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Wendy Kalman, November 30, 2021 As a researcher at the Center for Israel Education, I review and correct interview transcripts. CIE founder and Chief Content Officer Ken Stein interviewed nearly 90 diplomats, politicians and others in preparation to write his 1999 book, Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin, and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace. He […]

Speculation again abounds whether a two state solution might be a seriously considered outcome to Palestinian-Israeli differences. A long history of its mention but not its implementation persists. Advocacy by external voices persists, but no one seems ready to make the critical political trade-offs required.

In 1937, the British who were governing Palestine at the time, suggested that it should be geographically divided into two states, one for the Arabs and one for the Jews. After a laborious review of what should be done about the on-going violence and rising tensions between between Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations made the same decision; establish two states for Arabs and Jews. Palestinian Arabs and Arab leaders surrounding Palestine totally rejected the UN proposal. The Zionists were pleased that the UN, representing the international community, voted in favor of establishing two states, especially a Jewish state. Arab opposition to partition may be read in the view expressed by the head of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha who rejected all compromise with the Zionists. Israel was then established in May 1948 in the midst of steady flow of Arabs leaving Palestine.

The JNF estimated that upto 250,000 dunams – (a dunam = 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.

The first version of the Jewish National Library was founded in 1892 in Jerusalem, five years before the First Zionist Congress met; its location evolved to Mount Scopus in Jerusalem during the British Mandate and then after the 1948 war, the library’s books were moved to the Rehavia section of Jerusalem, and then in 1960 to Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University. As a visiting graduate student from The University of Michigan in the summer of 1971, I walked into the mediocrely lit yet vast reading room of the Library.

There are 300 articles listed below, stretching back to March 2020. We have updated this list about every 60 days since then.  It is not exhaustive but certainly inclusive of the important assessments on the pandemic written. Think tanks, scholars and analysts produced excellent assessments of the impact that the Coronavirus pandemic had and would have […]

Assembled by Ken Stein and Michele Freesman, Emory University’s Institute for the Study of Modern Israel and the Center for Israel Education, [email protected] AFP, “Saudi Arabia: Dealing with Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon is ‘pointless’,” Times of Israel, October 31, 2021,  https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-arabia-dealing-with-hezbollah-dominated-lebanon-is-pointless/  Al-Ahram Online Staff, “Israel’s president apologizes for 1956 Kafr Qasem massacre,” Al-Ahram Online, October 30, 2021, […]

1 de noviembre de 1995) Fuente: Yehuda Avner. The Prime Ministers: an Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership. Londres: Toby, 2010. 707. Impreso. El 1.º de noviembre de 1995, tres días antes de su asesinato, el primer ministro Isaac Rabin dialogó con su consejero y redactor de discursos, Yehuda Avner, sobre los motivos que lo llevaron […]

Yitzhak Rabin’s life story, in the words of former Knesset member Nachman Shai, is “the story of the State of Israel.” He fought to create and defend it in 1948 and 1967, represented it in Washington, led it twice as prime minister, liberated Jews from captivity in 1945 and 1976, and embraced an opportunity for a chance at a longtime peace with the Palestinians in 1993. Rabin possessed essential qualities of an admired leader: credible, authentic, honest, visionary, and strategic. In addition, Rabin was taciturn, incisive, and suffered no fools. For a lifetime, he put the Jewish people on his shoulders as defender and diplomat.

Moshe Sasson spanned four decades in his service to Israel, from the Haganah’s Arab Department of Intelligence in the 1940s to being Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt in the 1980s. He recollects analytically and in detail his conversations with Arab leaders at Lausanne as well as personal impressions of Moshe Dayan and Anwar Sadat. A tour de force.

This 54-minute webinar, recorded Oct. 27, 2021, is part of the Center for Israel Education’s “Israel in Context” series and is incorporated into an extensive set of documents, study guides, videos and other resources CIE has compiled at https://israeled.org/madrid-conference/ to mark the 30th anniversary of the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, when Israel first sat at the same table with all of its immediate Arab neighbors to talk peace.

Historical Context Explore the historical context through the events and the documents leading up to the 1991 Madrid Middle East Peace Conference: 1949: Israel ends the War of Independence without secure borders or Arab acceptance. The cease-fire lines give Israel more land than proposed by the 1947 U.N. partition plan for Palestine, and the Arab […]