricultural produce. As regards the latter, it is important to note that less than 20% of the land is farmable, but that significant advances in crop watering and desalinization have been made, artificial watering being one of the main technological characteristics of the Jewish state.
This profile of a technologically highly developed Israel is furthermore complemented, however, by a rich historical, cultural, and archeological heritage. The capital of the state, Jerusalem, is a holy site not only for Jews, but also for Christianity and Islam. 220 historical monuments are to be found there, among which are Dome of the Rock, an Islamic sanctuary from the seventh century VII, built at the site of the ancient Jewish temple from Biblical times. Also, in Jerusalem one finds the Holy Sepulcher, venerated by the Christian churches as the burial site of Christ. Finally, for religious Jews there is the Western Wall, or “Wailing Wall,” in Jerusalem, which consists of the remains of the wall that surrounded the ancient Jewish temple destroyed in the year 70 during an insurrection against Roman Empire. The Old City, where these monuments are to be found, is surrounded by a wall dating back to the sixteenth century.
In addition to those just mentioned, in Israel there are over 20,000 archeological sites. On the shores of the Dead Sea, in the desert of Judea, one finds the Masada fortress, whose construction is attributed to King Herod. According to some traditions, it was there that one of the last battles between Jewish rebels and the Roman army took place in the first century. From its heights, the structure of the palace, the Roman attack ramp, and the remains of the camps of the troops sent by Rome can be seen.
In Acre, by the Mediterranean Sea, remains are preserved from medieval times, when the city formed part of one of the kingdoms subject to the crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is one of the most ancient cities, having been populated since Phoenician times. In addition there are archeological sites by the Biblical cities of Hazor, Megiddo, Shomron, and ones from the Roman era, such as Caesarea or Banias. A law stipulates that prior to any construction, the chosen site must be examined to assure that it is not of potential archeological value.
VIII – The balance after sixty years
Ever since its emergence in mid-nineteenth century Europe, the idea of a state for the Jews in their own historical territories, which they had abandoned two thousand years previously, became a dream seemingly impossible to convert into reality. However, a century later, the State of Israel declared its independence. Back then, the hostile background, the rejection of the surrounding states, and the armed conflicts with neighboring populations cast doubt on the possibility of its survival. Sixty years later, Israel not only continues to exist, but has become an economically advanced democratic nation, with the very highest levels of education, healthcare, and technology.
In Israel the past millennia of the People of the Book and the latest telecommunications technologies live alongside each other; religious communities tied to their most sacred locations alongside the most advanced scientific research; the tastes, music, and customs of the Middle East next to the latest expressions of Western culture.
Israel has managed to stand up within the international community as the sole Jewish state, not to question the rights of citizenship of Jews in other states, but to guarantee the right of all Jews to be like other peoples; to give Jews the possibility of electing, of identifying with, and committing to their own in an alternative way. The State of Israel, in many spheres, is still fighting to be accepted. But today, sixty years after the declaration of its independence, it expresses the continuity of a dream dreamt by a few idealists in the nineteenth century, a dream that has been transformed into another dream, this time in real life, that grows stronger day by day.