Israel
...a Slavic language. Thus the surnames of central and eastern European Jews sound Germanic or Slavic because they are. Sometimes there was indeed a meaning that might translate from a Hebrew term, but in some areas only a limited number of specified names were available for Jews to choose from.” http://www.jewishwebindex.com/Names.htm My family fled Poland prior to the advent of World War II. They knew that if Germany were to ever invade Poland that all Jews would suffer. We immigrated to the United States where I attended the New York University and majored in Economics and Political Science. When Israel became an independent state in 1948, my family immigrated again to the “Home Land”. “May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was reborn. No Jewish state had existed since the year 70 but, for almost nineteen centuries, the dispersed Jews had kept alive the hope of return to Zion. When Israel declared her independence, the state’s first aim was defined as ‘the ingathering of the exiles’. The new state was to be a refuge for all Jews and, and between 1948 and 1951 more than 300,000 of them arrived from Europe and a slightly greater number from the Muslim lands of Asia and Africa. In three years the Jewish population of Israel more than doubled.” Israel: The First Forty Years The majority of Israeli people are immigrants as well as Jewish. The road to an independent state of Israel has been fought long and hard and thousands of people have come together to fight for Israel. “Following World War II, the British withdrew from their mandate of Palestine, and the UN partitioned the area into Arab and Jewish states, an arrangement rejected by the Arabs. Subsequently, the Israelis defeated the Arabs in a series of wars without ending the deep tensions between the two sides. The territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 war are not included in the Israel country profile, unless otherwise noted. On 25 April 1982, Israel withdrew from the Sinai pursuant to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. Outstanding territorial and other disputes with Jordan were resolved in the 26 October 1994 Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. In addition, on 25 May 2000, Israel withdrew unilaterally from southern Lebanon, which it had occupied since 1982. In keeping with the framework established at the Madrid Conference in October 1991, bilateral negotiations were conducted between Israel and Palestinian representatives (from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip) and Syria to achieve a permanent settlement. On 24 June 2002, US President Bush laid out a "road map" for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which envisions a two-state solution. However, progress toward a permanent status agreement has been undermined by Palestinian-Israeli violence ongoing since September 2000.” http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/is.html The population of Israel continues to grow today. Even though the population growth is not as great as it was in the early years, Israel is still a Mecca for holy people of all faiths. “On the eve of 5765, the population of the State of Israel is estimated at 6.8 million people. Of those, approximately 5.5 million are Jews and Others; 5.2 million are Jews, and 287,000 are "Others" - immigrants and their families who are not registered as Jews in the Population Register - and approximately 1.3 million are Arabs. Jews and Others constitute 81% of the population, and Arabs constitute 19%. During 2003/4 the population grew by approximately 110,000. The rate of growth of the population in 2003/4 was 1.6%. In 2002/3 it was 1.8%. During 2003/4 approximately 22,000 immigrants arrived in Israel: approximately half from the former USSR; approximately 15% from Ethiopia (approximately 3,400); approximately 9% from France; and the rest, from other countries. In 2002/3 27,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel. http://www.cbs.gov.il/engindex.htm Israel is known as “The Jewel of the Mediterranean” because Israel is bordered by 273 km of the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is also bordered by Lebanon, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, and the West Bank. The majority (80.1%) of all people in Israel are Jewish. There are also many Muslims and Christians that make up the population of Israel. My parents, Agnieszka and Jarek Iwanowicz, told me about their dreams for a religious homeland for the Jewish people. “The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was preceded by more than 50 years of efforts to establish a sovereign nation as a homeland for Jews. These efforts were initiated by Theodore Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, and were given added impetus by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which asserted the British Government's support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In the years following World War I, Palestine became a British Mandate and Jewish immigration steadily increased, as did violence between Palestine's Jewish and Arab communities. Mounting British efforts to restrict this immigration were countered by international support for Jewish national aspirations following the near-extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis during World War II. This support led to the 1947 UN partition plan, which would have divided Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under UN administration.” http://www.countryreports.org Israel was a “State of Mind” before 1948 when we became an independent state. However, Israel has come a long way. No one would ever be able to understand the struggles or the hardships that my people have been subjected to in order to create a home of their own in their promised land. “When the twentieth century opened Jerusalem was a small provincial town of the Ottoman Empire, one of the towns furthest from the imperial capital, Constantinople. It had a population of only 70,000, of whom the majority, 45,000 were Jews, and 25,000 were Arabs. In 1995 and 1966, as Jerusalem celebrated the three-thousandth anniversary of the establishment of King David’s capital of one of its many hills, its status of the capital of the Jewish State was not recognized by any of the world’s leading powers. Although its Arab minority was disaffected it was also, for the most part, prosperous. The city’s urban life is as varied, and for most of its citizens as been for so many centuries, the ‘Holy City’, the centre of religious worship for both Judaism and Christianity, and the important religious centre for Islam, figuring immediately after Mecca and Medina as a focal point of the Muslim faith.” Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century Israel today still has an uneasy relationship with surrounding countries as well as the United Nations. We as a people struggle to make our country better for the people that live there whether they are Jewish, Christian, or Arab. However, the United Nations has voted against us on several occasions. “In the General Assembly and its committees, as well as in the specialized agencies of the UN, there exists a long-standing tradition of singling out Israel. The General Assembly devotes seven out of 179 items of its agenda to issues concerning Israel. No other nation or issue is accorded such scrutinizing treatment. Nineteen anti-Israel resolutions are adopted by the General Assembly annually. The automatic majority enjoyed by the Arab-Moslem bloc enables this group to pass any anti-Israel resolution it chooses, no matter how one-sided it may be. This same automatic majority blocks the adoption of any resolution that has any hint of criticism against the Palestinians or any Arab state. Politicization remains a serious problem in the specialized agencies. Anti-Israel resolutions are traditionally adopted in many agencies on issues, which have no relevance to the work or mandate of these organizations. The Commission on Human Rights routinely adopts totally disproportionate resolutions concerning Israel. Of all the condemnations issued by the Commission, 26 percent refer to Israel alone, while rogue states such as Syria, Iran and Yemen are never criticized. The special rapporteur assigned by the commission to the territories was given a mandate very different from that of any other special rapporteur. Israel is the object of more investigative committees, special representatives and rapporteurs than any other state in the UN system. The special representative of the Director-General of UNESCO visited Israel more than 50 times in 30 years of activity. A "Special Mission" has been sent by the Director-General of the ILO to Israel and the territories every year for the past 20 years.” http://www.israel-un.org/ Terrorism is also a tremendous part of all Israeli’s lives today. The people are scared to walk the streets for fear of a suicide bomber attack. The world as a whole must end the tyranny and violence that these terrorist force upon the world. Israel continues to feel the brunt of terrorism and I for one am working diligently for pe...