The Moses of his Generation

For ages the Jewish population did not have a place to call home. They had been wandering around deserts, were once slaves in Egypt, but didn’t have any land to their name. Following the Holocaust, after many Jews had been persecuted by Hitler and the Nazis, a good portion of the overall amount of Jews in the world let alone Europe had been exterminated. As a result, Harry Truman and the UN suggested Israel, a homeland for the Jews. Tensions had been growing throughout the beginning of the 20th Century regarding the Palestinian area in the Middle East. This area was off to the side of Asia, near Africa. When the Jews and Arabs were offered part of this land, war broke out and still continues today. Even though a war happened as a result

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the one of the world’s oldest conflicts, and it is still an ongoing problem in the world. Zionists and Arabs: two groups with conflicting beliefs who both claim Israel as their own. In wake of the Holocaust the U.N decided to gift the Jews a homeland for the lives lost in the genocide. In 1947, the U.N Partition divided the land of Israel (Historic Palestine) into two separate states: Arab and Jewish. Since then, the state of Israel has been the center of conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists. As time passed the Zionists gained more land from winning the Six-Day War, and consequently the Palestinians had to live as refugees in other Arab countries. Additionally, more than 75% of the land belonged to

in 1918 britain aided by the arabs captured palestine from the the ottoman turks but britain had now made too many promises that hey couldn't keep . Many Arabs opposed British troops because of England's failure to fulfill its promise and were also getting angry about the increase of jewish migrating to palestine. Arabs became concerned that Jewish immigration would threaten their position in Palestine which lead to large scale attacks on the jews. At the time of Hitler's dictatorship in Germany, Jewish immigration increased dramatically in 1933. An Arab revolt started which Britain suppressed with the help of Zionist militias. Zionist settlements climaxed in 1936. In 1947, Britain forbid Jewish refugees from nazi concentration camps to land in Palestine to prevent war between Jews and Arabs, which resulted in worldwide criticism of Britain. Britain withdrew itself from the situation handing over the mandate over Palestine, leaving the United Nations to deal with the situation. The United Nations proposed that Palestine was divided into two states, one for the Arabs and one for the Jews, however the Arabs opposed this idea claiming that the UN plan allotted too much territory to the Jews. the arabs thought it was unfair that the jews should get more land because the arabs were by far the larger population but because of the holocaust the was a lot of sympathy for the jews and this may be why the got more land.

David Ben-Gurion (the head of the world Zionist Organization) made Israel a nation-state, in may of 1948. The jews had a goal to create a homeland in the Palestine area for many years, this goal grew after WW2. The violence towards the Jewish in WW2, the united nations decided what the jews had control of. They decided that Palestine was going to be split into sections, one for the jews, one for the Arabs, and another for the jerusalem and bethlehem. A vote was taken, and soon everyone signed it. The Arab-Israeli war of 1948 was resulted in Israel's independence. The war was between the Arabs and israel. There was tension between the jews and the muslim Arab for control of “their” land. The dividing of Palestine caused the tension to end and civil war erupted. This caused many palestine Arabs to flee and become refugees and 700 000 jews flee to Israel, because they were expelled from their country. Israel's independence caused tension to form and created more problems for the

Before anyone can comprehend the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one must understand the theory of Zionism. Theodor Herzl was the first Jew to have the idea of creating Israel. He was a witness of the Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish officer was accused of treason, solely because he was Jewish. Herzl also witnessed mobs of people shouting “Death to the Jews”. This was the last straw for Herzl. Herzl decided that there needed to be a change so he made it one of his life goals to create a successful movement in which Jews founded a Jewish state. One of his main arguments was that discrimination against Jews could be eliminated if they had their own Jewish State, and so modern Zionism was formed. The idea of modern Zionism is so pertinent to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because much of the reason for Israel becoming a Jewish state is behind the fact that Jews were perpetrated throughout the years before Zionism even came into play of the situation.

The war for the independence of Israel was not a war as much as it was a hostile takeover of Palestine by any means necessary. Two infamous Jewish forces, the Irgun and the Haganah, often used terror tactics to achieve their goals and both focusing their energies on reprisals against Arabs and the British. Their tactics killed hundreds of innocent civilians in the name of a Jewish state and the Haganah even attacked their own people, framing the Palestinians, in order to generate support and sympathy for the their cause, but these acts appealed to some who “believed that any action taken in the cause of the creation of a Jewish state was justified.” There were unquestionably consequences to these actions as well as violent reactions to a Jewish state from other Middle Eastern states. When Israel finally declared independence, “the armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Iraq invaded Israel” and began the first war between the Arabs and now Israelis. Although the Arab Legion lost the war against Israel, in part to the support Israel received from the United States, it set a precedent for Arab-Israeli relations which have been tense every since and there still has yet to be reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians, who continue to be oppressed and persecuted.

In the early stages of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, the founder and “Father of Zionism”, negotiated with Britain, a major world power at the time, to give up five thousand square miles of Uganda. In 1903, this idea was brought to the Zionists, which offered geographical protection and isolation from Russia. These negotiations, however, came to a halt when Herzl died in 1904. Months later, however, the cause did find potential in the area of Palestine. Palestine was remote enough that Jews had geographical protection and had suitable weather for agricultural purposes. Similarly, Palestine was religiously significant because it contained the holy land of Jerusalem. As a result, in a span of twelve years (1902-1914), the Zionists move around 70,000 Jews within two migration periods known as the First and Second Aliyahs. These major movements gave the Jews the manpower they needed to make a serious threat to the Palestinian forces. Nevertheless, WWI put a halt in the Zionist efforts until the end of the war in 1917.

These attacks brought fear to the Jews and lead to the aforementioned movement where the Jews sought to re-establish their homeland of Palestine, or currently known as Israel, since they would be safe in a state of their own. Soon after the first World War, the British, in need of soldiers, made conflicting promises to colonial subjects, such as the Jews, with the Balfour Declaration. The declaration acknowledged the establishment of a Jewish

One of the major concerns was the Arabs already living on the land the Jewish wanted to populate. Among the players who had different views was Ze’Ev Jabotinsky, a Jewish nationalist and the founder of the Revisionist Zionism. The Revisionist advocated that the Land of Israel should be encompassed all the land within the Palestine mandate and the immediate Jewish right to political sovereignty over the entire area. The Revisionists wanted to maintain the “territorial integrity” of the Land of Israel and objected to the partition of Palestine and advocated for the establishment of Israel on both banks of the River Jordan. Jabotinsky suggested that it was the “moral right” of the Jewish people to return to Palestine and the world had already “acknowledged this right.” Further, Revisionists believed it was impossible to have an agreement with the Arabs as long as they hope they could create their own independent state. Consequently, the Jewish must create a state regardless of the Palestinians resistance secured by an “Iron Wall” which would be unbreakable by the Palestinians. The iron wall would lead to a peace resolution with the Arabs after which the Jewish state would give them “civil and national rights.” Revisionist Zionism adamantly advocated the creation of a strong Jewish state to guarantee and protect the

Zionists and Palestinian Arabs wanted individual nations and both felt they had a claim to Palestine. Shortly after in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution (UNGAR) called for a partition, which divided the country so that each state would have a majority of its own population. This divide meant that some of the Jewish settlements would fall within the proposed Arab state while an extremely large number of Palestinian Arabs would become part of the proposed Jewish state. (Beinin and Hajjar 2014). A year later in May, Israel unilaterally declared their independence and the State of Israel was established. This of course started a war, and neighboring Arab states invaded Israel almost immediately. During this war about 750,000 Arab Palestinians fled to Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip. (http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/%E2%80%9Cpalestine-refugees-unresolved-question-time-syria-crisis%E2%80%9D) Also during this fight, Israel expanded its borders far beyond the UN partition lines, leaving Egypt to take hold of the Gaza Strip & Jordan to control the West

Immediately after the Second World War, Robert Moses’ power increased exponentially. He then, got a control over city’s housing authority. Huge amount of money was spent by the federal government on the public housing and low income housing. This money was spent in New York at the command of Robert Moses. Up to that point Moses had been building mostly parks and bridges, now, he was going to build inside the city. No one could have predicted the magnitude of explosion that would overtake New York. Moses demanded to be the construction co-ordinater. The construction co-ordinater has to represent the city in all its dealing with federal government. And therefore, he got a control over public housing and federal money. In the end of the year 1948,

The Holocaust saw the systematic murder of six million Jews through a Nazi attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population from the European continent. With a strong sense of something needing to be done to atone for the Holocaust and thus compensate the remnants of the European Jewish population, pressure mounted on the British and the Americans to grant them a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East, hence conceding to an idea that had been set in motion long before the war. It is therefore through a consideration of the effects of the Holocaust on the Jewish communities, British and American policy towards the region, as well as the Palestinian Arabs, that its role in the establishment of Israel can become clear.

Moses was a leader of the Hebrews and probably the most important figure in Judaism. He led the Hebrew people out of Egypt and into the Promise Land. His story is told in the book of Exodus, and begins when he was first born during the time that the pharaoh of Egypt declared that all male Hebrew babies were to be drowned at birth. Moses’ mother Yocheved, hid Moses and placed him in a basket in the reeds of the Nile River, where he was then found by the pharaoh’s daughter, who kept Moses and raised him as her own. In the story of Moses, he grows up and stumbles upon an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. Out of anger Moses murders the Egyptian, and flees to Midian to escape his crime (Hays, 2000). In Midian, Moses rests besides a well,

It is now opinions of many biblical scholars and historians that Moses did not write the first five books also known as the Torah or the Pentateuch of the Old Testament which is also known as the Tanakh. There exists a theory that the original authors consisted five different groups all from various locations in the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah and who contributed to the writing of the Torah over a period of centuries. This theory is what is now known as the Documentary Hypothesis.

In 1948, the British mandate announced their intentions to terminate its mandate in Palestine due to the conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews. Britain faced difficulties trying to bring peace to Palestine. After the British mandate left Palestine, the Jewish people declared the establishment of a Jewish state (Israel). On the same day, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq intervened and this marked the first Arab-Israeli war. After this war, over 800,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees as a result of the independence of Israel. Also, Jews in the Arab countries were made to abandon their properties and flee.