Syria-Palaestina, How It Got the Name of Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                         

Herodotus, b: 484 BCE in
 Halicarnassus, Caria (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey

When people talked about "Palestine,"  what were they talking about?

From the time of Herodotus, Greeks had been calling the Jewish Homeland "Syria-Palaestina" or as we called it, Palestine from the Philistines, enemies of the Jewish people such as King Saul and King David.  "The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BC E Ancient Greece, when Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" in The Histories, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley In the treatise Meteorology . 
                                                                       

The Philistines had been a thorn in the side of the family of Abraham ever since the first period.  They came in waves.   They believed in multiple gods, and Dagon, seen in the form of statue, was the leading one. Others were Astarte and Baal.  The Canaanites of the land were using their gods as well.   Canaanite religion was polytheistic, and in some cases monolatristic. Dagon was also their god.  "

• Dagon, god of crop fertility and grain, father of Ba'al Hadad

1. Pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they conflicted with Abraham and Isaac.   Could have been slightly different from the following Philistines that entered later.                                                              

Rameses II 

2. Second period:  They came from Crete (Greek island, probably the biblical Caphtor) after being repulsed from Egypt by Rameses II in 1194 BCE.  They seized the southern coastal area of Palestine where they founded 5 principalities of 1. Gaza, 2. Ascalon (Ashkelon) , 3, Ashdod, 4. Ekron, 5. Gath of which Achish was king, friend of David.  By nature, they were a fighting people.  They dominated parts of Judah in the period of the Judges.  King Saul at first won battles but was ultimately defeated.  King David ended their era of domination and overran Philistia. (Read Samuel I.)

Note: It was in the ancient Egyptian city of Raameses in the Nile Delta where Jacob and his family settled, told in Gen. 47:11, 27.  Their descendants were compelled to build storehouses for the Egyptian king.  Raameses was the point of departure for the Exodus.
                                                                         

Moses and Ten Commandments (5 things to do and 5 things not to do.)
 1-5: one G-d, no other G-ds, G-d name sacred, Shabbat-day of rest; honor parents
6-10: not to murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness,  nor covet anything.
Imagine what people were like before this list of 10 rules to follow.   

Note: Moses led the Exodus from Egypt at age 80 for 40 years, about from 1311 BCE to 1271 BCE and so entered Canaan in 1271 BCE, superceding the 2nd wave of Philistines by some 77 years by my math.  Philistines were not native Canaanites, but had been a Mediterranean people, thought to have originated from Asia Minor and Greek localities.

3. Third period: Persian and Greek Periods; foreign settlers from the Mediterranean islands, overran the Philistine districts.
                                                                                 

Herod, selected by the Romans to be King of Judea

4. Fourth Roman Period from 63 BCE. Roman invaded and took Syria.  " Herod the Great, Antipater's son, was designated "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BCE: "  So Roman soldiers were in the city of Jerusalem and thereabouts.  Judea had been overcome by Rome for a good 130 years before it fell to them in 70 CE.  That's at least 5 generations of Jews living under oppression.  They could only talk about their own state of Judea in their great great grandfather's days.  It would be like Jews in 1950 talking about their great great grandparents of 1820.  Note how time had changed between just 130 years!  From covered wagons to automobiles and planes for us in this time change, but for our biblical ancestors, not much could have changed except their thinking.

From 6 CE, Rome had become the administrators of Judea, Samaria and Idumea.  .

Judah's " revenue was of little importance to the Roman treasury, but it controlled the land and coastal sea routes to the bread basket Egypt and was a border province against the Parthian Empire because of the Jewish connections to Babylonia (since the Babylonian exile). The capital was at Caesarea (Maritima), not Jerusalem."
                                                                       

Roman Emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) gave the name officially to the former land of Judah in 135 CE after fighting General Bar Kokhba for 3 years who had re-taken Jerusalem.  He did this out of anger to get even with the Jews.  He also renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina. This emperor decided to Hellenize the land and had outlawed circumcision amongst other things,  which brought on the rebellion of the Jewish General (Aluf) Bar Kokhba and the war from 132-135.  After winning against the Jews, he received the title of Imperator.  Judea was made a consular province called SYRIA-PALAESTINA.  .  The ruins of Jerusalem were re-built into a pagan city and a statue of Hadrian was erected on the site of THE HOLY OF HOLIES , the inner sanctum which was the most sacred place in the temple, meant only for Aaron and following Cohen  priests.
                                                                       

1920 Palestine

A state of Palestine?  Never.  At the time of the end of World War I in 1917, the Ottoman Empire, who fought against the allies with the Germans, were the losers, and thus lost all their land to the allies.  This was a WORLD-WIDE WAR, and the allies had already decided to give this land to the Jews who had been in meetings with them about it.  Most of the land had no value to anyone.  It was hot there, and either swampy, full of weeds, or a dry desert.  Not many people lived there.  There were Jews whose ancestors had never left after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  Then there were more recent Jews who had come mainly from Russia in the 1880s and on, who were building up the land and creating Tel Aviv.   There were Bedouins riding camels and horses, the Princes of the desert, who were mainly raiders of others, and only a few bedraggled landowners who had had a hard existence with the Ottoman Empire representatives who picked up tax money from them.
                                                             

Mehmed VI, last Sultan of Ottoman Empire
from 1918 to 1922

Who were Palestinians?  From the end of WWI to May 14, 1948 when Israel was announced as being born, both Jews and Arabs were Palestinians.  Jews had lost Judea and Arabs had lost nothing but the Ottoman Empire's holdings, and they were only subjects of the Ottoman Empire.  It was the Turks who were working for the Empire and had been for the past 400 years.  .

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines (religion).
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_(Roman_province)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion#Pantheon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_VI
Update: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_%22Palestine%22#cite_note-FOOTNOTEJacobson1999-9
Read:  THE Settlers by MEYER LEVIN,  an epic novel following a family's return to the Jewish homeland-once Palestine, now Israel, always Eretz Yisroel.  Set in Palestine at the turn of the century to the Balfour Declaration, covers 1/4 of a century.  Turkish overlords, Jewish pioneers, Arabs.

Jews From Island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                           

Rhodes, an island off of Turkey, but was a Greek-owned island
a place within the Mediterranean Sea; very close to Israel
where Jews lived undisturbed for about 1,500 years
what a find for geneticists to test DNA

There is an island in the Aegean Sea called Rhodes. It is the largest of Greece’s Dodecanese islands.   According to tradition, Jews came here to live in the 2nd century BCE.  They probably were able to live there as an isolated people until the 12th Century when Sephardi Jews were still escaping from the Spanish Inquisition and joined them, then numbering 500 Jews on the island.  By then, the Middle East had been taken over by the Ottoman Empire and Islam, which developed  with the advent of Mohammad's death in 632.  At that time, the Christian world was coming down on the heads of Jews even earlier than 1492 when the Spanish decree was that all Jews had to either convert or leave the country.                              

The Jews on Rhodes found themselves being governed by the rule of the Knights of St. John, a Christian ruling party, from 1309 to 1522.  It was headquartered in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta,
"After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291 (Jerusalem itself had fallen in 1187), the Knights were confined to the County of Tripoli and, when Acre was captured in 1291, the order sought refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus. Finding themselves becoming enmeshed in Cypriot politics, their Master, Guillaume de Villaret, created a plan of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting Rhodes to be their new home, part of the Byzantine empire. His successor, Fulkes de Villaret, executed the plan, and on 15 August 1309, after over two years of campaigning, the island of Rhodes surrendered to the knights. "                             

Knights of St. John-Malta KnightsThe Order of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem

By the end of this period, they were suffering for having suspected sympathy with the Turks.  In 1577, the Kahal Shalom Synagogue was built, now the oldest synagogue in Greece.

The Turks did take over and rule, which brought many Sephardi settlers and changed the composition of the community which was formerly under the Christian Greeks.
                                                                             

The Colossus of Rhodes is one of official Seven Ancient Wonders of the World
 and was located on the Greek island of Rhodes. The statue depicted the Greek God of the Sun, Helios, and was built to commemorate Rhodes’ victory over Cyprus.It is 98 feet tall, just a little shorter than the Statue of Liberty-111 feet tall.  .

Even on this remote island, in 1840 there was the accusation of a Jew committing a ritual murder, something that happened to Jews in the Middle Ages.   It was averted  through the intervention of Sir Moses Montefiore.

WWI came along and the Italians occupied the island from 1912 in an attempt to make Rhodes a center for the diffusion of an Italianized Jewish culture among the Jews of the Middle East, and in the Fascist period, a rabbinical seminary was even established.

Then in 1938 on the brink of WWII, the Italian anti-Semitic legislation led to a considerable exodus from the island mostly  going to Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo.  Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, had passed a series of anti-Semitic decrees that affected the Jews of Rhodes because the islands were then Italian.  Those that stayed sadly were deported to their death by the Germans in WWII and few lived out of a population of about 4,000.  They were all murdered on July 23, 1944 by the Nazis.
                                                                         

Rhodes at night

Of the people last on the island, they spoke Ladino, a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish.  The city of Rhodes had a Jewish quarter-or "La Juderia".  Now it's called the Square of the Jewish Martyrs or the Sea Horse Square as there is a fountain there on "La Calle Ancha Road (The Wide Street)".  There is a monument dedicated to the memory of the 1,604 Jews from Rhodes and the nearby smaller island of Kos.
                                                                                 

 This young Turkish consul to Rhodes, Muslim Selahattin Ülkümen. 
Rhodes had a Jewish community of about 2,000  before the War 
and Ülkümen saved many of them by issuing Turkish visas and passports even though it was against direct orders from Turkey. Two researchers, Gilbert and Nyombayire,  went back to Rhodes and interviewed
 Ülkümen’s son as well as two Jewish refugees who were saved
 because of the Diplomat’s efforts.
 During the war, in protest of Ülkümen’s assistance to the Jews of Rhodes, the Germans bombed the Turkish consulate killing his wife..

"As a part of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, Amanda Gurin of Atlanta went to “The Rescuers,” directed by Emmy-award winner Michael King. The documentary follows  the above researcher, a young Rwandan anti-genocide activist, Stephanie Nyombayire and a world-renowned Holocaust historian, Sir Martin Gilbert, as they scout Europe for descendents of the Righteous Diplomats. The trek took 35 days and took Nyombayire and Gilbert to 15 countries.  Ulkumen 
was one of them.  

This is the blessing in this story.  Some 40-50 Jews from Rhodes had Turkish citizenship and because of that were able to escape the Nazis through the intervention of the Turkish consul of the time, Selahattin Ulkumen, above.  At one time, almost half of the businesses, little shops, had belonged to the Jews of Rhodes.  Today only 5 buildings are owned by Jews who make up a handful of the Jews left in the island city, mostly now quite elderly, and just a few younger ones who have intermarried.  Only an elderly brother and sister are related to any of the original Jewish residents and they are living in the new city.

In 1956, Greek Jews were urged to move to Rhodes, so 20 Jewish families took up the offer and were able to be a part of a small but tightly knit and vibrant Jewish community.  By 1970, an exodus began and many young Jews left Rhodes for better educational and employment opportunities.  However, people do return who have family roots from the island.

Aaron A. had been living in Zimbabwe and was able to visit his ancestral home a year ago.  He now lives in Florida.  Vic visited Rhodes recently.  His father had lived there in 1938 and Vic had celebrated Yom Kippur with him then.  It was the last time Vic was able to see his father.  He recalled being with him, the close-knit community, the rich family life they had that was centered around the charming Jewish Quarter with its cobbled alleyways that led to the huge waterfront; the world for him that was.
                                                                       

Today, " Rhodes is known for its beach resorts, ancient ruins and structural remnants of its crusades-era occupation by the Knights of St. John. Rhodes City features the medieval Street of the Knights and the castle-like Palace of the Grand Masters, once a Turkish prison and now a museum. The city’s bars, clubs and cafes bustle during high season. It's quite the tourist attraction for nearby people.  People come here to celebrate the High Holidays who have family roots from the island.  Every Friday night in the summer they do have a minyan and hold services.  They come to hold weddings, bar and bat mitzvas with at least 100 attending and they come from Paris, Cape Town, England and Australia.  They even have built a museum on the island.  "Weather: 73°F (23°C), Wind W at 13 mph (21 km/h), 53% Humidity.  NIce!  

Resource:  The Jerusalem Report, August 24, 2015, p. 30-35.
The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia: Rhodes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Hospitaller
http://www.menemshafilms.com/reviews/rescuers-review-global-jewish-voice

HISTORY OF ISRAEL IN A CAPSULE

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

JUDAH was created out of Southern Israel after King Solomon died in 922 BCE.  Jeroboam took over next, then Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram, Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam, Zecharia, Shallum, Meneahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, and Hoshea from 730-721 BCE. 

  
Moses had died outside of Canaan in about 1271 BCE and Joshua took the 12 tribes inside and subdued the land.
King Saul was the first king of Israel and reigned in the 11th century BCE.  He was of the tribe of Benjamin.  .
David of the tribe of Judah  became king. and ruled from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE.
                                                                                 

His son, Solomon b: 961-d: 920 BCE  was to build the 1st Temple.  So far, the land has been in the hands of the Israelites for 351 years up to now.  The land of Israel was divided after Solomon's death between the North and the South, the North being referred to as Samaria, the name of their new capital.  Israel was more luxurious and the more powerful kingdom.  The south was renamed as Judah, the name of the tribe that inhabited this part of Israel.  However, Israel was weakened by internal fights between rival dynasties and recurring wars with the kingdom of Syria which resided in Damascus.  .
                                                                         

10 Tribes being led away by King of Assyria, SHALMANASER IV reigned from 728-722 BCE

In 721 BCE  the Assyrians attacked Israel  and took away 10 of the 12 tribes as slaves.  These people were replaced by new settlers that the Assyrians brought in.

Finally, Judah, which was smaller and more secluded geographically and more spiritual, having held onto Jerusalem and the Temple,  now being a smaller with a smaller military force, was overcome in 586 BCE by the Babylonians.  They destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple.  They also took large number of the Judeans and deported them and the monarchy was abolished.  GEDALIAH, a member of the Old Royal House, tried to renew and organize political life was ended by his assassination in 582 BCE.
                                                                       
        Then the Persians (Iran) stepped in.  King Cyrus overthrew the Babylonian Empire.  He allowed the children of the exiles to return home to Judah and set up a center in 539 BCE.  It took them a long time to do this.  EZRA AND NEHEMIAH  had to leave the comfort of the Persian court and return with them to set it up.  The former northern section of Israel was now filled with Samaritans, named for the capital of Samaria, but they were not children of the original exiles.  They were of mixed heritage, and were not practicing Judaism.  So they were excluded from participation in the re-established Judah as it was feared that they would contaminate or even dominate the southern society.  Judah then was called Judea and was now a semi-autonomous Persian vassal state since Cyrus had allowed its re-development. Judea was administered by the high priest of the Jerusalem Temple.

The Samaritans had their center on Mt. Gerizim which is in the hills of Ephraim facing Mt. Ebal.  Shechem (Nablus) is situated in the intervening valley.  When the Israelites entered Canaan, a ceremony was held at which the people assembled on this mountain and blessed all who observed the law, and those on Mt. Ebal cursed those who profaned it. The mountain is 2,907 feet high.

In the next scene we see ALEXANDER THE GREAT invading the country.  They of course replace the Persian influence with Greek dominance which resulted in the establishment of Greek colonies along the coast and around the Jordan Valley which gave the entire country a European rather than Asiatic orientation.  Nothing changed in the general political scene, however.

The Ptolemies of Egypt shared alternate control and the Seleucides of Syria.  This went on until the 2nd century BCE when the attempt of ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES of Syria tried to hellenize the country by force in the Jewish religion and in their established culture.  This led to the HASMONEAN revolt in 165 BCE and the reestablishment for the 1st time since 586 BCE of the full independence under the HASMONEAN HOUSE in 142 BCE which converted its rule into a monarchy by 104 BCE.

What they had on their hands were wars of conquest, one after the other, particularly under JOHN HYRCANUS from 135 to 104 BCE.  where they extended their rule over the whole land of Judea.

Now we see that though the Greeks were strong on the coast and the Samaritans were in the central hill country, almost all the land was inhabited by the Jewish people.  THE GALILEE in particular was a center of patriotic sentiment.  In 63 BCE, the ROMANS were expanding in the Middle East and Judea was brought to their political orbit.  For a period of many centuries, it was part of the roman Empire, whether administerred by members of the HASMONEAN dynasty, by the house of HEROD, or directly by the Roman PROCURATORS and PROCONSULS.
                                                                       

There was a time between 55 to 49 BCE, 6 years, when it was a vassal kingdom under PARTHIAN control, and during the 2 great Jewish revolts of 66 to 70 CE when Jerusalem and the Temple was burned down,  and again with BAR KOKHBA from 132 to 135 CE.  Jews had been living here for 1,406 years.  Those revolts led to thousands of Jews being killed so that there was a depopulation of great parts of the country and again non-Jewish settlers being introduced into the land and many parts, particularly in the former Judea losing their Jewish character.

Jews didn't give up.  A solid Jewish life did continue to maintain itself after 135 CE, principally in Galilee where is had been the strongest.  It was based there on agriculture as it had been formerly.  The control came from the intellectual leaders and the Patriarchs (presidents of the SANHEDRIN)  whose authority was actually in time recognized by the ROMAN government.  This became the period of the intense intellectual life reflected in the writings of the Mishnah, the Palestinian Talmud and the Midrash.

There were a lot of areas in the land that had a pagan aspect.  The new administrative center on the coast, CAESAREA,  was lacking Jews.  They had become a minority.  This city had become the hub of Roman-Greek intellectual life.  Some other cities of the DECAPOLIS in the Northern Samaria were centers of philosophical study.

The Christianization of the Roman Empire  came about in the 4th century.  This brought about waves of violence and anti-Jewish legislation which was adopted by the emperors.  The result was the complete undermining of the position of Jews in what was  called Palestine (Israel and Judah) as of 135 CE by the Romans.  The land became the focus of Christian piety.  The Patriarchate was abolished in 425 which not only reflected the Christian distaste for Jews but stimulated the process of it as well.

Jews remained as strong Jews in their religion and there was considerable intellectual activity as shown in the development of Hebrew poetry, the Midrash and the Masorah now written.  However, Jews had become the minority in their own country.  They were indistinguishable from any other Roman or in due course from the Byzantine province.

 The Jews helped the PERSIAN invaders in 614 to 628 and suffered when they had to leave.

Under the Moslems, who conquered the country in 635 to 640 Jews were looked upon as unimportant, though and attempt was made to revive intellectual life by the establishment of a Gaonate, an imitation of that of Babylonian Jewry.  Under the UMMAYAD CALIPHS, ruling from DAMASCUS,  the country prospered.

PALESTINE was neglected when the ABBASID DYNASTY transferred its capital to Baghdad.  PALESTINE again became a problem between rival rulers of EGYPT AND IRAQ.  This caused the Jewish population to be reduced once again to insignificance.
                                                                             

The CRUSADERS of 1099 came and were followed by the setting up of a western feudal state in the country which lasted only until 1187 because of the turmoil of war.  By 1291, the last Christian stronghold at Acre fell.
                                                                             

The MONGOLS, also called the TARTARS came along in the 13th century and added to the devastation of the land.  In 1244-1260 and again in 1271  they had attacked Syria. "The Mamluks took advantage of the weakened state of the Mongol forces, and, negotiating a passive alliance with the remnants of the Crusader forces in Acre, advanced northwards to engage the Mongols at the pivotal Battle of Ain Jalut in September 1260." The country was now under Egyptian rule and was not important politically to anyone else."For about three months, until the Mamluks returned in May 1300, Mulay's forces were in technical control over Syria, and some Mongols engaged in raids as far south as Jerusalem and Gaza.  However, when the Mamluks returned from Egypt, the remaining Mongols retreated with little resistance.

By 1517, it was conquered along with Egypt, by Turkey who thought of it as just a remote and unimportant province .  They regarded it as little more than a source of revenue.  This was the period of the renewal of the Jewish settlement  in their ancient land on any scale--in part through the arrival after 1492 of refugees from SPAIN and PORTUGAL, in part through the emergence of SAFED as the great KABBALISTIC CENTER, and to a minor extent, through the attempt of JOSEPH NASI and then SOLOMON IBN YAISH to establish and autonomous center around TIBERIAS.

The Jews of the Diaspora (Europe, Spain, Middle East) kept in contact with the Jews of Palestine was maintained by the Emissaries from the 4 Holy Cities of JERUSALEM, SAFED, TIBERIAS AND HEBRON.  They would travel abroad to collect alms for the maintenance of the Jewish institutions.  The OTTOMAN EMPIRE'S local Pashas were frequently corrupt and oppressive like Muhammad Ibn Farukh, Pasha of Jerusalem, who barbarously maltreated the Jews there in 1625. On the other hand, local rulers who kept a firmer government like the Beduin sheikh Dahir al-Umar, who rebuilt Tiberias in 1740 with Jewish participation led by Rabbi Hayyim ABULAFIA, or Ahmed al-Jazzar, governor of Acre from 1775-1804, were unable to perpetuate their government.

By the 18th century, the Jewish settlement was reinforced by an Ashkenazi (European Jewish)  immigration.  First of the Hasidim came in 1777.  They were followed by the Mitnaggedim (Perushim) whose early villages were mainly in Galilee (northern Israel).  NAPOLEON's campaign was in 1799 when he called on the Jews to rally to his armies and help free the Holy Land from the TURKS.  It didn't happen then.

MEHEMET ALI OF EGYPT kept a firm administration which seemed promising in 1831.  but was ended by the Powers of England, Austria, Prussia and Russia after only 9 years.  The importance of international politics was realized both by the cutting of the Suez Canal and by the southerly advance of Russia.  Visitors came to Palestine like Mark Twain and so did Russian Jews escaping pogroms.
                                                                           

Sir Moses Montefiore of England

Religions of all faiths were established in  great profusion.  The Jewish population grew.  There had been restrictions on Jews who wanted to live in Jerusalem,  but they were removed and soon it had a Jewish majority.  SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE and others tried to found  Jewish agricultural colonies.  In 1882, the BILU settlers of the 1st ALIYAH came from Russia and created a town.  They were backed by the resources of BARON EDMOND de ROTHSCHILD.  THE   ALIYAH from 1904 onward placed Jewish rural life in Palestine and it was supported by a Hebrew-speaking culture.

The BRITISH CAMPAIGNS of 1917-1918 at the end of WWI led to the termination of  TURKISH rule.  Administration of the land was done by the LEAGUE OF NATIONS and given to GREAT BRITAIN to carry out for 30 years.  They were the Mandatory Power with the object of implementing the BALFOUR DECLARATION.  SIR HERBERT SAMUEL was the first HIGH COMMISSIONER from 1920 to 1925.  In 1922, an arrangement was negotiated for political reasons by WINSTON CHURCHILL, then the British colonial secretary.  He detatched TRANSJORDAN from the historic Palestine and set it up as a separate emirate barring Jews from living there.The Brits were to carry out the Jews ability to have their Jewish Homeland and they were going against it.  Jewish political rights were now restricted.  Arab objections seemed to be fostered by them.  Immigration and expansion of Jews were limited.  Jews came anyway, if not in droves, in dribbles, and they changed the face of the country.  New villages and towns were created, swamps were drained and forests were planted--by the Jews.  Tel Aviv was built and expanded.
                                                                       

European Jews destined for their deaths in Holocaust

The Arabs benefited from the Jews' presence.  The landowning effendi enjoyed the advantage over the hard-working peasant.  This economic expansion was stimulated after the beginning of Nazi persecution in Europe in 1933 when Jewish immigration increased.
                                                                             

 In 1936 Arabs rioted, urged to do so by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.    He's the one who had gone to Germany and spoke with Hitler.  The Italian Fascist government was anxious to embarrass England in the Middle East, and they went along with the Germans against the Jews. The total population then was 1,367,000.  Of this number, 384,000 were Jews. The development of the country by the Jews continued, regardless.  Illegal immigration had to be the way to enter for the Jews from 1940.  The Brits continued to try to keep the Jews out, even during the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945.
                                                                           

The Exodus arrived with Jewish refugees

Jews found themselves fighting the Brits and the Arabs.  From 1945 onward, large-scale clashes happened and the Brits continued to prevent immigration.  They turned the problem over to the UNITED NATIONS which recommended on November 1947  the division of Palestine into an Arab state and  a Jewish state.  The British 30 year mandate ended on May 15, 1948, and so on the day before, May 14th, Israel announced their state.  They had a war on their hands because the Arabs refused to accept the ruling of the UN partition resolution.  .  This WAR OF INDEPENDENCE happened because the Arabs all attacked the new state of Israel.  They came from the regular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and a Saudi-Arabian contingent.    The act caused Israel to expand.  How 650,000 Jews, the total Jewish population, managed to fight off the soldiers of all the neighboring Arab states is one of the world's miracles.Israelis lost 6,000 fighters.

At the same time,  the King of Jordan took the Old City of Jerusalem and almost the whole of Transjordan and annexed it.  Egypt took and annexed the Gaza Strip at this time.  Many Arabs fled the scene.  A million and a half Jewish immigrants arrived.                    

The Land of Israel was for the 1st time in the modern period.  An armistice was signed in 1949, but the Arabs continued to fight Wars against Israel again in 1956, 1967, 1973 and Palestinians from Lebanon in 1982.  After that, there have been riots, intifadas, all sorts of attacks even up to today with knifing and using cars to ram crowds.  It hasn't always been peaceful, but a good life has continued amid havoc. After all the times of living in the Diaspora, Jews are home and are willing to fight for their special home.

Resource:   The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia:  Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_of_the_Levant