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03/05/1898 |
Golda Meir (1898-1978) was born in Kiev, Ukraine.
She was one of the founders of the state of
Israel and served as prime minister from 1969 to 1974.
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Economic hardship forced
her family to emigrate to the United States in 1906 and she joined
“Labour” group Poale Zion in her teens and emigrated to Palestine where
she became a member of Histradut “trade union”.
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Having joined the Executive of the Jewish Agency in
1946, she was involved in raising fund in the United States to help cover
the costs of the Israeli conquest of Palestine.
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She became Foreign Minister in
June 1956, a post she held until January 1966 to create bridges to the
emerging independent countries of Africa bilateral relations with South
American countries.
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She became Prime Minister
in early 1969 and the major event she had to face during her term was the
1973 Yom Kippur War. She resigned in 1974 to be successed by Yitzhak Rabin.
She passed away in December 1978.
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She has also remained
famous for her outspoken views denying Palestinians rights and blaming the
Arabs for the conflict.
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| 12/05/1948 |
All inhabitants of
Khubbayza village, district of Haifa ethnically cleansed by Irgun gang and
every house reduced to rubble. The same fate visited the township of
Burayr, district of Gaza.
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| 14/05/1948 |
Israel declares itself a
state.
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| 20/05/1860 |
Founder of Zionism
Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) was born in Budapest, Hungary.
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Raised in a secular
background he was doctor in law, writer, a
playwright and a journalist.
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The 1894 Dreyfus Case is by and
large considered one of the sparks in the genesis of Zionism. Alfred
Dreyfus was a French army captain unjustly convicted of treason for
Germany on a blatant antisemitic prejudice. Rather than calling to fight
antisemitism, Dr Herzl would use it as a rallying cry for quite another
agenda: to form a separate nation out of the Jewish communities all around
the world. “I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I
now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I
recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to ’combat’ anti-Semitism"
he wrote in his diary.
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Only two years later he
published the “Jewish State”, manifesto of Zionism.
Read
it here in English
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From then on he worked
tirelessly and convened the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897 where
the WZO was formed and elected Theodor Herzl as its chairman.
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He
threw himself into diplomatic efforts aimed at finding a power to patronise
the enterprise, first approached count Von Plehve author of the worst
pogroms of Tsarist Russia, thus beginning the tradition of cooperation with
antisemitic reactionary regimes. “The antisemites will become our most loyal friends, the antisemites
nations will become our allies" (diary).
Similar endeavours were
made with the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire.
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He died in 1904 aged 44.
His remains were transferred to Jerusalem in 1949 at Djebel Jarmaq renamed Mount
Herzl.
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Herzl was no less racist
and however no less a humanist than his contemporaries, he believed that the
ethnic cleansing of Palestine could be achieved at a low human cost.
Entirely focussed on praising the scheme to the European Jewry and regimes
he seemed unaware that the native Palestinian Arabs would oppose it. “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the
border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries whilst
denying it any employment in our own country” (Diary).
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He envisioned the future
Jewish state as an utopia where science and technology would
guarantee a bright future for mankind and above all else a prophetic
anticipation the Zionists would achieve their goal as it is captured in the
following September 3rd, 1897 quotation: “At Basle I founded the Jewish
State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal
laughter. Perhaps in five years, and certainly in fifty, everyone will know
it".
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