"A glance in the entries of a telephone directory and a visit to one of Israel’s military cemeteries give the history of modern Israel in a nutshell. It is the story of Jewish immigration to the land of Israel and constant wars. It is also, particularly, since the late 1970s, the story of attempts, s"
"But where should one start? Surely at the beginning. But where is the beginning? Historians, mainly of Jewish stock, often range back to biblical times to begin the story of Israel, as if to assert that the development of modern Israel was a fulfilment of a biblical prophecy or, perhaps, the inevita"
"Herzl’s dream of living to see the day of a Jewish homeland being established was dashed. It all took longer than he had hoped and he was a very sick man. Worn out by his labours, he died at the age of 44 of a debilitating heart condition and was interred in Vienna next to his father’s grave; 45 yea"
"In Palestine, on 31 July 1882, newcomers of this first Aliyah founded, on a stretch of uncultivated and uninhabited sandy land, just eight miles south-east of Jaffa, a new settlement which they called Rishon Lezion (First to Zion), and which became the first settlement to be established by Jewish se"
"He 【David Ben-Gurion】 belonged to a group of young, secular and idealistic men and women, driven by a fierce sense of mission and bent on ‘redeeming the land’ and proving that they were fit not only for commerce, as their detractors often charged, but also for physical work. They adopted Spartan ide"
"In 1910, members of the second Aliyah settled on Um Juni, a tract of land on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and formed the first kibbutz which they called Degania (Cornflower). This new form of agricultural settlement was based on full cooperation among the members in work and on equal pr"
"Although short, a single 68-word-long sentence, the declaration was a highly significant statement, for it was the first time that a great power – and England was still a world power of the first rank – had openly pledged its full support to the idea of helping the Jews to have their ‘national home’"