The first Kingdom of Israel appeared in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 10th century. BC. However, this country did not last long as an independent country. From the 7th century it was under the control of various conquerors until it was captured by the Roman Empire in 63 BC. This territory always caused a lot of problems for the Romans, including because of the Jewish religion: the canons of Judaism forbade the worship of the Roman emperor as a deity, which was a prerequisite for the loyalty of local authorities in the eyes of Rome.

In 135 AD. An unsuccessful uprising against the Romans took place on the territory of the Israeli province. These unrest had a serious impact on the fate of the Jewish people. By decision of the emperor, the Jews were evicted from the territory of their province as punishment, and it was occupied by other peoples. This marked the beginning of the emergence of Jewish communities throughout the Roman Empire and beyond.

Over time, Jewish communities appeared in Slavic lands.

Emergence of the modern Israeli state

IN late XIX V. There was a desire among Jews to return to the historical lands of Israel. The first settlers went to Palestine after 1881, with another wave occurring before the First World War. Jews created settlements in territories that belonged to Ottoman Empire, and for the time being did not claim independence.

The bulk of Jews moved to Palestine for religious reasons, but there were also those who planned to build socialist communes in the country.

After World War I, Palestine became a British mandate. The resettlement of Jews to these lands continued, but it caused discontent Arab population. Britain introduced entry quotas for foreign Jews, but they were not always respected. The most acute situation arose in the late thirties, when a large influx of Jews from Germany caused an uprising of Palestinian Arabs. As a result, Great Britain banned Jewish migration to its controlled territories from 1939.

After World War II, the problem of creating a Jewish state became truly urgent. Since 1947, Britain has relinquished control of Palestine. The USA and the USSR came to an agreement on the Palestinian issue - it was decided to divide the land between Jews and Arabs. Thus, the founding date of Israel can be considered May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the creation of an independent Jewish state. However, diplomats from other countries failed to translate the dialogue between Arabs and Jews into a peaceful direction. Soon after Israel declared independence, several Arab states began a military conflict with it. However, gradually Israel was recognized by almost all countries of the world.

It acquired in 1948, when Ben Gurion announced to the whole world the proclamation of the independent sovereign state of Israel.

Ben Gurion read this statement in the museum building on Rothschild Street in Tel Aviv. Israel's independence was declared one day before the end of the British Mandate for Palestine.

Then, when Israel was created, the Declaration of Independence stated that in November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution according to which the Jewish independent state of Israel was created in Eretz Israel.

The same United Nations declaration emphasized that, like any other people, the Jewish people can be independent, have the right to freedoms and independence, as well as sovereignty in their own independent and sovereign state.

Immediately, the sovereign independent state of Israel opened its borders for the repatriation of Jewish people from all countries of the world, with the sole purpose of uniting all Jews scattered around the world. The Declaration of the Founding of Israel also stated that the new state would make every effort to develop the new Jewish state and the welfare of the Jewish people. The main postulate of the declaration was that from now on the political structure of the State of Israel is aimed at the development and preservation of such main democratic foundations as freedom and justice, peace and tranquility, and will also fully comply with all the teachings of the Hebrew prophets.

The main state principles will be: the full rights of the country's citizens, both in political and social matters, regardless of their religion, gender and race. The Declaration on the Founding of Israel stated that every citizen of the State of Israel will be guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, the right to speak their native language, the right to a good education, for the preservation of culture and for worthy development.

And yet, the Declaration clearly stated that the new state would sacredly preserve monuments of all three religions on the territory of Israel, and would also adhere to and observe the principles of the UN Charter.

Immediately in 1948, after the declaration of independence of the State of Israel, it was announced that the new independent state would be and is ready to cooperate with the United Nations, with its bodies and representative offices on the implementation of the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in November 1947 .

And, in addition, the new state will take all possible steps to implement the economic unity of Israel.

At the same time, during the creation of Israel, after the proclamation of the formation of a new Jewish state, the Arab population living in Israel was asked to maintain peace and take part in the construction and revival of a new sovereign state, which would be based on equality. Everyone living in Israel was promised equal representation in all institutions and organizations of the state.

In the year of the declaration of independence of the state, Israel extended its hand for good neighborly relations with all neighboring states, their peoples, and called for cooperation with the people of Israel, with the people who have been moving towards independence on their land for so long.

The declaration also stated that Israel would certainly contribute to the rapid development of the Middle East.

The first state to de facto accept Israel was the United States of America. President Truman announced this in 1948 on May 14, immediately after Ben Gurion's Declaration of Independence. The country that was the first to recognize Israel de jure was the Soviet Union. This happened in May 1948, after the founding of Israel and the declaration of sovereign Israel. A year later, the sovereign independent state of Israel became a member of the United Nations.

The creation of Israel was painful and quite difficult. After the declaration of the Declaration of Independence, on the second day of the existence of the new independent state, the armed armies of the Arab states entered its territory: Syria, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt. They started the war against Israel. The purpose of the attack was one - the destruction of the Jewish state, since the countries of the Arab world did not recognize the new state of Israel.

The Israeli army won its independence with honor; henceforth the war of 1948 will be called the War of Independence. It should be added that the Israelis not only defended their independence, but also conquered part of the Arab lands, thereby expanding the territory of Israel. The war ended in June 1949, only a year later a peace treaty was signed, which stated the cessation of hostilities.

In difficult times, the time of war, the formation and creation of Israel as a state took place. The Khagan organization, which existed in a semi-underground position, became, and in 1948 Ben Gurion, who became the first prime minister in the history of an independent state, signed a decree on the creation of the Shai special service, the main function of which was to conduct all types of intelligence: counterintelligence, reconnaissance.

Subsequently, three intelligence departments were created from one service: military intelligence, political intelligence and counterintelligence. All three intelligence services were created in the new state on the basis of the British intelligence services. Today, these intelligence services have names - the Israeli Military Intelligence Service AMAN, the General Security Service "Shabak" - this is how counterintelligence began to be called, and "Mossad" - this is the name of political intelligence.

When Israel was created, the political and governmental structure of the country was established.

The head of state of Israel is the President. He is elected by Knesset members for seven years by secret ballot. The first president of the new state of Israel was Chaim Weizmann. According to the President of Israel, he does not have the powers of government; rather, he is a representative figure in the political hierarchy. The President is a symbol of the state, his task is to perform representative functions. What can a president do in Israel? In addition to representative functions, he approves the new composition of the government after the next elections, and also provides amnesty to those convicted.

When Israel was founded, the highest legislative body was determined to be the Knesset. This is a parliament consisting of 120 deputies elected by party lists using direct voting. The first Knesset came into existence after the first elections in 1949. Central executive agency- government. The government is headed by the Prime Minister, who is actually the head of the state of Israel. The first prime minister was Ben Guriron.

The highest judicial body of the state is the Supreme Court, which in Israel is called the High Court of Justice. All major government and government agencies and organizations are located in .

Executive branch during the creation of Israel, it was also defined - these are city mayors who are elected locally through direct voting. And yet, it is not separated from the state, and therefore in the cities there are still religious councils consisting of clergy of Israel. The services provided by religious councils relate mainly to religious rites and services, the conclusion of legal acts: marriage, divorce, birth or death.

The severe winter of early 1947 was accompanied in England by the most serious fuel crisis in the country's history. Industry practically stopped, the British were desperately freezing. The British government, more than ever, wanted good relations With Arab countries- oil exporters. On February 14, Foreign Secretary Bevin announced London's decision to refer the issue of Mandatory Palestine to the UN due to the fact that British peace proposals were rejected by both Arabs and Jews. It was a gesture of desperation.

“NOW THERE WILL BE NO PEACE HERE”

On March 6, 1947, Advisor to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs Boris Stein handed over to First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Vyshinsky a note on the Palestinian issue: “Until now, the USSR has not formulated its position on the issue of Palestine. The submission by Great Britain of the question of Palestine to the United Nations for discussion represents the first opportunity for the USSR not only to express its point of view on the question of Palestine, but also to take an effective part in the fate of Palestine. The Soviet Union cannot but support the demands of the Jews to create their own state on the territory of Palestine.”
Vyacheslav Molotov and then Joseph Stalin agreed. On May 14, Andrei Gromyko, the permanent representative of the USSR to the UN, voiced the Soviet position. At a special session of the General Assembly, he said, in particular: “The Jewish people suffered exceptional disasters and suffering in the last war. In the territory where the Nazis dominated, the Jews were subjected to almost complete physical extermination - about six million people died. The fact that not a single Western European state was able to protect the basic rights of the Jewish people and protect them from violence from the fascist executioners explains the desire of the Jews to create their own state. It would be unfair not to take this into account and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize such aspirations.”

Joseph Stalin acted as " godfather» State of Israel

“Since Stalin was determined to give the Jews their own state, it would be stupid for the United States to resist!” - concluded US President Harry Truman and instructed the “anti-Semitic” State Department to support the “Stalinist initiative” at the UN.
In November 1947, resolution No. 181(2) was adopted on the creation of two independent states in Palestine: Jewish and Arab immediately after the withdrawal of British troops (May 14, 1948). On the day the resolution was adopted, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Jews were distraught with happiness , took to the streets. When the UN made a decision, Stalin smoked his pipe for a long time and then said: “That’s it, now there will be no peace here.” “Here” is in the Middle East.
Arab countries did not accept the UN decision. They were incredibly outraged by the Soviet position. The Arab communist parties, which were accustomed to fighting against “Zionism - the agents of British and American imperialism,” were simply at a loss, seeing that the Soviet position had changed beyond recognition.
But Stalin was not interested in the reaction of Arab countries and local communist parties. It was much more important for him to consolidate, in defiance of the British, diplomatic success and, if possible, to join the future Jewish state in Palestine to the created world camp of socialism.
For this purpose, the USSR prepared a government “for the Jews of Palestine.” The prime minister of the new state was to be Solomon Lozovsky, a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, former deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs, and director of the Sovinformburo. Twice Hero Soviet Union tanker David Dragunsky was confirmed for the post of Minister of Defense, Grigory Gilman, a senior officer in the intelligence department of the USSR Navy, became Minister of Navy. But ultimately, a government was created from the international Jewish Agency, headed by its chairman Ben-Gurion (a native of Russia); and the “Stalinist government”, already ready to fly to Palestine, was dissolved.
The adoption of the resolution on the division of Palestine served as a signal for the beginning of the Arab-Jewish armed conflict, which lasted until mid-May 1948 and was a kind of prelude to the first Arab-Israeli war, which in Israel was called the “War of Independence.”
The Americans imposed an embargo on arms supplies to the region, the British continued to arm their Arab satellites, the Jews were left with nothing: their partisan detachments could only defend themselves with homemade guns and rifles and grenades stolen from the British. Meanwhile, it became clear that the Arab countries would not allow the UN decision to come into force and would try to exterminate Palestinian Jews even before the declaration of the state. The Soviet envoy to Lebanon, Solod, after a conversation with the prime minister of this country, reported to Moscow that the head of the Lebanese government expressed the opinion of all Arab countries: “if necessary, the Arabs will fight to preserve Palestine for two hundred years, as was the case during the Crusades.” "
Arms poured into Palestine. The dispatch of “Islamic volunteers” began. The Palestinian Arab military leaders Abdelkader al-Husseini and Fawzi al-Kawqaji (who had recently served the Fuhrer faithfully) launched a widespread offensive against Jewish settlements. Their defenders retreated to coastal Tel Aviv. A little more, and the Jews will be “thrown into the sea.” And, undoubtedly, this would have happened if not for the Soviet Union.
Jewish soldiers who had experience participating in the war against Germany arrived in Palestine along with weapons from Eastern European countries.

STALIN IS PREPARING A BRIDGEHEAD

By personal order of Stalin, already at the end of 1947, the first shipments began to arrive in Palestine small arms. But this was clearly not enough. On February 5, a representative of Palestinian Jews, through Andrei Gromyko, convincingly asked for an increase in supplies. Having listened to the request, Gromyko, without diplomatic subterfuge, busily asked whether it was possible to ensure the unloading of weapons in Palestine, since there were still almost 100,000 British troops there. This was the only problem that the Jews in Palestine had to solve; the USSR took on the rest. Such guarantees were received.

Palestinian Jews received weapons mainly through Czechoslovakia. Moreover, at first, captured German and Italian weapons were sent to Palestine, as well as those produced in Czechoslovakia at the Skoda and ChZ factories. Prague made good money on this. The airfield in Ceske Budejovice was the main transshipment base. Soviet instructors retrained American and British volunteer pilots - veterans of the recent war - to use new machines. From Czechoslovakia (via Yugoslavia) they then made risky flights to Palestine itself. They carried with them disassembled aircraft, mainly German Messerschmitt fighters and British Spitfires, as well as artillery and mortars.
One American pilot said: “The cars were loaded to capacity. But you knew that if you land in Greece, they will take away the plane and the cargo. If you sit in any Arab country, they will simply kill you. But when you land in Palestine, poorly dressed people await you. They don't have weapons, but they need them to survive. These will not allow themselves to be killed. Therefore, in the morning you are ready to fly again, although you understand that each flight may be your last.”
The supply of weapons to the Holy Land was often surrounded by detective details. Here is one of them.
Yugoslavia provided Jews not only with airspace, but also with ports. The first to load was the Borea transport ship flying the Panamanian flag. On May 13, 1948, he delivered cannons, shells, machine guns and approximately four million cartridges to Tel Aviv - all hidden under a 450-ton cargo of onions, starch and cans of tomato sauce. The ship was ready to moor, but then a British officer suspected smuggling, and under the escort of British warships, the Borea moved to Haifa for a more thorough inspection. At midnight the British officer looked at his watch. “The mandate is over,” he told the captain of the Borea. - You are free to continue on your way. Shalom! The Borea became the first ship to unload at a free Jewish port. Following from Yugoslavia, other transport workers with similar “stuffing” arrived.
The Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN, Andrei Gromyko, actively promoted the idea of ​​“the right of the Jewish people to create their own state”
Not only future Israeli pilots were trained on the territory of Czechoslovakia. There, in Ceske Budejovice, tank crews and paratroopers were trained. One and a half thousand infantrymen of the Israel Defense Forces trained in Olomouc, another two thousand in Mikulov. They formed a unit that was initially called the “Gotttwald Brigade” in honor of the leader of the Czechoslovak communists and the leader of the country. The brigade was transferred to Palestine through Yugoslavia. Medical personnel were trained in Velké Strebno, radio operators and telegraph operators in Liberec, electromechanics in Pardubice. Soviet political instructors conducted political classes with young Israelis. At the “request” of Stalin, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria refused to supply weapons to the Arabs, which they did immediately after the end of the war purely for commercial reasons.
In Romania and Bulgaria, Soviet specialists trained officers for the Israel Defense Forces. Here the preparation of Soviet military units began for transfer to Palestine to help Jewish combat detachments. But it turned out that the fleet and aviation would not be able to support a rapid landing operation in the Middle East. It was necessary to prepare for it, first of all to prepare the receiving party. Soon Stalin realized this and began building a “Middle Eastern bridgehead.” And the already trained fighters, according to the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, were loaded onto ships to be sent to Yugoslavia to save the “brotherly country” from the presumptuous Tito.

OUR MAN IN HAIFA

Along with weapons, Jewish soldiers who had experience participating in the war against Germany arrived in Palestine from Eastern European countries. Soviet officers also went to Israel secretly. Great opportunities also appeared for Soviet intelligence. According to State Security General Pavel Sudoplatov, “the use of Soviet intelligence officers in combat and sabotage operations against the British in Israel began already in 1946.” They recruited agents among Jews leaving for Palestine (mainly from Poland). As a rule, these were Poles, as well as Soviet citizens, who, taking advantage of family ties, and in some places falsifying documents (including nationality), traveled through Poland and Romania to Palestine. The relevant authorities were well aware of these tricks, but received instructions to turn a blind eye to it.
On the instructions of Lavrentiy Beria, the best officers of the NKVD-MGB were sent to Palestine.
True, to be precise, the first Soviet “specialists” arrived in Palestine shortly after October revolution. In the 1920s, on the personal instructions of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first Jewish self-defense forces “Israel Shoichet” were created by Cheka resident Lukacher (operational pseudonym “Khozro”).

So, Moscow's strategy included intensifying covert activities in the region, especially against the interests of the United States and Great Britain. Vyacheslav Molotov believed that it was possible to implement these plans only by concentrating all intelligence activities under the control of one department. An Information Committee was created under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which included the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security, as well as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces. The committee reported directly to Stalin and was headed by Molotov and his deputies.
At the end of 1947, the head of the department for the Middle and Far East Komiinforma, according to information, Andrei Otroshchenko convened an operational meeting, at which he said that Stalin had set the task: to guarantee the transition of the future Jewish state to the camp of the closest allies of the USSR. To do this, it is necessary to neutralize the ties of the Israeli population with American Jews. The selection of agents for this “mission” was entrusted to Alexander Korotkov, who headed the illegal intelligence department at Komiinform.
Pavel Sudoplatov wrote that he allocated three Jewish officers for secret operations: Garbuz, Semenov and Kolesnikov. The first two settled in Haifa and created two intelligence networks, but did not take part in sabotage against the British. Kolesnikov managed to organize the delivery of small arms and Faust cartridges captured from the Germans from Romania to Palestine.
Sudoplatov’s people were engaged in specific activities - they were preparing the very bridgehead for a possible invasion Soviet troops. They were most interested in the Israeli military, their organizations, plans, military capabilities, and ideological priorities.
And while debates and behind-the-scenes negotiations were going on at the UN about the fate of the Arab and Jewish states on the territory of Palestine, the USSR began to build a new Jewish state at a Stalinist pace. We started with the main thing - the army, intelligence, counterintelligence and police. And not on paper, but in reality.
The Jewish territories resembled a military district that had been alerted and urgently began combat deployment. There was no one to plow; everyone was preparing for war. By order of Soviet officers, people of the required military specialties were identified among the settlers and delivered to bases, where they a quick fix were checked by Soviet counterintelligence, and then urgently taken to ports, where ships were unloaded in secret from the British. As a result, the full crew got into the tanks that had just been put on the pier and drove the military equipment to the place of permanent deployment or directly to the battle site.
Israeli special forces were created from scratch. Direct participation in the creation and training of commandos was taken by the best officers of the NKVD-MGB, (“Stalin’s falcons” from the Berkut detachment, the 101st reconnaissance school and Directorate “C” of General Sudoplatov), ​​who had experience in operational and sabotage work: Otroshchenko, Korotkov, Vertiporokh and dozens of others. In addition to them, to Israel in urgently sent two generals from the infantry and aviation, a vice admiral of the Navy, five colonels and eight lieutenant colonels, and, of course, junior officers for direct work in the field.

David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir

Among the “juniors” there were mainly former soldiers and officers with the corresponding “fifth column” in the questionnaire, who expressed a desire to repatriate to historical homeland. As a result, Captain Galperin (born in Vitebsk in 1912) became the founder and first head of the Mossad intelligence service and created the Shin Bet public security and counterintelligence service. The “honorary pensioner and faithful heir of Beria,” the second person after Ben-Gurion, entered the history of Israel and its intelligence services under the name Iser Harel. Smersh officer Livanov founded and led the foreign intelligence service Nativa Bar. He adopted the Jewish name Nekhimiya Levanon, under which he entered the history of Israeli intelligence. Captains Nikolsky, Zaitsev and Malevany “set up” the work of the special forces of the Israel Defense Forces, two naval officers (names could not be established) created and trained a naval special forces unit. Theoretical training was regularly reinforced by practical exercises - raids on the rear of Arab armies and cleansing of Arab villages.
Some of the scouts found themselves in piquant situations; if they happened in another place, serious consequences could not be avoided. Thus, one Soviet agent infiltrated the Orthodox Jewish community, and he himself did not even know the basics of Judaism. When this was discovered, he was forced to admit that he was a career security officer. Then the community council decided to give the comrade a proper religious education. Moreover, the authority of the Soviet agent in the community grew sharply: the USSR is a fraternal country, the settlers reasoned, what secrets could there be from it?
People from Eastern Europe willingly made contact with Soviet representatives and told them everything they knew. Jewish soldiers were especially sympathetic to the Red Army and the Soviet Union and did not consider it shameful to share secret information with Soviet intelligence officers. The abundance of sources of information created a deceptive sense of power among station staff. “They,” we quote Russian historian Zhores Medvedev, “intended to secretly rule Israel, and through it also influence the American Jewish community.”
Soviet intelligence services were active both in left-wing and pro-communist circles, as well as in the right-wing underground organizations LEHI and ETZEL. For example, Beersheba resident Chaim Bresler in 1942-1945. was in Moscow as part of the LEHI representative office, engaged in the supply of weapons and trained militants. He kept photographs of the war years with Dmitry Ustinov, the then Minister of Armaments, later the Minister of Defense of the USSR and a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, with prominent intelligence officers: Yakov Serebryansky (worked in Palestine in the 1920s together with Yakov Blumkin), State Security General Pavel Raikhman and other people. The acquaintances were quite significant for a man included in the list of heroes of Israel and LEHI veterans.

Tel Aviv, 1948

“INTERNATIONAL” SINGED IN CHORUS

At the end of March 1948, Palestinian Jews unpacked and assembled the first four captured Messerschmitt 109 fighters. On this day, the Egyptian tank column, as well as Palestinian partisans, were only a few tens of kilometers from Tel Aviv. If they had captured the city, the Zionist cause would have been lost. The Palestinian Jews did not have troops capable of covering the city. And they sent everything they had into battle—these four planes. One returned from the battle. But when they saw that the Jews had aviation, the Egyptians and Palestinians got scared and stopped. They did not dare to take the virtually defenseless city.
As the date for the proclamation of Jewish and Arab states approached, passions around Palestine became intensely intense. Western politicians vied with each other to advise Palestinian Jews not to rush into declaring their own state. The American State Department warned Jewish leaders that if the Jewish state were attacked by Arab armies, they should not count on help from the United States. Moscow insistently advised that a Jewish state be proclaimed immediately after the last English soldier left Palestine.
The Arab countries did not want the emergence of either a Jewish state or a Palestinian one. Jordan and Egypt were going to divide Palestine, where 1 million 91 thousand Arabs, 146 thousand Christians and 614 thousand Jews lived in February 1947, among themselves. For comparison: in 1919 (three years before the British Mandate) there were 568 thousand Arabs, 74 thousand Christians and 58 thousand Jews living here. The balance of forces was such that the Arab countries had no doubt of success. Secretary General The Arab League promised: “This will be a war of annihilation and a grandiose massacre.” Palestinian Arabs were ordered to temporarily leave their homes to avoid accidentally coming under fire from the advancing Arab armies.
Moscow believed that Arabs who did not want to stay in Israel should settle in neighboring countries. There was another opinion. It was voiced by the permanent representative of the Ukrainian SSR to the UN Security Council Dmitry Manuilsky. He proposed "relocating Palestinian Arab refugees to Soviet Central Asia and creating an Arab union republic or autonomous region there." It's funny, isn't it! Moreover, the Soviet side had experience in mass migrations of peoples.
On the night of Friday 14 May 1948, amid a seventeen-gun salute, the British High Commissioner for Palestine sailed from Haifa. The mandate has expired. At four o'clock in the afternoon, in the museum building on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, the State of Israel was proclaimed (Judea and Zion were also among the name options.) The future Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, after persuading the frightened (after a warning from the United States) ministers vote for the declaration of independence, promising the arrival of two million Jews from the USSR within two years, read out the Declaration of Independence prepared by “Russian experts”.
A massive wave of Jews was expected in Israel, some with hope and some with fear. Soviet citizens - retirees of the Israeli special services and the IDF, veterans of the Israeli Communist Party and former leaders of numerous public organizations in unison claim that, indeed, in post-war Moscow and Leningrad, and other large cities of the USSR, rumors about “two million future Israelis” were intensively spread. In fact, the Soviet authorities planned to send so many Jews in the other direction - to the North and Far East.
On May 18, the Soviet Union was the first to recognize the Jewish state de jure. On the occasion of the arrival of Soviet diplomats, about two thousand people gathered in the building of one of the largest cinemas in Tel Aviv, “Ester,” and about five thousand more people stood on the street listening to the broadcast of all the speeches. A large portrait of Stalin and the slogan “Long live the friendship between the State of Israel and the USSR!” were hung above the presidium table. The working youth choir sang the Jewish anthem, then the anthem of the Soviet Union. The whole hall was already singing “Internationale”. Then the choir performed “March of the Artillerymen”, “Song of Budyonny”, “Get Up, Huge Country”.
Soviet diplomats stated at the UN Security Council: since Arab countries do not recognize Israel and its borders, Israel may not recognize them either.

ORDER LANGUAGE – RUSSIAN

On the night of May 15, the armies of five Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as “seconded” units from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and several other states) invaded Palestine. The spiritual leader of the Muslims of Palestine, Amin al-Husseini, who was at one with Hitler throughout the Second World War, addressed his followers with the instruction: “I declare a holy war! Kill the Jews! Kill them all! “Ein Brera” (no choice) - this is how the Israelis explained their willingness to fight even in the most unfavorable circumstances. And in fact, the Jews had no choice: the Arabs did not want concessions on their part, they wanted to exterminate them all, essentially declaring a second Holocaust.
The Soviet Union, “with all sympathy for the national liberation movement of the Arab peoples,” officially condemned the actions of the Arab side. At the same time, instructions were given to all security agencies to provide the Israelis with all necessary assistance. A massive propaganda campaign in support of Israel began in the USSR. State, party and public organizations began to receive a lot of letters (mainly from Jewish citizens) with a request to send them to Israel. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) was actively involved in this process.
Immediately after the Arab invasion, a number of foreign Jewish organizations turned to Stalin personally with a request to provide direct military support to the young state. In particular, special emphasis was placed on the importance of sending “Jewish volunteer bomber pilots to Palestine.” “You, a man who has proven your insight, can help,” said one of the telegrams from American Jews addressed to Stalin. “Israel will pay you for the bombers.” It was also noted here that, for example, in the leadership of the “reactionary Egyptian army” there are more than 40 British officers “with a rank above captain.”
On the night of May 15, the armies of five Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as “seconded” units from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and several other states) invaded Palestine.
The next batch of “Czechoslovakian” aircraft arrived on May 20, and 9 days later a massive air strike was launched against the enemy. From that day on, the Israeli Air Force seized air supremacy, which greatly influenced the victorious conclusion of the War of Independence. A quarter of a century later, in 1973, Golda Meir wrote: “No matter how radically the Soviet attitude toward us changed over the next twenty-five years, I cannot forget the picture that appeared to me then. Who knows if we would have survived if not for the weapons and ammunition that we were able to purchase in Czechoslovakia?
Stalin knew that Soviet Jews would ask to go to Israel, and some (the necessary) of them would receive a visa and leave to build a new state there according to Soviet patterns and work against the enemies of the USSR. But he could not allow the mass emigration of citizens of a socialist country, a victorious country, especially its glorious warriors.
Stalin believed (and not without reason) that it was the Soviet Union that saved more than two million Jews from inevitable death during the war. It seemed that Jews should be grateful and not put a spoke in their wheels, not lead a line contrary to Moscow’s policy, and not encourage emigration to Israel. The leader was literally infuriated by the news that 150 Jewish officers had officially asked the government to send them as volunteers to Israel to assist in the war with the Arabs. As an example to others, they were all severely punished, some were shot. Did not help. Hundreds of soldiers, with the help of Israeli agents, fled from groups of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, others used a transit point in Lvov. At the same time, they all received fake passports with fictitious names, under which they later fought and lived in Israel. That is why in the archives of the Mahal (Israeli Union of Internationalist Warriors) there are very few names of Soviet volunteers, says the famous Israeli researcher Michael Dorfman, who has been studying the problem of Soviet volunteers for 15 years. He confidently states that there were many of them, and they almost built the “ISSR” (Israeli Soviet Socialist Republic). He still hopes to complete the Russian-Israeli TV project, interrupted due to the default in the mid-1990s, and in it “to tell a very interesting, and perhaps sensational story of the participation of Soviet people in the formation of the Israeli army and intelligence services.” , in which “there were many former Soviet military personnel.”
Less known to the general public are the facts of the mobilization of volunteers into the Israel Defense Forces, which was carried out by the Israeli embassy in Moscow. Initially, employees of the Israeli diplomatic mission assumed that all activities on the mobilization of demobilized Jewish officers were carried out with the approval of the USSR government, and Israeli Ambassador Golda Meerson (from 1956 - Meir) sometimes personally handed over lists of Soviet officers who had left and were ready to leave for Israel. However, later this activity became one of the reasons for “accusing Golda of treason,” and she was forced to leave her post as ambassador. Under her, about two hundred Soviet servicemen managed to leave for Israel. Those who did not have time were not repressed, although most of them were demobilized from the army.
How many Soviet military personnel went to Palestine before and during the War of Independence is not known for certain. According to Israeli sources, 200 thousand Soviet Jews used legal or illegal channels. Of these, “several thousand” are military personnel. In any case, the main language of “interethnic communication” in the Israeli army was Russian. He also occupied second (after Polish) place in all of Palestine.
The first Soviet resident in Israel in 1948 was Vladimir Vertiporokh, who was sent to work in this country under the pseudonym Rozhkov. Vertiporokh later admitted that he went to Israel without much confidence in the success of his mission: firstly, he did not like Jews, and secondly, the resident did not share the leadership’s confidence that Israel could be made a reliable ally of Moscow. Indeed, experience and intuition did not deceive the intelligence officer. Political emphasis changed sharply after it became clear that the Israeli leadership had reoriented its country's policy towards close cooperation with the United States.
The leadership led by Ben-Gurion feared a communist takeover from the moment the state was declared. Indeed, there were such attempts, and they were brutally suppressed by the Israeli authorities. This includes the shooting of the landing ship Altalena, later called the Israeli cruiser Aurora, in the Tel Aviv roadstead, and the uprising of sailors in Haifa, who considered themselves followers of the cause of the sailors of the battleship Potemkin, and some other incidents, the participants of which did not hide their goals - the establishment of Soviet power in Israel according to the Stalinist model. They blindly believed that the cause of socialism was winning throughout the world, that the “socialist Jewish man” was almost formed and that the conditions of the war with the Arabs had created a “revolutionary situation.” All that was needed was an order “strong as steel,” one of the participants in the uprising said a little later, because hundreds of “red fighters” were already ready to “resist and oppose the government with arms in hand.” It is no coincidence that the epithet steel is used here. Steel was in fashion then, like everything Soviet. The very common Israeli surname Peled means "Stalin" in Hebrew. But there followed the “cry” of the recent hero of “Altalena” - Menachem Begin called on the revolutionary forces to turn their arms against the Arab armies and, together with Ben-Gurion’s supporters, defend the independence and sovereignty of Israel.

INTERBRIGADES IN JEWISH STYLE

In the continuous war for its existence, Israel has always aroused sympathy and solidarity on the part of Jews (and non-Jews) living in different countries peace. One example of such solidarity was the voluntary service of foreign volunteers in the ranks of the Israeli army and their participation in hostilities. All this began in 1948, immediately after the proclamation of the Jewish state. According to Israeli data, approximately 3,500 volunteers from 43 countries then arrived in Israel and took direct part in the fighting as part of units and formations of the Israel Defense Forces - Zva Hagana Le-Israel (abbreviated IDF or IDF). The volunteers were divided by country of origin as follows: approximately 1,000 volunteers came from the USA, 250 from Canada, 700 from South Africa, 600 from the UK, 250 from North Africa, 250 each from Latin America, France and Belgium. There were also groups of volunteers from Finland, Australia, Rhodesia and Russia.
These were not random people - military professionals, veterans of the armies of the anti-Hitler coalition, with invaluable experience gained on the fronts of the recently ended World War II. Not all of them lived to see victory - 119 foreign volunteers died in the battles for Israeli independence. Many of them were posthumously awarded another military rank, up to brigadier general.
The story of each volunteer reads like an adventure novel and, unfortunately, is little known to the general public. This is especially true for those people who, in the distant 20s of the last century, began an armed struggle against the British with the sole purpose of creating a Jewish state on the territory of Mandatory Palestine. Our compatriots were at the forefront of these forces. It was they who in 1923 created the paramilitary organization BEITAR, which took up military training fighters for Jewish units in Palestine, as well as to protect Jewish communities in the Diaspora from Arab gangs of pogromists. BEITAR is an abbreviation of the Hebrew words Brit Trumpeldor (Trumpeldor's Union). So it was named in honor of the Russian army officer, Knight of St. George and hero of the Russo-Japanese War Joseph Trumpeldor.
In 1926, BEITAR entered world organization Zionist revisionists, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky. The most numerous military formations of BEITAR were in Poland, the Baltic countries, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Hungary. In September 1939, the command of Etzel and Beitar planned to carry out Operation Polish Landing - up to 40 thousand Beitar fighters from Poland and the Baltic countries were to be transferred on sea vessels from Europe to Palestine in order to create a Jewish state on the conquered bridgehead. However, the beginning of the Second World War canceled these plans.
The division of Poland between Germany and the USSR and its subsequent defeat by the Nazis dealt a heavy blow to the formations of BEITAR - together with the entire Jewish population of occupied Poland, its members ended up in ghettos and camps, and those of them who found themselves on the territory of the USSR often became the object of persecution by the NKVD for excessive radicalism and arbitrariness. The leader of the Polish BEITAR, Menachem Begin, the future Israeli prime minister, was arrested and sent to serve his sentence in the Vorkuta camps. At the same time, thousands of Beytarites fought heroically in the ranks of the Red Army. Many of them fought as part of national units and formations formed in the USSR, where the percentage of Jews was especially high. In the Lithuanian division, the Latvian corps, in Anders' army, in the Czechoslovak corps of General Svoboda there were entire units in which commands were given to Hebrew. It is known that two BEITAR students, sergeant Kalmanas Šuras from the Lithuanian division and lieutenant Antonin Sohor from the Czechoslovak corps, were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their exploits.
When the State of Israel was created in 1948, the non-Jewish part of the population was exempted from performing compulsory military service on an equal basis with Jews. It was believed that it would be impossible for non-Jews to fulfill their military duty due to their deep family, religious and cultural ties with the Arab world, which declared all-out war on the Jewish state. However, already during the Palestinian war, hundreds of Bedouins, Circassians, Druze, Muslim Arabs and Christians voluntarily joined the ranks of the IDF, deciding to forever link their fate with the Jewish state.
Circassians in Israel are the Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus (mainly Chechens, Ingush and Circassians) living in villages in the north of the country. They were drafted into both IDF combat units and border police. Many of the Circassians became officers, and one rose to the rank of colonel in the Israeli army. “In the Israeli War of Independence, the Circassians sided with the Jews, who were then only 600 thousand, against 30 million Arabs, and since then they have never betrayed their alliance with the Jews,” said Adnan Harkhad, one of the elders of the Circassian community.

PALESTINE: STALIN'S ELEVENTH STRIKE?

Discussions are still ongoing: why did the Arabs need to invade Palestine? After all, it was clear that the situation at the front for the Jews, although it remained quite serious, had nevertheless improved significantly: the territory allocated to the Jewish state by the UN was already almost completely in the hands of the Jews; Jews captured about a hundred Arab villages; Western and Eastern Galilee were partly under Jewish control; Jews achieved a partial lifting of the blockade of the Negev and unblocked the “road of life” from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The fact is that each Arab state had its own calculations. King Abdullah of Transjordan wanted to capture all of Palestine - especially Jerusalem. Iraq wanted access to Mediterranean Sea through Transjordan. Syria has set its sights on Western Galilee. Lebanon's influential Muslim population had long eyed the Central Galilee with greed. And Egypt, although it had no territorial claims, was toying with the idea of ​​becoming the recognized leader of the Arab world. And, of course, in addition to the fact that each of the Arab states that invaded Palestine had their own reasons for the “campaign,” they were all attracted by the prospect of an easy victory, and this sweet dream was skillfully supported by the British. Naturally, without such support it is unlikely that the Arabs would agree to open aggression.
The Arabs lost. The defeat of the Arab armies in Moscow was regarded as a defeat for England and they were incredibly happy about it; they believed that the position of the West had been undermined throughout the Middle East. Stalin did not hide the fact that his plan was brilliantly implemented.
The armistice agreement with Egypt was signed on February 24, 1949. Front line last days battles turned into a truce line. The coastal sector near Gaza remained in the hands of the Egyptians. No one challenged the Israelis' control of the Negev. The besieged Egyptian brigade emerged from Falluja armed and returned to Egypt. She was given full military honors, almost all the officers and most of the soldiers received state decorations as “heroes and victors” in the “great battle against Zionism.” On March 23, a truce with Lebanon was signed in one of the border villages: Israeli troops left this country. A truce agreement was signed with Jordan on the island. Rhodes on April 3, and finally on July 20, on neutral territory between the positions of Syrian and Israeli troops, a truce agreement was signed with Damascus, according to which Syria withdrew its troops from a number of areas bordering Israel, which remained a demilitarized zone. All these agreements are of the same type: they contained mutual obligations of non-aggression, defined armistice demarcation lines with a special clause that these lines should not be considered as “political or territorial boundaries.” The agreements made no mention of the fate of the Arabs of Israel and Arab refugees from Israel to neighboring Arab countries.
Documents, figures and facts give a certain idea of ​​the role of the Soviet military component in the formation of the State of Israel. No one helped the Jews with weapons and immigrant soldiers except the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe. To this day, in Israel one can often hear and read that the Jewish state survived the “Palestinian war” thanks to “volunteers” from the USSR and other socialist countries. In fact, Stalin did not give the green light to the volunteer impulses of Soviet youth. But he did everything so that within six months the mobilization capabilities of sparsely populated Israel could be “digested” great amount supplied weapons. Young people from “nearby” states - Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and to a lesser extent, Czechoslovakia and Poland - made up the conscript contingent that made it possible to create a fully equipped and well-armed Israel Defense Forces.
In total, 1,300 km2 and 112 settlements, allotted by a UN decision to the Arab state in Palestine, were under Israeli control; 300 km2 and 14 settlements were under Arab control, designated by the UN for the Jewish state. In fact, Israel occupied a third more territory than was provided for in the decision of the UN General Assembly. Thus, under the terms of the agreements reached with the Arabs, Israel retained three-quarters of Palestine. At the same time, part of the territory allocated to the Palestinian Arabs came under the control of Egypt (Gaza Strip) and Transjordan (since 1950 - Jordan), which in December 1949 annexed the territory, which was called the West Bank. Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Transjordan. Large numbers of Palestinian Arabs have fled the war zones to safer places in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as to neighboring Arab countries. Of the original Arab population of Palestine, only about 167 thousand people remained in Israel. The main victory of the War of Independence was that already in the second half of 1948, when the war was still in full swing, one hundred thousand immigrants arrived in the new state, which was able to provide them with housing and work.
In Palestine, and especially after the creation of the State of Israel, there was exceptionally strong sympathy for the USSR as a state that, firstly, saved the Jewish people from destruction during the Second World War, and, secondly, provided enormous political and military assistance to Israel in his struggle for independence. In Israel, “Comrade Stalin” was truly loved, and the overwhelming majority of the adult population simply does not want to hear any criticism of the Soviet Union. “Many Israelis idolized Stalin,” wrote the son of the famous intelligence officer Edgar Broide-Trepper. “Even after Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress, portraits of Stalin continued to decorate many government institutions, not to mention kibbutzim.”

The history of the State of Israel is a long and thorny path, an endless series of wars, centuries of enslavement and the struggle for freedom. The first mentions of the Jewish state date back to the 11th - 10th centuries BC. e. However, due to the fact that in this region such powerful states as Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Macedonia successively gained strength and replaced each other - starting from the 8th century BC. The Jewish state lost its independence for many centuries.

In 63 BC. e. The Roman Empire captured these territories, dividing them into separate provinces. Further, after the collapse of the Roman Empire in 395, the territory of Palestine went to Byzantium.

Beginning in 636, for the next six centuries, the ethnic territories of the Jewish people were controlled by the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties of Arab caliphs.

It is also worth mentioning the Crusaders, who founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, but left Jerusalem in 1187 under the pressure of Arab armies.

In 1517, Israeli territories became part of the powerful Ottoman Empire. After its collapse in the 1920s, Britain established its rule in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

Despite the fact that the lands of Israel were sacred to the Jews, and according to the Bible were bequeathed to them by God, the majority of this people were scattered throughout the world. However, the Jewish intelligentsia continued to entertain the idea of ​​an independent state for the Jews on their ethnic territory.

In 1947, the UN, seeing no prospect of resolving the long-standing hostility between Muslims and Jews, adopted a plan to divide Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state.

On May 14, 1948, the creation of the State of Israel was announced in the designated territories. The Arab states did not recognize Israel's independence and sent united troops into its territory. But the Israeli armed forces (IDF) managed not only to repel the invasion, but also captured part of the territories that, according to the UN plan, were intended for the Arab state.

The Second Arab-Israeli War (Operation Kadesh) was fought by Israel, with the support of British and French troops, against Egypt for gaining control of the Suez Canal.

During the Six-Day War of 1967, the Israeli army, thanks to its air superiority, achieved a convincing victory over the Arab League troops, capturing new territories, in particular the Golan Heights.

The next Arab-Israeli war began in October 1973 with an attack by Syria and Egypt, but once again ended in Israeli victory. The conflict lasted 18 days, accompanied by heavy losses in people and equipment on both sides.

In 1980, the Israeli government signed the Camp David Agreement, as a result of which the territories in the Sinai Peninsula captured during Operation Kadesh were returned to Egypt.

In 1982, Israeli armed forces invaded Lebanon to destroy terrorist bases of the Palestine Liberation Organization. As a result of the conflict, a “security zone” was created in southern Lebanon, which was controlled by Israel until 2000.

Beginning in 1993, Israel signed a series of agreements that were aimed at creating the Palestinian National Authority. But in 2001, Palestinian terrorist organizations resumed their activities.

In August 2006, an armed clash between the Israeli army and the terrorist group Hezbollah took place in Lebanon. Fighting were completed at the insistence of the UN Security Council.

To protect Israeli territory from regular rocket attacks, Operation Cast Lead was launched in the Gaza Strip in May 2008. On November 21, 2012, a ceasefire agreement was signed between Israel and Hamas.

Despite this agreement, it is necessary to understand that it is too early to talk about the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Modern Israel and its territory are fraught with many religious secrets, political stories and blood shed for the land. People fought for this part of the Middle East in pre-biblical times and are still fighting for it. Its current population, for the most part, has no hereditary roots with those who inhabited its territory several centuries ago, and it was wars on national grounds, the thirst for power over the land and, paradoxically, religion that became the reason for this.

Independent political and military ambitions, already modern state Israel began to emerge in the mid-twentieth century, after its statehood was recognized by the UN in 1948. This opportunity fell to the young country during the post-war decision to divide Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish. However, the UN decision did not suit everyone, primarily the League of Arab States, which initially did not share the UN plans to redistribute Palestinian lands. Since then, modern Israel, despite its small size and small population, has defended its Middle Eastern status with unenviable frequency and to this day proves its right to statehood to its “friendly” neighbors.

After the Second World War and after the recognition of Israel described above, its people, justifiably offended by fascism and territorial neighborly appetites, are struggling to form an internal national awareness among the population of the newly acquired statehood. A modern centralized structure of power is being formed, political and spiritual movements are being created, in a word, society is being formed. Israel is increasingly playing on the stage of the world diplomatic theater.

However, to this day the new state has not been able and still is not succeeding in becoming a peaceful player. Instability in the region and non-recognition of Israel by the League of Arab States and some other geopolitical opponents is also the current cause of modern wars in the region. Moreover, from the moment of its founding, having gained long-suffering experience in international diplomacy, Israel has become a kind of international mediator in the military-political games of more “adult” geopolitical giants. It is not unreasonable to believe that such mediation plays into the hands of the Jewish society itself, since only this can protect the state from such restless neighbors as, for example, Iran, which historically perceives Israel as a kind of cancer in the region.

If you trace the history of conflicts in the Middle East since 1948, it turns out that either the Jewish state itself or its notorious secret intelligence services take part in any conflict in one way or another. Since the recognition of Israel, about a dozen military conflicts have broken out and it is very difficult to imagine aggressive Jews with weapons who, without diplomatic international “protection,” are conquering the region. Today, the holy land has become a kind of large springboard for modern “military democracy”, which Western intelligence services sowed long ago. The Israeli army is an army of international mercenaries, which by and large can no longer be called national.

Unfortunately, while this military game of geopolitical preference is being played out in the Middle East, the Holy Land will not be able to appear like this for a long time. Too much blood has been shed on her, for her and her sons.

The history of Israel is very ancient and dates back thousands of years. It will be enough to say that the first source on the history of the creation of Israel was the Bible. Today, scientists have confirmed the fact that the events described in the Bible happened in reality, these facts are also confirmed by archaeological excavations. Therefore, today we can say with complete confidence that the history of the formation of the State of Israel began more than 3 thousand years ago.

The ancestor of the Jewish people was Abraham, who lived in the city of Ur in Mesopotamia - now the territory of Iraq. Around 1900 BC, Abraham and his family, in search of better life went on a long journey. His road lay through the Euphrates. Having moved to the other side of the river, Abraham called himself and his household Ivriim. And this name comes from the word “ever”, which means the other side. Over time, the word Hebrews was transformed into - Jews. Abraham and his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, settled in the city of Hebron, and it was they who became the founders of the Jewish nation.

Where did the name Israel come from? There is a legend that once upon a time, while already living in Hebron, Abraham's grandson Jacob quarreled with a man he did not know. A fierce fight ensued. The stranger was very strong, but Jacob won in a fierce struggle. The stranger, defeated by Jacob, admitted that he was not a man, but a messenger of God. The angel told Jacob that he had passed the difficult test and could now honorably call himself Israel, which means “the one who wrestled with God.” Since then, the descendants of Jacob with great pride bear the name “sons of Israel”; the state has also bear the same name since those ancient times.

The history of the State of Israel is an ancient and very interesting history. What are the 12 tribes of Israel? Jacob had 12 sons from two wives and two maidservants. It was from this event that the number of Jewish people began to increase. These 12 sons gave rise to twelve clans, or as they are also called, 12 tribes of the Jewish people.

Jacob's family then left Hebron for Egypt because Hebron had fallen on hard times. Joseph, the son of Jacob, came to Egypt first and achieved a high position at the court of the ruling pharaohs. For many hundreds of years, Jews lived in Egypt and replenished their family with descendants. It was in Egypt that the Jewish nation grew stronger. But the dynasty of the ruling pharaohs changed and from the favorites, the Jews were turned into slaves. For many years suffering, murder and humiliation accompanied the nation, until Moses appeared among the Jews.

The truth was revealed to Moses - he must free his people from slavery. While still a shepherd, a miracle appeared to him on Mount Sinai - in the fire of the Burning Bush, in a bush that did not burn, engulfed in a huge flame, it was revealed to him - he is God's messenger and his goal is to make the people free, to save them from slavery. With God's support, Moses demands the Pharaohs to free the Jewish people, but the Pharaohs do not want to do this. Then the terrible disasters sent by God to the Egyptians - the “ten plagues of Egypt” - frightened the pharaohs, and they released the sons of Israel. Then, together with Moses, more than half a million Jews left Egypt. Since then, all Jews have celebrated the holiday of Passover, in memory of the victory of the sons of Israel over the Egyptian pharaohs. Under the leadership of Moses, the Jews went to the Promised Land, to the land of their forefathers.

God bequeathed to the Israelites the land where all 12 founders of the Israeli tribes were born. And it was this land that was to become the state of Israel. But the Israelis were able to enter the Promised Land only when a new generation of people was born that did not know slavery and humiliation. And not a lot, not a little, but forty years passed.

But the feet of people who were free and proud of their name set foot on the Promised Land. Moses did not reach the Holy Land. He died. They buried him on a mountain from where the entire Promised Land was clearly visible. Having settled their land, the Jews strictly followed all the Divine Commandments. Years passed, the history of the State of Israel developed further. The sons of Israel developed the lands, began to expand the state, conquer tribes hostile to them, and establish trade contacts with friendly ones.

King Solomon began to rule in Israel. He was a wise and talented ruler. The reign of King Solomon is the golden age of the state, his reign has become legendary. He was known far beyond the borders of his state. During the reign of Solomon, the huge Temple of Israel was built on Mount Moriah, where all the men gathered during the holidays.

With the death of Solomon, the state split. Israel split into two kingdoms - the northern, called Israel, and the southern, called the Kingdom of Judah. Wars and civil strife began. The empire of King Solomon ceased to exist. The different halves of the state began to be called the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Rivalry began between the two kingdoms. Civil strife weakened and devastated all forces, and neighboring hostile tribes were not slow to take advantage of this. With the collapse of political unity began the collapse of religious unity. The history of two peoples began in Biblical Israel - Jews and Arabs.

Assyrians, Babylonians - many nations conquer Israel, steal its wealth, destroy what has been built over centuries. The Temple, built at one time by Solomon, was also destroyed. The Jewish people have experienced many more catastrophes throughout the history of the State of Israel.

However, the most terrible catastrophe was the years of the Second World War, when the Nazis began to systematically and consistently exterminate the Jewish people from the face of the earth. More than six million Jews died during the war.

IN post-war years the country was not an independent state that was ruled by Britain. In 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution dividing the territory of Israel into two different states - Jewish and Arab. And already in 1948, Israel declared itself an independent state. And this proclamation caused very sharp opposition from the Arabs. Many Arab countries did not accept Israeli independence, and some went to war against the newly formed new state. On the night when the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel was proclaimed, a war with the Arab countries began. The country's cities were subjected to continuous shelling. The war ended in 1949. The result of the war was the division of the eternal city of Jerusalem into two parts: the western part became Israeli, and the eastern part became Jordanian.

Until now, clashes with Arabs in the country have not stopped.