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August 23, 1950 American Jewish Yearbook, Vol. 53. 1952. 64-8. Over time, world Jewish opinion became splintered not only about the nature of Zionism or the role of Israel in their identity, but the degree…
Read full article at the Israel State Archives.
May 18, 2025 Contradiction has been a theme in Iran’s relationship with the Jewish people, for nowhere else in the Muslim world have Jews both suffered so grievously and flourished so thoroughly. Nor is the…
By Scott Abramson and Ken Stein In his famous 2004 essay “Between Right and Right,” Israel’s most celebrated novelist, Amos Oz, reflects on Israeli society, summing up his fellow citizens with this appraisal: “What we,…
Ben-Gurion elegantly connects modern Israel from messianic redemption to Zionism, building the country through labor and immigration, with dual needs to remain actively linked to the Jewish diaspora and Jewish values through education.
Jews worldwide are given the right to come to Israel and become citizens.
This report submitted to the United Nations at the end of 1951 notes that “some one million Jews have become the victims of accelerated antiSemitism” since 1948 in the Muslim countries of the Arab League and North Africa, “communities which have existed for thousands of years.” The report analyzes the situation for Jews overall and explains restrictions and oppressive measures country by country.
In a 40-minute video recorded June 14, 2021, Dr. Yaron Ayalon of the College of Charleston and Rich Walter of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta delve into the history and the political and cultural…
“Wilbur Carr, the Imperial State Department, and Immigration: 1920-1945” © Copyright 2011 by Kathy Warnes. All Rights Reserved. kathywarneswriter.weebly.com, kathywarnes@gmail.com The State Department, as it evolved in the first four decades of the 20th century…
The Romanian president told Menachem Begin that Egyptian President Sadat was interested in negotiations with the Israelis. This secret visit took place three weeks before Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan met secretly with Egyptian Vice President Hasan Tuhami in Morocco.
The US-Israeli relationship is complicated, dynamic, multidimensional, and enduring. From initial American governmental opposition to the present, Washington has become Israel’s most trusted ally. Rooted in common bonds, entrenched military sharing, and valued strategic interests, the association has also greatly influenced the shaping and sustenance of American Jewish identity.
Loy Henderson, Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, U.S. State Department, to U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall
Writing two months before the U.S. voted at the United Nations in favor of Palestine’s partition into Arab and Jewish states, Henderson voices profound dislike for Zionism and a Jewish state. He advocates for cultivating positive relations with Muslim and Arab states. He is one of many at the State Department at the time who saw Zionism as contrary to American national interests.
Areas of bilateral political and military cooperation are noted to fend off Soviet involvement in the the Middle East, to assist Israel in building the Lavi aircraft, to assure an independent Lebanon, and promote Arab-Israeli negotiations.
August 19, 1985 Introduction Israel and the United States enacted a free-trade agreement in August 1985 with the explicit goal not only of strengthening bilateral relations and expanding trade, but also of boosting a struggling…
President Clinton and Prime Minister Peres agree to deepen cooperation between their countries through regular consultation in all economic, political, military spheres.
On President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel, he and Prime Minister Yair Lapid affirmed the long-term U.S.-Israel strategic relationship.
Former US President Jimmy Carter embraced Hamas as a legitimate voice of the Palestinian people. His motivations possibly stretched from intentional to misguided to malevolent. Hamas leaders who were engaged in inter-Palestinian struggles remained pleased with the recognition he gave them. American officials and Israelis were keenly perturbed by the courtship he gave them.
In the aftermath of the horrific Hamas attack on Israelis where Hamas terrorists murdered more than a thousand Israelis and more than two dozen Americans, and others in southern Israel, in half a dozen speeches, President Biden unequivocally categorizes Hamas’s brutality as ‘pure unadulterated evil.’ He reiterates that the US will “stand with Israel.” He punctuates his support of Israel by sending two aircraft carrier groups to the Middle East, and his administration provides Israel with needed military supplies.
By Aidan New and Michael Jacobs (updated April 9) President Donald Trump’s second administration had an impact in the Middle East even before his inauguration Jan. 20, 2025: Special Middle East envoy Steven Witkoff was…
May 28, 2025 “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Overview and Developments since October 7, 2023,” by Jeremy M. Sharp, specialist in Middle East affairs, Congressional Research Service Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S….
By Ken Stein and Scott Abramson, March 23, 2025 Zionist/Jewish Economic Development in Palestine Before 1948 Jewish physical growth in Mandatory Palestine in the period known as the New Yishuv was sufficient through land acquired…
The Status-Quo Agreement is an understanding reached between David Ben-Gurion, then the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, and the religious parties in the period before Israel became a state.
Dr. Eli Sperling, April 15, 2025, for CIE © Center for Israel Education, 2025 Israeli music offers a powerful lens through which we can understand the country’s cultural and political evolution, serving as both a…
In less than 45 minutes, Israeli educator Susan Nachman Fraiman presents a taste of the variety of voices in Israeli art that have emerged in the past 20 years: female, religious, Mizrahi, Ethiopian and Israeli-Palestinian, all of which are rich subjects in themselves. We examine a few examples of works from each of these sectors and try to understand the rich background from which they come. This video is from a session July 25, 2022, at the 21st annual CIE/ISMI Enrichment Workshop on Modern Israel.
Two major discordant issues that vexed Israel before October 7, 2023, continue to cleave Israeli society: a possible exemption from mandatory military service for the Haredim and the Netanyahu government’s persistent effort to wrench from…
During the 2019 CIE/ISMI Educator Workshop on Modern Israel, Emory University Professor Michael Berger discusses how Hasidism was one of the most important Jewish innovations of its time, the evolution of ultra-Orthodoxy, and the status of Haredim within Israel today.
When Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned in 2008 amid allegations of bribery, Israel came within reach of a milestone in gender equality — one that was a credit to the Jewish state as much as…
Neither Israel’s political culture nor Israel’s democracy based on Jewish self determination simply materialized on May 15, 1948. A connection exists from Jewish self-rule in the Diaspora to Zionist political autonomy during the Yishuv and to contemporary Israeli political culture. Likewise, the origins of Israeli democracy are found in the hundreds of years of Jewish Diasporas transitioning into the Zionist movement to the state; from aliyot before the Palestine Mandate to 1948 and since. Components of Israeli political culture…
Elections, Parliament, Political Culture, Prime Ministers, Parties and the Voting Public Israel has a parliamentary system of government with some unusual features in the elections and the creation of multiparty ruling coalitions, as explained by…
Gerda Luft’s, “Cultural Life in Palestine,” is representative of the dozens of excellent analyses of Jewish life and politics in Palestine/Israel and the world located in the annual Palestine Yearbooks, later the Israel Yearbook, published from 1945 forward.
Updated August 8, 2025, with a new introduction The Jewish National Fund (JNF), or Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael (KKL), was founded in 1901 after the Fifth Zionist Congress. The goal of the fund was to raise…
The sale of Zirin Village to the Jewish National Fund was collusively undertaken by a local Arab family through the British Courts in Palestine. The process intentionally avoided financial compensation to the resident Arab occupants.
When the British and the French decided on the borders of some modern Middle Eastern states in the Levant in the 1915-1922 period, no Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Jewish, Lebanese or Jordanian state existed. Before the…
These Palestinian Arab newspaper materials and other quotations about Arab land sales to the Zionists during the British Mandate were first read and collected at the National Library at the Hebrew University on the Givat…
With more Arab sale offers than funds for purchases, Zionist leaders decide on strategic priorities and designate areas around Haifa, Jerusalem-Jaffa road, and the Galilee near headwaters of the
Jordan River.
Circumventing the existing law on prohibition of land sales to Jews, Palestinian Arabs are found selling lands regularly and furtively to Zionists.
The JNF estimated that up to 250,000 dunams (a dunam was a quarter of an acre) could be purchased if funds were available despite Arab opposition to sales and a steep rise in prices. By then, Jews owned 1.6 million dunams of land, with more than half of Palestine not owned by anyone.
Rabbi Michael Berger, a professor in Emory University’s religion department, and CIE President Ken Stein, an Emory emeritus professor, trace 3,000 years of Jewish connection to the Land of Israel and the strategies that prepared…
Kenneth W. Stein, “Zionist Land Acquisition: a core element in establishing Israel,” in Michael J. Cohen, (ed.) The British Mandate in Palestine: A Centenary Volume, 1920-2020, Routledge, 2020, pp. 189-204.
September 2, 1953 Israel starts work on a project to divert some of the water of the Jordan River at the B’not Yaakov (Daughters of Jacob) Bridge in the north of the state for use…
The Hebrew Bible, Prophetic Books, the Talmud, the daily prayer book, and ancient Jewish texts reinforce Judaism’s relationship to G-d and Eretz Yisrael.
Sharett gives an overview of Israeli foreign policy, key issues, and relationships with UN and Arab states.
Following the conclusion of the June 1967 War, the Israeli government sent word to Egypt and Syria seeking peace plan that was intended to jumpstart a peace process with Israel’s belligerent neighbors, Egypt and Syria. The messages were sent through the US, but no response was apparently received.
The Resolution calls for unspecified Israel withdrawal from territories in return for right of all states to live in peace. It does not call for full withdrawal. It is the basis of Egyptian (1979) and Jordanian (1994) Treaties with Israel, and PLO (1993) recognition of Israel.
Nine days before the March 26, 1979 signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty, US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud carried out an extraordinarily frank conversation. It included discussions about their bilateral relations, common fears of regional turbulence, and Sadat’s building estrangement from Arab leaders.
US endorses application of UN Resolution 242 to the West Bank and Gaza, and seeks Palestinian
control over land and resources, and for the territories to be affiliated with Jordan.
Prime Minister Sharon unilaterally withdrew Israeli military and civilian forces from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Sharon sought to ensure Israel’s Jewish and democratic essence by getting out of the lives of the Palestinians. Instead Hamas used the territory to kill Jews and degrade Israel morally. Two decades later what would Sharon have said about trusting your neighbor unilaterally?
April 11, 1923 Vladimir “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky (October 17, 1880-August 3, 1940) was a Russian-Jewish intellectual, writer, soldier and political activist who founded the Revisionist Zionist movement. A charismatic orator and prolific author, Jabotinsky broke with…
Ben-Gurion recognized that Arab opposition to Zionism is a national feeling and that Palestinian Arab leadership had done little to help the majority impoverished peasant population.
Steady disintegration of Palestinian Arab society from 1945-1949 is detailed by five Arab and non-Arab historians citing local social cleavages, economic impoverishment, fear, indebtedness, and political dysfunction.
From biblical times to the present, Jews and Judaism have had an unbroken connection to Zion, a reference to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, derived from the hill at the heart of Jerusalem. Zionism…
By Scott Abramson and Ken Stein In his famous 2004 essay “Between Right and Right,” Israel’s most celebrated novelist, Amos Oz, reflects on Israeli society, summing up his fellow citizens with this appraisal: “What we,…
When the British and the French decided on the borders of some modern Middle Eastern states in the Levant in the 1915-1922 period, no Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Jewish, Lebanese or Jordanian state existed. Before the…
From Ancient Times to the 19th Century The bond between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is one of the most enduring in human history. Since the Roman destruction of the Second Temple…
Ken Stein In the 1988 Hamas Charter and from remarks by it leaders and in other publications, they express hatred of Zionism, Israel and Jews. It is unmistakably clear that Hamas abhors Zionism, Israel and…
Jewish-majority self-rule existed in Eretz Yisrael during the First and Second Jewish Commonwealths, 1020 to 586 B.C.E. and 538 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., respectively. Then living for centuries as minorities throughout Europe, the Middle East…
Some ancestors of modern Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, like those of Israeli Jews, lived in the Land of Israel millennia ago, but most came to the area when Muhammad’s successors took Jerusalem and settled there…
Scott Abramson, November 2023 Throughout the history of their diaspora, the Jewish people had represented the definitive nation-in-exile and the quintessential minority, “the minority par excellence,” as philosopher Hannah Arendt described them. Jews had even…
April 14, 2025 The period of the New Yishuv lasted from the last 40 years of Ottoman rule in Palestine through the British Mandate until the establishment of Israel in 1948. It saw the growth…
Jews always have bound themselves together by committing to Torah values, taking care of one another, adapting to new settings, coping with persistently precarious living environments, and finding leaders who looked past immediate obstacles to…
Enormous tension and risks taken by Egyptian and Israeli leaderships are recounted in a brief chronology of events that led to the June 1967 war, a benchmark turning point in Middle Eastern, Israeli, and Jewish history.
Iran’s relations with Israel and the Jewish people from ancient times to the present day. June 23-June 24, 2025 — At the request of President Donald Trump, Iran and Israel enter a cease-fire to end…
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The Jewish people have a 3,000-year history with the city of Jerusalem as a political, economic, religious and cultural center. In ancient times, the city housed the First and Second Temples where Jews from throughout the Land of Israel and the growing Diaspora made regular pilgrimages. Español | Italiano
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