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Irgun

Irgun

Irgun (ארגון), shorthand for Irgun Tsvai Leumi (ארגון צבאי לאומי, also spelled Irgun Zvai Leumi), Hebrew for "National Military Organization", was a militant Zionist group that operated in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1931 to 1948. In Israel, this group is commonly referred to as Etzel (אצ"ל), an acronym of the Hebrew initials. In the time in which the Irgun operated, a lot of times peoples referred to the Irgun as 'הגנה ב or ההגנה הלאומית for reasons of secrecy. The Irgun was classified by British authorities as a terrorist organization and regularly described as such by many, but others considered it to be a liberation movement. Its political association with Revisionist Zionism rendered it a predecessor movement to modern Israel's right-wing Likud party/coalition.

Founding, development and key events

The group was an offshoot of the Haganah in protest both against its policy of restraint and socialist leanings. Based on the premises formulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky that "every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state," (Howard Sachar: A History of the State of Israel, pps 265-266) the group made retaliation against Arab attacks a central part of their initial efforts. The Jewish Agency denounced the existence, strategy, and tactics of the group from the very outset, leading to a full-fledged confrontation in 1948 that led to the dissolution of the group. Irgun was founded in 1931 by Avraham Tehomi, following a largely political and ideological split with the Haganah after he had assumed leadership over the district of Jerusalem. Irgun differentiated itself from the Haganah by disassociating from the socialist ideology and the prevalent strategy of Havlagah, or restraint. Throughout its history Irgun advocated a more decisive use of force in the defense of Jews in Mandate Palestine and in advancing the formation of a Jewish state. While the strategy, tactics, and operational methods of the organization changed through the years, its primary goals were to:
- Provide a non-Socialist alternative to the leading Zionist organizations;
- Eliminate or reduce the threat of Arab attacks on Jewish targets by assured and harsh retaliation for such attacks;
- Bring to an end the British mandatory rule, which they considered in violation of international law From its inception, the group went through several phases in its short lifespan.
- From 1931 to 1937 it was a small, renegade group that undertook scattered attacks against Arab targets. This phase ended when the group itself split, with some of its leaders, including the original founder, Tehomi, returning to the Haganah; and the group formally identifying itself as "Etzel" (Irgun).
- During the Great Uprising (1936-1939), in which about 320 Jews were killed in Arab attacks, Irgun resumed its reprisal attacks against Arabs. Following the killing of five Jews at Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim on November 9, 1937, Irgun launched a series of attacks which lasted until the beginning of World War II, in which more than 250 Arab civilians were killed.
- These attacks coincided roughly with Irgun's campaign of facilitating immigration of European Jews who faced discrimination, murder and pogroms in Europe. The first vessel arrived on April 13, 1937, and the last on February 13, 1940. All told, about 18,000 Jews escaped genocide in Europe in this way.
- Upon the publication of the White Paper in May of 1939, Irgun concentrated all its efforts against the British.
- From 1940 through 1943, Irgun declared a truce against the British, and supported Allied efforts against Nazi forces and their allies in the area by enlisting its members in British forces and the Jewish Brigade. A small group group lead by Avraham Stern, who insisted on continuing to fight the British, broke off and formed an independent group, Lehi. In 1941, the Irgun leader, David Raziel volunteered for a dangerous British military mission in Iraq to capture or kill Amin al-Husayni, but was killed by a German bomber before the operation could be finished.
- In February of 1944, under the new leadership of Menachem Begin, Irgun resumed hostilities against the British authorities. The purpose of these attacks was to increase the cost of British mandatory rule and influence British public opinion so as to encourage British withdrawal. It included attacks on prominent symbols of the British administration, including the British military, police, and civil headquarters at the King David Hotel and the British prison in Acre. Although these attacks were largely successful, several Irgun operatives were captured, convicted, and hanged. Refusing to accept the jurisdiction of the British courts, those accused refused to defend themselves. The Irgun leadership ultimately responded to these executions by hanging two British sergeants, which effectively brought the executions to an end.
- Following the assassination of Lord Moyne by Lehi, the Yishuv and Jewish Agency initiated "The Hunting Season" on Irgun and the Lehi group, facilitating the arrest of some 1000 members of those organizations who were interned in British camps. The British deported 251 of them to camps in Africa.
- From about October of 1945 until July 1946 Irgun was in an alliance with the Haganah and Lehi called the Jewish Resistance Movement (תנועת המרי העברי), organized to fight British restrictions on Jewish immigration. This alliance ended when Irgun bombed British military, police, and civil headquarters at the King David Hotel as a retaliation for Operation Agatha.
- From July 1946 until June 1948, Irgun fought as irregulars against the British mandate and Arab forces, informally in coordination with Haganah forces. Their participation in alleged war crimes at Deir Yassin has been widely discussed and documented. Their largest single operation was a successful assault on Jaffa (an Arab enclave according to the UN partition plan) starting on May 25.
- In 1948, the group was formally dissolved and its members integrated into the newly formed Israeli Defense Forces. This integration largely coincided with the sinking of the Altalena, a ship with fighters Irgun had recruited and arms Irgun had acquired for the Israeli forces.

Legacy of Irgun

Leaders within the mainstream Jewish Agency, Haganah, Histadrut, as well as British authorities, routinely condemned (publicly at least; privately the Haganah kept a dialogue with the dissident groups) Irgun operations as terrorist and branded it an illegal organization, as a result of the groups attacks on civilian targets. In their defense, former Irgun leaders assert that:
- The premises for their founding and strategy were vindicated by subsequent events. Arab violence against Jews in the mandate of Palestine could only be deterred through retaliation; the British authorities only ended their restrictions on Jewish immigration when pressured by force; and unrestricted Jewish immigration was a matter of saving lives, both during the Shoah and during post-World War II pogroms in Poland and Ukraine.
- Operations that are usually characterized as "terrorist" had another character. The King David Hotel bombing was considered a legitimate military target, being the British military headquarters; the attack on Deir Yassin was part of a campaign to control the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; the attack on the Acre prison was to release prisoners the British intended to hang. The Irgun and more radical lehi groups were both disolved with the creation of the IDF and state of Israel.

Radio station

The Irgun had, from 1939, a Radio station: Kol TSion HaLokhemet.

External links

- [http://www.etzel.org.il/english/index.html Official History of Irgun]
- [http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/irguntoc.html History of Irgun by an American Jewish Organization]
- [http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article?eu=393481 Encyclopedia Britannica Entry on Irgun] Category:Israel Defense Forces Category:National liberation movements Category:Militant Zionist groups Category:History of Israel Category:Terrorism

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than 6 million people, mainly in Israel, the West Bank, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. The core of the Tanakh (sometimes referred to as the Hebrew Bible), the Torah (which Christianity and Judaism traditionally hold to have been first recorded in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago), is written in (Biblical) Classical Hebrew. Jews have always called it לשון הקודש Lashon ha-Qodesh ("The Sacred Language") as the scriptures written in this language were considered sacred. Most scholars agree that after the first destruction of Jerusalem by the Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the kind of Hebrew prevalent in the Tanakh was replaced in daily use by Mishnaic Hebrew and a local version of Aramaic. After the depletion of the Jewish population of parts of Roman occupied Judea, it is believed that Hebrew gradually ceased to be a spoken language roughly around 200 CE, but has stayed as the major written language throughout the centuries. Not only religious, but texts for a large variety of purposes: letters and contracts, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry, protocols of courts—all resorted to Hebrew, which thus adapted itself to various new fields and terminologies by borrowings and new inventions. Hebrew was revitalized as a spoken language during the late 19th and early 20th century as Modern Hebrew, replacing a score of languages spoken by the Jews at that time, such as Arabic, Judezmo (also called Ladino), Yiddish, Russian, and other languages of the Jewish diaspora as the spoken language of the majority of the Jewish people living in Israel. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921, and the primary official language of the State of Israel, (Arabic maintained its official language status). The Hebrew name for the language is עברית, or Ivrit (IPA: )

History

While the term "Hebrew" as a nationality is customarily used to refer to the ancient Israelites, the classical Hebrew language was extremely similar to the Canaanite languages spoken by their neighbors, such as Phoenician; indeed, Moabite and Hebrew are often considered to be two dialects of the same language. Hebrew strongly resembles Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central Arabic, sharing many linguistic features with them.

Early history

Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language. This language family is generally thought by linguists to have originated somewhere in northeastern Africa, and began to diverge around the 8th millennium BCE, although there is much debate about the exact date and place. (The theory is espoused by most archeologists and linguists, but at odds with traditional reading of the Torah.) One branch of this family, Semitic, eventually reached the Middle East; it gradually differentiated into a variety of related languages. By the end of the 3rd millennium BCE the ancestral languages of Aramaic, Ugaritic, and other various Canaanite languages were spoken in the Levant alongside the influential dialects of Ebla and Akkad. As the Hebrew founders from northern Haran filtered south into and came under the influence of the Levant, like many sojourners into Canaan including the Philistines, they adopted Canaanite dialects. The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the Gezer calendar, dates back to the 10th century BCE, the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon. It presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks and Etruscans later became the Roman script. The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where more modern spelling requires it (see below). Roman script, dates to the 7th century BCE.]] Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example Protosinaitic. It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian writing, though the phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite, and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from Egyptian. One ancient document is the famous Moabite Stone written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam Inscription, found near Jerusalem, is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Old Hebrew include the ostraka found near Lachish which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE. The most famous work originally written in Hebrew is the Tanakh, though the time at which it was written is a matter of dispute (see dating the Bible for details). The earliest extant copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, written between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE. The formal language of the latter Babylonian Empire was Aramaic (its name is either derived from "Aram Naharayim", Upper Mesopotamia, or from "Aram," the ancient name for Syria). The Persian Empire, which had captured Babylonia a few decades later under Cyrus, adopted Aramaic as the official language. Aramaic is also a North-West Semitic language, quite similar to Hebrew. Aramaic has contributed many words and expressions to Hebrew, mainly as the language of commentary in the Talmud and other religious works. In addition to numerous words and expressions, Hebrew also borrowed the Aramaic writing system. Although the original Aramaic letter forms were derived from the same Phoenician alphabet that was used in ancient Israel, they had changed significantly, both in the hands of the Mesopotamians and of the Jews, assuming the forms familiar to us today around the first century CE. Writings of that era (most notably, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran) are written in a script very similar to the "square" one still used today.

Later history

The Jews living in the Persian Empire adopted Aramaic, and Hebrew quickly fell into disuse. It was preserved, however, as the literary language of Bible study. Aramaic became the vernacular language of the renewed Judaea for the following 700 years. Famous works written in Aramaic include the Targum, the Talmud and several of Flavius Josephus' books (several of the latter were not preserved, however, in the original.) Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jews gradually began to disperse from Judaea into foreign countries (this dispersion was hastened when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem (and turned it into a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina) in 135 CE after putting down Bar Kokhba's revolt.) For many hundreds of years Aramaic remained the spoken language of Mesopotamian Jews, and Lishana Deni, one of several Judæo-Aramaic languages, is a modern descendant that is still spoken by a few thousand Jews (and many non-Jews) from the area known as Kurdistan; however, it gradually gave way to Arabic, as it had given way to other local languages in the countries to which the Jews had gone. Hebrew was not used as a mother tongue for roughly 1800 years. However the Jews have always devoted much effort to maintaining high standards of literacy among themselves, the main purpose being to let any Jew read the Hebrew Bible and the accompanying religious works in the original (see rabbinic literature, Codes of Jewish law, The Jewish Bookshelf). It is interesting to note that the languages that the Jews adopted from their adopted nations, namely Ladino and Yiddish were not directly connected to Hebrew (the former being based on Spanish and Arabic borrowings, latter being a remote dialect of Middle High German), however, both were written from right to left using the Hebrew script. Hebrew was also used as a language of communication among Jews from different countries, particularly for the purpose of international trade. The most important contribution to preserving traditional Hebrew pronunciation in this period was that of scholars called Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who from about the seventh to the tenth centuries CE devised detailed markings to indicate vowels, stress, and cantillation (recitation methods). The original Hebrew texts used only consonants, and later some consonants were used to indicate long vowels. By the time of the Masoretes this text was considered too sacred to be altered, so all their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters.

Revival

cantillation The revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue was initiated by the efforts of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) (אליעזר בן־יהודה). He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 emigrated to Eretz Israel, then a province of the Ottoman Empire. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "shtetl" lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making the literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language. However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by more modern grammar and style, in the writings of people like Achad Ha-Am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into a gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904-1905 "Second aliyah" that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the new and better organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous, many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of pre-state Israel who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that exists today. The results of his and the Committee's work were published in a dictionary (The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew). Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British pre-State Israel.

Modern Hebrew

Ben-Yehuda based Modern Hebrew on Biblical Hebrew. Often new words were coined by applying unused word-patterns to existing roots (Biblical k-t-v, "write," gave rise to modern Hebrew hikhtiv, "dictated," and hitkatev, "corresponded.") When this did not suffice and the Committee set out to invent a new word for a certain concept, it searched through the Biblical word-indexes and foreign dictionaries, particularly Arabic. While Ben-Yehuda preferred Semitic roots to European ones, the abundance of European Hebrew speakers led to the introduction of numerous foreign words. Other changes which had taken place as Hebrew came back to life were the systematization of the grammar - the Biblical syntax was sometimes limited and ambiguous -- and the adoption of standard Western punctuation. Modern Hebrew shows influences from Russian (for example, the Russian suffix -acia is used in nouns where English has the suffix -ation); German (particularly in combination words like "tapuakh-adama," meaning potato (German Erdapfel , earth-apple) or "iton" (German Zeitung, news-ity, news-paper). English has been a very strong influence, both from British influence during the period of the Mandate and American influence in the present day. Finally, Arabic, being the language of numerous Mizrahic and Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Arab countries as well as of the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, has also had an important influence on Hebrew, especially in slang (for example, "sababa", meaning "excellent", or "ya'alla", meaning "come on".) Due to its many influences and its youth, Modern Hebrew has many characteristics which are distinctly not Semitic. At the phonetic level, it has abandoned the pharyngeal and emphatic consonants (in most pronunciations). It also uses the occasional foreign morpheme, in words such as רכבל ("rakevel") (meaning "cable car", formed by adding a lamed to the word for "vehicle") and רמזור ("ramzor") (meaning "traffic light", formed by adding a vav and a resh to the root for "hinting" and "allusion"). Even so, the Hebrew preserved part of the prominent characteristics of the Semitic languages. One of the main questions which occupying the researchers of the Modern Hebrew is how much the Modern Hebrew is a Semitic language. Another non-Semitic property of Modern Hebrew is the pronunciation of certain letters. For instance, the letter Heth (ח) now sounds like Khaf (כ), the letter 'Ayin (ע) now sounds like (sometimes) Alef (א), Qof (ק) sounds like Kaf (כּ), and Thav (ת) sounds like Teth (ט). Modern Hebrew is printed with a script known as "square". It is the same script, ultimately derived from Aramaic, that was used for copying of Bible books in Hebrew for two thousand years. This script also has a cursive version, which is used for handwriting. Hebrew has been the language of numerous poets, which include Rachel, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Shaul Tchernihovsky, Lea Goldberg, Avraham Shlonsky and Natan Alterman. Hebrew was also the language of hundreds of authors, one of whom is the Nobel Prize laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

Hebrew language in the USSR

, Yevsektsiya The Soviet authorities considered Hebrew a "reactionary language" since it was associated with both Judaism and Zionism, and it was officially banned by the Narkompros (Commissariat of Education) as early as 1919. Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries. Despite numerous protests in the West, teachers and students who attempted to study Hebrew language were pilloried and sentenced for "counter revolutionary" and later for "anti-Soviet" activities.

Dialects

According to Ethnologue, dialects of Hebrew include Standard Hebrew (General Israeli, Europeanized Hebrew), Oriental Hebrew (Arabized Hebrew, Yemenite Hebrew). In practice, there is also Ashkenazi Hebrew, still widely used in Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad. It was influenced by the Yiddish language. Sephardi Hebrew language is the basis of Standard Hebrew and not all that different from it, although traditionally it has had a greater range of phonemes. It was influenced by the Ladino language. Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew is actually a collection of dialects (including Yemenite) spoken liturgically by Jews in various parts of the Arab and Islamic world. It was influenced by the Arabic language. Nearly every immigrant to Israel is encouraged to adopt Standard Hebrew as their daily language. Phonologically, this "dialect" may most accurately be described as an amalgam of pronunciations preserving Sephardic vowel sounds and Ashkenazic consonant sounds—its recurring feature being simplification of differences among a wide array of pronunciations. This simplifying tendency also accounts for the collapse of the Ashkenazic /t/ and /s/ pronunciations of unaspirated and aspirated ת into the single phoneme /t/. Most Sephardic dialects differentiated between these two pronunciations as /t/ and /θ/. Within Israel, the pronunciation of "Standard Hebrew", however, more often reflects the national or ethnic origin of the individual speaker, rather than the specific recommendations of the Academy. For this reason, over half the population pronounces ר as , (a uvular trill, as in Yiddish and some varieties of German) or as (a uvular fricative, as in French or many varieties of German), rather than as /r/, an apical trill, as in Spanish. The pronunciation of this phoneme is often used as a determinant among Israelis when ascertaining the national origin of perceived foreigners.

Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew

See main article Jewish languages Yiddish, Ladino, Karaim, and Judaeo-Arabic were all highly influenced by Hebrew. Although none are completely derived from Hebrew, they all make extensive use of Hebrew loanwords. In a less direct manner, the revival of Hebrew is often cited by proponents of International auxiliary languages as the best proof that languages long dead, with small communities, or modified or created artificially can become living languages used by a large number of people.

Sounds

Hebrew has two kinds of stress: on the last syllable (milra‘) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mil‘el). The former is more frequent. Specific rules connect the location of the stress with the length of the vowels in the last syllable; however due to the fact that Modern Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are often ignored in everyday speech. Interestingly enough, the rules that specify the vowel length are different for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the mil‘el-stressed ókhel (="food") and milra‘-stressed okhèl (="eats", masculine) are written in the same way. Little ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in normal sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word "conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms.

Vowels

vowel length The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu‘ot. The marks for these vowels are called Niqqud. Modern Israeli Hebrew has 5 vowel phonemes:
- /a/ (as in "car") - The vowels qamatz and patakh
- /e/ (as in "set") - The vowels seggol and tzereh
- /i/ (as in "beak")- The vowel khiriq
- /o/ (as in "horn")- The vowel kholam
- /u/ (as in "room")- The vowels shuruq and qubbutz In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (hataf). However, there is no audible distinction between the three in modern Israeli Hebrew. Hebrew phonetics include a special feature called shva. According to "Ha-Yesod, the Fundamentals of Hebrew" by Luba Uveeler and Norman M. Broznick, this feature is pronounced "Shva" and is spelled Shin Vav He. There are two kinds of shva: resting (nax) and moving (na' ). The resting shva is pronounced as a brief stop of speech. The moving shva sounds much like the English a in about. Hebrew also has dagesh, a strengthening. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light (qal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (hazaq or dagesh forte). There are two sub-categories of the heavy dagesh: structural heavy (hazaq tavniti) and complementing heavy (hazaq mashlim). The light affects the phonemes /b/ /k/ /p/ in the beginning of a word, or after a resting schwa. Structural heavy emphases belong to certain vowel patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see the section on grammar below), and correspond originally to doubled consonants. Complementing strengthening is added when vowel assimilation takes place. As mentioned before, the emphasis influences which of a pair of (former) allophones is pronounced. Interestingly enough, historical evidence indicates that /g/, /d/ and /t/ used to have strengthened versions of their own, however they had disappeared from virtually all the spoken dialects of Hebrew. All other consonants except gutturals may receive the heavy emphasis, as well. One-letter words are always attached to the following word. Such words include: the definite article h (="the"); prepositions b (="in"), m (="from"), l (="to"); conjunctions sh (="that"), k (="as", "like"), v (="and"). The vowel that follows the letter thus attached depends in general on the beginning of the next word and the presence of a definite article which may be swallowed by the one-letter word. The rules for the prepositions are complicated and vary with the formality of speech. In most cases they are followed by a moving schwa, and for that reason they are pronounced as be, me and le. In more formal speech, if a preposition is put before a word which begins with a moving schwa, then the preposition takes the vowel /i/ (and the initial consonant is weakened), but in colloquial speech these changes do not occur. For example, colloquial be-kfar (="in a village") becomes bi-khfar. If l or b are followed by the definite article ha, their vowel changes to /a/. Thus
- be-ha-matos becomes ba-matos (="in the plane"). However it does not happen to m, therefore me-ha-matos is a valid form, which means "from the plane". :
- indicates that the given example is not grammatically correct

Consonants

The Hebrew word for consonants is ‘itsurim (עיצורים). ע was once pronounced as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Modern Ashkenazi (Northern and Eastern European Jews) reading tradition ignores this; however, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern and North African Jews) and Israeli Arabs accent these phonemes in a traditional semitic fashion which resembles Arabic `ain ع. Georgian Jews pronounce it as a glottalized g. Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it as "ng" in "sing" — a pronunciation which can also be found in the Italki tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany. Postalveolar sounds (with the exception of ) are not native to Hebrew, and only found in borrowings. The pairs (/b/, /v/), (/k/, /x/), (/p/, /f/), written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have historically been allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds (/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with ), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings.

Historical sound changes

Standard (non-Oriental) Israeli Hebrew (SIH) has undergone a number of splits and mergers in its development from Biblical Hebrew .
- BH /b/ had two allophones, [b] and [v]; the [v] allophone has merged with /w/ into SIH /v/
- BH /k/ had two allophones, [k] and [x]; the [k] allophone has merged with /q/ into SIH /k/, while the [x] allophone has merged with into SIH /x/
- BH /t/ and have merged into SIH /t/
- BH and have merged into SIH
- BH /p/ had two allophones, [p] and [f]; the incorporation of loanwords into Modern Hebrew has probably resulted in a split, so that /p/ and /f/ are separate phonemes

Grammar

See main article Hebrew grammar Hebrew grammar is mostly analytical, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than grammatical cases. However inflection does play an important role in the formation of the verbs, nouns and the genitive construct, which is called "smikhut". Words in smikhut are often combined with hyphens.
Writing system
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet. Modern scripts are based on the "square" letter form. A similar system is used in handwriting, but the letters tend to be more circular in their character, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed equivalents. Biblical Hebrew text contains nothing but consonants and spaces, and most modern Hebrew texts contain only consonants, spaces and western-style punctuation. A pointing system (nikud, from the root word meaning "points" or "dots") developed around the 5th Century C.E. is used to indicate vowels and syllabic stresses in some religious books, and is almost always found in modern poetry, children's literature, and texts for beginning students of Hebrew. The system is also used sparingly to avoid certain ambiguities of meaning — such as when context is insufficient to distinguish between two identically spelled words — and in the transliteration of foreign names. All Hebrew consonant phonemes are represented by a single letter. Although a single letter might represent two phonemes — the letter "bet," for example, represents both /b/ and /v/ — the two sounds are always related "hard" (plosive) and "soft" (fricative) forms, their pronunciaton being very often determined by context. In fully pointed texts, the hard form normally has a dot, known as a dagesh, in its center. The letters hei, vav and yud can represent consonantal sounds (/h/, /v/ and /j/, respectively) or serve as a markers for vowels. In the latter case, these letters are called "emot qria" ("matres lectionis" in Latin, "mothers of reading" in English). The letter hei at the end of a word usually indicates a final /a/, which in turn is usually indicative of feminine gender. Vav may represent /o/ or /u/, and yod may represent /i/. There is no consonantal marker for /e/. In some modern Israeli texts, the letter alef is used to indicate long /a/ sounds in foreign names, particularly those of Arabic origin. Terminal syllabic emphasis is most common. Fully pointed texts will note variations with a vertical line placed underneath the first consonant of the emphasized syllable, to the left of the vowel mark if there is one.
Romanization
See also Romanization of Hebrew The Hebrew language is normally written in the Hebrew alphabet. Due to publishing difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the alphabet, there are many ways of transcribing Hebrew into Roman letters. The most accurate method is the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used (in a simplified ASCII form) in the section concerned with Phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language. However, the IPA is not well known, and is often considered cumbersome for transcribing pronunciations for a general audience. Therefore this article uses a different system to express Hebrew pronunciation, and at least some orthographic peculiarities. The system comes down to the following:
- The letter tzadi (צ) is transcribed by "c" so that it could be distinguished from other combinations of /t/ and /s/, although "ts" or "tz" is usually acceptable.
- The letter ‘ayin (ע) is transcribed ', the same as alef. In word-final position, this phoneme is always preceded by the vowel /a/.
- The letter shin (ש) is transcribed by "sh", and the letter sin as "s".
- Both the letter tav (ת) and the letter tet (ט) are transcribed by "t".
- The letter he (ה) at the end of a word, in those cases where it marks feminine gender, is transcribed by "ah" (it is read /a/).
- The letter chet (ח) is usually transcribed by "ch" as there is no "ch" sound in hebrew. "kh" is usually acceptable but not as common. "h" is occasionally used but often avoided as "h" is also used for he (ה).
- The letter qof (ק) is transcribed by "q" (it is pronounced /k/ by many speakers).
- Single-letter prepositions and the definite article are separated with a dash (-) from their subject.
- Stresses and schwas are not marked.
- The vowels are always written.
- The letter yod is usually transcribed by "y".
See also

- Common phrases in Hebrew
- Cantillation
- Hebrew alphabet
- Niqqud (vowel points)
- Samaritan Hebrew
- The study of Hebrew
- Hebrew literature
Notes
# [http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/ben-yehuda/ben-yehuda.htm Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Resurgence of the Hebrew Language] by Libby Kantorwitz # [http://www.zionistarchives.org.il/ZA/SiteE/pShowView.aspx?GM=Y&ID=48&Teur=Protest%20against%20the%20suppression%20of%20Hebrew%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union%20%201930-1931 Protest against the suppression of Hebrew in the Soviet Union 1930-1931] signed by Albert Einstein, among others # Robert Hetzron. (1987). Hebrew. In The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, 686–704. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520521-9.
External links

- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=heb Ethnologue report for Hebrew]
- [http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/english.html Academy of Hebrew Language], the Institute which prescribes standards for modern Hebrew grammar, orthography, transliteration, and punctuation based upon the study of Hebrew's historical development.
- History of the Hebrew Language
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/history_of_hebrew.htm History of the Hebrew Language Steinberg]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/rabin_he.htm Short History of the Hebrew Language Rabin]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israeli_hebrew_tene.htm Israeli Hebrew Tene]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israel_lang_policy_rosen.htm Israel Language Policy and Linguistics Rosén]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/hebrew_words_history.htm Words and their History Kutscher]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/hebrew_slang_sappan.htm Hebrew Slang and Foreign Loan Words Sappan ]
- Grammars
- [http://foundationstone.com.au/HtmlSupport/FrameSupport/onlineHebrewTutorialFrame.html Online Hebrew Tutorial] (foundationstone)
- [http://perso.wanadoo.fr/babel-site/ Hebrew is easy] (babel-site)
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/gk_cont.htm Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar]
- Dictionaries
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon1/index.htm Root-based] (Maskilon)
- [http://milon.morfix.co.il/ Word-search] English-Hebrew and Hebrew-English (Morfix)
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon3/index.htm Hebrew-English] (Maskilon)
- [http://www.faithofgod.net/davar/ Hebrew-English] (DAVAR freeware, english)
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Hebrew-english/ Hebrew-English] (Webster's Rosetta Edition)
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon4/index.htm English-Hebrew] (Maskilon)
- General
- [http://www.yiwoodmere.org/library/cybrary/hebrew.html Learning Hebrew - Links], Young Israel
- [http://www.yomanim.com Hebrew Writings and Diaries]
- [http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/katmandu/hebrew/atoc.html Hebrew Abbreviations], Princeton University Library
- [http://www.mikledet.com Mikledet.com]: Send Hebrew emails without having a Hebrew keyboard.
- [http://www.amhaaretz.org/translit/ Hebrew translit]: type in Hebrew using an English keyboard
- Category:Jewish languages Category:Judaism Category:Guttural R Category:Semitic languages Category:Canaanite languages Category:Languages of Israel ko:히브리어 ja:ヘブライ語 simple:Hebrew language th:ภาษาฮีบรู

British Mandate of Palestine

The British Mandate of Palestine was a swathe of territory in the Middle East including the modern territories of Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, which the League of Nations entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a Mandate Territory.

Establishment of British League of Nations mandate

British interest in Zionism dates to the rise in importance of the British Empire's South Asian enterprises in the early 19th century, concurrent with the Great Game and planning for the Suez Canal. As early as 1840, Viscount Palmerston (later to become Prime Minister) wrote to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire:

"There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine. It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and settle in Palestine because the wealth that they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan's dominions, and the Jewish people if returning under the sanction and protection at the invitation of the Sultan would be a check upon any future evil designs of Egypt or its neighbours. I wish to instruct your Excellency strongly to recommend to the Turkish government to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine."[http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/judeochr/rolegent/prozion.html]

Before the end of World War I, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The British, under General Allenby, defeated the Turkish forces in 1917 and occupied Palestine and Syria. The land was administered by the British for the remainder of the war. The British military administration ended starvation with the aid of food supplies from Egypt, successfully fought typhus and cholera epidemics and significantly improved the water supply to Jerusalem. They reduced corruption by paying the Arab and Jewish judges higher salaries. Communications were improved by new railway and telegraph lines. The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 and appointed Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, as its first High Commissioner in Palestine. During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917. The British had, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, previously promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support in the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. In 1920 at the Conference of San Remo, Italy, the League of Nations mandate over Palestine was assigned to Britain. This territory at this time included all of what would later become the State of Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, a part of the Golan Heights, and the Kingdom of Jordan. The majority of the approximately 750,000 people in this multi-ethnic region were Arabic-speaking Muslims, including a Bedouin population (estimated at 103,331 at the time of the 1922 census [http://www.zionism-israel.com/Palestine_Hope_Simpson_Report.htm] and concentrated in the Beersheba area and the region south and east of it), as well as Jews (who comprised some 11% of the total and were mostly Yiddish-speaking European immigrants or their descendants) and smaller groups of Druze, Syrians, Sudanese, Circassians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Hejazi Arabs. In June 1922 the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was an explicit document regarding Britain's responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine including "secur[ing] the establishment of the Jewish national home", and "safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine". The document defining Britain's obligations as Mandate power copied the text of the Balfour Declaration concerning the establishment of a Jewish homeland: :"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." Many articles of the document specified actions in support of Jewish immigration and political status. However, it was also stated that in the large, mostly arid, territory to the east of the Jordan River, then called Transjordan, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' application of the provisions dealing with the 'Jewish National Home'. A government under the Hashimite Emir Abdullah who had just been displaced from ruling the Hejaz was soon established in 'Transjordan'. In September 1922, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations stating that Transjordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement, and this memorandum was approved on 11 September. From that point onwards, Britain administered the part west of the Jordan as Palestine, and the part east of the Jordan as Transjordan. Technically they remained one mandate but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates. Transjordan remained under British control until 1946. In 1923 Britain transferred a part of the Golan Heights to the French Mandate of Syria, in exchange for the Metula region.

Palestinian Arab opposition to Jewish immigration

Metula Alef, during the 1930s]] During the 1920s, 100,000 Jewish immigrants entered Palestine, and 6,000 non-Jewish immigrants did so as well. Jewish immigration was controlled by the Histadrut, which selected between applicants on the grounds of their political creed. Land purchased by Jewish agencies was leased on the conditions that it be worked only by Jewish labour and that the lease should not be held by non-Jews. Initially, Jewish immigration to Palestine met little opposition from the Palestinian Arabs. However, as anti-Semitism grew in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigration (mostly from Europe) to Palestine began to increase markedly, creating much Arab resentment. There was violent incitement from the Palestine Muslim leadership that led to violent attacks against the Jewish population. In some cases, land purchases by the Jewish agencies from absentee landlords led to the eviction of the Palestinian Arab tenants, who were replaced by the Jews of the kibbutzim. The Arabic speakers before World War I had the status of peasants (felaheen), and did not own their land although they might own the trees that grew on that land. When Jews, who grew up with European laws, purchased land they did not always realise that the villagers on that land owned the trees. This was often a source of misunderstanding and conflict. The olive tree is particularly important as it can remain productive for more than one thousand years. The British government placed limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine. These quotas were controversial, particularly in the latter years of British rule, and both Arabs and Jews disliked the policy, each side for its own reasons. In response to numerous Arab attacks on Jewish communities, the Haganah was formed on June 15, 1920. Tensions led to widespread violent disturbances on several occasions, notably in 1921, 1929 (primarily violent attacks by Arabs on Jews — see Hebron) and 1936-1939. Beginning in 1936, several Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) conducted their own campaigns of violence against British and Arab targets.

Great Uprising

Main article: Great Uprising In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed a partition between Jewish and Arab areas that was rejected by both the Arabs and the Zionist Congress. In 1936-1939 the mandate experienced an upsurge in militant Arab nationalism that became known as the Great Uprising and, "The Arab Revolt." The revolt was triggered by increased Jewish immigration, primarily Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany as well as rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. The revolt was led or co-opted by the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Al-Husseini and his Husseini family, and is strongly suspected to have been financed by the Fascist government of Italy. The Arabs felt they were being marginalized in their own country, but in addition to non-violent strikes, they resorted to terrorism, leaving hundreds of Jews dead. Husseini's men killed more Arabs than Jews, using the revolt as an excuse to settle accounts with rival clans. The Jewish organization Etzel replied with its own terrorist campaign, with marketplace bombings and other violent acts that also killed hundreds. Eventually, the uprising was put down by the British using draconian measures. After he was implicated in killing the British district commissioner for the Galilee, Haj Amin El Husseini fled first to Lebanon, then to Iraq, and finally to Germany in late 1941. The British placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in the remaining land, directly contradicting the provision of the Mandate which said "the Administration of Palestine... shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency... close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes." A similar proposal to limit immigration in 1931 had been termed a violation of the mandate by the League of Nations, but by 1939 the League of Nations was defunct. According to the Israeli side, the British had by 1949 allotted over 8500 acres (34 km²) to Arabs, and about 4000 acres (16 km²) to Jews.

World War II and the Holocaust

As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the combatants in WWII. Many signed up for the British army, but others saw an Axis victory as their best hope of wresting Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Some of the leadership went further, especially the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini (who had by then escaped to Iraq), who on November 25, 1941, formally declared jihad against the Allied Powers and spent much time thereafter in what was then Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, recruiting Bosnia's Muslims and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians into Nazi SS-run volunteer units. About 20,000 Bosnian Muslims served in the 13th Armed SS Mountain Division "Handzhar" and several thousand in the 23rd Armed SS Mountain Division "Kama". [http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/006.shtml]. In post-war testimony, Husseini was named as a friend of Adolf Eichmann and an architect of the "Final Solution" by Otto Wisliceny. Husseini was imprisoned after the war and was to have been tried as a war criminal at the Nuremburg trials, but he escaped with the help of French collaborators. Even though Arabs were only marginally higher than Jews in Nazi racial theory, the Nazis naturally encouraged Arab support as much as possible as a counter to British hegemony throughout the Arab world. Arabs who opposed the persecution of the Jews at the hand of the Nazis included Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia and Egyptian intellectuals such as Tawfiq al-Hakim and Abbas Mahmoud al-Arkad. (Source: Yad Vashem). The mandate recruited soldiers in Palestine. About 6,000 Palestinian Arabs joined the British forces and about 26,000 Jews, a very significant disparity given the larger Arab population. In World War II, Italy, which in 1940 declared war on the United Kingdom on Germany's side, attacked Palestine from the air. In 1942 there was a period of anxiety for the Yishuv, when the German forces of general Erwin Rommel advanced east in North Africa towards the Suez canal and there was fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the two hundred days of anxiety. The Holocaust—the killing of approximately six million European Jews by the Nazis—had a major effect on the situation in Palestine. During the war, the British forbade entry into Palestine of European Jews escaping Nazi persecution, placing them in detention camps or deporting them to places such as Mauritius. Avraham Stern, the leader of the Jewish Lehi terrorist gang and other Zionists tried without success to convince the Nazis that immigration to Palestine could be a "solution" for their "Jewish problem". Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann visited Palestine briefly in 1939 and concluded, possibly from conversations with Haj Amin El-Husseini, that it would not serve Nazi policy to allow Jewish immigration to Palestine. Starting in 1939, the Zionists organized an illegal immigration effort, known as Aliya Beth, conducted by "Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet", that rescued tens of thousands of European Jews from the Nazis by shipping them to Palestine in rickety boats. Many of these boats were intercepted and some were sunk with great loss of life (e.g., the Patria disaster). The last immigrant boat to try to enter Palestine during the war was the Struma, torpedoed in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 as part of Soviet - British collaboration. The boat sank with the loss of nearly 800 lives. Illegal immigration resumed after WW II. Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri, members of the Jewish Lehi underground, assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo on 6 November 1944. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East, responsible for implementing the ban on Jewish immigration to Palestine. The assassination is said to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. Fighting Jewish terrorists on one hand and the Germans in North Africa on the other did not endear the British to the Jews in Palestine at this critical stage of the war. The British considered it more important to get Arab backing, because of their important interests in Egypt and other Arab lands, and especially to guarantee the friendship of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and therefore continued the ban on immigration. During the war, the moderate Haganah underground helped the British to ferret out Irgun and Lehi members whom they felt were hurting the war effort against the Nazis. Following the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in particular the repeated requests of US President Harry S. Truman and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the British refused to lift the ban on immigration and admit 100,000 displaced persons to Palestine. The Jewish underground forces then united and carried out several attacks against the British. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people. Seeing that the situation was quickly spiraling out of hand, the British announced their desire to terminate their mandate and to withdraw by May 1948.

Division of Palestine by United Nations

Main article: 1947 UN Partition Plan The United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to solve the dispute between the Palestinian Jews and Arabs. The UN appointed a committee, the UNSCOP, composed of representatives from several states. None of the Great Powers were represented, in order to make the committee more neutral. UNSCOP considered two main proposals. The first called for the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. The second called for the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. A majority of UNSCOP favoured the first option, although several members supported the second option instead and one member (Australia) said it was unable to decide between them. As a result the first option was adopted and the UN General Assembly largely accepted UNSCOP's proposals, though they made some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. The partition plan was rejected out of hand by the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs and by most of the Arab population, although much of the land reserved for the Jewish state had already been acquired by Jews, had a Jewish majority, or was under state control. Most of the Jews accepted the proposal, in particular the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation. Numerous records indicate the joy of Palestine's Jewish inhabitants as they attended the U.N. session voting for the division proposal. Up to this day, Israeli history books mention 29 November, the date of this session, as the most important date in Israel's acquisition of independence. Several Jews, however, declined the proposal. Menachem Begin, Irgun's leader, announced: "The partition of the homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. The Land of Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever". His views were publicly rejected by the majority of the nascent Jewish state. Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, claim that this publicly expressed acceptance was mainly propaganda for the consumption of Western nations, and that Begin's statement more accurately reflected the real intentions of the founders of the State of Israel. On the date of British withdrawal the Jewish provisional government declared the formation of the State of Israel, and the provisional government said that it would grant full civil rights to all within its borders, whether Arab, Jew, Bedouin or Druze. The declaration stated: :We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. Thus, upon creating the state - any inhabitants inside the newly formed State of Israel, whether Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Arabs, became Israeli. Palestinians consider a far more accurate statement of the intention of the founders of Israel to be that of Chaim Weizmann, who reportedly said: :[Our intention is to] finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English, or America is American.

Population of the British Mandate of Palestine

In 1922 the British undertook the first census of the mandate. The population was 752,048, comprising 589,177 Muslims, 83,790 Jews, 71,464 Christians and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The 1922 figures may refer to both banks of the Jordan river, at least for the non-Jews. After a second census in 1931, the population had grown to 1,036,339 in total, comprising 761,922 Muslims, 175,138 Jews, 89,134 Christians and 10,145 people belonging to other groups. There were no further censuses but statistics were maintained by counting births, deaths and migration. Some components such as illegal immigration could only be estimated approximately. In 1945 a demographic study showed that the population had grown to 1,764,520, comprising 1,061,270 Muslims, 553,600 Jews, 135,550 Christians and 14,100 people of other groups.

British High Commissioners for Palestine

For further reading

- AJ Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918-1948, Thames & Hudson, 1998, ISBN 0801866200
- Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, Henry Holt and Co. 2000, ISBN 0805065873

Notes

# Secret World War II documents released by the UK in July, 2001, include documents on a Operation Atlas (See [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/july2001.pdf References: KV 2/400-402]. A joint German/Arab team, lead by Kurt Wieland, parachuted into Palestine in September 1944. This was one of the last German efforts in the region to attack the Jewish community in Palestine and undermine British rule by supplying local Arabs with cash, arms and sabotage equipment. The team was picked up shortly after landing.

External links

- [http://www.globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=132 Legal Status of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem]
- [http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm A history of Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict]
- [http://www.zionismontheweb.org/zionism_history.htm A history of Zionism and the creation of Israel]
- [http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=4&ar=10 An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict] by Norman Finkelstein
- [http://domino.un.org/maps/m0103_1b.gif Map of 1947 UN division]
- [http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/deftoc.html Jewish Defense Organizations]
- [http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/ United Nations]
- [http://www.passia.org/images/pal_facts_MAPS/dist_of_pop_jews_and_palestinians_1946.gif Map of Population Distribution by Ethnicity 1946]
- [http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm Population of Palestine before 1948]
- [http://www.palestinefacts.org/ Facts about Palestine] Category:Palestine Category:Jews in Ottoman and British Palestine Category:Arab-Israeli conflict Category:British Empire Category:United Nations Palestine Category:History of Israel

1948

1948 (MCMXLVIII) is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January-February

- January 1 - Nationalisation of UK railways to form British Railways. Arab militants lay siege to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. First day of the Italian republican constitution.
- January 4 - Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
- January 5 - Warner Brothers shows the first color newsreel (Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl).
- January 17 - Truce between nationalist Indonesian and Dutch troops in Java
- January 26 - Teigin poison case - Man masquerading as a doctor poisons 12 out of 15 bank employees of the Tokyo branch of Imperial Bank and takes the money; artist Sadamichi Hirasawa is later sentenced for the crime.
- January 30 - Indian pacifist and leader Mahatma Gandhi is murdered by a Hindu extremist.
- January 30 - 1948 Winter Olympics open in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
- February 1 - Soviet Union begins to jam Voice of America broadcasts.
- February 4 - Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth. King George VI becomes King of Ceylon.
- February 18 - Eamon de Valera, head of government since 1932, loses power to an opposition coalition. John A. Costello is appointed Taoiseach of Éire (formerly called the Irish Free State) by President O'Kelly.
- February 24 - The Communist Party seizes control of Czechoslovakia.

March-April

- March 8 - The United States Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution.
- March 10 - Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk killed in fall from a window of his apartment in Prague. Later communist government rules it "suicide".
- March 17 - Hell's Angels founded in California
- March 20 - First elections in Singapore
- April 1 - Faroe Islands receive autonomy from Denmark
- April 3 - President Harry Truman signs the Marshall Plan which authorizes $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
- April 7 - The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
- April 7 - Buddhist monastery burns in Shanghai - 20 monks dead
- April 9 - Jorge Eliécer Gaitán's assassination provokes a violent riot in Bogotá (the Bogotazo), and a further ten years of violence in all of Colombia (La violencia).
- April 9 - The Deir Yassin massacre takes place in Palestine.

May

Palestine
- May 1 - 213 communists executed in Greece.
- May 2 - Hour of Charm's last broadcast.
- May 11 - Luigi Einaudi becomes President of the Italian Republic.
- May 14 - Israel is declared as an independent state.
- May 14 - The murder of a three-year-old girl in Blackburn, England leads to the fingerprinting of more than 40,000 men in the city in an attempt to find the murderer.
- May 15 - 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attack Israel.
- May 16 - Chaim Weizmann is elected as the first President of Israel.
- May 18 - The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convenes in Nanking.
- May 26 - The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557 which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as the auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
- May 30 - A dike along the Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. 15 people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.

June-July

- June 3 - Palomar Observatory telescope finished in California.
- June 16 - Communist guerillas kill three rubber planters in Malaya.
- June 16 - Three armed men hijack Cathay Pacific passenger plane Miss Macao and shoot the pilot. The plane crashes - one of 27 survives
- June 17 - A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Air Lines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
- June 18 - State of Emergency declared in Malaysia for communist insurgency - Malayan Emergency begins.
- June 21 - The Deutsche Mark becomes official currency of the Federal Republic of Germany.
- June 24 - Cold War: The Berlin Blockade begins.
- June 28 - Cominform Resolution marks the beginning of the Informbiro period in Yugoslavia and Soviet/Yugoslav split.
- July 5 - British National Health Service Act enacted.
- July 13 - The Coptic and Ethiopian Churches reach an agreement leading to the promotion of the Ethiopian church to the rank of an autocephalous Patriarchate. Five bishops are immediately consecrated by the Patriarch of Alexandria, and the successor to Abuna Qerellos IV is granted the power to consecrate new bishops, who are empowered to elect a new Patriarch for their church.
- July 15 - Attempted assassination of Palmiro Togliatti, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, incites number of strikes all over the country.
- July 15 - First London, England chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous
- July 20 - Cold War: President Harry S. Truman issues the second peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union (the first peacetime draft occurred in 1940 under President Roosevelt).
- July 24 - Great oil fire in the harbor of Naantali, Finland
- July 26 - U.S. President signs Executive Order 9981, ending racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces.
- July 29 - 1948 Summer Olympics begin in London.
- July 31 - At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.

August-December

- August 1 - The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded.
- August 12 - USA recognizes the government of South Korea.
- August 19 - Soviet troops fire at German demonstrators that protest against the Berlin Blockade.
- August 23 - World Council of Churches established.
- September 4 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons.
- September 5 - Robert Schuman becomes Prime Minister of France.
- September 6 - Juliana becomes Queen of the Netherlands.
- September 17 - Stern Gang assassinates count Folke Bernadotte.
- October 11 - Cleveland Indians defeat the Boston Braves to win the World Series, four games to two.
- November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1948: Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey for the US presidency.
- November 12 - In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II.
- November 15 - Louis Stephen St. Laurent becomes Canada's twelfth prime minister.
- November 16 - Operation Magic Carpet to transport Jews from Yemen to Israel begins.
- November 17 - Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi divorces his second wife, the former Princess Fawzia of Egypt.
- November 24 - In Venezuela, president Rómulo Betancourt is outsed by a military coup. A military junta takes over the government.
- December 7 - Gary Morris, singer and actor
- December 7 - Mads Vinding, Danish bassist
- December 10 - United Nations General Assembly adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- December 26 - Last Soviet troops withdraw from North Korea.
- December 28 - Member of Muslim Brotherhood assassinates Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi.
- December 30 - The play Kiss Me, Kate opens for the first of 1,077 performances.
- December 31 - 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Israeli troops drive Egyptians from Negev.

Undated

- Empire Windrush immigrant ship arrives in Britain
- Civil war in Costa Rica
- Civil war in Colombia
- Rope (film) released

Unknown date

- Porsche is founded.
- Miranda, the innermost moon of Uranus, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.
- Casimir effect discovered by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir.
- Tunnel of Vielha is opened in Val d'Aran, Spanish Pyrenees.
- Fresh Kills, world's largest landfill, opens in Staten Island, New York.
- The law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is founded.
- Brandeis University is founded.
- Oakridge Transit Centre opened in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Births

January-February

- January 2 - Mary Archer, British scientist
- January 2 - Deborah Watling, British actress
- January 7 - Kenny Loggins, American singer
- January 10 - Donald Fagen, American keyboardist
- January 10 - Mischa Maisky, Latvian cellist
- January 14 - Carl Weathers, American football player and actor
- January 14 - T-Bone Burnett, American record producer and musician
- January 15 - Ronnie Van Zant, American musician (d. 1977)
- January 16 - John Carpenter, American film director and composer
- January 17 - Davíð Oddsson, Prime Minister of Iceland
- January 19 - Frank McKenna, Premier of New Brunswick and Canadian Ambassador
- January 27 - Mikhail Baryshnikov, Russian-born dancer
- January 28 - Charles Taylor, Liberian president
- January 29 - Marc Singer, Canadian actor
- January 31 - Muneo Suzuki, Japanese politician
- February 1 - Elisabeth Sladen, British actress
- February 3 - Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, East Timorean Catholic bishop, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
- February 4 - Alice Cooper, American musician
- February 5 - Christopher Guest, American actor, writer, director, and composer
- February 5 - V. Alexander Stefan, American physicist, educator, and writer
- February 14 - Teller, American magician
- February 24 - J. Jayalalithaa, Indian politician
- February 25 - Danny Denzongpa, Indian actor
- February 28 - Steven Chu, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- February 28 - Mike Figgis, American director, writer, and composer
- February 28 - Bernadette Peters, American actress and singer
- February 28 - Mercedes Ruehl, American actress

March-April

- March 1 - Burning Spear, Jamaican singer and musician
- March 2 - Jeff Kennett, Australian politician
- March 2 - R. T. Crowley, pioneer of electronic commerce
- March 9 - Jeffrey Osborne, American singer
- March 12 - James Taylor, American musician
- March 15 - Sérgio Vieira de Mello, Brazilian diplomat (d. 2003)
- March 17 - William Gibson, Canadian writer
- March 20 - John de Lancie, American actor
- March 20 - Bobby Orr, Canadian hockey player
- March 22 - Andrew Lloyd Webber, English composer
- March 22 - Wolf Blitzer, American television journalist
- March 26 - Steven Tyler, American singer (Aerosmith)
- March 28 - Dianne Wiest, American actress
- March 31 - Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States
- March 31 - Rhea Perlman, American actress
- April 1 - Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican musician
- April 15 - Michael Kamen, American composer (d. 2003)
- (April 23)-
- April 29 - Michael Karoli, German musician (d. 2001)

May-July

- May 8 - Felicity Lott, English soprano
- May 11 - Shigeru Izumiya, Japanese musician
- May 12 - Steve Winwood, English singer
- May 14 - Bob Woolmer, British cricket coach
- May 15 - Brian Eno, English musician and record producer
- May 19 - Grace Jones, Jamaican singer and actress
- May 21 - Leo Sayer, English musician
- May 26 - Stevie Nicks, American singer and songwriter (Fleetwood Mac)
- May 29 - Michael Berkeley, British composer
- May 31 - John Bonham, British drummer (Led Zeppelin) (d. 1980)
- June 2 - Todd Rundgren, American singer and record producer
- June 13 - Garnet Bailey, Canadian hockey player and scout
- June 17 - Dave Concepcion, Venezuelan baseball player
- June 19 - Phylicia Rashad, American actress
- June 20 - Ludwig Scotty, President of Nauru
- June 21 - Lionel Rose, Australian boxer
- June 21 - Andrzej Sapkowski, Polish writer
- July 8 - Raffi Cavoukian, Egyptian-born singer
- July 16 - Pinchas Zukerman, Israeli violinist
- July 18 - Hartmut Michel, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- July 21 - Ed Hinton, American sportswriter
- July 21 - Cat Stevens, English musician
- July 21 - Garry Trudeau, American cartoonist
- July 25 - Peggy Fleming, American figure skater
- July 28 - Sally Struthers, American actress
- July 30 - Jean Reno, French actor

August-December

- August 2 - Dennis Prager, American radio talk show host and author
- August 3 - Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Prime Minister of France
- August 13 - Kathleen Battle, American soprano
- August 15 - Uschi Digard, American erotic actress and figure model
- August 20 - Robert Plant, English singer (Led Zeppelin)
- August 30 - Lewis Black, American comedian
-

Irgun

Founding, development and key events

Legacy of Irgun

Radio station

See also

Further reading

External links

Hebrew language

History

Early history

Later history

Revival

Modern Hebrew

Hebrew language in the USSR

Dialects

Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew

Sounds

Vowels

Consonants

Historical sound changes

Grammar

Writing system

Romanization

See also

Notes

External links

British Mandate of Palestine

Establishment of British League of Nations mandate

Palestinian Arab opposition to Jewish immigration

Great Uprising

World War II and the Holocaust

Division of Palestine by United Nations

Population of the British Mandate of Palestine

British High Commissioners for Palestine

See also

For further reading

Notes

External links

1948

Events

January-February

March-April

May

June-July

August-December

Undated

Unknown date

Births

January-February

March-April

May-July

August-December