Mandate

This map was published by the Palestine Arab Refugee office and represents developments from 1945–1949. The areas in red show Jewish land owned in March of 1945. The black lines show the proposed 1947 UN Partition Plan (“J” for Jewish State, and “A”…

Izz ad din Al-Qassam was a controversial Muslim religious activist in the 1920–30s. He opposed foreign influence on Arab lands and led resistance movements in multiple countries against the French, Italians, British, and Zionists. After immigrating…

Tell Beit Mirsim is a site in southern Israel, about 13 miles southwest of Hebron. Albright excavated this site on multiple occasions in the 1920s and 30s. He is shown at the top of the picture with a white hat. Local Arabs worked with Albright on…

Albright (1891-1971) was an American archaeologist and biblical scholar. He became the foremost proponent of “biblical archaeology,” a movement that attempted to authenticate events, people, and ideas found in the Bible through scientific,…

This map shows the number of Arab villages on the eve of the arrival of the first Zionist colonies in the late 1800s. As you can see, Palestine was widely and fairly densely populated, which conflicts with Zionist claims about the land being largely…

This map shows the extent of the British Mandate of Palestine, which includes Palestine and Transjordan. Note that Syria was a French mandated territory after WWI.

This photograph shows Winston Churchill (second from right), who was at that time the British Colonial Secretary, meeting with Emir Abdullah of Transjordan (fourth from right) and Sir Herbert Samuel (between them), who was the High Commissioner of…

These two photographs show the actual T. E. Lawrence (on the left) and the other of the actor Peter O'Toole, who played Lawrence in the famous movie Lawrence of Arabia. T. E. Lawrence was a British Army officer who was trained as an archaeologist…

This is a famous photograph of Theodor Herzl at the First World Jewish Congress, looking over the Rhine in Basel, Switzerland. He was born in Hungary and became the founding leader of the Zionist movement. In 1895-1896, he wrote a seminal piece Der…

This photograph shows the British General Edmund Allenby entering Jerusalem after the British took the city in World War I. He dismounted and walked into the city out of respect for it and in contradistinction to the German Emperor Wilhelm II's entry…

Chaim Weitzman was the first President of Israel. Prior to his presidency, he is widely credited as the one who convinced the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to create the Balfour Declaration; he was also instrumental in its drafting. He…