What was Israel before 1948?

Britain took control of the area known as Palestine following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled that part of the Middle East, in World War One.

The land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority, as well as other, smaller ethnic groups.Tensions between the two peoples grew when the international community gave the UK the task of establishing a "national home" in Palestine for Jewish people.This stemmed from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a pledge made by then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Britain's Jewish community.The declaration was enshrined in the British mandate over Palestine and endorsed by the newly-created League of Nations - forerunner of the United Nations - in 1922.To Jews Palestine was their ancestral home, but Palestinian Arabs also claimed the land and opposed the move.

The Worst 45 Minute Film You Will Ever See

Reports from the World Economic Forum at Davos cite CEO disappointment that the sensitive topic of rising global antisemitism after the Hamas attack on Israel received scant attention on the agenda, with just a single session. Following a showing there of the Israel military’s gathering of footage of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL commented, “People walked out of the room in silence simply crying or shell shocked.” Having now attended several such screenings of this exact same film, I saw leaders react in similar horror to the visual evidence of the butchery which once witnessed can never be unseen. But it must be seen. Leaders across sectors, nations, and religions must view the IDF’s footage to understand viscerally and emotionally that the atrocity deniers are wrong.In fact, just last month, at a gathering of top business leaders attending our Yale CEO Summit, we showed one of the first U.S. screenings of this video, which was painstakingly compiled and put together by the IDF. The purpose of this viewing was to follow the lead of those throughout history documenting the realities of heinous inhumanity still present in society, just as museums have chronicled past cruelty. No one was eager to see this video, and yet all felt an obligation to watch every moment--to bear witness to suffering and as a call to action to stop such carnage. 

This viewing can be understood as similar to visits to memorials to genocidal victims such as Israel’s Yad Vashem, The American Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Hungarian Jewish Museum in Budapest’s stately Dohány Street Synagogue, the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Ukraine, Srebrenica-Potočari Genocide Memorial and Cemetery in Croatia, and Rwanda’s Kigali Genocide Memorial, among other infamous memorials of tragedy. None are pleasant tourist experiences, but they are vital landmarks documenting the historic truth of unimaginable human cruelty to innocent victims. The Israeli Defense Forces videos of the Hamas campaign of a single day’s carnage is a new opportunity to fortify these vital truths and knowledge.Learning takes place not just through lectures, reading, and even discussions but also through feeling – or what philosopher John Dewey called “experiential learning” – a term much diluted and diverted from his intentions a century ago.  Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 book, the Medium is the Message was as much a celebration of media technology as it was a warning that it extends and overtakes our senses.  The renowned MIT political scientist, Ithiel de Sola Pool reassured us in his 1983 book Technologies of Freedom, that newly emerging digital media could save us from the oppression of bigotry. However, lately we have seen that over-lawyered, underprepared university administrators, cowardly political leaders, and naïve young social zealots have fallen victim to the filtering and distortion in social media in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel. The documentation is available to correct these false narratives being promoted in social media, but is the truth too hard to view? What is the value in screenings of the newly assembled footage of the brutal Hamas assault on peaceful innocent civilians this past October and who should see these images?