should be shared with those who had not been through the Holocaust.

Ben-Gurion was determined to snuff out any remaining embers of the Irgun and the Lechi, and he convinced the cabinet to give him broad powers to end acts of terrorism, including administrative detention without trial. The era of the Jewish underground,…

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The congress took on many additional issues. It was at the First Zionist Congress that the idea of the Jewish National Fund (whose original mission was to purchase and develop land in Ottoman Palestine) was first raised. The congress also put into place many of the committees and administrative bodies that later made the movement so effective.

After Egypt signed the arms deal with the Czechs, the United States refused to sell Israel weaponry to restore the balance of power (which is what sent Israel to the French looking for arms).

The Bible does not tell us what happened to the ten tribes of the northern kingdom who were dispersed. The story of the exile highlights the dangers—to any people—of forced migration, which both Jews and Arabs would endure again in the twentieth century. Whatever had happened to those lost biblical tribes, as the…

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A new Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, then invaded…

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ISRAEL MAINTAINED a military presence in Lebanon, along the border, until Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel’s troops out in 2000. At the time of the pullout, many Israelis felt that Israel had little to show for almost two decades in Lebanon, other than many hundreds of casualties.

THE COMBINATION OF THE Yom Kippur War, Meir’s resignation after the Agranat Commission, Rabin’s resignation under a cloud of financial scandal, and the abiding frustrations of the Mizrachi population was Begin’s perfect storm. On Election Day in May 1977, exit polls (the first in Israel’s history) stunned the nation. Begin’s Likud won 43 seats,

The once-in-two-millennia chance to establish a Jewish state seemed to be slipping through the fingers of the Yishuv, and decisive action was needed. In March 1948, Ben-Gurion instructed the Haganah to “gain control of the territory of the Hebrew state and defend its borders.” So began Plan Dalet (Plan “D”). According to the plan, if Arab towns