Volume 8, Number 4 Israel @70
THE
Serving the Local New Orleans, Northshore, and Baton Rouge Jewish Communities
Israel History 70 Years • May 14, 1948 - May 14, 2018 Modern Israeli History: A Timeline Key moments in the Jewish state's history By MJL Staff dreds of homes and business, the Mandate for Palestine, granting numbers of European Jews to seek prompting tens of thousands of Britain temporary authority over refuge there. Russian Jews to flee to Palestine. the territory. May 15, 1941 : Palmach Created Aug. 24, 1929: Hebron Massacre April 11, 1909: Tel Aviv Founded
5 Ways To Celebrate Israel's Independence Day Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on its 75th Anniversary
1882-1903: First Aliyah The First Aliyah brings an estimated 25,000-35,000 immigrants to Palestine, the majority of them fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe. 1894: Dreyfus Affair French Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of espionage. The case has a galvanizing effect on the development of Zionism by underscoring the precariousness of Jewish life in Europe.
Tel Aviv circa 1920. (PikiWiki Israel)
Tel Aviv, the first modern Jewish city, is founded on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
Funeral for a victim of the Hebron massacre of 1929. (Wikimedia Commons)
Palestinian Arabs kill dozens of Jews and wound scores more in The Haganah creates an elite what will come to be known as the fighting force called the Palmach to Hebron Massacre. protect the local Jewish community.
1910: First Modern Hebrew Dictionary Published Eliezer Ben-Yehuda begins pub1929: Fifth Aliyah Begins lishing the first Hebrew dictionary, The Fifth Aliyah begins, bringhastening the revival of the ancient ing over 200,000 Jews mainly from language. central and eastern Europe to preNov. 2, 1917: Balfour Declaration state Israel over the course of the Britain issues the Balfour Decla- decade leading up to World War II. ration, endorsing the establishment Driven in large part by the Nazi rise 1896: Herzl’s “The Jewish State” of a national home in Palestine for to power in Germany in the early Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hunthe Jewish people. 1930s, the large numbers of new garian journalist who covered the Dreyfus trial as a correspondent, Oct. 30, 1918: World War I Ends arrivals exacerbate tensions between Jews and Arabs. publishes Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), in which he pro1936: Arab Revolt poses the creation of a Jewish state Palestinian Arabs revolt against as the solution to anti-Semitism. British rule, demanding Arab indeAug. 29, 1897: First Zionist pendence and the end of Jewish Congress immigration. May 23, 1939: The White Paper British Gen. Edmund Allenby enters Old City of Jerusalem, December 1917. (Wikimedia Commons)
Theodor Herzl (in hat) on a boat to Palestine, 1898. (PikiWiki Israel)
Herzl convenes the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.
The Armistice of Mudros ends World War I in the Middle East and begins the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, which had occupied Palestine since the 16th century.
June 1920: Haganah Founded The Haganah is founded as an independent defense force for Jews April 19, 1903: Kishinev Pogrom The Kishinev Pogrom in the Rus- in Palestine. July 24, 1922: British Mandate sian Empire, in what is now MolStarts dova, kills dozens of Jews and The League of Nations adopts results in the destruction of hun-
Female members of the Palmach in Ein Gedi,1942. (Hashomer Hatzair Archives)
Jews demonstrating against the White Paper in Jerusalem, May 18, 1939. (Wikimedia Commons)
Nov. 29, 1947: UN Partition Plan The United Nations votes to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. Zionist leaders agree to the plan, but the leaders of several Arab countries and of the Palestinian Arab community reject it, leading to intercommunal clashes that ultimately develop into a full-blown civil war. December 1947: Arab Siege of Jerusalem Begins Anger over the partition vote prompts rioting in Jerusalem that claims more than a dozen lives. The fighting marks the beginning of the Arab siege of Jerusalem, which seeks to cut off the 100,000 Jewish residents of the city from the rest of the country. April 9, 1948: Deir Yassin More than 100 Arabs, including women and children, are killed by Jewish fighters in the village of Deir Yassin.
May 14, 1948: State of Israel The British House of Commons Established approves the White Paper of 1939, David Ben-Gurion proclaims the which severely restricts Jewish establishment of Israel in a ceremoimmigration to Palestine at precisely the moment when the Nazi See ISRAEL HISTORY 24 rise to power is prompting growing on Page