Kinlore

Tel Aviv · Ynhockey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Understanding an Israeli in 5 minutes

  1. An ancient people, a young state

    For most Jewish Israelis, Israel is not a colony or an experiment but a return. The Hebrew Bible, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Jerusalem and the Temple are the roots of Jewish identity, and for nearly two thousand years of exile Jews prayed facing Jerusalem and ended the Passover meal with "next year in Jerusalem". Archaeology tells a more complicated story than scripture, but the bond itself is real and old. The modern state, founded in 1948, revived Hebrew as an everyday language.

    • The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts — Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Free Press (2001)
    • The Oxford History of the Biblical World — Michael D. Coogan (ed.), Oxford University Press (1998)
    • Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations — Martin Goodman, Allen Lane (2007)
    • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)

  2. Never again, and never alone

    Zionism was born in the 1890s from the conviction that Jews would never be safe as a minority in other people's countries. The murder of about six million Jews in the Holocaust seemed to prove it. Many Israelis' grandparents were survivors, or refugees from Arab countries, and the lesson most draw is that Jews must be able to defend themselves. That instinct, sharpened by wars, terrorism and 7 October 2023, shapes Israeli attitudes to security more than any ideology.

    • Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State — Shlomo Avineri, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2013)
    • Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
    • The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust — Tom Segev, Hill and Wang (1993)
    • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)

  3. A nation of immigrants

    Israel was built by waves of aliyah ("ascent", immigration): Eastern European pioneers, Holocaust survivors, Jews from Iraq, Morocco, Yemen and Iran, about a million from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, Ethiopian Jews airlifted in 1984 and 1991. The 1950 Law of Return gives any Jew the right to settle. The mix brought tension, above all Mizrahi resentment of the Ashkenazi founding elite, and also an exuberant blended culture of food, music and slang.

    • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
    • A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time — Howard M. Sachar, Alfred A. Knopf (2007)
    • The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1991)
    • Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims — Ella Shohat, Social Text (1988)

  4. Army, family and a small country

    Most Jewish Israelis serve in the army at eighteen, men for about three years and women for about two, and reserve duty can last into middle age. The army is a melting pot, a career network and, in war, a shared fear for sons and daughters. Israel is small enough that everyone seems to know someone, and family is close: Friday-night dinners, big weddings, high birth rates. Directness, argument and "chutzpah" are valued over politeness.

    • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
    • My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel — Ari Shavit, Spiegel & Grau (2013)
    • Israel — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica

  5. Jewish and democratic, and arguing about both

    Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state, and the two halves pull against each other. Secular, traditional, religious-Zionist and ultra-Orthodox Jews hold very different visions of the country; about one in five citizens are Arab, most of whom identify as Palestinian. In 2023 a government plan to curb the Supreme Court brought hundreds of thousands into the streets week after week, the biggest protests in Israel's history.

    • Israel's Religiously Divided Society — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2016)
    • Population of Israel on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah 5786 — Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, CBS (2025)
    • Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Society in Israel — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)
    • The Israeli Democracy Index 2023 — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)

  6. The conflict that never ends

    Israel has never known full peace. It fought Arab armies in 1948, 1967 and 1973, made peace with Egypt and Jordan, and has ruled the West Bank, and until 2005 Gaza, since 1967. Israelis are deeply divided over what to do about the Palestinians and the settlements. The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, and the devastating war in Gaza that followed have left the country traumatised, defensive and more isolated than ever.

    • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
    • Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage (2001)
    • AFP tally of deaths in the 7 October 2023 attack, based on official Israeli figures — Agence France-Presse, AFP (2024)
    • Israel-Hamas War — Encyclopaedia Britannica

The story

Deep roots. The name "Israel" first appears outside the Bible on an Egyptian stele of Pharaoh Merneptah around 1208 BCE. In the Iron Age the kingdoms of Israel and Judah rose in the hill country; Judah's Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon in 586 BCE, rebuilt, and destroyed again by Rome in 70 CE. After the failed Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE) most Jews lived in exile, but a Jewish presence in the land, in Galilee, Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron and Tiberias, never entirely ended.

Ancient Israel & Judea

1200 BCE – 135
c. 1200 BCE – 135 CE religionidentityexileland

Ancient Israel, the Temples and the exile

The Israelites emerge in the hills of Canaan, build kingdoms and the Temple in Jerusalem, and after defeats by Babylon and Rome are scattered into a diaspora that keeps the land at the heart of its faith.

  • The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts — Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Free Press (2001)
  • The Oxford History of the Biblical World — Michael D. Coogan (ed.), Oxford University Press (1998)
  • Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations — Martin Goodman, Allen Lane (2007)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

This is the root of the Jewish claim to the land and of Israeli identity: the Hebrew language, the holidays, the names of towns and children all come from it. The destruction of the Temples is still mourned on Tisha B'Av, and Masada, Jerusalem and the Bar Kokhba revolt were made into national symbols.

What happened

The first mention of "Israel" outside the Bible is on a victory stele of the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah, around 1208 BCE, which names Israel as a people in Canaan. In the following centuries hundreds of small villages appeared in the central hill country; their material culture was largely Canaanite, but without pig bones, a hint of an emerging identity.

How it's seen
Traditional Jewish account

God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants.

Archaeologists and historians

There is no archaeological evidence for the Exodus as described, and most scholars think the Israelites emerged largely from within the Canaanite population around 1200–1000 BCE.

Palestinian view

Many Palestinians object to ancient history being used to justify modern dispossession, and see themselves as heirs of all the land's ancient peoples, Canaanites included.

Read the full story · 2 min Inside: Kingdoms and Temples · Rome and the dispersal
Traditional account

Zionism & the Yishuv

1881 – 1947
1881–1939 (First Zionist Congress, Basel, 29–31 August 1897) nationalismmigrationantisemitismlandpoliticsidentity

Zionism, Herzl and the first aliyot

Facing pogroms and persistent antisemitism in Europe, Jews organise a national movement to rebuild a homeland in Palestine, and waves of immigrants begin to build it.

  • Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State — Shlomo Avineri, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2013)
  • Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) — Theodor Herzl (1896)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History — James L. Gelvin, Cambridge University Press (2021)
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 — Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)
  • Herzl's Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State — Shlomo Avineri, BlueBridge (2014)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 — Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)
  • One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2000)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage (2001)
  • The Question of Palestine — Edward W. Said, Times Books (1979)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

Zionism is Israel's founding idea: that Jews are a people with the right to self-determination in their ancestral land. Israeli streets are named after its thinkers, the kibbutz and Hebrew revival remain sources of pride, and "Zionist" is a positive word for most Jewish Israelis.

What happened

Jews had prayed for a return to Zion for some 1,800 years, but modern Zionism was a political response to nationalism and antisemitism. For centuries Jews in Europe lived as a tolerated, often persecuted minority. The nineteenth century brought emancipation in the West but also a new, racial antisemitism.

How it's seen
Zionist view

The national liberation movement of an oppressed people returning to its homeland, comparable to Italian, Polish or Irish nationalism.

Diaspora Jewish view

The return of an ancient people to its homeland and an answer to antisemitism: Jews needed a place where they were not a vulnerable minority.

Palestinian view

A European settler-colonial movement that, backed by imperial powers, aimed to turn an Arab country into a Jewish state.

Historians

Many historians see Zionism as both a genuine national movement of a persecuted people and a settlement project typical of its colonial age.

Read the full story · 2 min Inside: Herzl · Building the Yishuv · Many Zionisms
Well established
1917–1948 empirelandmigrationidentity

The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate

Britain conquers Palestine in the First World War, promises a "national home for the Jewish people" there, and rules for three decades as Jewish immigration grows and Arab resistance hardens.

  • The Balfour Declaration — Arthur James Balfour, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School (1917)
  • One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2000)
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 — Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History — James L. Gelvin, Cambridge University Press (2021)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

For Israelis the Declaration and the Mandate were the first international recognition of the Jewish people's tie to the land, and the decades in which the Yishuv, the Jewish community, built the institutions, towns, kibbutzim and defence force of a future state.

What happened

On 2 November 1917, as British troops pushed into Ottoman Palestine, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild that the government "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", provided "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".

How it's seen
Zionist and Israeli view

A historic recognition of Jewish rights in the ancestral homeland, written into international law by the League of Nations.

Palestinian view

A colonial betrayal.

Historians

Britain made overlapping, contradictory wartime pledges to Arabs, Zionists and France.

Read the full story · 2 min Inside: The Mandate · Violence and retreat
Well established
1933–1945 persecutionantisemitismgenocidewarrefugeesmemoryreligion

The Holocaust (the Shoah)

Nazi Germany and its collaborators murder about six million Jews, two out of every three in Europe, in a deliberate attempt to destroy the Jewish people, along with Roma and Sinti, disabled people and others.

  • Introduction to the Holocaust (Holocaust Encyclopedia) — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • The Holocaust: Resource Center and History — Yad Vashem, Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
  • The Destruction of the European Jews — Raul Hilberg, Yale University Press (2003)
  • The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 — Saul Friedländer, HarperCollins (2007)
  • Jewish Americans in 2020 — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2021)
  • Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  • The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust — Tom Segev, Hill and Wang (1993)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 — Saul Friedländer, HarperCollins (2007)
  • Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  • Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil — Susan Neiman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2019)
  • The Third Reich at War — Richard J. Evans, Penguin (2008)
  • One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2000)
  • Mass Shootings at Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2024)
  • The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1991)
  • A History of Germany 1918–2014: The Divided Nation — Mary Fulbrook, Wiley-Blackwell (2015)
  • Elie Wiesel – Facts (Nobel Peace Prize 1986) — Nobel Prize Outreach, NobelPrize.org
  • The Question of Palestine — Edward W. Said, Times Books (1979)
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 — Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)
  • Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage (2001)
  • Genocide of European Roma (Gypsies), 1939–1945 — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  • We Are the Romani People — Ian Hancock, University of Hertfordshire Press (2002)
  • The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies — Guenter Lewy, Oxford University Press (2000)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

The Holocaust is the deepest layer of Israeli consciousness: why Israelis believe Jews must have a state and an army of their own, why so many react sharply to threats of annihilation, and why every schoolchild learns survivors' testimony. Comparisons with the Nazis are the most painful insult.

What happened

Jews call it the Shoah, Hebrew for "catastrophe". When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933, about 500,000 Jews lived there, less than 1% of the population, and about nine million in Europe as a whole. Nazi ideology cast Jews not as a religion but as a "race" responsible for all of Germany's misfortunes.

How it's seen
Israeli view

Proof that Jews without a state of their own are defenceless; the world closed its doors to Jewish refugees, and only a Jewish state could guarantee "never again".

How German memory changed

In the 1950s most West Germans preferred silence, and many former Nazis returned to careers.

Jewish views of German remembrance

Many Jews respect how seriously Germany has faced its past, and Germany's Jewish community has grown since 1990, largely through immigration from the former Soviet Union.

Palestinian view

Palestinians had no part in Europe's crime but paid its price, losing their homeland to a state founded partly in its shadow.

Historians on the Mufti

Jerusalem's Grand Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, collaborated with Nazi Germany during the war and met Hitler in 1941; Israeli accounts often stress this.

Romani view

Roma and Sinti were also persecuted as a "race", sterilised, deported and murdered alongside Jews, but their genocide was long left out of Holocaust memory, trials and compensation.

Read the full story · 3 min
Well established
November 1947 – July 1949 warindependencerefugeeslandidentitymigrationpolitics

1948: The War of Independence and the Nakba

After the UN votes to partition Palestine, war breaks out; Israel is born and survives, and some 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians flee or are expelled, never to return.

  • General Assembly Resolution 181 (II): Future Government of Palestine — United Nations General Assembly, United Nations (1947)
  • 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War — Benny Morris, Yale University Press (2008)
  • The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited — Benny Morris, Cambridge University Press (2004)
  • All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 — Walid Khalidi (ed.), Institute for Palestine Studies (1992)
  • The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 — Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds), Cambridge University Press (2007)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 — Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War — Benny Morris, Yale University Press (2008)
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 — Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)
  • The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1979)
  • World Jewish Population, 2024 (American Jewish Year Book) — Sergio DellaPergola, Springer / Berman Jewish DataBank
  • The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History — James L. Gelvin, Cambridge University Press (2021)
  • The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
  • The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel — Ilan Pappé, Yale University Press (2011)
  • Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory — Ahmad H. Sa'di and Lila Abu-Lughod (eds), Columbia University Press (2007)
  • Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel — Provisional State Council of Israel (1948)
  • The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1991)
  • The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine — Ilan Pappé, Oneworld (2006)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

Israelis call it the War of Independence: the moment a people who had just lost six million in the Holocaust won a state, at the cost of about 6,000 dead, around one percent of the Jewish population. Independence Day is a national celebration, and 1948 is the founding proof that Israel must rely on itself.

What happened

On 29 November 1947 the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, for Resolution 181, which divided Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state and an international zone around Jerusalem.

How it's seen
Israeli national narrative

The Jews accepted the UN compromise; the Arabs rejected it and attacked, first Palestinian militias and then five Arab armies. Israel fought for its life.

Jewish memory

A rebirth after the Holocaust: a sovereign home after nearly 1,900 years, and a refuge that opened its doors to survivors from the DP camps and to Jews driven from Arab lands, which is why many diaspora Jews still feel 1948 as their own story.

Palestinian narrative

The partition plan gave a Jewish minority over half the land against the will of the majority.

Historians since the opening of the archives

Israeli "new historians" such as Benny Morris showed from Israeli archives that there were many expulsions and massacres and that the idea of "transfer" had circulated among Zionist leaders, while finding no single master plan: the exodus was "born of war, not by design".

Read the full story · 3 min Inside: Civil war: November 1947 to May 1948 · Independence and invasion · The refugees · Two memories of one year
Debated by historians

Founding & ingathering

1948 – 1966
1948 – early 1960s migrationidentityinequalityrefugees

The ingathering: mass immigration and the Mizrahi experience

In its first years Israel's Jewish population more than doubles as survivors from Europe and Jews from the Arab world and Iran arrive, many to tent camps and remote development towns.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1991)
  • Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims — Ella Shohat, Social Text (1988)
  • A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time — Howard M. Sachar, Alfred A. Knopf (2007)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

Roughly half of Jewish Israelis have Middle Eastern or North African roots. The hardships and slights of the 1950s fed a lasting Mizrahi grievance against the Ashkenazi Labour elite, which reshaped politics from 1977 and still colours debates about class, culture and who the "real" Israel is.

What happened

Israel's Declaration of Independence promised to open the gates to Jewish immigration, and the 1950 Law of Return gave every Jew the right to settle. In the first three and a half years about 690,000 immigrants arrived, more than doubling the Jewish population.

How it's seen
Mizrahi Israeli view

Communities thousands of years old were uprooted by persecution and lost their property, then met condescension in Israel: DDT sprayed on arrivals, transit camps, the suspected disappearance of Yemenite children, and pressure to shed Arab culture.

Palestinian and Arab views

Arab governments and many Palestinians reject equating these Jews' departure with the Nakba, stressing Zionist recruitment, and object when Israel uses it to offset Palestinian refugee claims.

Historians

Push and pull both mattered: rising hostility and laws in Arab countries after 1948, such as Iraq's 1950 law stripping emigrating Jews of citizenship, alongside Zionist activism and Israel's need for population.

Read the full story · 1 min
Well established

1967 and its aftermath

1967 – 1992
1967 – today (Gaza pullout August 2005) landoccupationreligionsecurity

Settlements, the West Bank, and the Gaza disengagement

Israeli settlements spread across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to house roughly 750,000 Israelis, while in 2005 Israel removed all its settlers and soldiers from Gaza.

  • The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 — Gershom Gorenberg, Times Books (2006)
  • Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 — Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books (2007)
  • 2025 Report on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem — Office of the EU Representative (West Bank and Gaza Strip, UNRWA), European External Action Service (2026)
  • Area C of the West Bank: Key Humanitarian Concerns — UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA oPt), United Nations (2017)
  • Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem — International Court of Justice, ICJ (2024)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

Settlements are the most divisive issue in Israeli politics: for religious nationalists they are the return to the biblical heartland, for critics the obstacle to peace. The trauma of the 2005 Gaza evacuation, and the rockets that followed, shapes how Israelis view any future withdrawal.

What happened

Settlement began within months of the 1967 war, first under Labour governments, on strategic grounds and at Kfar Etzion, a bloc lost in 1948. In 1968 religious settlers led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger moved into Hebron.

How it's seen
Settler and right-wing view

Judea and Samaria, with Hebron, Shiloh and Bethel, are the cradle of Jewish history, not foreign land; the territory was never part of a Palestinian state, and its legal status is disputed, not occupied.

Israeli critics

Groups such as Peace Now, founded in 1978, argue the settlements entrench an occupation that corrodes Israel's democracy and its security, and make separation into two states impossible.

Palestinian view

Settlements are colonisation of the land meant for a Palestinian state, enforced by checkpoints, a separate legal system and settler violence that the army often fails to stop.

International law

Most states and the UN Security Council (Resolution 2334, 2016) regard the settlements as illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and in 2024 the ICJ advised that Israel's continued presence in the occupied territory is unlawful.

Read the full story · 1 min Inside: Leaving Gaza
Well established
5–10 June 1967 waroccupationrefugeesreligionland

The Six-Day War and the Naksa

In six days Israel defeats Egypt, Jordan and Syria and takes Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, beginning an occupation that still shapes the conflict.

  • Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East — Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press (2002)
  • 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East — Tom Segev, Metropolitan Books (2007)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Security Council Resolution 242 — United Nations Security Council, United Nations (1967)
  • The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
  • Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood — Tarek Osman, Yale University Press (2013)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

1967 turned fear of annihilation into euphoria and put the Western Wall and the biblical heartland in Israeli hands. It also began the occupation and settlement of the West Bank, which has divided Israelis ever since between those who see liberated land and those who see a trap.

What happened

In May 1967 tension on Israel's borders turned into crisis. After false Soviet reports of Israeli troop concentrations against Syria, Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser moved forces into Sinai, had the UN peacekeepers there withdrawn and, on 22 May, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, which Israel had long said would be a cause for war.

How it's seen
Israeli view

A war of self-defence. Egypt's Nasser expelled UN peacekeepers from Sinai, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and massed troops while Arab leaders spoke of destroying Israel.

Palestinian view

A war of expansion that completed what 1948 began, bringing all of Palestine under Israeli control and creating a new wave of refugees.

Historians

Most agree Israel faced a real threat in May 1967, but debate whether Nasser actually intended war or stumbled into brinkmanship, and how far Israel's leaders exploited the crisis.

Egyptian view

Nasser's brinkmanship in May 1967 was a catastrophic miscalculation, many Egyptians now admit, but Israel struck first and seized Egyptian land.

Read the full story · 2 min Inside: Jerusalem · The Naksa · Land for peace? · Seeing the other side
Well established
6 October 1973 – 26 March 1979 warpeacetrauma

The Yom Kippur War and peace with Egypt

Egypt and Syria launch a surprise attack on Yom Kippur; Israel recovers at great cost, and the shock opens the way to Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, Camp David and the first Arab–Israeli peace treaty.

  • The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East — Abraham Rabinovich, Schocken (2004)
  • Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David — Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf (2014)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood — Tarek Osman, Yale University Press (2013)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

The 1973 "mehdal" (failure) shattered post-1967 confidence and toppled Golda Meir; Israelis compared it to 7 October fifty years later almost to the day. The peace with Egypt that followed has held for over four decades and is proof to many that land for peace can work.

What happened

On 6 October 1973, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Egypt and Syria attacked. Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and Syrian tanks pushed into the Golan Heights; Israel's intelligence had dismissed the warning signs. Reservists were called from synagogues.

How it's seen
Israeli view

A near-catastrophe caused by complacency and intelligence failure, turned around by reservists' sacrifice. The peace with Egypt showed that Israel would give up land, all of Sinai, for real peace.

Egyptian and Arab view

The October War, or Ramadan War, restored Arab pride by crossing the Suez Canal and breaking the myth of Israeli invincibility, which made an honourable peace possible.

Palestinian view

Camp David was a separate peace that took Egypt out of the conflict and offered Palestinians only limited "autonomy" without the PLO or a state; Egypt was suspended from the Arab League.

Many Egyptians on the peace

Sadat won back every inch of Sinai, something no other Arab leader managed, and spared Egypt more wars.

Read the full story · 1 min
Well established
1982 (occupation of south Lebanon until 2000) warrefugeesexileprotest

The Lebanon War and Sabra and Shatila

Israel invades Lebanon to destroy the PLO, drives it to Tunis, and is tarnished by the massacre of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila by its Lebanese allies.

  • Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut (Kahan Commission) — Yitzhak Kahan, Aharon Barak and Yona Efrat, Government of Israel (1983)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
  • Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage (2001)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

Lebanon was Israel's first "war of choice" and its first deeply divisive war, sparking mass protest and an eighteen-year occupation of a southern strip. It gave rise to Hezbollah, an enemy Israel was still fighting in 2024.

What happened

On 6 June 1982, after an assassination attempt on Israel's ambassador in London, Israel invaded Lebanon. Defence Minister Ariel Sharon's aims went far beyond the stated 40-kilometre zone: to destroy the PLO, which had built a state-within-a-state in Lebanon, and install a friendly Christian-led government.

How it's seen
Israeli views

The government called it "Operation Peace for Galilee", aimed at ending PLO rocket and guerrilla attacks from Lebanon.

Palestinian view

An assault aimed at crushing Palestinian nationalism itself. Israel surrounded the camps, lit them with flares and let the Phalangists in; its responsibility was direct, not indirect.

Read the full story · 1 min
Well established
December 1987 – 1993 occupationresistanceprotest

The First Intifada

A popular uprising of stones, strikes and boycotts erupts across the West Bank and Gaza, putting the occupation on the world's screens and pushing both sides towards negotiation.

  • Intifada — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Fatalities statistics, 1987 to the present — B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'Tselem
  • The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

The intifada showed Israelis that the occupation was not cost-free and could not be managed forever; many soldiers found policing crowds of teenagers corrosive. It helped convince Yitzhak Rabin to try the Oslo path.

What happened

On 9 December 1987 an Israeli truck collided with cars carrying Palestinian workers in Gaza, killing four. Protests in the Jabalia refugee camp spread within days across Gaza and the West Bank.

How it's seen
Palestinian view

A largely unarmed popular uprising against twenty years of occupation, met with live fire, beatings, curfews, deportations and mass arrests.

Israeli view

Violent riots that included firebombs and lethal attacks, which soldiers had to contain.

Read the full story · 1 min
Well established

Oslo hopes & the intifadas

1993 – 2005
13 September 1993 – 4 November 1995 peacestatehoodoccupationviolence

The Oslo Accords and the assassination of Rabin

Israel and the PLO recognise each other and agree on interim Palestinian self-rule; two years later a Jewish extremist murders Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

  • Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo I) — Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, United Nations Peacemaker (1993)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
  • Remarks at the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles, White House, 13 September 1993 — Yitzhak Rabin, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1993)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

Oslo was the high point of Israeli hope for peace, and Rabin's murder by a Jewish extremist its darkest moment. Its collapse into the bombings and the second intifada persuaded many Israelis that land for peace had failed; for the left, the assassination is when the country lost its way.

What happened

The Madrid conference of 1991 brought Israel and its Arab neighbours to the table, but the real breakthrough came in secret. In early 1993 Israeli academics and then officials met PLO representatives in Norway.

How it's seen
Israeli views

Supporters saw a brave gamble that ended Israel's rule over Palestinian cities and won it new friends abroad.

Palestinian views

Many welcomed the return of Arafat and the hope of a state.

Historians and negotiators

Accounts of why Oslo failed differ: US negotiator Dennis Ross largely blamed Arafat's failure to confront violence and make final-status decisions; others, such as Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, point to continued settlement, delays and mistrust on both sides.

Read the full story · 2 min Inside: What it did, and did not, do · Violence on both sides · The assassination · After Rabin
Well established
September 2000 – 2005 violenceoccupationterrorismsecurity

The Second (al-Aqsa) Intifada

After the Camp David talks fail, a far deadlier uprising of shootings, suicide bombings and military reoccupation kills more than 3,000 Palestinians and about 1,000 Israelis.

  • Intifada — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Fatalities statistics, 1987 to the present — B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'Tselem
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors — Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, New York Review of Books (2001)
  • The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace — Dennis Ross, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004)

Read more
★ Why it matters today

For Israelis it was a time of buses and cafés blown up, and it destroyed the peace camp: many concluded there was no partner. The separation barrier, checkpoints and a hard security outlook are its legacy.

What happened

On 28 September 2000 opposition leader Ariel Sharon, escorted by hundreds of police, visited the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif. The next day Israeli police killed several Palestinian protesters at al-Aqsa mosque, and an uprising spread across the territories. In October, 13 Arab citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli police during protests inside Israel.

How it's seen
Israeli view

Arafat rejected a generous offer at Camp David and turned to terror.

Palestinian view

A revolt against an occupation that Oslo had entrenched, sparked by Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to al-Haram al-Sharif and Israel's lethal response to protests.

International Court of Justice

In a 2004 advisory opinion the ICJ said the barrier, where it runs inside the West Bank, violates international law.

Read the full story · 1 min
Well established

Walls, protest & war

2006 – today
January – October 2023 democracyprotestreligionidentity

The judicial overhaul and the protest movement

A plan by Benjamin Netanyahu's new right-wing government to curb the Supreme Court splits the country and brings the largest protests in Israel's history.

  • The Israeli Democracy Index 2023 — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)
  • Israel — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica

Read more
★ Why it matters today

The fight over the courts exposed a deep rift over what kind of country Israel should be: more Jewish-religious and majoritarian, or more liberal and secular. Many Israelis believe the division weakened the country before 7 October, and it still shapes the 2026 election.

What happened

In January 2023 Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced plans to give the government control of judicial appointments and limit the Supreme Court's power to strike down laws and government decisions. Every Saturday night for months, crowds of up to hundreds of thousands, waving blue-and-white flags, filled Tel Aviv's Kaplan Street and cities across the country.

How it's seen
Supporters of the reform

An unelected, activist Supreme Court, drawn from a narrow secular Ashkenazi elite, had taken powers no other democracy gives its judges; elected majorities should decide.

Protesters

Israel has no written constitution and a single-chamber parliament controlled by the government, so the court is the only real check on power; the overhaul would endanger minorities and democracy itself.

Palestinian views

Many Palestinians saw the protests as an argument among Jews about their own democracy that rarely mentioned the occupation; Arab citizens of Israel feared for minority rights but mostly stayed away.

Read the full story · 1 min
Well established
7 October 2023 – ceasefire of 10 October 2025 (aftermath ongoing) warterrorismhostageshumanitarianidentitypersecutionmemory

7 October 2023 and the Gaza war

Hamas-led militants kill about 1,200 people in Israel and take 251 hostages; Israel's war in Gaza that follows kills tens of thousands of Palestinians and leaves the territory in ruins.

Read more
★ Why it matters today

7 October was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust and shattered Israelis' faith that their state could protect them. The hostages became a national obsession, the war divided the country over priorities and blame, and Israel faces unprecedented international isolation and legal challenges.

What happened

Early on Saturday 7 October 2023, a Jewish holiday, Hamas fired thousands of rockets and sent some 3,000 fighters, joined by other armed groups and civilians from Gaza, through the border fence into southern Israel.

How it's seen
Israeli view

An unprovoked massacre of civilians by a genocidal terrorist organisation, which forced Israel to fight to destroy Hamas and bring the hostages home.

Palestinian views

Palestinians differ about 7 October itself: some saw it as resistance after years of siege, many opposed the killing of civilians, and many say they were never asked.

Many Jews in Israel and the diaspora

7 October revived the oldest fear, of being hunted for being Jewish.

Jewish critics of the war

A significant minority of Jews, especially younger and left-leaning ones, mourn the 7 October victims but condemn the scale of death and destruction in Gaza, and reject treating all criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

International bodies and scholars

The ICJ ordered Israel in January 2024 to prevent genocidal acts while the case brought by South Africa proceeds; the ICC issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Netanyahu, former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif; a UN commission of inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide.

Read the full story · 3 min Inside: 7 October · The war in Gaza · Hostages and ceasefires · A wave of antisemitism
Debated by historians

Core values & worldview

If you want to understand an Israeli, start with the sense of being an ancient people who came home against the odds. Jewish identity grew out of the Land of Israel: the Hebrew Bible, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Jerusalem and its Temple. Scholars debate how much of the biblical story is history, but there is no doubt that Jews have lived in the land for about three thousand years and remembered it through two millennia of exile.

  • The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts — Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Free Press (2001)
  • The Oxford History of the Biblical World — Michael D. Coogan (ed.), Oxford University Press (1998)
  • Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations — Martin Goodman, Allen Lane (2007)
For most Jewish Israelis, Zionism simply means that this people has the right to a state in that land. Many Palestinians and their supporters see the same story as one of settlement and dispossession; you will find their account side by side with Israel’s throughout this site.
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 — Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)

That history helps explain a few things you will often notice.

Security first. Israel was founded three years after the Holocaust and was attacked by its neighbours on its first full day. A country the size of Wales, or New Jersey, with hostile forces nearby, came to see strength as the condition of survival. Many Israelis have a family story of pogrom, Holocaust or expulsion from an Arab country, and a friend or relative killed in war or terror.

  • The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust — Tom Segev, Hill and Wang (1993)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War — Benny Morris, Yale University Press (2008)
When outsiders call Israeli policy disproportionate, many Israelis hear people who have never had to live with rockets.

Family and togetherness. Israel has the highest birth rate in the developed world, and family is the centre of social life. In crises the country closes ranks: after 7 October civilians organised food, transport and shelter for displaced families within hours.

  • Israel — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Population of Israel on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah 5786 — Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, CBS (2025)

Directness and argument. Israelis are famous for bluntness. “Dugri” (straight talk) is a virtue, queues are negotiable, and arguing loudly with people you love is normal. The old joke “two Jews, three opinions” applies to politics most of all.

  • My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel — Ari Shavit, Spiegel & Grau (2013)

Improvisation. The word balagan (chaos) is used affectionately; so is yihye beseder, “it’ll be fine”. Israelis are proud of their start-up culture, their improvised kibbutzim and their ability to make a plan B in an hour.

  • My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel — Ari Shavit, Spiegel & Grau (2013)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)

Daily life & customs

The week bends around Shabbat. From Friday afternoon to Saturday night public buses mostly stop in many cities and much of Jerusalem goes quiet, while Tel Aviv heads to the beach. Even secular families often gather for a Friday-night meal.

  • Israel's Religiously Divided Society — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2016)

Hebrew, revived as a spoken language from the late nineteenth century, is the main language; Arabic has a special status, and you will hear Russian, Amharic, French and English too.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • Israel — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica

At eighteen most Jewish Israelis are drafted: men for about three years, women for about two, with many men in the reserves for decades. Arab citizens are generally exempt (Druze men are drafted), and most ultra-Orthodox men have long avoided service, a hot political issue since the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that they must be called up.

  • Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Society in Israel — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
After the army, many young Israelis take a long trip, to India, South America or Thailand, before university.

The calendar is a mix of Jewish holidays and modern memory. The week between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day is the emotional core of the year: twice the siren sounds and the whole country, drivers included, stands still.

  • The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust — Tom Segev, Hill and Wang (1993)
Passover seders, Yom Kippur (when the roads empty and children cycle on the highways) and Hanukkah are kept in some form by most Jewish Israelis.
  • Israel's Religiously Divided Society — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2016)

Wounds & sensitivities

The Holocaust. About six million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Israel took in hundreds of thousands of survivors, and the memory runs through school trips to Poland, the testimony of grandparents and the national psyche. Comparisons between Israel and the Nazis wound deeply.

7 October 2023. Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, and took 251 hostages, in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Every Israeli knows where they were that morning; many know someone who was killed, kidnapped or called up. The last hostage’s remains were only recovered in January 2026.

  • AFP tally of deaths in the 7 October 2023 attack, based on official Israeli figures — Agence France-Presse, AFP (2024)
  • Israel-Hamas War — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Many Israelis feel the world moved too quickly from their grief to condemning them.

Wars and bereavement. Israel’s official Memorial Day roll, which counts from 1860, lists more than 25,000 fallen soldiers and security personnel, and thousands of civilians have been killed in attacks. Bereaved families hold a special place in public life.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)

Antisemitism. Many Israelis, and Jews abroad, feel a sharp rise in antisemitism since 2023. Israelis are sensitive to criticism of Israel that slides into hostility to Jews, though they argue bitterly among themselves about where that line falls.

  • Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor — Yossi Klein Halevi, Harper (2018)

The Mizrahi wound. Jews who came from Arab countries and Iran in the 1950s were often sent to transit camps and remote “development towns”, and felt looked down on by the Ashkenazi establishment. That resentment helped bring Menachem Begin’s Likud to power in 1977 and still shapes politics.

  • Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims — Ella Shohat, Social Text (1988)
  • The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1991)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)

Modern attitudes

Divided on the Palestinians. Israelis disagree deeply about the West Bank, settlements and a Palestinian state. Support for a two-state solution among Jewish Israelis had been falling for years after the second intifada, and fell further after 7 October; many now say there is no partner, while a dedicated minority still campaigns for peace and against the occupation.

  • The Israeli Democracy Index 2023 — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor — Yossi Klein Halevi, Harper (2018)

A democracy under strain. The 2023 judicial overhaul plan split the country into opposing camps, roughly religious-right versus secular-centre, and brought the biggest protests in its history. Trust in institutions fell sharply, and the 7 October failures deepened the anger.

  • The Israeli Democracy Index 2023 — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)

A region at war. Since 2023 Israel has fought not only Hamas but Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran directly, in a twelve-day war in June 2025 and again after US and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader in February 2026. Many Israelis have spent long nights in shelters, and tens of thousands from the north and the Gaza border were displaced for months.

Startup nation. Israel has one of the world’s densest concentrations of tech companies and venture capital, but also high living costs and wide inequality, especially affecting Arab and Haredi communities.

  • Israel — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica

Liberal and conservative at once. Tel Aviv hosts one of the world’s largest Pride parades; Jerusalem’s has been attacked. Marriage and divorce for Jews are controlled by the Orthodox rabbinate, so many secular couples marry abroad, often in Cyprus.

  • Israel's Religiously Divided Society — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2016)

Not all Israelis are the same

Secular to ultra-Orthodox. In a 2016 Pew survey, Jewish Israelis described themselves as 49% hiloni (secular), 29% masorti (traditional), 13% dati (religious) and 9% haredi (ultra-Orthodox). These groups often live, vote and school their children separately.

  • Israel's Religiously Divided Society — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2016)
Haredim, about 14% of the population and growing fast, mostly study Torah rather than serve in the army.
  • Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Society in Israel — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)

Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and more. Roughly half of Jewish Israelis have roots in the Middle East and North Africa and half in Europe, with growing numbers of mixed families. Russian-speakers, Ethiopian Israelis and immigrants from France, the US and Latin America add more layers.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1991)

Arab citizens. About 2.1 million Arab citizens, roughly a fifth of the population, are mostly Muslim, with Christian, Druze and Bedouin communities. Many call themselves Palestinian citizens of Israel; others prefer “Arab Israeli”. They vote, sit in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court, and are prominent in medicine, yet face discrimination and much higher rates of crime and poverty.

  • Population of Israel on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah 5786 — Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, CBS (2025)
  • The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel — Ilan Pappé, Yale University Press (2011)

Left and right, centre and periphery. Tel Aviv and the coastal centre tend to vote centre-left; Jerusalem, the periphery and the settlements tend to vote right. Settlers themselves range from ideological religious nationalists to people who moved for cheaper housing.

  • Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 — Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books (2007)
  • The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 — Gershom Gorenberg, Times Books (2006)

Israelis abroad and Jews abroad. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis live abroad, especially in the US and Europe. Israel is not the same as the world’s Jews: many diaspora Jews feel close ties to Israel, others are critical, and none should be held responsible for its government.

Meeting someone

Conversation starters

  • Food. Where to find the best hummus, shakshuka or Friday-night dinner recipe will get you a passionate, detailed answer.
  • Family roots. “Where is your family from?” often opens a story spanning Morocco, Poland, Iraq or Argentina.
    • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • Travel and tech. The post-army trip, start-ups and hiking the Israel National Trail are easy, happy topics.
  • Language. Asking about Hebrew slang, much of it borrowed from Arabic, Yiddish and Russian, usually delights.

Topics to approach carefully

  • 7 October and the hostages. Assume people are grieving. Lead with listening, not with your view of the war.
    • AFP tally of deaths in the 7 October 2023 attack, based on official Israeli figures — Agence France-Presse, AFP (2024)
  • Gaza and the West Bank. Israelis hold every view, from settler to anti-occupation activist. Don’t assume where someone stands, and don’t hold an individual responsible for their government.
    • The Israeli Democracy Index 2023 — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)
  • Genocide and apartheid. These labels, used by many Palestinians, human rights groups and a UN inquiry, are rejected by most Israelis as false and deeply offensive. Raise them only if you are ready for a serious conversation.
    • Legal analysis of the conduct of Israel in Gaza under the Genocide Convention — UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, UN Human Rights Council (2025)
    • Application of the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel): Order on Provisional Measures, 26 January 2024 — International Court of Justice, ICJ (2024)
  • The army. Military service is near-universal and personal; criticism of “the IDF” may sound like criticism of someone’s son.
  • Nazi comparisons. Never.

Common misconceptions

  • “Israelis are all religious.” Most Jewish Israelis are secular or traditional.
    • Israel's Religiously Divided Society — Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center (2016)
  • “Israelis are all European.” About half of Jewish Israelis have Middle Eastern or North African roots.
    • The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times — Norman A. Stillman, Jewish Publication Society (1991)
    • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • “All Israelis are Jewish.” About a fifth are Arab citizens.
    • Population of Israel on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah 5786 — Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, CBS (2025)
  • “Israelis all support the government.” Israeli politics is fierce, and many Israelis have marched against their own government for years.
    • The Israeli Democracy Index 2023 — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)
  • “Israel and Jews are the same thing.” Israel is a state; Jewish identity is far older and wider, and Jews around the world hold every view of Israel.

People everyone knows

Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl

1860–1904

A Budapest-born, assimilated Viennese journalist who concluded, amid the antisemitism of fin-de-siècle Europe and the Dreyfus affair in France, that Jews would only be safe in a state of their own. His pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896) and the First Zionist Congress he convened in Basel in 1897 turned scattered longings for Zion into a political movement. He died at 44, decades before Israel existed; Israel calls him the "visionary of the state", and his remains were reburied in Jerusalem in 1949, on what is now Mount Herzl.

  • Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State — Shlomo Avineri, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2013)
  • Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) — Theodor Herzl (1896)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • Herzl's Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State — Shlomo Avineri, BlueBridge (2014)
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)

David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion

1886–1973

Born David Grün in Płońsk (now in Poland), he arrived in Ottoman Palestine in 1906 as a young Labour Zionist, led the Jewish community under the British Mandate and read out Israel's Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. As first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) he built the army, absorbed mass immigration and set the template of the state. Israelis remember him as the founding father; Palestinians remember him as the leader under whom some 700,000 Arabs fled or were driven out in 1948, and historians still debate how far he planned or encouraged the expulsions.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited — Benny Morris, Cambridge University Press (2004)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)

Golda Meir

Golda Meir

1898–1978

Born in Kyiv and raised in Milwaukee, she moved to a kibbutz in 1921 and rose through the Labour movement to become Israel's first and so far only woman prime minister (1969–74). Admired for her grit, she was blamed for the failure to anticipate the 1973 Yom Kippur War and resigned in 1974. Her 1969 remark to a British newspaper that "there was no such thing as Palestinians" is still quoted by Palestinians as the purest example of the denial of their existence.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East — Abraham Rabinovich, Schocken (2004)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)

Menachem Begin

Menachem Begin

1913–1992

Commander of the right-wing Irgun underground, which bombed the British administrative offices in Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946, killing 91 people, and took part with Lehi in the Deir Yassin killings of 1948. After nearly thirty years in opposition, his Likud won the 1977 election, powered largely by Mizrahi voters who felt scorned by the Labour elite. He made peace with Egypt at Camp David, sharing the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with Anwar Sadat, expanded West Bank settlement and launched the 1982 Lebanon war.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David — Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf (2014)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage (2001)

Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin

1922–1995

A Jerusalem-born soldier who was army chief of staff in the 1967 war and, as defence minister, met the first intifada with an iron fist. As prime minister again from 1992 he shook Yasser Arafat's hand at the White House and signed the Oslo Accords, sharing the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat and Shimon Peres. On 4 November 1995 he was shot dead by Yigal Amir, a Jewish ultranationalist, after a peace rally in Tel Aviv. For many Israelis his murder marks the moment hope died; the square where it happened now bears his name.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
  • Remarks at the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles, White House, 13 September 1993 — Yitzhak Rabin, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1993)

Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu

born 1949

Israel's longest-serving prime minister (1996–99, 2009–21 and from 2022). For supporters he is the security-minded statesman who built a booming tech economy and normalised ties with Arab states in the 2020 Abraham Accords; for opponents he is a divisive figure who campaigned against Oslo, sidelined the Palestinian question, has been on trial for corruption since 2020 (he denies the charges) and drove the 2023 judicial overhaul. He led Israel through 7 October and the Gaza war; in November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest, which Israel rejects. Israelis are due to vote again on 27 October 2026.

  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
  • The Israeli Democracy Index 2023 — Israel Democracy Institute, IDI (2024)
  • Israel-Hamas War — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Israel — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica

Try it yourself

The quickest way into a culture: a song, a film, a book and a dish.

“If you will it, it is no dream.”
— Theodor Herzl, epigraph to his novel Altneuland (1902)
  • Altneuland (The Old New Land) — Theodor Herzl (1902)
  • Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State — Shlomo Avineri, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2013)
“We say to you today in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough!”
— Yitzhak Rabin, at the signing of the Oslo Accords, White House, 13 September 1993
  • Remarks at the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles, White House, 13 September 1993 — Yitzhak Rabin, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1993)
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)

Listen

  • Yerushalayim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold) Naomi Shemer's 1967 song of longing for the Old City, written weeks before the Six-Day War and sung ever since as an unofficial anthem.
    ▶ Listen
  • Arik Einstein, "Ani Ve'Ata" (You and I) The 1971 song by the gentle, much-loved father of Israeli rock, "you and I will change the world", still sung at gatherings and memorials.
    ▶ Listen

Watch

  • Waltz with Bashir Ari Folman's 2008 animated documentary about his own blocked memories of the 1982 Lebanon war and the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
    ▶ Watch

Read

  • A Tale of Love and Darkness Amos Oz's memoir of a Jerusalem childhood in the 1940s, his mother's suicide and the birth of the state; perhaps the best way into the founding generation.
    Find it
  • The poems of Yehuda Amichai Short, wry, tender poems about love, war and Jerusalem by Israel's best-loved modern poet, read at weddings and funerals alike.
    Find it

Taste

  • Friday-night dinner Challah, chicken soup or something from grandma's Iraqi, Moroccan or Polish repertoire.
    Recipe
  • Hummus, falafel and sabich Street food shared with Palestinians and the wider Levant; sabich, with fried aubergine and egg, came with Iraqi Jews.
    Recipe

See & do

  • Shtisel A gentle TV drama (2013–21) about an ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem that won over secular Israelis and audiences abroad.
    Look it up
  • Memorial Day into Independence Day The siren stops the country on Yom HaZikaron for fallen soldiers and victims of terror; at nightfall the mood turns to fireworks and barbecues for Yom Ha'atzmaut.
    Look it up

Where

Homeland Diaspora Significant place

Related

Palestinians · Jewish people · Islam · Iran

Sources & further reading

  • The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East — Abraham Rabinovich, Schocken, 2004
  • AFP tally of deaths in the 7 October 2023 attack, based on official Israeli figures — Agence France-Presse, AFP, 2024
  • Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory — Ahmad H. Sa'di and Lila Abu-Lughod (eds), Columbia University Press, 2007
  • Latest developments in Iran: US and Israeli strikes, death of Khamenei — Al-Monitor (with AFP), Al-Monitor, 2026
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press, 2012
  • Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press, 2012
  • My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel — Ari Shavit, Spiegel & Grau, 2013
  • The Balfour Declaration — Arthur James Balfour, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, 1917
  • The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton, 2014
  • Fatalities statistics, 1987 to the present — B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'Tselem
  • Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage, 2001
  • 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War — Benny Morris, Yale University Press, 2008
  • The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited — Benny Morris, Cambridge University Press, 2004
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