title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The point where the boys became stranded was about from the entrance and below the top of the mountain. The route to them had several flooded sections, some with strong currents and zero visibility, and some extremely narrow parts, the smallest measuring only .


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The journey through the cave to the boys took six hours against the current and five hours to exit with the current, even for experienced divers.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: From the outset, rescue workers battled rising water levels. In an effort to drain the cave, a stone diversion dam was built upstream and systems were installed to pump water out of the cave and divert flows that were entering it. On 4 July, it was estimated that the pumps were removing from the cave, ruining nearby farm fields in the process. For a time, well-meaning volunteers inadvertently pumped water back into the groundwater supply. Helped by a spell of unseasonably dry weather, these efforts reduced water levels by per hour on 5 July, enabling rescue teams to walk into the cave. However, heavy rains forecast for 8 July were expected to halt or reverse this process and could even flood the position where the team was trapped.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: On 6 July, the oxygen level in the cave was detected to have dropped, raising fears that the boys might develop hypoxia if they remained for a prolonged time. By 8 July the oxygen level was measured to be 15%; the level needed to maintain normal function for humans is between 19.5% and 23.5%. Thai military engineers attempted to install an air supply line to the boys, but the effort was abandoned as impractical.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: As the crisis unfolded, rescuers planned several different methods to save the team and coach. The principal options were to:


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Multiple dangers—the threat of more heavy rain, dropping oxygen levels, and the difficulty or impossibility of finding or drilling an escape passage—forced rescuers to make the decision to bring out the team and coach with experienced divers. The Thai Navy SEALs and US Air Force rescue experts met with the Thai Minister of the Interior who approved the plan. Ninety divers worked in the cave system, forty from Thailand and fifty from other countries. Rescuers at first considered teaching the boys basic diving skills to enable them to make the journey. Organisers built a mock-up of a tight passage with chairs, and divers practiced with local boys in a school swimming pool. Thai SEALs and US Air Force experts then refined the plan to use teams of divers to bring out the weakened boys.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: On 5 July, at 8:37 pm, Saman Kunan (), a 37-year-old former Thai Navy SEAL, made a dive from Chamber 3 to the T-junction close to Pattaya Beach to deliver three air tanks. During his return he lost consciousness underwater. His dive buddy attempted CPR without success. Kunan was brought to Chamber 3 where CPR was attempted again, but he could not be resuscitated and was pronounced dead about 1 am on 6 July.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: A member of Thai Navy SEALs class 30, Kunan had left the SEALs in 2006 at the rank of petty officer 1st class and was working in security at the Suvarnabhumi Airport when he volunteered to assist the cave rescue. He was posthumously promoted to lieutenant commander by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy, an unprecedented rise of seven ranks. A funeral sponsored and attended by the Thai royal family was held on 14 July. On the same day, he was also awarded the Knight Grand Cross (first class) of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant by King Vajiralongkorn. A memorial statue of him may form a part of a proposed tourist attraction at the site.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Another rescue diver and Thai Navy SEAL, Beirut Pakbara, died the following year from a blood infection acquired during the rescue operation.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: On the morning of 8 July, officials instructed the media and all non-essential personnel around the cave entrance to clear the area as a rescue operation was imminent, due to the threat of monsoon rains later in the week, which were expected to flood the cave until October.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: For the first part of the extraction, eighteen rescue divers consisting of thirteen international cave divers and five Thai Navy SEALs were sent into the caves to retrieve the boys, with one diver to accompany each boy on the dive out. There were conflicting reports that the boys were rescued with the weakest first or strongest first. In fact, the order was which boy volunteered first. The 25-year-old coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, said, "I talked with Dr. Harris. Everyone was strong and no one was sick," he told the press. "Everybody had a strong mental state. Dr. Harris said... there's no preference." The team decided as a group that the boys who lived the farthest away should leave first. Ekapol Chanthawong stated in their 18 July press conference, "We were thinking, when we get out of the cave, we would have to ride the bicycle home," Ekapol said, not realizing at the time their story had garnered global media attention. "So the persons who live the furthest away would be allowed to go out first... so that they can go out and tell everyone that we were inside, we were okay."


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The international cave diving team was led by four British divers: John Volanthen, Richard Stanton, Jason Mallinson and Chris Jewell (each assigned a boy) and two Australians: Richard Harris, a physician specializing in anesthesia, and Craig Challen. Irishman Jim Warny became an additional lead diver on the final day of the rescue, to bring back Ekapol Chanthawong. The lead divers' portion of the journey would stretch over 1 kilometre going through submerged routes while being supported by 90 Thai and foreign divers at various points performing medical check-ups, resupplying air-tanks for the main divers and other emergency roles.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The boys were dressed in a wetsuit, buoyancy jacket, harness and a positive pressure full face mask. A cylinder with 80% oxygen was clipped to their front, a handle attached to their back and they were tethered to a diver in case they were lost in the poor visibility. The rescue divers described them as "a package." Harris administered the anaesthetic ketamine to the boys before the journey, rendering them "fully unconscious." This was to prevent them from panicking on the journey, which would risk their own lives as well as the lives of their rescuers. They were also given the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam and the drug atropine to steady their heart rates and reduce saliva production to prevent choking. The Thai government provided Harris and two medical assistants with diplomatic immunity in case something went wrong.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The anaesthetic lasted between 45 minutes and an hour, requiring divers, whom Harris had trained, to administer "top-up" ketamine injections during the three hour journey. The boys were maneuvered out by the swimming divers who held onto their back or chest, with each boy on either the right or left side of the diver, depending on the guideline; in very narrow spots divers pushed the boys from behind. The divers navigated them through tight passages carefully to avoid dislodging their face masks against rocks. The divers kept their heads higher than the boys so that, in poor visibility, the divers would hit their head against the rocks first. After a short dive to a dry section, the divers and boys were met by three divers, and the boys' dive gear was removed. The boys were then transported on a drag stretcher over of rocks and sand hills. Craig Challen assessed them, and their dive gear was put back on before they were re-submerged for the next section. The boys arrived at 45-minute intervals. The divers knew the boys were breathing from their exhaust bubbles, which they could see and feel.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: After being delivered by the divers into the staging base in Chamber 3, the boys were then passed along a 'daisy chain' by hundreds of rescuers stationed along the treacherous path out of the cave. The boys, wrapped in 'sked' stretchers, would alternately be carried, slid and zip-lined over a complex network of pulleys installed by rock-climbers. Many areas from Chamber 3 to the entrance of the cave were still partially submerged and rescuers described having to transport the boys over slippery rocks and through muddy water for hours. The journey from Chamber 3 to the cave entrance took about four to five hours initially, but was reduced to less than an hour after a week of draining and clearing the mud path using shovels.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The authorities warned that extracting everyone would take several days, because crews had to replace air tanks, gear, and other supplies, requiring ten to twenty hours between each run. Shortly after 19:00, local officials said that two boys had been rescued and taken to Chiangrai Prachanukroh Hospital. Shortly after, two more boys exited the cave and were assessed by medical officials. Low water levels had reduced the time required for the rescues. The lower water was due to improved weather and the construction of a weir outside the cave to help control the water.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: On 9 July, four more boys were rescued from the cave. On 10 July, the last four boys and their coach were rescued from the cave. Experience helped streamline the rescue procedure, so the total time to extract a boy was reduced from three hours on the first day to just over two hours on the final day, allowing four boys and the coach to be rescued. The three Thai Navy SEALs and the Army doctor who had stayed with the boys the entire time were the last to dive out. Three of these divers made it to Chamber 3, joining waiting rescuers when the pumps shut off for an uncertain reason, possibly due to a burst water pipe. Water levels in Chamber 3 started to rise, which would have cut off rescuers' access to Chamber 2, Chamber 1 and the entrance of the cave. "All of a sudden a water pipe burst and the main pump stopped working", a diver stated. "We really had to run from the third chamber to the entrance because the water level was rising very quickly—like 50 cm every 10 minutes." This forced up to 100 rescuers still located more than inside the cave to evacuate in a hurry, abandoning the rescue equipment inside the cave. The last diver made it back to Chamber 3 as everyone was preparing to leave. The rescuers managed to rush to the cave exit in under an hour.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: A number of news outlets reported on the role of coach Ekkaphon during the rescue. The coach had previously been a Buddhist monk, and had guided meditation for the children during the ordeal. He also passed on a message in which he apologised for putting the children in danger.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Thai authorities said the rescued boys were able to eat rice porridge, but more complex foods would be withheld for ten days. The Thai Health Ministry said the boys lost an average of each, but were in "good condition". The boys were quarantined while health workers determined whether they had caught any infectious diseases, and they were expected to remain hospitalised for at least one week. Due to the prolonged stay in the damp cave environment, officials were worried about potential infections such as histoplasmosis or leptospirosis. Parents of the team members initially visited looking through a window, but if laboratory results proved negative, they would be allowed to visit in person while wearing a medical gown, face mask and hair cap.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The boys wore sunglasses as a precaution while their eyes adjusted to daylight. Detailed tests of their eyes, nutrition, mental health and blood were carried out. A Health Ministry physician said all the boys showed an increase in white blood cells, so preventive antibiotic doses were given to the entire team.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Residents of Chiang Rai province volunteered to cook, clean for, and otherwise support the missing team's families and the rescue teams at the encampment by the cave mouth. Social media was used to draw attention to the rescue attempts. Classmates and teachers of the team spent time chanting and praying for the missing boys. Classmates of one of the boys made 1,000 paper cranes for him, while praying for his safe return. Local schools donated money to help the parents with living costs, as many of them stopped working in order to follow the rescue attempts.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: On 29 June, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha visited the search site and told the families of the boys not to give up hope. Following the death of Saman Kunan, King Rama X announced that he would sponsor Kunan's funeral.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: After the rescue was completed, the boys' families, the rescue commander, military officials, and the thousands of volunteers gathered at the cave entrance. The group gave thanks for the lives saved and asked forgiveness from the cave goddess "Jao Mae Tham" for the intrusion of pumps, ropes and people during the rescue.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Some observers, primarily in Western media, questioned whether assistant coach Ekkaphon Chanthawong should face criminal charges for leading the group into the caves, despite the warning sign at the entrance stating that it is dangerous to enter between July and November. The boys had entered the cave on 23 June.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Local communities, as well as the boys' parents, emphasised that they did not blame the boys or their coach, as the rain had arrived a month earlier than usual. Vern Unsworth, a British caver mapping the cave, stated, "Nobody's to blame, not the coach, not the boys. They were just very unlucky... It wasn’t just the rain that day, the mountain is like a sponge and waters from earlier rain were raising the levels". Unsworth said that he himself had been planning to make a solo venture into the complex on 24 June, when he received a telephone call saying the boys were missing there.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: While the police chief told the newspaper "Khao Sod" that he "hadn't ruled out" pressing negligence charges against the coach for putting the team in danger, no calls were made to take legal action against him. A number of lawyers stated that the coach would probably not face criminal charges, since Thai law also takes into consideration whether a person has malicious intent. In mainstream media, Ekkaphon has widely been held "a hero" and was a "calm voice [that] helped boys to beat despair in the darkness." The coach was reported to have treated the boys with care, giving them his food, helping them remain calm, and instructing them to drink the relatively clean water dripping from the cave walls, instead of the murky floodwaters that trapped them.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: When asked if Ekkaphon should be held legally responsible for negligence, Mongkhon Bunpiam, the father of 12-year-old Mongkhon, rejected the suggestion: "We would never do that... the boys love their coach... and we as parents don't want it either. Coach Ekk has been good to my boy, and now I hear how he gave them hope, and kept them calm for so many days without food. I have great admiration for him." Tanawut Vibulrungruang, father of 11-year old Chanin, was reported to be "touched by the actions of the team's coach. Without him... he doesn't know how the kids could have survived." The team's head coach, Nopparat Kanthawong, said he would not have approved of the hike, but was confident in Ekkaphon's ability to take care of the boys. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said that the emphasis should be on the rescue and the recovery of the team, and he asked the public to avoid a rush to judgment.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Over the course of two weeks, hundreds of volunteers, military specialists and corporate experts arrived from around the world to offer assistance in the rescue.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Volunteers, teams and technical specialists from countries including Germany, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine, also participated in the operation. France offered to send a team of specialists and equipment, but Thai authorities believed that adequate resources were already on site.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The ordeal captured the media's attention from around the world. Over a period of three weeks, articles relating to the incident dominated the top stories section at many major news publications.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: FIFA, via a letter from its president Gianni Infantino to the president of the Football Association of Thailand, invited the children and coach to the World Cup final if circumstances allowed. The entire team was expected to remain hospitalised for at least a week, and watched the final on television instead. FC Barcelona invited the team to play in their international academy tournament in 2019 and to watch a first-team game at their home stadium Camp Nou. England and Manchester City F.C. defender Kyle Walker said he wanted to send them shirts, after spotting that one of the rescued boys was wearing a "Three Lions" jersey. In October 2018 the boys travelled to the UK as guests at Old Trafford for the Manchester United F.C. home match against Everton F.C. in the Premier League. The boys were invited by the IOC to the opening ceremony of the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: The head of the rescue mission and former governor of Chiang Rai province, , said that the cave system would be turned into a living museum to highlight how the operation unfolded. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha acknowledged the statement but highlighted the concerns for tourist safety, stating that precautions would have to be added and correctly implemented both inside and outside to safeguard tourists.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Following the incident, Thailand's Navy SEALs will include cave-diving in their training regimen to be better prepared for similar emergencies.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: Three of the boys and their assistant coach were stateless, and officials promised that they would be granted Thai citizenship within six months. On 26 September, the four were granted Thai citizenship. The Thai government has vowed to end statelessness by 2024.


title: Tham Luang cave rescue

text: A song about the rescue, "Heroes of Thailand" was written on 16 July 2018 by British music producer Will Robinson, with English and North Thailand dialect lyrics, and was performed by the Isan Project featuring Ronnarong Khampha.


title: Jews

text: Jews (, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, although its observance varies from strict to none.


title: Jews

text: Jews originated as an ethnic and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, in a part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel. The Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE (Late Bronze Age). The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold in the region with the emergence of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Some consider that these Canaan-sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as the "Hebrews". Though few sources mention the exilic periods in detail, the experience of life in the Jewish diaspora, from the Babylonian captivity and exile to the Roman occupation and exile, and the historical relations between Jews and their homeland in the Levant thereafter became a major feature of Jewish history, identity, culture, and memory.


title: Jews

text: In the following millennia, Jewish diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the "Ashkenazim" (Central and Eastern Europe), the "Sephardim" (initially in the Iberian Peninsula), and the "Mizrahim" (Middle East and North Africa). Prior to World War II, the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million, representing around 0.7 percent of the world population at that time. During World War II, approximately 6 million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and , was estimated to be at 14.6–17.8 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank, comprising less than 0.2 percent of the total world population.


title: Jews

text: The modern State of Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. It defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state in its Basic Laws, particularly in —which is based on the Israeli Declaration of Independence—and . Israel's Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to Jews who have expressed their desire to settle in the Jewish state.


title: Jews

text: Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including in science and technology, philosophy, ethics, literature, politics, business, art, music, comedy, theatre, cinema, architecture, food, medicine, and religion. Jews wrote the Bible, were the founders of early Christianity, and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam. In these ways, Jews have also played a significant role in the development of Western culture.


title: Jews

text: The English word "Jew" continues Middle English '. These terms were loaned via the Old French ', which itself evolved from the earlier ', which in turn derived from ' which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin "Iudaeus", which, like the New Testament Greek term "Ioudaios", meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea". The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic "", corresponding to Hebrew , originally the term for the people of the kingdom of Judah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe of Judah and the kingdom of Judah derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect the name "Judah" with the verb , meaning "praise", but scholars generally agree that the name of both the patriarch and the kingdom instead have a geographic origin—possibly referring to the gorges and ravines of the region.


title: Jews

text: The Hebrew word for "Jew" is , with the plural . Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino (plural , ) and the Yiddish (plural ).


title: Jews

text: The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ "yahūdī" (sg.), "al-yahūd" (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío/a" in Spanish, "jood" in Dutch, "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian ("Ebreo"), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" ()) and Russian ("Еврей, Yevrey"). The German word "Jude" is pronounced , the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish".


title: Jews

text: It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun "Jew", in phrases such as "Jew lawyer" or "Jew ethics", is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts "Jewish" is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of "Jew" as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as "There are now several Jews on the council", which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like "Jewish people" or "persons of Jewish background" may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun.


title: Jews

text: Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used. Generally, in modern secular usage Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion.


title: Jews

text: Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on "halakhic" definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as , which forbade intermarriage between Jews' Israelite ancestors and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that [i.e. giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,] would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods" – are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by , where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers. Since the anti-religious "Haskalah" movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, "halakhic" interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged.


title: Jews

text: According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures ("Kil'ayim"). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally. Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother. Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system.


title: Jews

text: A factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities and variety, written in at least ten Near Eastern languages. As archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, and historical textual records, as well as religious literature and mythology. The ethnic stock to which Jews originally trace their ancestry was a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes known as the Israelites that inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. Modern Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah.


title: Jews

text: According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish ancestry is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The Twelve Tribes are described as descending from the twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs' descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, after which the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua, then through the mediation of Samuel became subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the Tribe of Judah, the Tribe of Benjamin, partially the Tribe of Levi, and later adding remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the Kingdom of Israel. Modern Jews claim lineage from those tribes since the ten northern tribes were lost following Assyrian captivity.


title: Jews

text: Modern archaeology and the current historical view has largely discarded the historicity of this narrative. It has been reframed as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative. The Israelites and their culture, according to the modern archaeological and historical account, did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh, one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites.


title: Jews

text: The Israelites become visible in the historical record as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE. It is not certain if a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred nor if there was ever a United Monarchy. There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE, and the Canaanites are archeologically attested in the Middle Bronze Age. There is debate about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power, but historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by c. 900 BCE and that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE. It is widely accepted that the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire.


title: Jews

text: The term Jew originated from the Roman "Judean" and denoted someone from the southern kingdom of Judah. The shift of ethnonym from "Israelites" to "Jews" (inhabitant of Judah), although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE), a book in the Ketuvim, the third section of the Jewish Tanakh. In 587 BCE Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and deported the most prominent citizens of Judah.


title: Jews

text: According to the Book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 521–516 BCE. The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem. Professor Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than a single event. By the 4th century BCE, the majority of Jews lived outside the land of Israel.


title: Jews

text: As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah ("Yehud Medinata") with different borders, covering a smaller territory. The population of the province was greatly reduced from that of the kingdom, archaeological surveys showing a population of around 30,000 people in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The region was under control of the Achaemenids until the fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. Jews were also politically independent during the Hasmonean dynasty spanning from 110 to 63 BCE and to some degree under the Herodian dynasty from 37 BCE to 6 CE.


title: Jews

text: Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent. The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin. Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language.


title: Jews

text: Without a Temple, Greek-speaking Jews no longer looked to Jerusalem in the way they had before. Judaism separated into a linguistically Greek and a Hebrew / Aramaic sphere. The theology and religious texts of each community were distinctively different. Hellenized Judaism never developed yeshivas to study the Oral Law. Rabbinic Judaism (centered in the Land of Israel and Babylon) almost entirely ignores the Hellenized Diaspora in its writings. Hellenized Judaism eventually disappeared as its practitioners assimilated into Greco-Roman culture, leaving a strong Rabbinic eastern Diaspora with large centers of learning in Babylon.


title: Jews

text: By the first century, the Jewish community in Babylonia, to which Jews were exiled after the Babylonian conquest as well as after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, already held a speedily growing population of an estimated one million Jews, which increased to an estimated two million between the years 200 CE and 500 CE, both by natural growth and by immigration of more Jews from the Land of Israel, making up about one-sixth of the world Jewish population at that era. The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world; Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing. The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman.


title: Jews

text: However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens, the figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' Chronicon. Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken. Feldman's views on active Jewish missionizing have also changed. While viewing classical Judaism as being receptive to converts, especially from the second century BCE through the first century CE, he points to a lack of either missionizing tracts or records of the names of rabbis who sought converts as evidence for the lack of active Jewish missionizing. Feldman maintains that conversion to Judaism was common and the Jewish population was large both within the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora. Other historians believe that conversion during the Roman era was limited in number and did not account for much of the Jewish population growth, due to various factors such as the illegality of male conversion to Judaism in the Roman world from the mid-second century. Another factor that made conversion difficult in the Roman world was the halakhic requirement of circumcision, a requirement that proselytizing Christianity quickly dropped. The Fiscus Judaicus, a tax imposed on Jews in 70 CE and relaxed to exclude Christians in 96 CE, also limited Judaism's appeal.


title: Jews

text: Following the Roman conquest of Judea and the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, hundreds of thousands of Jews were taken as slaves to Rome, where they later immigrated to other European lands. The Jews who immigrated to Iberia and North Africa comprise the Sephardic Jews, while those who immigrated to the Rhineland and France comprise the Ashkenazi Jews. Additionally both before and after the Roman conquest of Judea many Jews lived in Persia and Babylon as well as other Middle eastern countries, these Jews comprise the Mizrachi Jews. In Francia, Jews like Isaac Judaeus and Armentarius occupied prominent social and economic positions, as opposed to in Spain, where Jews were persecuted under Visigoth rule. In Babylon, from the 7th to 11th centuries the Pumbedita and Sura academies lead the Arab and to an extant the entire Jewish world. The deans and students of said academies defined the Geonic period in Jewish history. Following this period were the Rishonim who lived from the 11th to 15th centuries, it was during this time that the Ashkenazi Jews began experiencing extreme persecution in France and especially the Rhineland, which resulted in mass immigration to Poland and Lithuania. Meanwhile, Sephardic Jews experienced a golden age under Muslim rule, however following the Reconquista and subsequent Alhambra decree in 1492, most of the Spanish Jewish population immigrated to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. However some Jews chose to remain and pretended to practice Catholicism. These Jews would form the members of Crypto-Judaism.


title: Jews

text: The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated. Converts to Judaism typically have a status within the Jewish "ethnos" equal to those born into it. However, several converts to Judaism, as well as ex-Jews, have claimed that converts are treated as second-class Jews by many born Jews.


title: Jews

text: Conversion is not encouraged by mainstream Judaism, and it is considered a difficult task. A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or would-be or current spouses of Jews.


title: Jews

text: The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54 percent of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah), in Islamic Spain and Portugal, in North Africa and the Middle East, India, China, or the contemporary United States and Israel, cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities.


title: Jews

text: Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed "lashon ha-kodesh", "the holy tongue"), the language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea. By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek. Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. These languages were also used by the Jews of Israel at that time.


title: Jews

text: For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish is the Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judaeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use.


title: Jews

text: For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath. Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times. Modern Hebrew is designated as the "State language" of Israel.


title: Jews

text: Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars.


title: Jews

text: The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian. Some Romance languages, particularly French and Spanish, are also widely used. Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language, but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel.


title: Jews

text: In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec, the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language. Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans. Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies, Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities. Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan, as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan. Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria, Morocco, and the city of Tunis, while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue.


title: Jews

text: There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine. Instead, a variety of secular and religious institutions at the local, national, and international levels lead various parts of the Jewish community on a variety of issues. Today, many countries have a Chief Rabbi who serves as a representative of that country's Jewry. Although many Hassidic Jews follow a certain hereditary Hasidic dynasty, there is no one commonly accepted leader of all Hasidic Jews. Many Jews believe that the Messiah will act a unifying leader for Jews and the entire world.


title: Jews

text: A number of modern scholars of nationalism support the existence of Jewish national identity in antiquity. One of them is David Goodblatt, who generally believes in the existence of nationalism before the modern period. In his view, the Bible, the parabiblical literature and the Jewish national history provide the base for a Jewish collective identity. Although many of the ancient Jews were illiterate (as were their neighbors), their national narrative was reinforced through public readings, a common practice in the ancient eastern Mediterranean area. The Hebrew language also constructed and preserved national identity. Although it was not spoken by most of the Jews after the 5th century BCE, Goodblatt contends that:


title: Jews

text: It is believed that Jewish nationalist sentiment in antiquity was encouraged because under foreign rule (Persians, Greeks, Romans) Jews were able to claim that they were an ancient nation. This claim was based on the preservation and reverence of their scriptures, the Hebrew language, the Temple and priesthood, and other traditions of their ancestors.


title: Jews

text: Within the world's Jewish population there are distinct ethnic divisions, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. An array of Jewish communities was established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another, resulting in effective and often long-term isolation. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments: political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestations of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, as well as degrees and sources of genetic admixture.


title: Jews

text: Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the "Ashkenazim" and the "Sephardim". Ashkenazim, or "Germanics" (Ashkenaz meaning "Germany" in Hebrew), are so named denoting their German Jewish cultural and geographical origins, while Sephardim, or "Hispanics" (Sefarad meaning "Spain/Hispania" or "Iberia" in Hebrew), are so named denoting their Spanish/Portuguese Jewish cultural and geographic origins. The more common term in Israel for many of those broadly called Sephardim, is "Mizrahim" (lit. "Easterners", Mizrach being "East" in Hebrew), that is, in reference to the diverse collection of Middle Eastern and North African Jews who are often, as a group, referred to collectively as "Sephardim" (together with Sephardim proper) for liturgical reasons, although Mizrahi Jewish groups and Sephardi Jews proper are ethnically distinct.


title: Jews

text: Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now almost extinct communities.


title: Jews

text: The divisions between all these groups are approximate and their boundaries are not always clear. The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African, Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are no closer related to each other than they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed "Sephardi" due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions.


title: Jews

text: Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70 percent of Jews worldwide (and up to 90 percent prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim. Only in Israel is the Jewish population representative of all groups, a melting pot independent of each group's proportion within the overall world Jewish population.


title: Jews

text: Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths. In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. For example, Ashkenazi Jews share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany and the French Rhine Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions in placing most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East.


title: Jews

text: Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous. Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel. In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect." Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." A study showed that 7% of Ashkenazi Jews have the haplogroup G2c, which is mainly found in Pashtuns and on lower scales all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese.


title: Jews

text: Studies of autosomal DNA, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most in a community sharing significant ancestry in common. For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World". North African, Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly southern European, while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations. Behar "et al." have remarked on a close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians. A 2001 study found that Jews were more closely related to groups of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors, whose genetic signature was found in geographic patterns reflective of Islamic conquests.


title: Jews

text: The studies also show that Sephardic Bnei Anusim (descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism), which comprise up to 19.8 percent of the population of today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and at least 10 percent of the population of Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), have Sephardic Jewish ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, have also been thought to have some more remote ancient Jewish ancestry. Views on the Lemba have changed and genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but have been unable to narrow this down further.


title: Jews

text: Although historically, Jews have been found all over the world, in the decades since World War II and the establishment of Israel, they have increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries. In 2013, the United States and Israel were collectively home to more than 80 percent of the global Jewish population, each country having approximately 41 percent of the world's Jews.


title: Jews

text: According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics there were 13,421,000 Jews worldwide in 2009, roughly 0.19 percent of the world's population at the time.


title: Jews

text: According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million. Adherents.com cites figures ranging from 12 to 18 million. These statistics incorporate both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.


title: Jews

text: According to Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2015 there were about 6.3 million Jews in Israel, 5.7 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world.


title: Jews

text: Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens. Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on 14 May 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, , 14 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel (not including the Druze), most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel.


title: Jews

text: Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million. Currently, Jews account for 75.4 percent of the Israeli population, or 6 million people. The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Jews fleeing Arab lands. Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union. This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America.


title: Jews

text: A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim.


title: Jews

text: The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the 19th century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Imperial Russia (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and eastern Poland), the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the 20th century.


title: Jews

text: More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 5.2 million to 6.4 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000–300,000), and Brazil (196,000–600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America). According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 470,000 people of Jewish heritage live in Latin-America and the Caribbean. Demographers disagree on whether the United States has a larger Jewish population than Israel, with many maintaining that Israel surpassed the United States in Jewish population during the 2000s, while others maintain that the United States still has the largest Jewish population in the world. Currently, a major national Jewish population survey is planned to ascertain whether or not Israel has overtaken the United States in Jewish population.


title: Jews

text: Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants). The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In Eastern Europe, the exact figures are difficult to establish. The number of Jews in Russia varies widely according to whether a source uses census data (which requires a person to choose a single nationality among choices that include "Russian" and "Jewish") or eligibility for immigration to Israel (which requires that a person have one or more Jewish grandparents). According to the latter criteria, the heads of the Russian Jewish community assert that up to 1.5 million Russians are eligible for aliyah. In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population, despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons.


title: Jews

text: Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15 to 20 percent in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10 percent in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7 percent in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Arab countries and around 30,000 in Iran and Turkey. A small-scale exodus had begun in many countries in the early decades of the 20th century, although the only substantial aliyah came from Yemen and Syria. The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90 percent of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80 percent of Iranian Jews left the country.


title: Jews

text: Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000). There is also a 6,800-strong community in New Zealand.


title: Jews

text: Since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks, a proportion of Jews have assimilated into the wider non-Jewish society around them, by either choice or force, ceasing to practice Judaism and losing their Jewish identity. Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods, with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely. The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th century (see Haskalah) and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 19th century, accelerated the situation, encouraging Jews to increasingly participate in, and become part of, secular society. The result has been a growing trend of assimilation, as Jews marry non-Jewish spouses and stop participating in the Jewish community.


title: Jews

text: Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50 percent, in the United Kingdom, around 53 percent; in France; around 30 percent, and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10 percent. In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.


title: Jews

text: The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions throughout Jewish history. During Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages the Roman Empire (in its later phases known as the Byzantine Empire) repeatedly repressed the Jewish population, first by ejecting them from their homelands during the pagan Roman era and later by officially establishing them as second-class citizens during the Christian Roman era.


title: Jews

text: According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."


title: Jews

text: Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of England, Germany, France, and, in the largest expulsion of all, Spain and Portugal after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), where both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors were expelled.


title: Jews

text: In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos.


title: Jews

text: Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions. They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims. Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading" was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic. On the other hand, Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession.


title: Jews

text: Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century, as well as in Islamic Persia, and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century. In modern times, it has become commonplace for standard antisemitic themes to be conflated with anti-Zionist publications and pronouncements of Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Turkish Refah Partisi."


title: Jews

text: Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed their Jewish populations or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods employed ranged from expulsion to outright genocide; within nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to silence dissent. The history of antisemitism includes the First Crusade which resulted in the massacre of Jews; the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and "autos-da-fé" against the New Christians and Marrano Jews; the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine; the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars; as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. According to a 2008 study published in the "American Journal of Human Genetics", 19.8 percent of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought.


title: Jews

text: The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews. Of the world's 16 million Jews in 1939, almost 40% were murdered in the Holocaust. The Holocaust—the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of European Jews (and certain communities of North African Jews in European controlled North Africa) and other minority groups of Europe during World War II by Germany and its collaborators—remains the most notable modern-day persecution of Jews. The persecution and genocide were accomplished 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 labour 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 Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of kilometres by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were murdered in gas chambers. Virtually every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."


title: Jews

text: Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, the Land of Israel, and many of the areas in which they have settled. This experience as refugees has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history. The patriarch Abraham is described as a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees after an attempt on his life by King Nimrod. His descendants, the Children of Israel, in the Biblical story (whose historicity is uncertain) undertook the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as recorded in the Book of Exodus.


title: Jews

text: Centuries later, Assyrian policy was to deport and displace conquered peoples, and it is estimated some 4,500,000 among captive populations suffered this dislocation over three centuries of Assyrian rule. With regard to Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III claims he deported 80% of the population of Lower Galilee, some 13,520 people. Some 27,000 Israelites, 20 to 25% of the population of the Kingdom of Israel, were described as being deported by Sargon II, and were replaced by other deported populations and sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire. Between 10,000 and 80,000 people from the Kingdom of Judah were similarly exiled by Babylonia, but these people were then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.


title: Jews

text: Many Jews were exiled again by the Roman Empire. The 2,000 year dispersion of the Jewish diaspora beginning under the Roman Empire, as Jews were spread throughout the Roman world and, driven from land to land, settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to the Iberian Peninsula to Poland to the United States and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel.


title: Jews

text: There were also many expulsions of Jews during the Middle Ages and Enlightenment in Europe, including: 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England, see the "(Statute of Jewry)"; in 1396, 100,000 from France; in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of these Jews settled in East-Central Europe, especially Poland. Following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Spanish population of around 200,000 Sephardic Jews were expelled by the Spanish crown and Catholic church, followed by expulsions in 1493 in Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa, others migrating to Southern Europe and the Middle East.


title: Jews

text: During the 19th century, France's policies of equal citizenship regardless of religion led to the immigration of Jews (especially from Eastern and Central Europe). This contributed to the arrival of millions of Jews in the New World. Over two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States from 1880 to 1925.


title: Jews

text: In summary, the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern antisemitism, the Holocaust, as well as the rise of Arab nationalism, all served to fuel the movements and migrations of huge segments of Jewry from land to land and continent to continent until they arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel.


title: Jews

text: In the latest phase of migrations, the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, California, and Long Island, New York) and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe. Similarly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the Jews in the affected territory (who had been refuseniks) were suddenly allowed to leave. This produced a wave of migration to Israel in the early 1990s.


title: Jews

text: Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population growth, although the Jewish populations of other countries, in Europe and North America, have recently increased through immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth.


title: Jews

text: Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favors seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples.


title: Jews

text: There is also a trend of Orthodox movements reaching out to secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown. Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.


title: Jews

text: Jews have made many contributions to humanity in a broad and diverse range of fields, including the sciences, arts, politics, and business. For example, over 20 percent of Nobel Prize laureates have been of Jewish descent, with multiple winners in each category.


title: Starlink

text: Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, providing satellite Internet access coverage to 45 countries. It also aims for global mobile phone service after 2023. SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. As of December 2022, Starlink consists of over 3,300 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), which communicate with designated ground transceivers. In total, nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, with a possible later extension to 42,000. SpaceX announced reaching more than one million subscribers in December 2022.


title: Starlink

text: The SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington houses the Starlink research, development, manufacturing, and orbit control teams. The cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be at least US$10 billion.


title: Starlink

text: SpaceX expects more than $30 billion in revenue by 2025 from its satellite constellation, while revenues from its launch business were expected to reach $5 billion in the same year.


title: Starlink

text: Astronomers have raised concerns about the effect the constellation can have on ground-based astronomy and how the satellites will add to an already congested orbital environment. SpaceX has attempted to mitigate astronomy concerns by implementing several upgrades to Starlink satellites aimed at reducing their brightness during operation. The satellites are equipped with krypton-fueled Hall thrusters which allow them to de-orbit at the end of their life. Additionally, the satellites are designed to autonomously avoid collisions based on uplinked tracking data.


title: Starlink

text: Constellations of low Earth orbit satellites were first conceptualized in the mid-1980s as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, where weapons were to be staged in orbit to intercept ballistic missiles on short notice. The potential for low-latency communication was also recognized and development offshoots in the 1990s led to numerous commercial megaconstellations using around 100 satellites such as Celestron, Teledesic, Iridium, and Globalstar. However all entities entered bankruptcy by the dot-com bubble burst, due in part to excessive launch costs at the time.


title: Starlink

text: In June 2004, the newly formed company SpaceX acquired a stake in Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) as part of a "shared strategic vision". SSTL was at that time working to extend the Internet into space. However, SpaceX's stake was eventually sold back to EADS Astrium in 2008 after the company became more focused on navigation and Earth observation.


title: Starlink

text: In early 2014, Elon Musk and Greg Wyler were reportedly working together planning a constellation of around 700 satellites called WorldVu, which would be over 10 times the size of the then largest Iridium satellite constellation. However, these discussions broke down by June 2014, and SpaceX instead filed an ITU application via the Norway telecom regulator under the name STEAM. SpaceX confirmed the connection in the 2016 application to license Starlink with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). SpaceX trademarked the name "Starlink" in the United States for their satellite broadband network; the name was inspired by the book "The Fault in Our Stars". While Starlink is deployed worldwide, it has encountered trademark conflicts in some countries such as Mexico.


title: Starlink

text: Starlink was publicly announced in January 2015 with the opening of the SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington. During the opening, Elon Musk stated there is still significant unmet demand worldwide for low-cost broadband capabilities. and that Starlink would target bandwidth to carry up to 50% of all backhaul communications traffic, and up to 10% of local Internet traffic, in high-density cities.


title: Starlink

text: Starting with 60 engineers, the company operated in of leased space, and by January 2017 had taken on a second facility, both in Redmond. In August 2018, SpaceX consolidated all their Seattle-area operations with a move to a larger three-building facility at Redmond Ridge Corporate Center to support satellite manufacturing in addition to R&D. In July 2016, SpaceX acquired an additional creative space in Irvine, California (Orange County). The Irvine office would include signal processing, RFIC, and ASIC development for the satellite program.


title: Starlink

text: By October 2016, the satellite division was focusing on a significant business challenge of achieving a sufficiently low-cost design for the user equipment. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said then that the project remained in the "design phase as the company seeks to tackle issues related to user-terminal cost".


title: Starlink

text: In November 2016, SpaceX filed an application with the FCC for a "non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite system in the Fixed-Satellite Service using the Ku- and Ka- frequency bands".


title: Starlink

text: In March 2017, SpaceX filed plans with the FCC to field a second orbital shell of more than 7,500 "V-band satellites in non-geosynchronous orbits to provide communications services" in an electromagnetic spectrum that has not previously been heavily employed for commercial communications services. Called the "Very-Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) constellation", it was to have comprised 7,518 satellites that were to orbit at just altitude, while the smaller, originally planned group of 4,425 satellites would operate in the K- and K-bands and orbit at altitude. In the event, by 2022 SpaceX had withdrawn plans to field the 7518-satellite V-band system superseding in with a more comprehensive Gen2 Starlink satellite design.


title: Starlink

text: In September 2017, the FCC ruled that half of the constellation must be in orbit within six years to comply with licensing terms, while the full system should be in orbit within nine years from the date of the license.


title: Starlink

text: SpaceX filed documents in late 2017 with the FCC to clarify their space debris mitigation plan, under which the company was to:


title: Starlink

text: "...implement an operations plan for the orderly de-orbit of satellites nearing the end of their useful lives (roughly five to seven years) at a rate far faster than is required under international standards. [Satellites] will de-orbit by propulsively moving to a disposal orbit from which they will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere within approximately one year after completion of their mission."


title: Starlink

text: In March 2018, the FCC granted SpaceX approval for the initial 4,425 satellites, with some conditions. SpaceX would need to obtain a separate approval from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The FCC supported a NASA request to ask SpaceX to achieve an even higher level of de-orbiting reliability than the standard that NASA had previously used for itself: reliably de-orbiting 90% of the satellites after their missions are complete.


title: Starlink

text: In May 2018, SpaceX expected the total cost of development and buildout of the constellation to approach $10 billion. In mid-2018, SpaceX reorganized the satellite development division in Redmond, and terminated several members of senior management.


title: Starlink

text: In November 2018, SpaceX received U.S. regulatory approval to deploy 7,518 V-band broadband satellites, in addition to the 4,425 approved earlier; however, the V-band plans were subsequently withdrawn by 2022.


title: Starlink

text: At the same time, SpaceX also made new regulatory filings with the U.S. FCC to request the ability to alter its previously granted license in order to operate approximately 1,600 of the 4,425 Ka-/Ku-band satellites approved for operation at in a "new lower shell of the constellation" at only orbital altitude. These satellites would effectively operate in a third orbital shell, a orbit, while the higher and lower orbits at approximately and approximately would be used only later, once a considerably larger deployment of satellites becomes possible in the later years of the deployment process. The FCC approved the request in April 2019, giving approval to place nearly 12,000 satellites in three orbital shells: initially approximately 1,600 in a – altitude shell, and subsequently placing approximately 2,800 Ku- and Ka-band spectrum satellites at and approximately 7,500 V-band satellites at . In total, nearly 12,000 satellites were planned to be deployed, with (as of 2019) a possible later extension to 42,000.


title: Starlink

text: In February 2019, a sister company of SpaceX, SpaceX Services Inc., filed a request with the FCC to receive a license for the operation of up to a million fixed satellite Earth stations that would communicate with its non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite Starlink system.


title: Starlink

text: In June 2019, SpaceX applied to the FCC for a license to test up to 270 ground terminals – 70 nationwide across the United States and 200 in Washington state at SpaceX employee homes – and aircraft-borne antenna operation from four distributed United States airfields; as well as five ground-to-ground test locations.


title: Starlink

text: By late 2019, SpaceX was transitioning their satellite efforts from research and development to manufacturing, with the planned first launch of a large group of satellites to orbit, and the clear need to achieve an average launch rate of "44 high-performance, low-cost spacecraft built and launched every month for the next 60 months" to get the 2,200 satellites launched to support their FCC spectrum allocation license assignment. SpaceX said they will meet the deadline of having half the constellation "in orbit within six years of authorization... and the full system in nine years".


title: Starlink

text: On 15 October 2019, the United States FCC submitted filings to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on SpaceX's behalf to arrange spectrum for 30,000 additional Starlink satellites to supplement the 12,000 Starlink satellites already approved by the FCC.


title: Starlink

text: That month, Elon Musk publicly tested the Starlink network by using an Internet connection routed through the network to post a first tweet to social media site Twitter.


title: Starlink

text: In November 2020, Starlink beta internet service was opened to the public. Starlink beta testers reported speeds over 150 megabits per second, above the range announced for the public beta test.


title: Starlink

text: In February 2021, SpaceX opened up pre-orders to the public. SpaceX completed raising an additional $3.5 billion in equity financing over the previous six months, to support the capital-intensive phase of the operational fielding of Starlink, plus the development of the Starship launch system. In April 2021, SpaceX clarified that they have already tested two generations of Starlink technology, with the second one having been less expensive than the first. The third generation, with laser inter-satellite links, is expected to begin launching "in the next few months [and will be] much less expensive than earlier versions".


title: Starlink

text: , SpaceX has over 3000 Starlink satellites in orbit, and announced having over one million active subscribers. They continue to launch up to 53 more satellites per Falcon 9 flight.


title: Starlink

text: On 6 November 2020, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada announced regulatory approval for the Starlink low Earth orbit satellite constellation.


title: Starlink

text: The FCC initially awarded SpaceX with $885.5 million worth of federal subsidies to support rural broadband customers through the company's Starlink satellite Internet network. SpaceX won subsidies to bring service to customers in 35 U.S. states. The $885.5 million aid package was revoked in August 2022, with the FCC stating that Starlink "failed to demonstrate" its ability to deliver the promised service. SpaceX later appealed the decision saying they met or surpassed all RDOF deployment requirements that existed during bidding and that the FCC created "new standards that no bidder could meet today".


title: Starlink

text: In March 2021, SpaceX put an application into FCC for mobile variations of their terminal for vehicles, vessels and aircraft.


title: Starlink

text: In May 2021, SpaceX announced agreements with Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure to provide on-ground compute and networking services for Starlink. Viasat made a legal attempt to temporarily halt Starlink launches.


title: Starlink

text: In June 2021, SpaceX applied to the FCC to use mobile Starlink transceivers on launch vehicles flying to Earth orbit, after having previously tested high-altitude low-velocity mobile use on a rocket prototype in May 2021.


title: Starlink

text: By 1 October 2021, SpaceX had sold 5000 Starlink preorders in India, and announced that Sanjay Bhargava, who had worked with Elon Musk as part of a team that founded electronic payment firm PayPal, would head the tech billionaire entrepreneur's Starlink satellite broadband venture in India. Three months later, Bhargava resigned "for personal reasons" following the Indian government ordering SpaceX to halt selling preorders for Starlink service until SpaceX gains regulatory approval for providing satellite internet services in the country.


title: Starlink

text: In 2022 SpaceX announced the "Starlink Business" service tier. The FCC also approved the licensing of Starlink services to boats, aircraft, and moving vehicles.


title: Starlink

text: In May 2022, Starlink entered the Philippine market, and is the company's first Asian deployment, due to a landmark legislative change (RA 11659, Public Services Act) about all-foreign allowance of company ownership in regards to utility entities such as internet and telco companies. Starlink was able to obtain a provisional permission from the country's Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DICT), National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and will soon start commercial services, aimed at regions with lower internet connectivity.


title: Starlink

text: In May 2022, Chinese military researchers published an article in a peer-reviewed journal describing a strategy for destroying the Starlink constellation if they threaten national security. The researchers specifically highlight concerns with reported Starlink military capabilities. Musk later announced that "Starlink is meant for peaceful use... to mend the fault in our stars". The head of Russia's space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, had earlier warned Musk that "you will have to answer in an adult way, Elon, no matter how you play the fool."


title: Starlink

text: In August 2022, SpaceX secured its first contract for services in the passenger shipping industry. Royal Caribbean Group has added Starlink internet to Freedom of the Seas and plans to offer the service on 50 ships under its Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and Silversea Cruises brands by March 2023. Starlink services on private jet charter flights in the US by JSX are expected to begin in late 2022, and Hawaiian Airlines has contracted to provide "Starlink services on transpacific flights to and from Hawaii in 2023."


title: Starlink

text: According to Ookla, between Q1 and Q2 2022, Starlink speeds decreased worldwide as more people signed up for Starlink, although SpaceX has said that Starlink speeds will improve once more satellites are operational.


title: Starlink

text: On 1 December 2022, the FCC issued an approval for SpaceX to launch the initial 7500 satellites for its second generation (Gen2) constellation, in three low-Earth-orbit orbital shells, at 525, 530, and 535 km altitude. Overall, SpaceX had requested approval for as many as 29,988 Gen2 satellites, with approximately 10,000 in the 525–535 km altitude shells, plus ~20,000 in 340–360 km shells and nearly 500 in 604–614-km shells. However, the FCC noted that this is not a net increase in approved on-orbit satellites for SpaceX since SpaceX is no longer planning to deploy 7518 V-band satellites at altitude that had previously been authorized.


title: Starlink

text: Starlink provides satellite internet connectivity to underserved areas of the planet, as well as competitively priced service in more urbanized areas. The company has stated that the positive cash flow from selling satellite internet services would be necessary to fund their Mars plans. Furthermore, SpaceX has long-term plans to develop and deploy a version of the satellite communication system to serve Mars.


title: Starlink

text: In October 2020, SpaceX launched a paid-for beta service in the U.S. called "Better Than Nothing Beta", charging $499 for a user terminal, with an expected service of "50 Mbps to 150 Mbps and latency from 20 ms to 40 ms over the next several months". From January 2021, the paid-for beta service was extended to other countries, starting with the United Kingdom.


title: Starlink

text: The initial version of Starlink was limited to working within a few miles of the customers' registered address. In April 2021, Musk tweeted that users would be able to move the Starlink unit anywhere by the end of the year after more satellite launches and software updates.


title: Starlink

text: In February 2022, SpaceX announced "Starlink Business", a higher performance edition of the service. It provides a larger high-performance antenna and listed speeds of between 150 and 500Mbit/s, with a cost of $2500 for the antenna and a $500 monthly service fee. The service includes 24/7, prioritized support. Deliveries are advertised to begin in the second quarter of 2022.


title: Starlink

text: On 23 May 2022, SpaceX rolled out "Starlink For RVs", a new edition of the service that lets customers pay more to skip waitlists to connect to its broadband satellites without a fixed address, although connection speeds for other users will be prioritized.


title: Starlink

text: On 7 July 2022 SpaceX announced "Starlink Maritime", a new addition to help support users, and companies, on the ocean. Only working on the water, unable to work on land, the advertised speed for the service is set up to 350 Mbps. However it comes at the one time price of $10,000 for the two user terminals, and $5,000 monthly price.


title: Starlink

text: In August 2022 SpaceX lowered monthly service costs for users in select countries. Users in Brazil and Chile are reporting decreases of about 50%.


title: Starlink

text: In September 2022, SpaceX sent out an email to users with pre-orders about a service called "Best Effort". It allows those still waiting in a full capacity cell to receive the unused bandwidth of their cell, while still being on the waiting list for more prioritized service. The price and equipment are the same as the residential service coming in at $110 per month.


title: Starlink

text: In August 2022, T-Mobile US and SpaceX announced a partnership to add satellite cellular service to Starlink Gen2 satellites, and provide dead-zone cell phone coverage across the US using existing midband PCS spectrum that T-Mobile owns. Cell coverage will begin with messaging and expand to include voice and limited data services later, with testing to begin in 2023. With Starlink Gen2 sats in low-Earth orbit using existing PCS spectrum, T-Mobile plans to be able to connect by satellite to ordinary mobile devices, unlike previous generations of satellite phones which used specialized Earth-bound radios to connect to geosynchronous satellites with characteristic long communications lag time. T-Mobile has offered to extend the offering globally if cellular carriers in other countries wish to exchange roaming services via the T-Mobile partnership with SpaceX, with other carriers responsible for working with their regulators to enable midband data communication landing rights on a country-by-country basis. Bandwidth will be limited to approximately 2 to 4 megabits per second spread across a very large cell coverage area; so limited to approximately 1000 to 2000 voice calls, or millions of text messages, across an entire cell. The size of a single coverage cell has not yet been publicly released, but the satellites are 7 meters long, and the antenna would fold out to be "roughly 25 square meters".


title: Starlink

text: In March 2018, the Space Development Agency (SDA) was formed by Under Secretary of Defense Michael D. Griffin as part of a Trump Administration initiative to resurrect the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). SDA accelerates development of missile defense capabilities using industry-procured low-cost low Earth orbit satellite platforms.


title: Starlink

text: In October 2020, SDA awarded SpaceX an initial $150 million dual-use contract to develop a deluxe military version of the Starlink satellite bus. The first tranche of satellites were originally scheduled to launch September 2022 to form part of the Tracking Layer of the Space Force's National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA). However, the launch schedule slipped to mid-December 2022 after supply-chain difficulties arose procuring "space qualified microelectronics for components such as radios."


title: Starlink

text: The NDSA will be composed of seven layers with specific functions: data transport, battle management, missile tracking, custody/weapons targeting, navigation/PNT, deterrence, and ground support. Historically, space-based missile defense concepts (e.g., Brilliant Pebbles) were expensive, but reusable launch systems have mitigated costs according to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office analysis. NSDA leverages existing commercial satellite bus development such as Starlink to reduce costs, including free-space optical laser terminals for a secure command and control mesh network. The 2019 Missile Defense Review notes space-based sensing enables "improved tracking and potentially targeting of advanced threats, including HGVs and hypersonic cruise missiles". " However, the Union of Concerned Scientists warns developments could escalate tensions with Russia and China and called the project "fundamentally destabilizing". The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace later advocated for a treaty halting development to prevent an arms race in space.


title: Starlink

text: Starlink's military satellite development is overseen internally at SpaceX by retired four-star general Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy. O'Shaughnessy advocated before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services for a layered capability with lethal follow-on that incorporates machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather and act upon sensor data quickly.


title: Starlink

text: In December 2022, SpaceX announced Starshield, a program to incorporate military or government entity payloads onboard a Starshield satellite bus (based on Starlink Block v1.5 and v2.0 technology). These satellites are heavier, with twice the area as a single Starlink v1.5 and have two pair of solar arrays as opposed to one on Starlink Block v1.5. While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for US government use, with an initial focus on three areas, namely, earth observation, communications and hosting payloads.


title: Starlink

text: Designed to meet diverse mission requirements, Starshield satellites are capable of integrating a wide variety of payloads, offering unique versatility to users. Starshield will be compatible with the Starlink constellation to interoperate. “Starlink's inter-satellite laser communications terminal, which is the only communications laser operating at scale in orbit today, can be integrated onto partner satellites to enable incorporation into the Starshield network.


title: Starlink

text: In January 2022, SpaceX deployed four national security satellites for the US government on their Transporter-3 rideshare mission. In the same year they launched another group of four US satellites with a single on-orbit spare Globalstar FM-15 satellite in June. Their purpose was not disclosed at the time of launch, but was considered likely either technical demonstration, communications, earth observation or signals intelligence.


title: Starlink

text: It is likely the four SpaceX-built Tranche 0 Tracking Layer satellites due to launch in Q1 2023 are also based on the Starshield satellite bus.


title: Starlink

text: In 2019, tests by the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) demonstrated a 610 Mbit/s data link through Starlink to a Beechcraft C-12 Huron aircraft in flight. Additionally, in late 2019, the United States Air Force successfully tested a connection with Starlink on an AC-130 Gunship.


title: Starlink

text: In 2020, United States Air Force utilized Starlink in support of its Advanced Battlefield management system during a live-fire exercise. They demonstrated Starlink connected to a "variety of air and terrestrial assets" including the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.