Seder Olam Revisited: C48d- Israel
- Albert Benhamou
- 3 days ago
- 26 min read
CHRONOLOGY OF JEWISH HISTORY
Generation 48: Hebrew years 5640-5760 (1880-2000 CE)
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To return to the list of chronological generations from Seder Olam Revisited, click here.
Introduction
This 48th chronological generation concludes with the creation of the State of Israel and the free return of the Jews to their homeland without obstacle for the first time since their exile at the hands of the Romans. This generation is pre-Messianic because the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel is listed in scriptures as the main event before Messianic times.
Hebrew Year | CE | Event |
5707 | 1947 | The Dead Sea Scrolls |
5708 | 1947 | The Maronites of Lebanon |
5708 | 1947 | The U.N. vote for the Partition Plan |
5708 | 1948 | The State of Israel |
5708 | 1948 | The war of independence |
5708 | 1948 | Israel Brodie, Chief Rabbi of Britain |
5712 | 1952 | Israel's first Sabbatical year |
5726 | 1966 | Immanuel Jakobovitz, Chief Rabbi of Britain |
5727 | 1967 | The Six-Day war |
5734 | 1973 | The Yom Kippur war |
5738 | 1978 | The South Lebanon war |
5742 | 1982 | The Lebanon war |
5748 | 1987 | The Intifada |
5753 | 1993 | The Oslo Accords |
5754 | 1994 | The Vatican and Israel establish diplomatic relations |
5757 | 1996 | Jihad against America |
5760 | 2000 | Failure at Camp David |
Year 5707 – 1947 CE – Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
In spring 1947, scrolls of manuscripts were found in clay jars hidden in a cave discovered in the Judean desert on the north-western side of the Dead Sea: they became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The region was under British Mandate but, a few months later, the Holy Land was to be divided between an Arab state and a Jewish state, as voted by the United Nations in November 1947 (see below). This led to the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948 and a war against the Arab coalition who refused the partition arbitrated by the U.N. When a ceasefire was in place, the Dead Sea region came under Jordanian control. The (British) director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities gave to the Dominican Roland de Vaux, head of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, the task to explore other Judean caves in the region and to excavate the archeological site of Qumran. Then followed a long history of academic "hijacking" of the discover by Roland de Vaux who prevented any historian or researcher to access the discovered scrolls. The reason for this attitude may have been political but mostly religious: the Vatican and the Christian authorities were worried by the contents of texts which, for the first time in history, dated from the time of Jesus. What if some of these texts revealed something contradictory with the New Testament which was composed and compiled, and with additions from the Byzantine monks, some 300 years after Jesus (see document C35, year 331 CE)?
The frustration among researchers and scholars around the world for not being able to access the manuscripts caused some of them to speak out publicly and to accuse Roland de Vaux of being ruthless, narrow-minded, bigoted and fiercely vindicative (Baigent, Michael, Leigh, Richard, the Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, published 1993, pp. 27-28). They also suspected him of antisemitism and of being a Fascist sympathiser.
More broadly, the atmosphere of secrecy around the Dead Sea Scrolls led suspicion that something extraordinary may lie hidden in these texts that would shake the entire Christian world !
Furthermore, after Roland de Vaux excavated the ruins of Qumran, he led the theory that the sect called Essenes described by Josephus in his works, were connected to the Dead Sea scrolls. This sect was founded by a leader so-called the Teacher of Righteousness, who was opposed to a religious leader so-called the Wicked Priest. These is uncertainty about who were these two characters, but it doesn't take long to realize that the only period of Ancient Jewish History when religious differences took place was at the time of Seleucid power. In these days, the conflict was between different factions, or sects, mostly between followers of Traditional Judaism (the Pharisees) and the upper class of Jewish aristocracy who favoured assimilation to the Greek before assimilating to the Roman culture (the Sadducees). Besides these two main groups, there were other smaller sects, of which the Essenes who lived in isolated communities in order to avoid religious persecutions. The Teacher of Righteousness was probably the High Priest who replaced the Hellenistic High Priest Alcimus back in 159 BCE, before being ousted in 157 BCE by Jonathan Maccabee during a change of alliance in Judea (see document 31a, year 157 BCE). Consequently, this High Priest would have founded his own "school", or sect, that followed "rules" that he established to belong to it. These were the rules of the community of Essenes of Qumran.
The change of territorial situation following the Six Day war in 1967 (see below) led the Israeli authorities to carry out other excavations in several Jewish-related sites in the Holy Land. In addition, the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem (also known as the Rockefeller Museum), which hosted the Dead Sea Scrolls with Roland de Vaux and his team, became under the control of the Israeli authorities. Roland de Vaux, probably lacking the desire to cooperate with the Jewish State, kept out of the works about the Dead Sea Scrolls until his death in 1971. Over time, his old team also passed away, some of them without having published anything during their hold on the manuscripts over a period of more than 30 years !
In the 1970's, the Israeli department of antiquities organized the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls between different groups. The works were quickly passed to more diligent teams. Finally, the first major publication about these texts was made in 1977 (translated in English as The Temple Scroll in 1983). And, in 1990, the responsibility of the works was finally passed to an Israeli scholar for the first time since 1967. But, in total and because of Roland de Vaux and his incompetent team, it took nearly as much as half a century for the complete Dead Sea Scrolls to come to light. For more information about the discovery the Dead Sea Scrolls, and their importance to both Jews and Christians, click here.
Today the complete texts are available online (to access the site, click here). For the first time in History, we are able to compare manuscripts of a same text (especially the Book of Daniel, for which we now have texts in both Hebrew and Aramaic) that have been copied about 1000 years apart ! One scholar puts it as follows:
The Daniel fragments from Caves 1 and 6 reveal, overall, that the later Masoretic text is preserved in a good, hardly changed form. They are thus a valuable witness to the great faithfulness with which the sacred text has been transmitted. (A. Mertens, Das Buch Daniel im Lichte der Texte vom Toten Meer, Stuttgarter Biblische Monographien, Wurzburg, 1971)
Year 5708 – 1947 CE – The Maronites of Lebanon
The partition of Palestine was becoming a matter of time. Many U.N. missions returned with the same conclusion that the remaining land ought to be divided between Jewish and Arab states. But the Arab camp still refused any agreement on the matter. For more information about the various attempts to have a two-states solution, click here.
Elsewhere, in Lebanon, another community was anguished by the prospect that their country may be absorbed by Syria. The leader of the Christian Maronite community wrote to the U.N. on this matter, where he expressed the wish that both Jews and Christians in the Middle-East deserved to have their own land:
It is an incontestable historical fact that Palestine was the home of the Jews and of the first Christians. None of them was of Arab origin. By the brutal force of conquest, they were forced to become converts to the Moslem religion, That is the origin of the Arabs in that country. Can one deduce from that that Palestine is Arab or that it ever was Arab?
Historical vestiges, monuments and sacred mementos of the two religions remain alive there as evidence of the fact that this country was not involved in the internal war between the princes and monarchs of Iraq and Arabia. The Holy Places, the temples, the Wailing Wall, the churches and the tombs of the prophets and saints, in short, all the relics of the two religions, are living symbols, which alone invalidate the statements now made by those who have little interest in making Palestine an Arab country. To include Palestine and the Lebanon within the group of Arab countries is to deny history and to destroy the social balance in the Near East. [...]
What has the role of the Jews been in Palestine? Considered from this angle, the Palestine of 1918 appears to us a barren country, poor, denuded of all resources, the least developed of all the Turkish vilayets. The Moslem-Arab colony there lived on the borderline of poverty. Jewish immigration began, colonies were formed and established, and in less than twenty years the country was transformed: agriculture flourished, large industries were established, wealth came to the country. (Archbishop Ignace Moubarac of Beirut, letter to Mr. Justice Sandstorm, Chairman of UNSCOP Geneva, 5 August 1947; to read the full letter, click here)
Year 5708 – 1947 CE – The U.N. Vote of November 1947
The question of Jewish immigration and the need for a Jewish homeland, despite the Arab opposition, was ultimately brought to a vote on 29 November 1947 at the General Assembly of the United Nations after more than two decades of failed attempts to find a conciliary solution. The resolution, approved by 72% of the nations, called for a partition of Palestine between an Arab and a Jewish states, with defined borders. The Jewish Agency accepted the partition plan but the Arab representatives rejected it. Following the historical UN vote, the British Mandate was set to end by 1 August 1948 at the latest. However, after debate at the British Parliament, the end date was move forward to 14 May 1948.
The tensions increased in Palestine after the historical vote, with the British authorities showing reluctance to intervene and expose their lives just a few months before they would leave the region. Many isolated Jewish villages were attacked and Jews were ambushed. At that time, there were 600,000 Jews living in Palestine, while hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust were blocked by the British authorities from entering the land of Israel.
Year 5708 – 1948 CE – The State of Israel
On 14 May 1948 (Hebrew date 5 Iyyar 5708), after the British Mandate officially ended on the previous day, the creation of a State of Israel was declared by the Jewish officials the next day. It was a Friday afternoon, before the start of the Shabbat. The declaration of independence was read by David Ben Gurion in the museum of Tel Aviv (former home of Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv and one of its founders).
Year 5708 – 1948 CE – The war of independence
Five Arab nations immediately declared war to the new nation, and thus began the War of Independence of Israel. These five nations were Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and some of them were themselves created by the same mandated approach to dismante the Ottoman empire. One may wonder why they felt that they had the right to exist as a new nation, but not Israel. These five nations were supported by additional Muslim volunteers from Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan and so on, and by the local Palestinian Arabs twice in size than the Palestinian Jews.
These five armies were a repeat of the war that Nehemiah had to sustain against the five local enemies who had established themselves in the Jewish land during the Exile of Babylon and were eager to prevent the return of Jews to Zion (see document C28, year 444 BCE):
But it came to pass that, when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem went forward, and that the breaches began to be stopped, then they were very wroth, and they conspired all of them together to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion therein. (Nehemiah 4:1-2)
We can find a parallel between these five ancient armies and the five modern ones: the Ammonites lived in modern-day Jordan, the Ashdodites refer to Egypt (because Muslims established themselves in the coastal plain, including Ashdod, during the Egyptian rule between 1831 and 1840), the Tobiah to Syria (because Tobiah was a name found during the Assyrian empire), Sanballah to Lebanon (he was a leader of Persian origin but, in his times, Persia had formed an alliance with the Phoenicians, modern-day Lebanon, to compete against the Greek maritime empire), and finally "the Arabians" can be associated to the rest of the coalition (mostly Iraq but also some other nations).
After several months of battles, and one ceasefire around June 1948, an armistice was signed in February 1949 as Israel had managed to gain more territory than the initial Partition Plan. So, new borders were defined and they remained the same until the Six Day War of 1967.
Out of 1,200,000 million Arabs living in Mandated Palestine, about 700,000 of them moved out of the new State of Israel because of fear and negative propaganda from the Arab states. Those Palestinians who remained in the new State of Israel received Israeli citizenship and form today about 21% of the Israeli population. In another hand, Jews who lived in Muslim countries saw their life turned into misery from 1948, and many had to flee the land of their ancestors where they had lived there before Islam was even born. So about 800,000 Jews from Arab countries lost their homes and properties and came to establish themselves in Israel instead (while other Jews emigrated to other welcoming Western countries). Yet, the Arab world was shaken by the establishment of a Jewish state in their midst and one Muslim leader, Sheikh Hassan el-Bana, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared in an interview in Cairo on 1 August 1948:
"If the Jewish state becomes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea." (The New-York Times, 2 August 1948,extract available online)
Year 5708 – 1948 CE – Symbolism in the creation of the State of Israel
The creation of the State of Israel signalled the unrestricted possibility for the Jews to return to the land that God had promised to their forefathers. Even the Koran mentions that this land has been given to the Jews by Allah Himself. The State of Israel was created in 1948 CE which corresponds to Hebrew Year 5708. The mass "return" to Sion, which really started 3 years earlier right at the end of WW-II (Hebrew year 5705) is paralleled to the return of the patriarch Jacob in the land of Canaan after his "exile" in Charan (Jacob was also named Israel when he returned to Canaan, see document C19a year 1555 BCE). So, Jacob returned to the Land of Israel (called Canaan at the time) in Hebrew Year 2205. The difference to Hebrew Year 5705 is 3500 years, which means that there are exactly 70 Jubilee periods between these two events, both were returns to the promised land and both were named/renamed Israel.
The number 70 has a special significance in Jewish history for multiple reasons (to read about Jewish symbolism of the numbers, click here):
the number 7 in itself echoes divine plans, especially with the establishment of the 7th day (the Shabbat), and 10 is the number of Sephirot associated with God; so 70 has a double relation to God's plans and essence,
the number 70 is like a completion; King David lived 70 years, and died when he completed his earthly time; also Jacob came down to Egypt with all his 70 souls; and the Bible speaks of 70 nations that populated the earth after the Flood; in short, 70 is a completeness or a due time that has completed,
the number 70 is also the number of members of the Great Assembly (Sanhedrin), so again it is a number that denotes the completeness,
no less important, the exile in Babylon lasted 70 years, spiritually, from the time the First Temple was destroyed until the Second Temple was erected.
In conclusion, the completion of 70 Jubilee periods is particularly significant, and, in the case of the Israelites, it is a time cycle that has completed between the two returns to Canaan/Sion.
But the parallel between Jacob and Israel goes further, if we look at the same 70 Jubilee periods. Jacob spent 20 years in Charan with Laban, years during which his existence was threatened (due to the fact that his father-in-law Laban wanted to keep Jacob in his own family and thus absorb his descendance into his, which would have meant the end of the Hebrew people as a distinct nation). The period of 20 years going backwards into time means, in modern-day, the year 1925: that year was when Hitler became a noticeable politician in Germany, and furthermore it was the year when he published for the first his notorious book Mein Kampf, which give a clear picture of his intent to get rid of the Jews as a people. So, we can find the parallel of 70 Jubilees in the two events, 20 years apart, on one hand the sojourn of Jacbo in Charan with the obvious threat of assimilation and extinction of the Hebrews as a distinctive people, and on the other hand for the Jewish people from the time they were officially targeted and threatened by Nazism until they left Europe and emigrated en masse to the Promised Land.
Year 5708 – 1948 CE – Israel Brodie, Chief Rabbi of Britain
Joseph Hertz served as Chief Rabbi for 33 years until his death after WW-II in 1946 (see document C48a, year 1913 CE). He was succeeded in 1948 by Israel Brodie who was born in England and educated at Oxford. He was in fact the first Chief Rabbi of Britain being born in Britain ! During WW-II, he served as Chaplain for the Jewish Forces. Also, he was a freemason. The Jewish officials of Britain had faced difficult times when the British Mandate was put under pressure because of the fight between Jewish and Arab nationals over Palestine, and after WW-II by the Jewish underground attacking the British authorities in Palestine. When he was chosen as Chief Rabbi, he was 53 years old, and his contract was limited to 17 years which effectively meant that he had to retire at the age of 70, in 1965.
During his tenure, Brodie engaged in rebuilding the Jewish life in Europe despite the vacuum caused by the Holocaust. He was a good spokesman for the Jews but had also engaged in religious disputes with some of the rabbis who deviated from Orthodox Judaism, a situation which embittered his last years in office. In particular, he argued against Rabbi Louis Jacobs who questioned the traditional view that the Torah was given to Moses by God Himself. To echo his views, Jacobs created another Jewish movement called the Masorti Judaism, which means "Traditional" Judaism, although it departed from Jewish tradition !
Year 5712 – 1952 CE – Israel's first Sabbatical year
Nobody knows for sure what is the true Sabbatical cycle any more. The law of Sabbatical years was established at Mount Sinai by divine command through Moses, to remind of the Shabbat, but the counting of the seven-year cycles was to be started when the Israelites would enter Canaan for the first time, meaning at the fall of Jericho in year 1265 BCE (see document C21c, year 1265 BCE). The number of years between 1265 BCE and 1952 CE is 3217 years, based on this present chronology, a number which is not divisible by 7. And, if we use the traditional Seder Olam chronology, the Israelites entered Canaan in year 1273 BCE, so the difference of years is 3225 which is not divisible by 7 either.
In another hand, the counting of Jubilee cycles was started by Joshua in Hebrew Year 2500 (see document C21c, year 1260 BCE). If we assume that Joshua started the Sabbatical count at the same time in order to synchronise the two counts (one Jubilee cycle is equal to seven Sabbatical cycles + the 50th year of Jubilee celebration), it only makes a difference of 5 years between the two assumed years for the first Sabbatical cycle: this still doesn't match the year 1952.
So why is there a discrepancy? The Jubilee count has been cancelled since the destruction of the Second Temple, because there was no longer a High Priest to call for that particular year. So only Sabbatical years were recorded since that year in a kind of "reset". Because it is not the year of start that matters, but the counting of the cycle itself. The year of start can be chosen arbitrarily based on a major event. So, as we counted the Sabbatical cycle (7 years) from year 69 CE (the Temple was destroyed in the month of Av of Hebrew year 3829 AM), the secular year 1952 falls in a Sabbatical year because 1952-69= 1883 which is divisible by 7: it makes 269 Sabbatical cycles since year 69 CE.
In accordance with Rabbinical authorities, the State of Israel thus declared the year 1952 as the first Sabbatical year of the State. The subsequent Sabbatical years were marked by major turns in the History of Israel:
2nd Sabbatical = 1959 => the 10th year anniversary of Israel and creation of Fatah
3rd Sabbatical = 1966 => Six-Day War
4th Sabbatical = 1973 => Kippur War
5th Sabbatical = 1980 => First relations between Israel and an Arab state (Egypt)
6th Sabbatical = 1987 => Israel-Palestinian conflict; First Intifada
7th Sabbatical = 1994 => Relations between Israel and Jordan, and with the Vatican
8th Sabbatical = 2001 => September 11 terror attack in USA, "War on Terror" coalition
9th Sabbatical = 2008 => First war between Israel and the Hamas in Gaza
10th Sabbatical = 2015 => Under Obama, US-led nuclear deal with Iran
11th Sabbatical = 2022 => Netanyahu's coalition with right-wing parties
Year 5716 – 1956 CE – The Suez Crisis
Egypt suffered a military coup in 1952 that overturn 32-year old King Farouk. It was led by a young officer, Gamel Abdel Nasser, who had participated in the 1948 war against the new State of Israel and had some success in holding the so-called Faluja pocket during that conflict. He only gave up his position in February 1949 as part of the ceasefire proceedings between Egypt and Israel, and was welcome as a hero back in Egypt. He resented the terms of the ceasefire as humiliating for Egypt and formed a secret group of dissenting officers. The politicians in power tried to regain popular support by canceling in 1951 the 1936 agreement with Britain to allow the latter to maintain a military force in the Suez Canal Zone. The popularity of this move worried Nasser that he may lose public support so he led the coup of 1952.
Once in power, Nasser introduced several reforms, including the right of vote for women, a first in any Arab country. This displeased the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In a famous public address of 1966, Nasser moke this religious organisation who tried to convince him to put a law for women to wear the hijab on their head (to watch this video, click here). The Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate him in 1954.
Nasser was formally elected in 1956 after he established a new constitution in that year that removed the previous monarchy regime. His first act was to nationalise the Suez Canal which led to a conflict in October 1956 with France and Britain, the two main shareholders of the canal. The two Western powers were joined by Israel who had its maritime trafic interrupted in the Red Sea since 1949, and who wanted to put a stop to Nasser's support of terrorist acts along the border. But both USA and USSR put pressure for these military interventions to stop (although USSR themselves were involved against the Hungarian revolution of 1956) and the crisis ended with higher glory for Nasser who started to promote a Pan-Arabism policy which ultimately aimed to raise a joint effort against the State of Israel. Yet, the Suez Crisis brought benefits for the State of Israel: the reopening of its maritime trafic in the Red Sea, the end of terror attacks launched from Egyptian territory, and, more over, the presence of U.N. peacekeepers in the Sinai peninsula as an internetional guarantee buffer between Egypt and Israel.
Year 5726 – 1966 CE – Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of Britain
Upon planned retirement in 1965, Israel Brodie was succeeded in 1966 by Immanuel Jakobovits as Chief Rabbi of Britain. The latter was born in East Prussia before the war, but his family fled Germany in 1938. He later became Chief Rabbi of Ireland at the age of 27, then also served in New York from 1958 before being appointed in London. In Britain, he was knighted in 1981 and thus became the first Chief Rabbi to enter the House of Lords. He held the post until 1991 and died in 1999.
Year 5727 – 1967 CE – The Six-Day War
In June 1967, the State of Israel had to fight a war against a coalition of Arab states led by Nasser which started when Nasser asked the U.N. force that was stationed in the Sinai between Egypt and Israel to withdraw. He also blocked the Straits of Tiran to Israeli maritime trafic in the Red Sea. This was a breach since the previous ceasefire agreement following the Suez Crisis of 1956 and indicated an imminent Egyptian attack against the Jewish State.
Rather than waiting for this conflict, Israel pre-empted their move by attacking Egypt on 5 June 1967. Jordan, led to believe that Egypt was victorious attacked Israel by bombing the western Jewish side of Jerusalem: this opened a new front of Israel against Jordan. Last, in the last day of the conflict, Israel attacked Syria in the Golan Heights to secure a buffer to protect the Israeli agricultural villages in the valley below and put a stop to the attrition war that Syria had led for years against Israel on this border.
The war lasted six days and was concluded by a territorial gain for Israel with occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, a buffer on the Golan Heights, up to the Mount Hermon, and the West Bank. The West Bank encompassed the older Jewish kingdoms of Judea and Israel, with capital cities of Jerusalem and Samaria. After the war of 1948 and the invasion of these regions, and of the Old City of Jerusalem, Jordan had illegally annexed these territories and renamed them "West Bank". During this conflict, Israeli forces also took over the old city of Jerusalem, which had been forbidden for Jews since 1948 due to its military occupation by the Arab Legion of Jordan.
The swift military victory, operated in three fronts against Egypt, Jordan and Syria, puzzled the world at large. In the US Academy of West Point, this victory is explained by saying that the Israelis did almost everything right while the Arabs did almost everything wrong. Believers see this stunning victory as something unnatural, in other words that it was impossible to achieve without "divine help".
But, the biggest losers of the Six-Say War were the Palestinian Arabs who had been led to believe by successive Arab leaders since 1948 that their armies would wipe Israel off the map. Over one million Palestinians had lived in camps since 1948, because the Arab nations would not grant them citizenship nor give them the right to establish in their countries. Worse, Jordan annexed the West Bank, but did not grant Jordanian citizenship to the local Palestinian population who were considered as refugees in their own land ! The Six-Day War then put these refugees populations under Israeli military rule.
In August 1967, an Arab Summit was convened in Khartoum, Sudan, and decided on the "Three No's": no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. This act started a policy of rejection of Israel by the Arab world and is still broadly for years until 2002. As a result, Israel was not keen to return the territories it conquered in 1967, and kept them as guarantee until peace would eventually prevail.
Before the war, Palestinians refugees who had partially settled in Jordan, organised themselves under the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) founded in 1964 with the help of USSR and with Arab agents of the KGB. The PLO preached violence and carried out attacks against Israeli civilians. These actions would eventually cause Israel to retaliate against Jordan, who provided a territorial base to terror, so Jordan tried to put a stop to Palestinian actions. So, the PLO tried to overturn the royal regime in Jordan, and this led to a repression by the Jordan army between September 1970 and July 1971 called Black September. One has to remember that Jordan was unfairly created to the detriment of a vast Palestinian population by British interests after WW-I (see document C48b, year 1921): the territory of modern-day Jordan was part of the mandate over Palestine which promoted the creation of an Arab state for Palestinians. Instead, Britain brought a Hashemite (Saudi) ruler to govern over the local Palestinian population.
After their expulsion from Jordan in 1971, the PLO militants settled in Lebanon which became their new base for terror attacks against Israel. This led to future conflits in Lebanon.
The Six-Day War also marked a sharp increase of US support to the Jewish State under the impulse of US President Lyndon Johnson, at a time when France froze their sales of military equipment. During WW-II, Johnson got personally involved in saving hundreds of Jews of Warsaw by issuing visas to emigrate to Texas, USA, before the war started. Johnson came from a family who was friendly to Jews even putting their own life in danger. One example was the case of Leo Frank, an American Jew was accused of "blood libel" in Texas. The Johnson family actively pleaded for his defence and the Ku Klux Klan threatened to kill them. Frank was ultimately lynched by a mob in 1915. Lyndon Johnson also published in 1934 a work titled "Nazism: An Assault on Civilization" where he denounced the dangers posed by Hitler's ideas.
After the Six-Day War, Johnson made sure that the UN Resolution 242, approved in November 1967, included the key concept of "land for peace". The Resolution indeed mentions that Israel has the right for "secure and recognized boundaries", whatever the boundaries may be, otherwise the return of seized land would not be possible and would not achieve ultimate peace.
Year 5734 – 1973 CE – The Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 helped put the Arab nations, who had been defeated in the Six-Day War, in a par level with Israel. Egypt and Syria, with the help of advanced Russian weapons, carried out surprised attacks that proved devastating to the Israeli military who were at the edge of losing the war. But they held off the Egyptian army in Sinai while they counterattacked the Syrians who had stopped their advance after having conquered all the Golan Heights. After gaining the upper hand on the Golan, Israel carried out a daring operation led by commander Ariel Sharon to break the Egyptian front in two parts in the Sinai Peninsula while they moved on Egyptian soil and destroyed the anti-aircraft defence systems that were placed there and prevented Israel's control of the air. Then both fronts moved decisively for the Israelis to reach the outskirts of both capitals, Cairo and Damascus, when diplomacy led by USSR and USA put pressure to halt the war.
Within four years after the armistice, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat came to Israel to deliver an historical speech to the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset. This opened the door to peace talks and Israel finally returned all the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace. In Syria however, the hard-lined policy of President Hafez al-Assad was to not negotiate with Israel, so the Golan Heights were kept as protective buffer by Israel until they were seemingly annexed, for security reasons, in 1981.
Anwar Sadat was assassinated on 6 October 1981 by Islamic militants during the annual commemoration of the crossing of the Egyptian army into the Sinai Peninsula.
Year 5738 – 1978 CE – The South Lebanon War
The result of Yom Kippur War was another disappointment for the Palestinians. Then, after aggressively controlling the South Lebanon region, terrorising the Christian population there, they increased their attacks on Israel from that region, opening a de facto war from the Lebanese soil. PLO was said to have become a state within a state, not having any obedience to Lebanon and carrying their own war against Israel from their Lebanese base.
By 1975, the tensions were so great between Christian factions in Lebanon and the PLO that a civil war broke out which lasted 15 years until 1990 and caused the exodus of one million Lebanese people. Many parts of the country suffered from massacres, perpetrated from one side or another. After this civil war, Lebanon was destroyed and never fully recovered its past glory of being an Arab beacon in the Mediterranean.
During the war, and in order to remove Palestinian militants from South Lebanon, Israel invaded that region from March 1978 until the Litani River. The large city of Tyre was however left alone, to avoid civilian casualties, but was surrounded. All Palestinian militants moved north, and the Christian villages of South Lebanon were finally relieved from persecutions at the hand of the Palestinians. A Christian army, the SLA (South Lebanon Army), was supported and trained by the Israelis to take control of South Lebanon.
Year 5742 – 1982 CE – The Lebanon War
From their HQ in Beirut, attacks against Israel and Jews worldwide were planned by the PLO, so Israel decided to push military operations more north in June 1982 to dislodge the terror groups from Lebanon. At that time, Lebanon had no effective governance, nor army, but was supposed to be ruled by Syrian forces who had come to stop the civil war. The Israeli army (the IDF) soon reached the outskirts of Beirut. The fighting was fierce and also involved some battle between the IDF and the Syrian army which was stationed in parts of Lebanon with the goal to maintain order. The siege on Beirut lasted for two months until the PLO and his chairman Yasser Arafat accepted to leave Lebanon for an asylum in Tunisia.
Meanwhile, the civil war between other Islamic factions in Lebanon continued to rage. Bachir Gemayel, the Christian leader who was elected president in September 1982, was assassinated after one week by a pro-Syrian group. In retaliation, the Christians carried out a massacre of Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, while the Israeli military thought they went in to find some Palestinian militants hiding in the camps.
Israel finally withdrew south to the Litani River in January 1985. But, from that time, another Muslim (Shia) faction started to rise and take over the vacuum left by the PLO: the Hezbollah, sponsored and supported by both Syria and Iran. To this day, Hezbollah also forms a state in the state in Lebanon, and carry out military actions from time to time against Israel from the Lebanese soil which lead to escalations into further military conflicts, with Lebanese civilian casualties because Hezbollah usually launches its rockets from dense urban areas and even private homes in South Lebanon. One military conflict against Hezbollah in 2006 led to a ceasefire and the formation of the UNIFIL, a UN peace-keeping force strong with 10,000 Blue Helmets. Their mission, based on UN Resolution 1701, is observation of the ceasefire which includes monitoring that the Hezbollah militants would not return to South Lebanon. Their mission is obviously a failure as the terror attacks, and the building of underground tunnels, were pursued by Hezbollahs under the cover of UNIFIL "observers" who, generally, focus on monitoring Israel responses and condemning them.
Year 5748 – 1987 CE – The Intifada
On 8 December 1987, after a trivial road accident involving an Israeli truck and a Palestinian car when passengers were killed, riots broke out in the Gaza Strip against the Israeli authorities. Demonstrators threw stones to the Israeli vehicles and the unrest spread to the West Bank. Both regions were under Israeli military administration since the Six-Day War. This spontaneous uprising took every side by surprise, including the Palestinian leaders who were in Tunisia at the time and had not orchestrated it. But they soon grasped the opportunity to benefit from it and aimed to obtain world recognition for Palestinian rights.
The Intifada lasted until September 1993 when both Palestinian and Israeli sides entered the negotiation table which led to the Madrid Conference of 1991 and finally to the Oslo Accords of 1993.
Year 5753 – 1993 CE – The Oslo Accords
The principle behind any Israeli Palestinian peace proposal is the land-for-peace route. The Oslo Accords called for a progressive withdrawal of Israel from territories occupied since the Six-Day War in exchange for mutual recognition of the right to exist, abandonment of the violence and autonomy of the Palestinian people, before eventual statehood independence. As part of these accords, Israel withdrew from the the city of Gaza at the end of 1995, while keeping a military presence in the Strip to keep public order until they could build sufficient security protection with the future border. This new situation allowed Arafat, the PLO leader, to return to a Palestinian city, Gaza, free of "occupation" in 1996.
Arafat was an iconic fighter but he was not a political leader. His administration was riddled with corruption. He was accused of using international funds to enrich its companions and himself (his daughter Zahwa Arafat inherited the wealth of her father amounting today to an estimated $8 billion US). This systematic embezzlement deprived the ordinary Palestinian person from life improvement in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Year 5754 – 1994 CE – Diplomatic relations between Rome and Jerusalem
Following an agreement signed at the end of December 1993 between the Holy See and the State of Israel, Rome and Jerusalem finally opened diplomatic relationship in 1994. There were multiple reasons for the delay for not having done so since 1948. On the surface, there was a disagreement from the Holy See about taxation of their properties in the Holy Land. But, this could have been resolved by a negotiated agreement. The main issue was the fear of backlash against Christian populations in Arab countries. When the Oslo Accords were signed, the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist and therefore this last obstacle no longer existed for the Vatican which could also recognize the State of Israel right away in 1993.
Year 5757 – 1996 CE – Jihad against America
The Hebrew year 5757 was special because the two numbers making that year, the numbers 5 and 7, are both related to divine intent and action (for Jewish symbolism in the numbers, click here). So, what happened in that Hebrew year, which started on September 1996?
First, less than a month before, a person called Osama Bin Laden entered the spotlight of world media by declaring religious war (Jihad) against America and push them out of the two holy Muslim cities (Medica and Mecca). And in September 1996 (Tishri 5757), the Taliban took control over Afghanistan making it a de-facto base terrirory for militancy and training of terrorists befre they would operate across the globe. Five years later, Osama Bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan, hit at the symbols of America in the infamous September 11, 2001 attacks over New York and Washington.
The year 5757 indeed marked a turn into the world situation, as Muslim radical movements waged terror attacks against U.S. and Western interests over the years that followed. The traditional conflicts were overshadowed by this large-scale War on Terror in September 2011. This situation also caused more tension against the State of Israel and also against the Jews in the Diaspora. These security concerns created a catalyst for Jews to "return to Zion" as they felt endangered and, at times, unwelcomed to remain in their host country.
Lastly, also in the year 5757, Benjamin Netanyahu from the Likud Party became Prime Minister of Israel which signalled the end of the previous Labour Party's failed attempts to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
For all these reasons, the Hebrew year 5757 was a turning point in world affairs.
Year 5760 – 2000 CE – Failure at Camp David
During the peace talks of Camp David in 2000, which aimed to achieve a major milestone in the peace roadmap, Arafat was given a serious compromise of land for peace by Ehud Barak, the Prime Minister of Israel. But he rejected the offer. Bill Clinton, the U.S. President of the time, was shocked by Arafat's refusal as he later expressed it publicly (to listen to him, click here).
So, instead of moving towards peace and obtaining over 90% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip to start a Palestinian State, Arafat returned to the Middle-East and triggered the second Intifada. This new uprising started in September 2000 and lasted until 2005 when Israel unilateraly withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Then the Palestinians held their first elections in January 2006 with unexpected results...
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Albert Benhamou
Private Tour Guide in Israel
Cheshvan 5786 - November 2025
