title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Half-Life: Alyx is a 2020 virtual reality (VR) first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve. It was released for Windows and Linux with support for most PC-compatible VR headsets. Set five years before "Half-Life 2" (2004), players control Alyx Vance on a mission to seize a superweapon belonging to the alien Combine. Like previous "Half-Life" games, "Alyx" incorporates combat, puzzles, exploration and survival horror. Players use VR to interact with the environment and fight enemies, using "gravity gloves" to snatch objects from a distance, similarly to the gravity gun from "Half-Life 2".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: The previous "Half-Life" game, "", was released in 2007 and ended on a cliffhanger. Valve made several attempts to develop further "Half-Life" games, but could not settle on a direction. In the mid-2010s, Valve began experimenting with VR. Recognizing the demand for a major VR game, they experimented with prototypes using their various intellectual properties such as "Portal", and found that "Half-Life" best suited VR.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Half-Life: Alyx" entered production using Valve's new Source 2 engine in 2016, with the largest team in Valve's history, including members of Campo Santo, a studio Valve acquired in 2018. VR affected almost every aspect of the design, including combat, movement, level design, and pacing. Valve initially planned to launch "Alyx" alongside its Index VR headset in 2019, but delayed it following internal feedback about the story by their new writer, Rob Yescombe; Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton rejoined Valve to rewrite it.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Half-Life: Alyx" received acclaim for its graphics, voice acting, narrative, and atmosphere, and has been cited as VR's first killer app. It was nominated for numerous awards and won "Best VR/AR" at the 2020 Game Awards. Valve acknowledged that the audience for VR games was limited; Gabe Newell, the president of Valve, described "Alyx" as a long-term investment into new technologies.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Half-Life: Alyx" is a virtual reality game (VR) that supports all SteamVR-compatible VR headsets, which include the Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest and all Windows Mixed Reality headsets. As the gameplay was designed for VR, Valve said they had no plans for a non-VR version. "Half-Life: Alyx" also supports user mods via the Steam Workshop.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Players control the Resistance member Alyx Vance as she and her father Eli Vance fight the Combine, an alien empire that has conquered Earth. The designer David Speyrer said "Alyx" was not an episodic game or side story, but "the next part of the "Half-Life" story", around the same length as "Half-Life 2." Players use VR to get supplies, use interfaces, throw objects, and engage in combat. Like the gravity gun from "Half-Life 2", the gravity gloves allow players to pick up objects from a distance. The game includes traditional "Half-Life" elements such as exploration, puzzles, combat, and story. While it is primarily a first-person shooter, it adds elements of the survival horror genre, as health and ammo are more scarce, and includes frightening encounters.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Players can physically move around in room scale to move Alyx in-game. Alternatively, they can use analog sticks on the VR controllers to move Alyx as in a traditional game, teleport to nearby points, or use an intermediate mode to "glide" to selected points. When players teleport, the game simulates movement even though the action is instantaneous. Alyx may die if attacked or moved from too great a height.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Half-Life: Alyx" takes place five years before the events of "Half-Life 2." Earth has been conquered by the alien Combine, who have implemented a brutal police state. In City 17, teenage Alyx and her father Dr. Eli Vance, both members of a human resistance movement, are stealing Combine resources. After they are captured by the Combine, resistance member Russell rescues Alyx and warns her that Eli will be transported to Nova Prospekt for interrogation. To intercept the train carrying Eli, Alyx ventures into the quarantine zone, an area inside City 17 infested with parasitic alien life. Along the way, she meets an eccentric Vortigaunt named Gary who asks Alyx to save his fellow Vortigaunts and foresees that Eli will die.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Inside the Quarantine Zone, Alyx derails the train and Gary rescues Eli from the wreckage. While in custody, Eli has learned that the Combine are storing a superweapon in a massive vault that hovers above the quarantine zone; he instructs Alyx to find the vault and steal its contents. Alyx ventures through the Quarantine Zone, contending with aliens and Combine soldiers. She shuts down a power station keeping the vault afloat, and discovers that each station contains enslaved Vortigaunts forced to channel their energies to the vault. The Vortigaunt she rescues promises that he and the others will take down the remaining power stations.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Eli contacts Alyx and warns her that the vault does not contain a weapon; it is a prison built around an apartment complex to contain something the Combine discovered. Alyx, Eli and Russell reason that whatever is inside can help them fight the Combine. As she approaches the vault, Alyx overhears a scientist mentioning to Combine superiors that the occupant is a survivor of the Black Mesa incident. Assuming the survivor is Gordon Freeman, Alyx aims to mount a rescue and crashes the vault to the ground.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Inside the vault, Alyx finds the apartment complex around which it was built. Anomalous physical phenomena permeate the building; objects float in antigravity, and mirrored rooms are stacked on top of one another. Alyx discovers an advanced prison cell in its center. She breaks it open, expecting to find Gordon, but instead releases the mysterious G-Man. As a reward, the G-Man offers his services to Alyx. She requests he remove the Combine from Earth, but the G-Man claims that the interests of his "employers" are not strong enough to justify such a significant change. He instead transfers her to the future, and offers her the chance to change the outcome of Eli's death at the hands of a Combine Advisor at the end of "". Alyx complies, killing the Advisor and saving her father. The G-Man informs Alyx that she has proven herself capable of replacing Gordon, with whom the G-Man has grown dissatisfied. He traps Alyx in stasis and leaves.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Gordon regains consciousness in White Forest base. Eli is alive, but Alyx is missing. Eli realizes what has happened to Alyx, declares his intention to kill the G-Man, and hands Gordon his crowbar.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: After the release of "Half-Life 2" in 2004, Valve began developing a trilogy of episodic sequels, planning to release shorter games more frequently. "" was released in 2006, followed by "" in 2007, which ended on a cliffhanger. "" was scheduled for 2008, but was canceled. The designer Robin Walker said that Valve used the "Half-Life" series to "solve some interesting collision of technology and art that had reared itself"; when working on "Episode Three", Valve failed to find a unifying idea that provided a sense of "wonderment, or opening, or expansion".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve abandoned episodic development and made several failed attempts to develop further "Half-Life" projects. Walker blamed the lack of progress on Valve's flat management structure, whereby employees decide what to work on themselves. He said the team eventually decided that "we would all be happier if we worked on a big thing, even if it’s not exactly what we wanted to work on".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve decided to complete its new engine, Source 2, before beginning a new game, as developing "Half-Life 2" and the original Source engine simultaneously had created problems. In 2016 and 2017, the "Half-Life" writers Marc Laidlaw, Erik Wolpaw, Jay Pinkerton and Chet Faliszek left Valve; coupled with Valve's support for their other franchises, journalists took the departures as an indicator that new "Half-Life" games were no longer in development.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: In 2015, Valve collaborated with the electronics company HTC to develop the HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset released in 2016. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, aimed for Valve to become more like Nintendo, which develops games in tandem with hardware and allows them to create innovative games such as "Super Mario 64". Valve experimented with VR, and in 2016 released "The Lab", a collection of VR minigames. Valve recognized that many players wanted a more ambitious VR AAA game, and began exploring the development of a major VR game. Walker wondered if they could develop a VR "killer app", as the influential FPS "Doom" had been in 1993.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve developed several VR prototypes, with three projects under development by 2017. Finding that the portal systems of their puzzle series "Portal" were disorienting in VR, they settled on "Half-Life". Walker said that "Half-Life 3" had been a "terrifyingly daunting prospect", and the team saw VR as a way to return to the series. Additionally, Valve anticipated that fans would react negatively if "Half-Life 3" were a VR-only game, and felt that a prequel carried less weight.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve built prototypes using "Half-Life 2" assets, and narrowed the gameplay systems to those they felt best fit VR. They found that the "Half-Life" systems were a "surprisingly natural fit" for VR, but that VR affected almost every aspect of the design, including combat, level design and pacing; for example, shooting in VR, which requires the player to physically position their hand in space, is a different experience from aiming with traditional mouse-and-keyboard controls.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Half-Life: Alyx" entered development around February 2016, and entered full production later that year. The team, comprising around 80 people, was the largest in Valve's history, and included Campo Santo, a studio Valve acquired in 2018. As Valve had repeatedly failed to see projects through, some staff were reluctant to join and many were skeptical that VR was the right direction.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve did not develop a non-VR version of "Alyx", as they were confident that the game would only be possible in VR. They anticipated that fans would modify it to run without VR equipment; though this bothered some on the team, Walker was not concerned, as he believed it would offer an inferior experience that would demonstrate why they had chosen VR.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: In late 2018, Valve held a company-wide playtest of the entire game; the results convinced the team that VR had been the right choice. The final weeks of development took place remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mike Morasky, composer for "Portal 2" and "Team Fortress 2", wrote the score in consultation with Kelly Bailey, the composer for previous "Half-Life" games. He cited industrial music by acts such as Nine Inch Nails, the Prodigy and Skinny Puppy as inspiration.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: To mitigate the problem of motion sickness in VR, Valve implemented several movement options. They cited inspiration from the 2018 VR game "Budget Cuts", which uses teleporting to move the player between locations. Valve had assumed that teleportation would damage the experience; however, though teleporting appears jarring when watching others use it, they found that players quickly became accustomed to it. According to Walker, "It recedes to the background of your mind, and you become much more focused on what you're doing with it."


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: To disincentivize players from quickly teleporting through levels, Valve filled areas with elements to capture their attention and slow them down, such as threats, collectables or other elements of interest. To solve the problem of taller players having to crouch when moving through some spaces, Valve standardized their virtual body size when they teleport, effectively making every player the same height when teleporting. They found that players did not notice this discrepancy as they were focused on moving to their goal.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Every weapon can be used one-handed, as Valve wanted players to have a hand free to interact with the world at all times. The crowbar, an iconic weapon from previous "Half-Life" games, was omitted as Valve could not make melee combat work in VR, and because players would accidentally catch it on objects in the game world as they moved, creating confusion. Additionally, players associated the crowbar with Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of previous games. Valve wanted to create a different identity for Alyx, portraying her as a "hacker and tinkerer". Other discarded weapon concepts include a trip mine, slingshot, shield, and rocket launcher.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: As players move at more realistic speeds in VR compared to typical FPS games, Valve had to adjust enemies to make combat fair and fun. Antlions, returning enemies from "Half-Life 2", would quickly overwhelm players; the team slowed their movement and added the ability to shoot their legs off to slow them down. Fast zombies and fast headcrabs, also introduced in "Half-Life 2", were cut as they were too frightening for some players in VR. According to the designer Dario Casali, "The shock of having [fast headcrabs] come around the corner and latch onto you before you'd even know what was going on was just too much."


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Merle Dandridge reprised her role as Alyx for initial recording sessions in March 2019, but after playtests indicated that Alyx needed a younger voice, Ozioma Akagha was cast in September 2019. Akagha avoided using irritation in her performance, as "you don't want someone in your head that sounds irritated with you".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Additional actors include James Moses Black as Eli, replacing Robert Guillaume, who died in 2017, and Rhys Darby as Russell, who added comedic elements. Returning actors include Tony Todd as the alien Vortigaunts, Mike Shapiro as the G-Man, and Ellen McLain as the voice of the Combine broadcasts. Shapiro recorded his lines in one 20-minute take, with pickups in 2019. Cissy Jones (Olga) and Rich Sommer (Larry, Russell's Drone, and Combine Soldiers) were cast at the suggestion of writer Sean Vanaman, who had worked with them on Campo Santo's "Firewatch" (2016).


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: The former Valve writers Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton turned down invitations to return to Valve early in the "Alyx" development. Instead, Valve recruited Rob Yescombe of "The Invisible Hours", who worked on "Alyx" in 2017 and 2018. Yescombe's narrative was darker than other "Half-Life" games, with scenes of dread, torture and horror. The antagonist was a female Combine officer named Hahn; in one proposed ending, Alyx would kill Hahn in revenge for torturing her father. Yescombe also proposed an ending in which Alyx and the G-Man would travel back in time to the events of the first "Half-Life" to prevent Freeman from triggering the alien invasion.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: After the company-wide playtest in 2018, feedback was overwhelmingly positive but for the story, which employees scored the lowest of any Valve game. Morasky described it as "dark, serious and laborious", likening it to a Zack Snyder superhero film. Designer Corey Peters said the team had a "strong feeling" about the story and that it had been "validating" to get the feedback.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve initially planned to launch "Alyx" alongside its Index VR headset in June 2019, but delayed it to address the story. They re-enlisted Wolpaw and Pinkerton to rewrite the plot and dialogue from scratch while preserving the gameplay. They were joined by Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, who had joined the company when Valve acquired Campo Santo. Marc Laidlaw, who retired from Valve in 2016, provided consultation.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: The new writers identified three problems. First, the nature of a prequel meant that players knew the characters would survive, reducing suspense. Second, the story did not have an impact on the overall "Half-Life" story; the writers did not want it to feel "just like a hermetically sealed short story in the world of "Half-Life"". Third, the game had to end with an encounter with G-Man, essentially a god, giving Alyx something for freeing him; the writers could not imagine what this could be. Walker said the team did not want the ending to be something "you could just ignore", and knew that fans had been in a "narrative limbo" since "Episode Two", which they wanted to change.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Having Alyx and the G-Man travel forward in time and rescue Eli at the end of "Episode Two" was suggested by the character artist Jim Murray. The team was reluctant, as this undid the "Episode Two" cliffhanger, but were intrigued by the questions it raised about the world and how it pushed the "Half-Life" story forward. The change required Valve to create new assets, such as the "Episode Two" White Forest helicopter hangar and models for Dog, an older Eli, and Gordon Freeman. The red herring, wherein Alyx believes she is rescuing Gordon Freeman before discovering the G-Man, was conceived by Vanaman late in production. As there was no character model for the Combine scientist Alyx overhears, the scene was animated in shadow play.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: While previous Valve games use silent protagonists, the writers found that having Alyx speak improved the storytelling. They added radio dialog between Alyx and Russell as a simple way to "bring the energy up" whenever needed. The final script ran to 280 pages, compared to 128 pages for "Half-Life 2" and 18 for "Half-Life".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve announced "Half-Life: Alyx" in November 2019. Valve waited until the game was almost complete before announcing it, aiming to avoid the delays of previous games. They were conscious that players, having waited years for a new "Half-Life" game, might be disappointed by a VR game, and tightly managed the announcement. To promote "Alyx", Valve made the prior "Half-Life" games free on Steam from January 2020 until its release. Valve was due to showcase "Alyx" at the 2019 Game Awards that December, but canceled hours prior, saying they were "hard at work on the game".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Alyx" was free to owners of Valve Index headsets or controllers. "Alyx" was released on March 23, 2020. Valve released a Linux version on May 15, 2020, along with Vulkan rendering support for both platforms. A pre-release build was mistakenly released on Steam; it included non-VR developer tools, allowing interactions such as picking up objects and firing weapons. However, most of the basic interactions, such as pressing buttons or filling Alyx's backpack, could not be completed with the "use" key.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: When asked about plans for future "Half-Life" games, the designer David Speyrer said Valve was willing but were waiting for the reaction to "Alyx". According to Walker, "We absolutely see "Half-Life: Alyx" as our return to this world, not the end of it." Mod support tools for the Source 2 engine and Steam Workshop support for "Half-Life: Alyx" were released on May 15, 2020. Valve announced plans to release a new Hammer level editor for Source 2. They planned to release a partial Source 2 software development kit for the updated features at a later date, with the focus at launch on shipping and supporting "Alyx".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Half-Life: Alyx" received "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator Metacritic. By April 2020, it was one of the 20 highest-rated PC games on Metacritic. Reviewers at publications such as "VG247", "Tom's Hardware", and "Video Games Chronicle" described it as VR's "killer app".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: The announcement trailer was watched over 10 million times within the first 24 hours of its release. Though most fans expressed excitement, some were disappointed that the game was only available in VR, a small but growing market in 2019. Before the game's release, Vic Hood of "TechRadar" expressed enthusiasm for "Alyx", but wrote that "we forever live in hope for a "Half-Life 3"".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Kevin Webb of "Business Insider" wrote that "Alyx" could "spark fresh interest in an industry [VR] that has struggled to win over hardcore gamers". Andrew King of "USGamer" also suggested that "Alyx" would be the "make or break VR Jesus Moment" for the modding community, in whether the players would be interested and be capable of using the tools provided by Valve to produce new creations that took advantage of VR space, as modification within VR space had traditionally been difficult to work with prior to this point. "Alyx" also won the Easy Allies 2020 awards for both Best World Design and Game of the Year.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: In "Polygon", Ben Kuchera wrote of how "Alyx" used VR to transform traditional FPS systems; for example, he felt that reloading guns, traditionally done with a single button press, was more fun in VR. He wrote: "The magic lies in being "inside" the world, being able to touch it, and interact with it, directly. The game’s design and pacing would lose all meaning if played as a standard game, even if more players would be able to experience the story for its own sake."


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: Valve's Greg Coomer said Valve knew many people would not play the game on launch, and that its audience was "relatively small right now". Newell described it as a "forward investment" into long-term technologies. In 2021, "PCGamesN" wrote that though it was "artfully crafted", "Alyx" had had "all the cultural impact of a Michael Bublé album".


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: The Valve Index headset, controllers, and base stations all sold out in the United States, Canada, and Europe within a week of the game's announcement. By mid-January 2020, they were sold out in all 31 regions the units were offered. According to Superdata, Valve sold 103,000 Index units in the fourth quarter of 2019 as a result of the "Alyx" announcements, compared to the total 149,000 sold throughout 2019, and it was the highest-selling VR headset for PCs during that quarter. Though Valve had expected to supply several Index pre-orders in time for the release of "Alyx", the COVID-19 pandemic limited their supply chain.


title: Half-Life: Alyx

text: "Half-Life: Alyx" won "Game of the Year" at the 2020 VR Awards. At The Game Awards 2020, it was nominated for "Best Game Direction", "Best Audio Design", and "Best Action", and won for "Best VR/AR" game. At the 17th British Academy Games Awards, it was nominated for "Best Game", "Game Direction", "Audio Achievement", and "Artistic Achievement".


title: History of Israel

text: Israel, also known as the Holy Land or Palestine, is the birthplace of the Jewish people, the place where the final form of the Hebrew Bible is thought to have been compiled, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. In the course of history, the region has come under the sway of various empires and, as a result, has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups. Today it contains sites that are sacred to many Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, and the Baháʼí Faith.


title: History of Israel

text: First known in the historical record as Canaan, the area became a hotbed of competing civilisations and cultures, including that of the Israelites, resulting in the emergence of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel, Judah and Philistia. The region was subsequently invaded, conquered and administered to varying degrees by Assyria, Babylonia, Persia and Macedonian Greece. A brief era of independence under Hasmonean rule ended when the region was incorporated into the Roman Republic. With the advent and rise of Christianity and its adoption by the Greco-Roman world under the Roman Empire in the 4th century, Christians became a majority in the Levant until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. The region then saw the intermittent warfare of the Crusades and the Mongol invasion. From the 13th century, the region was part of the Mamluk Sultanate, and, from the 16th century, a province of the Ottoman Empire.


title: History of Israel

text: The late 19th century saw the widespread consolidation of a Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism, as part of which "aliyah" (Jewish return to the Land of Israel from the diaspora) increased. During World War I, the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the Allies led to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was granted control of the region by League of Nations mandate, in what became known as Mandatory Palestine. The British government publicly committed itself to the creation of a Jewish homeland. Arab nationalism opposed this design, asserting Arab rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish migration. As a result, Arab–Jewish tensions grew in the succeeding decades of British administration.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1948, the Israeli Declaration of Independence sparked the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in the 1948 Palestinian exodus and subsequently led to waves of Jewish emigration from other parts of the Middle East. Today, approximately 43 percent of the global Jewish population resides in Israel. In 1979, the Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed, based on the Camp David Accords. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo I Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was followed by the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed. Despite efforts to finalize the peace agreement, the conflict continues to play a major role in Israeli and international political, social, and economic life.


title: History of Israel

text: The oldest evidence of early humans in the territory of modern Israel, dating to 1.5 million years ago, was found in Ubeidiya near the Sea of Galilee. Flint tool artefacts have been discovered at Yiron, the oldest stone tools found anywhere outside Africa. Other groups include 1.4 million years old Acheulean industry, the Bizat Ruhama group and Gesher Bnot Yaakov.


title: History of Israel

text: In the Mount Carmel area at el-Tabun, and Es Skhul, Neanderthal and early modern human remains were found, showing the longest stratigraphic record in the region, spanning 600,000 years of human activity, from the Lower Paleolithic to the present day, representing roughly a million years of human evolution. Other notable Paleolithic sites include caves Qesem and Manot. The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans found outside Africa are the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids, who lived in northern Israel 120,000 years ago. Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.


title: History of Israel

text: The Canaanites are archaeologically attested in the Middle Bronze Age (2100–1550 BCE). There were probably independent or semi-independent city-states. Cities were often surrounded by massive earthworks, resulting in the archeological tells common in the region today. In the late Middle Bronze Age, the Nile Delta in Egypt was settled by Canaanites who maintained close connections with Canaan. During that period, the Hyksos, dynasties of Canaanite/Asiatic origin, ruled much of Lower Egypt before being overthrown in the 16th century BCE.


title: History of Israel

text: During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), there were Canaanite vassal states paying tribute to the New Kingdom of Egypt, which governed from Gaza. In 1457 BCE, Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III defeated a rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by Kadesh's king at the Battle of Megiddo.


title: History of Israel

text: In the Late Bronze Age there was a period of civilizational collapse in the Middle East, Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control ended. There is evidence that urban centers such as Hazor, Beit She'an, Megiddo, Ekron, Ashdod and Ashkelon were damaged or destroyed. Two groups appear at this time, and are associated with the transition to the Iron Age (they used iron weapons/tools which were better than earlier bronze): the Sea Peoples, particularly the Philistines, who migrated from the Aegean world and settled on the southern coast, and the Israelites, whose settlements dotted the highlands.


title: History of Israel

text: The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel (as "") occurs in the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, erected for Pharaoh Merneptah (son of Ramesses II) c. 1209 BCE, which states "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not." Archeological evidence indicates that during the early Iron Age I, hundreds of small villages were established on the highlands of Canaan on both sides of the Jordan River, primarily in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. These villages had populations of up to 400, were largely self-sufficient and lived from herding, grain cultivation, and growing vines and olives with some economic interchange. The pottery was plain and undecorated. Writing was known and available for recording, even in small sites. William G. Dever sees this "Israel" in the central highlands as a cultural and probably political entity, more an ethnic group rather than an organized state.


title: History of Israel

text: Modern scholars believe that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples and their cultures through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centred on a national god Yahweh. According to McNutt, "It is probably safe to assume that sometime during Iron Age I a population began to identify itself as 'Israelite'", differentiating itself from the Canaanites through such markers as the prohibition of intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion. Monotheism, the belief in a single all-powerful law-giving God, is thought to have evolved among the Israelites gradually, over the next few centuries, from a number of separate cults, leading to the first versions of the religion now known as Judaism.


title: History of Israel

text: The first grapheme-based writing originated in the area, probably among Canaanites resident in Egypt. This evolved into the Phoenician alphabet from which all modern alphabetical writing systems are descended. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was one of the earliest and evidence of its use exists from about 1000 BCE (see the Gezer calendar), while the language spoken was Biblical Hebrew.


title: History of Israel

text: Philistine cooking tools and the prevalence of pork in their diets, and locally made Mycenaean pottery—which later evolved into bichrome Philistine pottery—all support their foreign origin. Their cities were large and elaborate, which—together with the findings—point out to a complex, hierarchical society.


title: History of Israel

text: The Hebrew Bible states that the United Kingdom of Israel, which included the territories of Judah and Israel, was founded in the late 11th century BCE by king Saul. Following Saul's death, David ascended to the throne, conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital, and enlarged the kingdom's borders to include neighboring kingdoms. After his death, Solomon inherited his empire and constructed the First Temple in Jerusalem. According to the biblical narrative, around 930 BCE, following the death of Solomon, the kingdom split into a southern Kingdom of Judah and a northern Kingdom of Israel.


title: History of Israel

text: Archeologists have debated whether the united monarchy ever existed, but recent evidence suggests that a polity ruled by David and Solomon did exist. However this is not universally accepted and the extent of this rule is likely smaller than that suggested in the Bible.


title: History of Israel

text: Historians and archaeologists agree that the northern Kingdom of Israel existed by 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah existed by 850 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two kingdoms and soon developed into a regional power; during the days of the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Sharon and large parts of the Transjordan. Samaria, the capital, was home to one of the largest Iron Age structures in the Levant. The Kingdom of Israel's capital moved between Shechem, Penuel and Tirzah before Omri settled it in Samaria, and the royal succession was often settled by a military coup d'état. The Kingdom of Judah was smaller but more stable; the Davidic dynasty ruled the kingdom for the four centuries of its existence, with the capital always in Jerusalem, controlling the Judaean Mountains, most of the Shephelah and the Beersheba valley in the northern Negev.


title: History of Israel

text: In 854 BCE, according to Assyrian records (the Kurkh Monoliths), an alliance between Ahab of Israel and Ben Hadad II of Aram-Damascus managed to repulse the incursions of the Assyrians, with a victory at the Battle of Qarqar. This is not reported in the Bible which describes conflict between Ahab and Ben Hadad. Another important discovery of the period is the Mesha Stele, a Moabite stele found in Dhiban, now in the Louvre. In the stele, Mesha, king of Moab, tells how Chemosh, the god of Moab, had been angry with his people and had allowed them to be subjugated to the Kingdom of Israel, but at length, Chemosh returned and assisted Mesha to throw off the yoke of Israel and restore the lands of Moab. It refers to Omri, king of Israel, to the god Yahweh, and may contain another early reference to the House of David. Jehu, son of Omri, is referenced by the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.


title: History of Israel

text: Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria invaded Israel in around 732 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians following a long siege of the capital Samaria around 720 BCE. The records of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he captured Samaria and deported 27,290 inhabitants to Mesopotamia. It is likely that Shalmaneser captured the city since both the Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible viewed the fall of Israel as the signature event of his reign. The Assyrian deportations became the basis for the Jewish idea of the Ten Lost Tribes. Foreign groups were settled by the Assyrians in the territories of the fallen kingdom. The Samaritans claim to be descended from Israelites of ancient Samaria who were not expelled by the Assyrians.


title: History of Israel

text: It is believed that refugees from the destruction of Israel moved to Judah, massively expanding Jerusalem and leading to construction of the Siloam Tunnel during the rule of King Hezekiah (ruled 715–686 BCE). The tunnel could provide water during a siege and its construction is described in the Bible. The Siloam inscription, a plaque written in Hebrew left by the construction team, was discovered in the tunnel in 1880s, and is today held by the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.


title: History of Israel

text: During Hezekiah's rule, Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, attempted but failed to capture Judah. Assyrian records say that Sennacherib levelled 46 walled cities and besieged Jerusalem, leaving after receiving extensive tribute. The Bible, which claims that an angel of God saved Jerusalem, destroying the Assyrian camp over-night, also refers to tribute, and suggests that Hezekiah was aided by Taharqa, king of Kush (now Sudan), in repulsing the Assyrians. The Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt were Nubian Pharaohs and they probably defeated the Assyrians. Sennacherib had a 12 meter by 5-metre frieze erected in his palace in Nineveh (now in Iraq) depicting his victory at Lachish, the second largest city of Judah.


title: History of Israel

text: The writings of four different "prophets" are believed to date from this period: Hosea and Amos in Israel and Micah and Isaiah of Judah. These men were mostly social critics who warned of the Assyrian threat and acted as religious spokesmen. They exercised some form of free speech and may have played a significant social and political role in Israel and Judah. They urged rulers and the general populace to adhere to god-conscious ethical ideals, seeing the Assyrian invasions as a divine punishment of the collective resulting from ethical failures.


title: History of Israel

text: Under King Josiah (ruler from 641 – 619), the Book of Deuteronomy was either rediscovered or written. The Book of Joshua and the accounts of the kingship of David and Solomon in the book of Kings are believed to have the same author. The books are known as Deuteronomist and considered to be a key step in the emergence of monotheism in Judah. They emerged at a time that Assyria was weakened by the emergence of Babylon and may be a committing to text of pre-writing verbal traditions.


title: History of Israel

text: During the late 7th century BCE, Judah became a vassal state of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. In 601 BCE, Jehoiakim of Judah allied with Babylon's principal rival, Egypt, despite the strong remonstrances of the prophet Jeremiah. As a punishment, the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem in 597 BCE, and the city surrendered. The defeat was recorded by the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and deported king Jehoiachin, along with other prominent citizens, to Babylon; Zedekiah, his uncle, was installed as king. A few years later, Zedekiah launched another revolt against Babylon, and an army was sent to conquer Jerusalem.


title: History of Israel

text: In 587 or 586 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and razed the city. The Kingdom of Judah was abolished, and many of its citizens were exiled to Babylon. The former territory of Judah became a Babylonian province called Yehud with its center in Mizpah, north of the destroyed Jerusalem. Tablets that describe King Jehoicahin's rations were found in the ruins of Babylon. He was eventually released by the Babylonians. According to both the Bible and the Talmud, the Davidic dynasty continued as head of Babylonian Jewry, called the "Rosh Galut" (exilarch or head of exile). Arab and Jewish sources show that the "Rosh Galut" continued to exist for another 1,500 years in what is now Iraq, ending in the eleventh century.


title: History of Israel

text: In 538 BCE, Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and took over its empire. Cyrus issued a proclamation granting religious freedom to all peoples subjugated by the Babylonians (see the Cyrus Cylinder). According to the Bible, Jewish exiles in Babylon, including 50,000 Judeans led by Zerubabel, returned to Judah to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Second Temple was subsequently completed c. 515 BCE. A second group of 5,000, led by Ezra and Nehemiah, returned to Judah in 456 BCE. The first was empowered by the Persian king to enforce religious rules, the second had the status of governor and a royal mission to restore the walls of the city. The country remained a province of the Achaemenid empire called Yehud until 332 BCE.


title: History of Israel

text: The final text of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is thought to have been written during the Persian period (probably 450–350 BCE). The text was formed by editing and unifying earlier texts. The returning Israelites adopted an Aramaic script (also known as the Ashuri alphabet), which they brought back from Babylon; this is the current Hebrew script. The Hebrew calendar closely resembles the Babylonian calendar and probably dates from this period.


title: History of Israel

text: The Bible describes tension between the returnees, the elite of the First Temple period, and those who had remained in Judah. It is possible that the returnees, supported by the Persian monarchy, became large landholders at the expense of the people who had remained to work the land in Palestine, whose opposition to the Second Temple would have reflected a fear that exclusion from the cult would deprive them of land rights. Judah had become in practice a theocracy, ruled by hereditary High Priests and a Persian-appointed governor, frequently Jewish, charged with keeping order and seeing that tribute was paid.


title: History of Israel

text: A Judean military garrison was placed by the Persians on Elephantine Island near Aswan in Egypt. In the early 20th century, 175 papyrus documents recording activity in this community were discovered, including the "Passover Papyrus", a letter instructing the garrison on how to correctly conduct the Passover feast.


title: History of Israel

text: In 333 BCE, the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great defeated Persia and conquered the region. After his death in 322 BCE, his generals divided the empire and Judea became a frontier region between the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. After a century of Ptolemaic rule, eventually Judea became part of the Seleucid Empire in 200 BCE at the battle of Panium (fought near Banias on the Golan Heights).


title: History of Israel

text: Under the Hellenistic kingdoms, Judea was ruled by the hereditary office of the High Priest of Israel as a Hellenistic vassal. The first translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Greek Septuagint, was made in 3rd century BCE Alexandria, during the rule of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, for the Library of Alexandria.


title: History of Israel

text: Hellenistic rulers generally respected Jewish culture and protected Jewish institutions. However, Antiochus IV issued decrees forbidding traditional Jewish practices and began a campaign of persecution against devout Jews. In 167 BCE, a Seleucid official ordered a public sacrifice to the Greek gods. Mattathias, a Hasmonean priest, killed a Hellenized Jew who volunteered and then killed the Seleucid official. Afterwards, he fled with his sons and followers to the wilderness of Judea. This was the start of the Maccabean Revolt.


title: History of Israel

text: The Books of the Maccabees (written soon after) describe the uprising and the end of Seleucid rule. These books were not part of the sacred Jewish canon and the Hebrew originals were lost (Greek translations survived).


title: History of Israel

text: The revolt was led by Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias, who conquered Jerusalem in 164 BCE and re-established worship at the temple. The Jewish holiday Hanukkah commemorates the recovery of the temple. Ultimately, a vassal Jewish kingdom was established by the Hasmoneans (the family of Judas Maccabeus).


title: History of Israel

text: Seleucid power was in decline and the Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus was able to create an independent Jewish kingdom, and double the kingdom's size. He subjugated the Edomites and converted them to Judaism. Under John Hyrcanus and his sons, Aristobulus I and Alexander Jannaeus, Hasmonean territory continued to expand. Some scholars argue that the Hasmonean dynasty institutionalized the final Jewish biblical canon.


title: History of Israel

text: Under Hasmonean rule, the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes emerged as the principal Jewish social movements. As part of the struggle against Hellenization, the Pharisee leader Simeon ben Shetach established the first schools based around meeting houses. This led to the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism. Justice was administered by the Sanhedrin, a Rabbinical assembly and law court whose leader was known as the Nasi. The Nasi's religious authority gradually superseded that of the Temple's high priest, who under the Hasmoneans was the king himself. The Hasmoneans had good relations with the Roman Republic, however growing tension between Pharisees and Sadducees led to a conflict over the succession to Janneus, in which the warring parties invited Roman intervention on their behalf.


title: History of Israel

text: In 64 BCE the Roman general Pompey conquered Syria and intervened in the Hasmonean civil war in Jerusalem, restoring Hyrcanus II as High Priest and making Judea a Roman vassal kingdom. During the siege of Alexandria in 47 BCE, the lives of Julius Caesar and his protégé Cleopatra were saved by 3,000 Jewish troops sent by Hyrcanus II and commanded by Antipater, whose descendants Caesar made kings of Judea.


title: History of Israel

text: From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Herodian dynasty, Jewish-Roman client kings of Edomite origin, descended from Antipater, ruled Judea. Herod the Great considerably enlarged the temple (see Herod's Temple), making it one of the largest religious structures in the world. At this time, Jews formed as much as 10% of the population of the entire Roman Empire, with large communities in North Africa and Arabia. Despite the fame of the temple, Rabbinical Judaism, led by Hillel the Elder, began to assume popular prominence over the Temple priesthood. The Romans gave the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem permission not to display an effigy of the emperor, the only religious structure in the Roman Empire that was exempt. Special dispensation was granted for Jewish citizens of the Roman Empire to pay a tax to the temple.


title: History of Israel

text: Augustus made Judea a Roman province in 6 CE, deposing the last Jewish king, Herod Archelaus, and appointing a Roman governor. There was a small revolt against Roman taxation led by Judas of Galilee and over the next decades tensions grew between the Greco-Roman and Judean population centered on attempts to place effigies of emperor Caligula in synagogues and in the Jewish temple.


title: History of Israel

text: According to Christian scripture, Jesus was born in the last years of Herod's rule in the Judean city of Bethlehem. Jesus is thought to have been a Galilean Jewish reformer from Nazareth, and was executed in Jerusalem by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate between 25 and 35 CE. All his key followers, the Twelve Apostles, were Jews (and regarded themselves as Jews) including Paul (5–67 CE) who took critical steps towards creating a new religion, defining Jesus as the "Son of God". In the year 50 CE, the Council of Jerusalem decided to abandon the Jewish requirement of partial circumcision of the foreskin and adherence to the Torah, creating a form of Judaism highly accessible to non-Jews and with a more universal notion of God. Another Jewish follower, Peter, is believed to have become the first Pope.


title: History of Israel

text: In 64 CE, the Temple High Priest Joshua ben Gamla introduced a religious requirement for Jewish boys to learn to read from the age of six. Over the next few hundred years this requirement became steadily more ingrained in Jewish tradition.


title: History of Israel

text: Growing dissatisfaction with direct Roman rule led to the eruption of a Jewish revolt, subsequently known as the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE). The revolting Jews named their state "Israel". The contemporary Jewish military leader and historian Josephus authored a detailed account of the revolt's events, including the sieges of Jotapata and Gamla by Vespasian, the siege of Jerusalem (69–70 CE) by Titus, and the desperate last stand at Masada under Eleazar ben Yair (72–73 CE).


title: History of Israel

text: The revolt's failure had profound demographic, theological, political, and economic consequences. Many Jews died fighting and under siege during the revolt, and a sizable portion of the population was either expelled from the country or displaced. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple necessitated a reshaping of Judaism to ensure its survival. Judaism's Temple-based sects, most notably the Sadducees, vanished. The Pharisees, led by Yochanan ben Zakai, obtained Roman permission to establish a school at Yavne. Their teachings became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism, which eventually became the mainstream form of Judaism.


title: History of Israel

text: According to Christian tradition, most Christians, at this time a sub-sect of Judaism, fled to Pella during the revolt. After the war Jews continued to be taxed in the Fiscus Judaicus, which was used to fund a temple to Jupiter. An arch commemorating the victory was erected in Rome and still exists.


title: History of Israel

text: Tensions and attacks on Jews around the Roman Empire led to a massive Jewish uprising against Rome from 115 to 117. Jews in Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia fought against Rome. This conflict was accompanied by large-scale massacres of both sides. Cyprus was so severely depopulated that new settlers were imported and Jews banned from living there.


title: History of Israel

text: In 131, Roman emperor Hadrian re-founded Jerusalem as a Roman colony under the name "Aelia Capitolina" and constructed a Temple of Jupiter on the site of the former Jewish temple. Jews were banned from living in Jerusalem itself (a ban that persisted until the Arab conquest).


title: History of Israel

text: In 132 CE, the Bar Kokhba revolt erupted. The uprising was led by a Jew named Simon Bar Kokhba, who ruled as "nasi", and was viewed by some of the rabbis of the period as the long-awaited messiah. Based on the Bar Kokhba revolt coinage, the independent Jewish state was named "Israel". It has been suggested that a rabbinical assembly which convened during the revolt decided which books could be regarded as part of the Hebrew Bible; the Jewish apocrypha and Christian books were excluded. As a result, the original text of some Hebrew texts, including the Books of Maccabees, were lost (Greek translations survived). A rabbi of this period, Simeon bar Yochai, is regarded as the author of the Zohar, the foundational text for Kabbalistic thought. However, modern scholars believe it was written in Medieval Spain. Christians refused to participate in the revolt and from this point the Jews regarded Christianity as a separate religion.


title: History of Israel

text: The Bar Kokhba revolt was eventually crushed by emperor Hadrian himself, with serious losses. Today, it is viewed by modern scholars as having decisive historic importance. According to Cassius Dio, writing in the century following the revolt, "50 of the Jews most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. 580,000 men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out, thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate." While scholars debate whether these numbers are accurate, archaeological surveys and excavations appear to confirm the claim of Cassius Dio that the district of Judaea was largely depopulated. Most scholars agree that, in contrast to the aftermath of the First Jewish–Roman War, Judea was devastated after the Bar Kokhba revolt, with many Jews killed, exiled, or sold into slavery.


title: History of Israel

text: Around the time of the revolt, the province of Judaea (Iudaea) was renamed Syria Palaestina. The commonly-held view is that it was implemented as punishment for the Bar Kokhba revolt or to "disassociate the Jewish people from their historical homeland" and hold Hadrian accountable. However, no evidence exists for this narrative, and it has been disputed by scholars in recent years. No other revolt led to a province being renamed. The term, which has been first used centuries earlier in the texts of several Greek-speaking writers, is where the names "Palestine" (in English) and "Filistin" (in Arabic) are originated.


title: History of Israel

text: As a result of the disastrous effects of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled. Over the next centuries, more Jews left to communities in the Diaspora, especially the large, speedily growing Jewish communities in Babylonia and Arabia. Others remained in the Land of Israel, where there was a continuous small Jewish presence and Galilee became its religious center. Jewish communities also continued to reside in the southern Hebron Hills and on the coastal plain. Some Jews had converted to Christianity. The Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, huge compendiums of Rabbinical discussions, were compiled during the 2nd to 4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem. A separate collection of Rabbinical stories, discussions and rulings was compiled by the Babylonian academies a hundred years later, and forms the 5,000 page Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud is the main source of Jewish life and law.


title: History of Israel

text: The Romans permitted a hereditary Rabbinical Patriarch from the House of Hillel based in Galilee, called the "Nasi", to represent the Jews in dealings with the Romans. The most famous of these was Judah haNasi, who is credited with compiling the final version of the Mishnah (a massive body of Jewish religious texts interpreting the Bible) and with strengthening the educational demands of Judaism by requiring that illiterate Jews be treated as outcasts. As a result, many illiterate Jews may have converted to Christianity. Jewish seminaries, such as those at Shefaram and Bet Shearim, continued to produce scholars. The best of these became members of the Sanhedrin, which was located first at Sepphoris and later at Tiberias. Before the Bar Kochba uprising, an estimated 2/3 of the population of Galilee and 1/3 of the coastal region were Jewish. In the Galillee, many synagogues have been found dating from this period, and the burial site of the Sanhedrin leaders was discovered in 1936. There was a notable rivalry between Palestinian and Babylonian academies. The former thought that leaving the land in peaceful times was tantamount to idolatry and many would not ordain Babylonian students for fear they would then return to their Babylonian homeland, while Babylonian scholars thought that Palestinian rabbis were descendants of the 'inferior stock' putatively returning with Ezra after the Babylonian exile. An economic crisis and heavy taxation to finance the wars of imperial succession that affected the Roman empire in the 3rd century led to further Jewish migration from Syria Palaestina to the more tolerant Sassanid Empire, where a prosperous Jewish community with extensive seminaries existed in the area of Babylon.


title: History of Israel

text: Early in the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine made Constantinople the capital of the East Roman Empire and made Christianity an accepted religion. His mother Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (326–328) and led the construction of the Church of the Nativity (birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (burial site of Jesus in Jerusalem) and other key churches that still exist. The name Jerusalem was restored to Aelia Capitolina and became a Christian city. Jews were still banned from living in Jerusalem, but were allowed to visit and worship at the site of the ruined temple. Over the course of the next century Christians worked to eradicate "paganism", leading to the destruction of classical Roman traditions and eradication of their temples. By the end of the 4th century, anyone caught worshipping "pagan" gods was executed and their property confiscated.


title: History of Israel

text: In 351–2, another Jewish revolt in the Galilee erupted against a corrupt Roman governor. In 362, the last pagan Roman Emperor, Julian the Apostate, announced plans to rebuild the Jewish Temple. He died while fighting the Persians in 363 and the project was discontinued.


title: History of Israel

text: In 380 Emperor Theodosius I, the last ruler of a united Roman Empire, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.


title: History of Israel

text: The Roman Empire split in 390 CE and the region became part of the (Christian) East Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine Christianity was dominated by the (Greek) Eastern Orthodox Church whose massive land ownership has extended into the present. In the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire collapsed leading to Christian migration into the Roman province of Palaestina Prima and development of a Christian majority. Jews numbered 10–15% of the population, concentrated largely in the Galilee. Judaism was the only non-Christian religion tolerated, but restrictions on Jews slowly increased to include a ban on building new places of worship, holding public office or owning Christian slaves. In 425, following the death of the last Nasi, Gamliel VI, the Sanhedrin was officially abolished and the title of Nasi banned. Several Samaritan Revolts erupted in this period, resulting in the decrease of Samaritan community from about a million to a near extinction. Sacred Jewish texts written in Palestine at this time are the Gemara (400), the Jerusalem Talmud (500) and the Passover Haggadah. In 495, the Exilarch Mar-Zutra II set up an independent Jewish city-state in what is now Iraq. It lasted seven years and after its fall, his son Mar-Zutra III moved to Tiberias where he became head of the local religious academy in 520.


title: History of Israel

text: The Jewish Menorah, which the Romans took when the temple was destroyed, was reportedly taken to Carthage by the Vandals after the sacking of Rome in 455. According to the Byzantine historian, Procopius, the Byzantine army recovered it in 533 and brought it to Constantinople.


title: History of Israel

text: In 611, Khosrow II, ruler of Sassanid Persia, invaded the Byzantine Empire. He was helped by Jewish fighters recruited by Benjamin of Tiberias and captured Jerusalem in 614. The "True Cross" was captured by the Persians. The Jewish Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen may also have provided support. Nehemiah ben Hushiel was made governor of Jerusalem. Christian historians of the period claimed the Jews massacred Christians in the city, but there is no archeological evidence of destruction, leading modern historians to question their accounts. In 628, Kavad II (son of Kosrow) returned Palestine and the True Cross to the Byzantines and signed a peace treaty with them. Following the Byzantine re-entry, Heraclius massacred the Jewish population of Galilee and Jerusalem, while renewing the ban on Jews entering the latter. Benjamin of Tiberias was converted to Christianity.


title: History of Israel

text: According to Muslim tradition, on the last night of his life in 620, Muhammad was taken on a journey from Mecca to the "farthest mosque", whose location many consider to be the Temple Mount, returning the same night.


title: History of Israel

text: In about 635, an Arab army led by Muawiyah I conquered Palestine and the entire Levant, making it a province of the new Medina-based Arab Empire. The Byzantine ban on Jews living in Jerusalem came to an end and Palestine gradually came to be dominated politically and socially by Muslims, though the dominant religion of the country down to the Crusades may still have been Christian.


title: History of Israel

text: In 661, Muawiyah was crowned Caliph in Jerusalem, becoming the first of the (Damascus-based) Umayyad dynasty. In 691, Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705) constructed the Dome of the Rock shrine on the Temple Mount (where the Jewish temple had been located). A second building, the Qibli Mosque, was also erected on the Temple Mount in 705. Both buildings were rebuilt in the 10th century following a series of earthquakes.


title: History of Israel

text: Jews consider the Temple Mount (Muslim name Noble Sanctuary) to contain the Foundation Stone (see also Holy of Holies), which is the holiest site in Judaism. Jews believe it is the site where Abraham tried to sacrifice his son, Isaac, while Muslims believe that Abraham tried to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, in Mecca.


title: History of Israel

text: A new city, Ramlah, was built as the Muslim capital of Jund Filastin, the name given to the province. In 750, Arab discrimination against non-Arab Muslims led to the Abbasid Revolution and the Umayyads were replaced by the Abbasid Caliphs who built a new city, Baghdad, to be their capital.


title: History of Israel

text: During the 8th century, the Caliph Umar II introduced a law requiring Jews and Christians to wear identifying clothing: Jews were required to wear yellow stars round their neck and on their hats. Christians had to wear Blue. Clothing regulations were not always enforced, but did arise during repressive periods and were sometimes designed to humiliate and persecute non-Muslims. A poll tax was imposed on all non-Muslims by all Islamic rulers and failure to pay could result in imprisonment or worse. Non-Muslims were banned from travelling unless they could show a tax receipt. Over the ensuing several centuries the country experienced a drastic decline in its population, from an estimated 1 million to some 300,000 by the early Ottoman period. This demographic collapse, including flight from Palestine, was accompanied by a slow process of conversion to Islam: the predominantly Jacobite Monophysitic Christian population had been hostile to Byzantium orthodoxy, and at times for that reason welcomed Muslim rule. There is no strong evidence for forced conversion, or for possibility that the jizya tax significantly affected such changes.


title: History of Israel

text: In 982, Caliph Al-Aziz Billah of the Cairo-based Fatimid dynasty conquered the region. The Fatimids were followers of Isma'ilism, a branch of Shia Islam and claimed descent from Fatima, Mohammed's daughter. Around the year 1010, the Church of Holy Sepulchre (believed to be Jesus burial site), was destroyed by Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim, who relented ten years later and paid for it to be rebuilt. In 1020 al-Hakim claimed divine status and the newly formed Druze religion gave him the status of a messiah.


title: History of Israel

text: Between the 7th and 11th centuries, Jewish scribes, called the Masoretes and located in Galilee, Jerusalem and Babylonia, established the Masoretic Text, which became the orthodox text of the Hebrew Bible.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1099, the First Crusade took Jerusalem and established a Catholic kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Jerusalem. During the conquest, both Muslims and Jews were indiscriminately massacred or sold into slavery. Jews encountered as the Crusaders travelled across Europe were given a choice of conversion or murder, and almost always chose martyrdom. The carnage continued when the Crusaders reached the Holy Land. Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews still recite a prayer in memory of the death and destruction caused by the Crusades.


title: History of Israel

text: Around 1180, Raynald of Châtillon, ruler of Transjordan, caused increasing conflict with the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin (Salah-al-Din), leading to the defeat of the Crusaders in the 1187 Battle of Hattin (above Tiberias). Saladin was able to peacefully take Jerusalem and conquered most of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin's court physician was Maimonides, a refugee from Almohad (Muslim) persecution in Córdoba, Spain, where all non-Muslim religions had been banned. This was the end of the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain and Maimonides possessed extensive knowledge of Greek and Arab medicine. His religious writings (in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic) are still studied by Orthodox Jews. Maimonides was buried in Tiberias. A Crusader city-state at Acre survived for another century.


title: History of Israel

text: The Christian world's response to the loss of Jerusalem came in the Third Crusade of 1190. After lengthy battles and negotiations, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin concluded the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192 whereby Christians were granted free passage to make pilgrimages to the holy sites, while Jerusalem remained under Muslim rule. In 1229, Jerusalem peacefully reverted into Christian control as part of a treaty between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil that ended the Sixth Crusade. In 1244, Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarezmian Tatars who decimated the city's Christian population, drove out the Jews and razed the city. The Khwarezmians were driven out by the Ayyubids in 1247. In 1258, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad, killing hundreds of thousands.


title: History of Israel

text: Between 1258 and 1291, the area was the frontier between Mongol invaders (occasional Crusader allies) and the Mamluks of Egypt. The conflict impoverished the country and severely reduced the population.


title: History of Israel

text: In Egypt a caste of warrior slaves, known as the Mamluks, gradually took control of the kingdom. The Mamluks were mostly of Turkish origin, and were bought as children and then trained in warfare. They were highly prized warriors, who gave rulers independence of the native aristocracy. In Egypt they took control of the kingdom following a failed invasion by the Crusaders (Seventh Crusade). The first Mamluk Sultan, Qutuz of Egypt, defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Ain Jalut ("Goliath's spring" near Ein Harod), ending the Mongol advances. He was assassinated by one of his Generals, Baibars, who went on to eliminate most of the Crusader outposts. The Mamluks ruled Palestine until 1516, regarding it as part of Syria. In Hebron, Jews were banned from worshipping at the Cave of the Patriarchs (the second-holiest site in Judaism); they were only allowed to enter 7 steps inside the site and the ban remained in place until Israel assumed control of the West Bank in the Six Days War. The Egyptian Mamluk sultan Al-Ashraf Khalil conquered the last outpost of Crusader rule in 1291.


title: History of Israel

text: The Mamluks, continuing the policy of the Ayyubids, made the strategic decision to destroy the coastal area and to bring desolation to many of its cities, from Tyre in the north to Gaza in the south. Ports were destroyed and various materials were dumped to make them inoperable. The goal was to prevent attacks from the sea, given the fear of the return of the Crusaders. This had a long-term effect on those areas, which remained sparsely populated for centuries. The activity in that time concentrated more inland.


title: History of Israel

text: The expulsion of the Jews of Spain is regarded by Jews as the worst catastrophe between the destruction of Jerusalem in 73 CE and the Holocaust of the 1940s. The expulsion followed a long process of expulsions and bans from what are now England, France, Germany, Austria, and Holland. In January 1492, the last Muslim state was defeated in Spain and six months later the Jews of Spain (the largest community in the world) were required to convert or leave without their property. 100,000 converted with many continuing to secretly practice Judaism, for which the Catholic church's inquisition (led by Torquemada) now mandated a sentence of death by public burning. 175,000 left Spain. Many Spanish Jews moved to North Africa, Poland and the Ottoman Empire, especially Thessaloniki (now in Greece) which became the world's largest Jewish city. Some groups headed to the Middle East and Palestine, within the domains of the Ottoman Empire. About 100,000 Spanish Jews were allowed into Portugal, however five years later, their children were seized and they were given the choice of conversion or departing without them. Most converted but continued to practice in secret. The economic success of the converts in Spain and Portugal and suspicion of their sincerity led to the creation of the first racial laws restricting the rights of anybody (including Christians) of Jewish origin. Escaping Jews were often maltreated by those shipping them and refused entry to various ports around the Mediterranean by communities afraid of being swamped. Expulsions also took place in Italy, affecting survivors of the original expulsion.


title: History of Israel

text: On the day set as the last day for Jews to legally reside in Spain, Columbus sailed to America. Many secret Jews chose to move to the New World, where they were temporarily able to practice Judaism freely (see History of the Jews in Latin America).


title: History of Israel

text: Following the expulsions, Jewish society became much more isolated from the larger communities in which they resided, and it is from this period that Jews started speaking their own languages such as Yiddish (Judeo-German) and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish).


title: History of Israel

text: In Italy, Jews were allowed to live in Venice but were required to live in a ghetto, and the practice spread across Italy (see Cum nimis absurdum) and was adopted in many places in Catholic Europe. Jews outside the Ghetto often had to wear a yellow star. Secretly practicing Jews could not revert to Judaism inside Europe as this carried a death sentence. The last compulsory Ghetto was administered by the Vatican in Rome and abolished in the 1880s.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1523, David Reubeni tried to persuade Emperor Charles V to participate in a plan to raise a Jewish army to conquer Judea and set up a Jewish kingdom, using Jewish warriors from India and Ethiopia. He managed to meet with a number of royal leaders but was eventually executed by the inquisition.


title: History of Israel

text: Under the Mamluks, the area was a province of Bilad a-Sham (Syria). It was conquered by Turkish Sultan Selim I in 1516–17, becoming a part of the province of Ottoman Syria for the next four centuries, first as the Damascus Eyalet and later as the Syria Vilayet (following the Tanzimat reorganization of 1864).


title: History of Israel

text: The Ottoman Sultans encouraged Jews fleeing the inquisition in Catholic Europe to settle in the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman the Magneficent's personal physician was Moses Hamon, an inquisition survivor. Jewish businesswomen dominated communication between the Harem and the outside world (see Esther Handali). Between 1535 and 1538 Suleiman the Magnificent (ruled 1520 – 1566) built the current city walls of Jerusalem; Jerusalem had been without walls since the early 13th century. The construction followed the historical outline of the city, but left out a key section of the City of David (today part of Silwan) and what is now known as Mount Zion.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1558 Selim II (1566–1574), successor to Suleiman, whose wife Nurbanu Sultan was Jewish, gave control of Tiberias to Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, one of the richest women in Europe and an escapee from the inquisition. She encouraged Jewish refugees to settle in the area and established a Hebrew printing press. Safed became a centre for study of the Kabbalah. Doña Nasi's nephew, Joseph Nasi, was made governor of Tiberias and he encouraged Jewish settlement from Italy.


title: History of Israel

text: Jewish population was concentrated in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias, known in Jewish tradition as the Four Holy Cities. Further migration occurred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine, which was accompanied by brutal massacres of tens of thousands of Jews.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1660, a Druze revolt led to the destruction of Safed and Tiberias. In 1663 Sabbatai Zevi settled in Jerusalem, and was proclaimed as the Jewish messiah by Nathan of Gaza. He acquired a large number of followers before going to Istanbul in 1666, where Sultan Suleiman II forced him to convert to Islam. Many of his followers converted, forming a sect that still exists in Turkey, known as the Dönmeh. In the late 18th century a local Arab "sheikh" Zahir al-Umar created a "de facto" independent Emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the Sheikh failed, but after Zahir's death the Ottomans restored their rule in the area.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1799 Napoleon briefly occupied the country and planned a proclamation inviting Jews to create a state. The proclamation was shelved following his defeat at Acre. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, an Ottoman ruler who left the Empire and tried to modernize Egypt, conquered Ottoman Syria and tried to revive and resettle much of its regions. His conscription policies led to a popular Arab revolt in 1834, resulting in major casualties for the local Arab peasants, and massacres of Christian and Jewish communities by the rebels. Following the revolt, Muhammad Pasha, the son of Muhammad Ali, expelled nearly 10,000 of the local peasants to Egypt, while bringing loyal Egyptian peasants and discharged soldiers to settle the coastline of Ottoman Syria. Northern Jordan Valley was settled by his Sudanese troops.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1838 there was another revolt by the Druze. In 1839 Moses Montefiore met with Muhammed Pasha in Egypt and signed an agreement to establish 100–200 Jewish villages in the Damascus Eyalet of Ottoman Syria, but in 1840 the Egyptians withdrew before the deal was implemented, returning the area to Ottoman governorship. In 1844, Jews constituted the largest population group in Jerusalem. By 1896 Jews constituted an absolute majority in Jerusalem, but the overall population in Palestine was 88% Muslim and 9% Christian.


title: History of Israel

text: Before the 18th century, most law was produced and enforced by religious authorities in both the Islamic and the Christian world (see Canon Law) and Jewish communities existed autonomously, subject only to the Lords and Kings. Following the reformation, there was growing separation of religion and state in Europe, especially in Holland, where a group of Spanish Jewish exiles settled and practiced their religion freely. A few Jews agitated for legal equality and, in the 18th century, a Jewish enlightenment movement known as the Haskalah (Hebrew for education) emerged in Germany. The movement called for Jews to study science and philosophy as a means to modernize Judaism and gain social rights without conversion to Christianity. The movement grew and spread across Europe. The Haskalah created a new secular Jewish culture that included literature, history (Christian historians ignored their Jewish communities) and newspapers.


title: History of Israel

text: During the 19th century, new notions of separation of church and state emerged in the French revolution and led to France becoming the first country to grant the Jews full citizenship. Other states in Western Europe and North America followed during the 19th Century, leading to Jews gaining civil rights and economic freedom. A small number of Jews, such as the Rothschild family, achieved extraordinary wealth and notoriety. In Eastern Europe, new nations emerged from the Habsburg Empire, Russian Empire and Ottoman Empire (which between them ruled most of Eastern Europe), but the new nationalists mostly regarded Jews as an unwanted presence. Jews were usually the only non-Christian minority and spoke a distinct language (Yiddish or Ladino).


title: History of Israel

text: Jewish emancipation led to a reaction by conservative elements, and a movement emerged in Europe of people who called themselves "anti-Semites" (the term had not previously existed). These people saw the Jews as a foreign race, prone to evil, who could not be integrated into European society. Although anti-Semitism fed on the religious hatred of earlier times, many did not see conversion as a solution.


title: History of Israel

text: In the Russian Empire, Jews faced growing persecution and legal restrictions, Half the world's Jews lived in the Russian Empire, where they were restricted to living in the Pale of Settlement. Severe pogroms in the early 1880s and legal repression led to 2 million Jews emigrating from the Russian Empire. 1.5 million went to the United States. Popular destinations were also Germany, France, England, Holland, Argentina and Palestine. The arguments over emancipation and the Jewish migration led to talk of a Jewish Question.


title: History of Israel

text: Between 1882 and 1903, approximately 35,000 Jews moved to Palestine. "Russian" Jews established the Bilu and Hovevei Zion ("Lovers of Zion") movements with the aim of settling in Palestine. In 1878, "Russian" Jewish emigrants established the village of Petah Tikva, followed by Rishon LeZion in 1882. The existing Ashkenazi-Jewish communities were concentrated in the Four Holy Cities, extremely poor and relied on donations (halukka) from groups abroad, while the new settlements were small farming communities, but still relied on funding by the French Baron, Edmond James de Rothschild, who sought to establish profitable enterprises. Many early migrants could not find work and left, but despite the problems, more settlements arose and the community grew. After the Ottoman conquest of Yemen in 1881, a large number of Yemenite Jews also emigrated to Palestine, often driven by Messianism.


title: History of Israel

text: In Jaffa, where the European and North African migrants arrived by ship, a vibrant commercial community developed in which Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews inter-mingled. An agricultural school, the Mikveh Israel, was founded near Jaffa by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a French Jewish association .


title: History of Israel

text: The migrants and the Haskalah led to a revival of the Hebrew language and Palestine attracted Jews of all kinds; Adventurous, religious, secular, nationalist and left-wing socialists. Socialists aimed to reclaim the land by becoming peasants or workers and forming self-sustaining collectives. By 1890, Jews were a majority in Jerusalem, although the country as a whole was populated mainly by Muslim and Christian Arabs.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1896 Theodor Herzl published "Der Judenstaat" ("The Jewish State"), in which he asserted that the solution to growing antisemitism in Europe (the so-called "Jewish Question") was to establish a Jewish state. In 1897, the World Zionist Organization was founded and the First Zionist Congress proclaimed its aim "to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law." However, Zionism was regarded with suspicion by the Ottoman rulers and was unable to make major progress.


title: History of Israel

text: Between 1904 and 1914, around 40,000 Jews settled in the area now known as Israel (the Second Aliyah). In 1908 the World Zionist Organization set up the Palestine Bureau (also known as the "Eretz Israel Office") in Jaffa and began to adopt a systematic Jewish settlement policy. Migrants were mainly from Russia (which then included part of Poland), escaping persecution. The first Kibbutz, Degania, was founded by nine Russian communists in 1909. In 1909 residents of Jaffa bought land outside the city walls and built the first entirely Hebrew-speaking town, Ahuzat Bayit (later renamed Tel Aviv). Hebrew newspapers and books were published, Hebrew schools created and Jewish political parties and workers organizations were established.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1915-1916 Talaat Pasha of the Young Turks forced around a million Armenian Christians from their homes in Eastern Turkey, marching them south through Syria, in what is now known as the Armenian genocide. The number of dead is though to be around 700,000. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam. A community of survivors settled in Jerusalem, one of whom developed the now iconic Armenian pottery.


title: History of Israel

text: During World War I, most Jews supported the Germans because they were fighting the Russians who were regarded as the Jews' main enemy. In Britain, the government sought Jewish support for the war effort for a variety of reasons including an antisemitic perception of "Jewish power" in the Ottoman Empire's Young Turks movement which was based in Thessaloniki, the most Jewish city in Europe (40% of the 160,000 population were Jewish). The British also hoped to secure American Jewish support for US intervention on Britain's behalf.


title: History of Israel

text: There was already sympathy for the aims of Zionism in the British government, including the Prime Minister Lloyd George. Over 14,000 Jews were expelled by the Ottoman military commander from the Jaffa area in 1914–1915, due to suspicions they were subjects of Russia, an enemy, or Zionists wishing to detach Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and when the entire population, including Muslims, of both Jaffa and Tel Aviv was subject to an expulsion order in April 1917, the affected Jews could not return until the British conquest ended in 1918, which drove the Turks out of Southern Syria. A year prior, in 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, sent a public letter to the British Lord Rothschild, a leading member of his party and leader of the Jewish community. The letter subsequently became known as the Balfour Declaration. It stated that the British Government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration provided the British government with a pretext for claiming and governing the country. New Middle Eastern boundaries were decided by an agreement between British and French bureaucrats.


title: History of Israel

text: A Jewish Legion composed largely of Zionist volunteers organized by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor participated in the British invasion. It also participated in the failed Gallipoli Campaign. The Nili Zionist spy network provided the British with details of Ottoman plans and troop concentrations.


title: History of Israel

text: After pushing out the Ottomans, Palestine came under martial law. The British, French and Arab Occupied Enemy Territory Administration governed the area shortly before the armistice with the Ottomans until the promulgation of the mandate in 1920.


title: History of Israel

text: The British Mandate (in effect, British rule) of Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration, was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 and came into effect in 1923. The territory of Transjordan was also covered by the Mandate but under separate rules that excluded it from the Balfour Declaration. Britain signed a treaty with the United States (which did not join the League of Nations) in which the United States endorsed the terms of the Mandate.


title: History of Israel

text: The Balfour declaration was published on the 2nd of November 1917 and the Bolsheviks seized control of Russia a week later. This led to civil war in the Russian Empire. Between 1918 and 1921, a series of pogroms led to the death of at least 100,000 Jews (mainly in what is now the Ukraine), and the displacement as refugees of a further 600,000. This led to further migration to Palestine. Between 1919 and 1923, some 40,000 Jews arrived in Palestine in what is known as the Third Aliyah. At the same time, the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) led many Greek Jews to seek refuge in Palestine. Following the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, 500,000 Moslems left Greece and 1.5 million Christians left Turkey. Thessaloniki became part of Greece.


title: History of Israel

text: Many of the Jewish immigrants of this period were Socialist Zionists and supported the Bolsheviks, who granted Jews equal rights and had many leaders of Jewish origin. The socialist migrants became known as pioneers ("halutzim"), experienced or trained in agriculture who established self-sustaining communes called Kibbutzim. Malarial marshes in the Jezreel Valley and Hefer Plain were drained and converted to agricultural use. Land was bought by the Jewish National Fund, a Zionist charity that collected money abroad for that purpose. A mainly socialist underground Jewish militia, Haganah ("Defense"), was established to defend outlying Jewish settlements.


title: History of Israel

text: After the French victory over the Arab Kingdom of Syria ended hopes of Arab independence, there were clashes between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and in Jaffa the following year.


title: History of Israel

text: A Jewish Agency was created which issued the entry permits granted by the British and distributed funds donated by Jews abroad. Between 1924 and 1929, over 80,000 Jews arrived in the Fourth Aliyah, fleeing antisemitism and heavy tax burdens imposed on trade in Poland and Hungary, inspired by Zionism and motivated by the closure of United States borders by the Immigration Act of 1924 which severely limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.


title: History of Israel

text: The new arrivals were mainly middle-class families who moved into towns and established small businesses and workshops—although lack of economic opportunities meant that approximately a quarter later left.


title: History of Israel

text: Pinhas Rutenberg, a former Commissar of St Petersburg in Russia's pre-Bolshevik Kerensky Government, built the first electricity generators in Palestine. In 1925 the Jewish Agency established the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion (technological university) in Haifa. British authorities introduced the Palestine pound (worth 1000 "mils") in 1927, replacing the Egyptian pound as the unit of currency in the Mandate.


title: History of Israel

text: From 1928, the democratically elected Va'ad Leumi (Jewish National Council or JNC) became the main administrative institution of the Palestine Jewish community (Yishuv) and included non-Zionist Jews. As the Yishuv grew, the JNC adopted more government-type functions, such as education, health care and security. With British permission, the Va'ad Leumi raised its own taxes and ran independent services for the Jewish population. From 1929 its leadership was elected by Jews from 26 countries.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1929 tensions grew over the Kotel (Wailing Wall), the holiest spot in the world for Modern Judaism, which was then a narrow alleyway where the British banned Jews from using chairs or curtains: Many of the worshippers were elderly and needed seats; they also wanted to separate women from men. The Mufti of Jerusalem claimed it was Muslim property and deliberately had cattle driven through the alley. He alleged that the Jews were seeking control of the Temple Mount. This provided the spark for the August 1929 Palestine riots. The main victims were the (non-Zionist) ancient Jewish community at Hebron, who were massacred. The riots led to right-wing Zionists establishing their own militia in 1931, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (National Military Organization, known in Hebrew by its acronym "Etzel"), which was committed to a more aggressive policy towards the Arab population.


title: History of Israel

text: Zionist political parties provided private education and health care: the General Zionists, the Mizrahi and the Socialist Zionists, each established independent health and education services and operated sports organizations funded by local taxes, donations and fees (the British administration did not invest in public services). During the interwar period, the perception grew that there was an irreconciliable tension between the two Mandatory functions, of providing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the goal of preparing the country for self-determination. The British rejected the principle of majority rule or any other measure that would give the Arab population, who formed the majority of the population, control over Palestinian territory.


title: History of Israel

text: In 1933, the Jewish Agency and the Nazis negotiated the Ha'avara Agreement (transfer agreement), under which 50,000 German Jews would be transferred to Palestine. The Jews' possessions were confiscated and in return the Nazis allowed the Ha'avara organization to purchase 14 million pounds worth of German goods for export to Palestine and use it to compensate the immigrants. Although many Jews wanted to leave Nazi Germany, the Nazis prevented Jews from taking any money and restricted them to two suitcases so few could pay the British entry tax and many were afraid to leave. The agreement was controversial and the Labour Zionist leader who negotiated the agreement, Haim Arlosoroff, was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1933. The assassination was used by the British to create tension between the Zionist left and the Zionist right. Arlosoroff had been the boyfriend of Magda Ritschel some years before she married Joseph Goebbels. There has been speculation that he was assassinated by the Nazis to hide the connection but there is no evidence for it.


title: History of Israel

text: Between 1929 and 1938, 250,000 Jews arrived in Palestine (Fifth Aliyah). 174,000 arrived between 1933 and 1936, despite large sums the British demanded for immigration permits: Jews had to prove they had 1,000 pounds (families with capital), 500 pounds if they had a profession and 250 pounds if they were skilled labourers. After 1938, the British tried to prevent immigration, mostly due to the outbreak of the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. Migrants were mainly from Germany and included professionals, doctors, lawyers and professors. German-Jewish architects built in the Bauhaus style made Tel-Aviv the world's only city with purely Bauhaus neighbourhoods and Palestine had the highest per-capita percentage of doctors in the world.


title: History of Israel

text: Fascist regimes were emerging across Europe and persecution of Jews increased. In many countries (most notably the 1935 German Nuremberg laws), Jews reverted to being non-citizens deprived of civil and economic rights, subject to arbitrary persecution. Significantly antisemitic governments came to power in Poland (the government increasingly boycotted Jews and by 1937 had totally excluded all Jews), Hungary, Romania and the Nazi created states of Croatia and Slovakia, while Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and the Czech territories (starting with the Sudetenland in 1938). With each annexation more Jews came under Nazi control.


title: History of Israel

text: Jewish immigration and Nazi propaganda contributed to the large-scale 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, a largely nationalist uprising directed at ending British rule. The head of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, responded to the Arab Revolt with a policy of "Havlagah"—self-restraint and a refusal to be provoked by Arab attacks in order to prevent polarization. The Etzel group broke off from the Haganah in opposition to this policy.


title: History of Israel

text: The British responded to the revolt with the Peel Commission (1936–37), a public inquiry that recommended that an exclusively Jewish territory be created in the Galilee and western coast (including the population transfer of 225,000 Arabs); the rest becoming an exclusively Arab area. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation. The plan was rejected outright by the Palestinian Arab leadership and they renewed the revolt, which caused the British to appease the Arabs, and to abandon the plan as unworkable.


title: History of Israel

text: Testifying before the Peel Commission, Weizmann said "There are in Europe 6,000,000 people ... for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter." In 1938, the US called an international conference to address the question of the vast numbers of Jews trying to escape Europe. Britain made its attendance contingent on Palestine being kept out of the discussion. No Jewish representatives were invited. The Nazis proposed their own solution: that the Jews of Europe be shipped to Madagascar (the Madagascar Plan). The agreement proved fruitless, and the Jews were stuck in Europe.


title: History of Israel

text: With millions of Jews trying to leave Europe and every country in the world closed to Jewish migration, the British decided to close Palestine. The White Paper of 1939, recommended that an independent Palestine, governed jointly by Arabs and Jews, be established within 10 years. The White Paper agreed to allow 75,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine over the period 1940–44, after which migration would require Arab approval. Both the Arab and Jewish leadership rejected the White Paper. In March 1940 the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of Palestine. Jews now resorted to illegal immigration: (Aliyah Bet or "Ha'apalah"), often organized by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet and the Irgun. With no outside help and no countries ready to admit them, very few Jews managed to escape Europe between 1939 and 1945. Those caught by the British were mostly imprisoned in Mauritius.


title: History of Israel

text: During the Second World War, the Jewish Agency worked to establish a Jewish army that would fight alongside the British forces. Churchill supported the plan but British Military and government opposition led to its rejection. The British demanded that the number of Jewish recruits match the number of Arab recruits, but few Arabs would fight for Britain, and the Palestinian leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, allied with Nazi Germany.


title: History of Israel

text: In June 1940, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv and Haifa, inflicting multiple casualties. In May 1941, the Palmach was established to defend the Yishuv against the planned Axis invasion through North Africa. The British refusal to provide arms to the Jews, even when Rommel's forces were advancing through Egypt in June 1942 (intent on occupying Palestine) and the 1939 White Paper, led to the emergence of a Zionist leadership in Palestine that believed conflict with Britain was inevitable. Despite this, the Jewish Agency called on Palestine's Jewish youth to volunteer for the British Army (both men and women). 30,000 Palestinian Jews and 12,000 Palestinian Arabs enlisted in the British armed forces during the war. In June 1944 the British agreed to create a Jewish Brigade that would fight in Italy.


title: History of Israel

text: Approximately 1.5 million Jews around the world served in every branch of the allied armies, mainly in the Soviet and US armies. 200,000 Jews died serving in the Soviet army alone. Many of these war veterans later volunteered to fight for Israel or were active in its support.


title: History of Israel

text: A small group (about 200 activists), dedicated to resisting the British administration in Palestine, broke away from the Etzel (which advocated support for Britain during the war) and formed the "Lehi" (Stern Gang), led by Avraham Stern. In 1943, the USSR released the Revisionist Zionist leader Menachem Begin from the Gulag and he went to Palestine, taking command of the Etzel organization with a policy of increased conflict against the British. At about the same time Yitzhak Shamir escaped from the camp in Eritrea where the British were holding Lehi activists without trial, taking command of the Lehi (Stern Gang).


title: History of Israel

text: Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the war. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were used as slaves. The 1941 pro-Axis coup in Iraq was accompanied by massacres of Jews. The Jewish Agency put together plans for a last stand in the event of Rommel invading Palestine (the Nazis planned to exterminate Palestine's Jews).


title: History of Israel

text: Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis, aided by local forces, led systematic efforts to kill every person of Jewish extraction in Europe (The Holocaust), causing the deaths of approximately 6 million Jews. A quarter of those killed were children. The Polish and German Jewish communities, which played an important role in defining the pre-1945 Jewish world, mostly ceased to exist. In the United States and Palestine, Jews of European origin became disconnected from their families and roots. As the Holocaust mainly affected Ashkenazi Jews, Sepharadi and Mizrahi Jews, who had been a minority, became a much more significant factor in the Jewish world. Those Jews who survived in central Europe, were displaced persons (refugees); an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, established to examine the Palestine issue, surveyed their ambitions and found that over 95% wanted to migrate to Palestine.


title: History of Israel

text: In the Zionist movement the moderate Pro-British (and British citizen) Weizmann, whose son died flying in the RAF, was undermined by Britain's anti-Zionist policies. Leadership of the movement passed to the Jewish Agency in Palestine, now led by the anti-British Socialist-Zionist party (Mapai) led by David Ben-Gurion. In the diaspora, US Jews now dominated the Zionist movement.


title: History of Israel

text: The British Empire was severely weakened by the war. In the Middle East, the war had made Britain conscious of its dependence on Arab oil. British firms controlled Iraqi oil and Britain ruled Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates. Shortly after VE Day, the Labour Party won the general election in Britain. Although Labour Party conferences had for years called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Labour government now decided to maintain the 1939 White Paper policies.


title: History of Israel

text: Illegal migration (Aliyah Bet) became the main form of Jewish entry into Palestine. Across Europe Bricha ("flight"), an organization of former partisans and ghetto fighters, smuggled Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe to Mediterranean ports, where small boats tried to breach the British blockade of Palestine. Meanwhile, Jews from Arab countries began moving into Palestine overland. Despite British efforts to curb immigration, during the 14 years of the Aliyah Bet, over 110,000 Jews entered Palestine. By the end of World War II, the Jewish population of Palestine had increased to 33% of the total population.


title: History of Israel

text: In an effort to win independence, Zionists now waged a guerrilla war against the British. The main underground Jewish militia, the Haganah, formed an alliance called the Jewish Resistance Movement with the Etzel and Stern Gang to fight the British. In June 1946, following instances of Jewish sabotage, the British launched Operation Agatha, arresting 2,700 Jews, including the leadership of the Jewish Agency, whose headquarters were raided. Those arrested were held without trial.


title: History of Israel

text: On 4 July 1946 a massive pogrom in Poland led to a wave of Holocaust survivors fleeing Europe for Palestine. Three weeks later, Irgun bombed the British Military Headquarters of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people. In the days following the bombing, Tel Aviv was placed under curfew and over 120,000 Jews, nearly 20% of the Jewish population of Palestine, were questioned by the police. In the US, Congress criticized British handling of the situation and considered delaying loans that were vital to British post-war recovery. The alliance between Haganah and Etzel was dissolved after the King David bombings.