lThe Modern State of Israel did not begin like any other country. The idea of a homeland for Jews dates back to the 13th century when Jews all over Europe were being persecuted because of their religion. The persecution began in England when King Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England and was soon followed by an all Jew expulsion from Austria and Spain. Other countries in Europe who had not expelled Jews were also treating Jewish people poorly.
Jewish persecution reached its climax during the 19th century when Europeans sought to prevent Jews from being granted citizenship to their countries because they saw them as aliens in a non-European community. These groups of people called themselves anti-Semites. As a result, Jewish migration out of Europe grew rapidly as Jews began fleeing to Russia and Palestine, among other countries. Between 1882 and 1903, approximately 35,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine, which was a province of the Ottoman Empire (Margulies 13).
English: Portrait of Lord Balfour, along with his ...
David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) ...
The main differences between the 1947 partition pr...This was called Aliyah, the Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. In addition to the persecution of Jews by Europeans, other incidents across Europe also led to the creation of the State of Israel.
One of the most famous Jewish Persecution related incidents was the Dreyfus Affair. The Dreyfus Affair was a notorious anti-Semitic incident in France that involved a French Jewish army captain who was wrongly convicted of spying for Germany. This incident and many others like this caught the attention of Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jew who founded modern political Zionism. These incidents transformed Herzl from an ordinary journalist into a Zionist leader. Herzl pushed for the creation of Israel, meeting with top officials from different countries trying to find the perfect place for all Jews to coexist peacefully. Herzl would then go on to...