Shot Number

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Vision
Images of Egypt (map, pyramids, etc.)

Images of Babylon

Stock footage or images of the Crusades

Map illustrating movements of Jewish people from

Spain (and the rest of Western Europe) to Eastern
Europe

Map of Arabian Peninsula

Early Map of Israel

Interview of scholar of early Zionism

Image of Theodor Herzl

Stock footage of World War I

Map of British Mandate of Palestine between 1922

and 1948

Cycle of images of various partition proposals (Peel

Commission, British White Paper)

Holocaust stock footage

Interview with post-WWII scholar of Israel-Palestine

Map of UNSCOP partition

Map of Middle East

Map of Israel following Arab-Israel War

Voiceover/Sound
Jewish history relating to the foundation of Israel
truly begins with the Jewish exodus from Egypt in
approximately 1500 BCE
Following this exodus, the Jewish people first moved
to Israel and established a monarchy under King
David and his descendants. After being forced out of
their home by the Assyrians and then the Christian
majority, the Jewish cultural center became Babylon
toward the beginning of the Common Era.
This expulsion from their homeland was only the
beginning of the recorded history of Jewish
oppression. Between 1050 and 1492, the Jewish
people were displaced in both the Middle East and
Western Europe as the Christian Crusaders made it
their mission to reclaim the Holy Land.
The Crusades and the expansion of Christianity in
Western Europe ultimately led to the mass migration
of Jewish people into Eastern Europe, where they
largely stayed for several hundred years.
While the Jewish people were settled in Babylon and
surrounding areas, the Muslim faith was beginning
and spreading rapidly beginning with the Prophet
Muhammed in 622.
By 640, Muslim conquerors had taken over Israel and
had begun the process of Islamization and
Arabization that would continue well into the 19th
century
(discussion of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II
and the subsequent persecution of expulsion of Jews
from Russia in 1881 talk about the initially small
migration of Jewish people from Russia to the more
urban areas of Ottoman-ruled Palestine) After the
migration of Jewish people began, the Arab
population in Palestine called for a limit on Jewish
immigration from the Ottoman government in 1891

Between 1896 and 1904, Theodor Herzl issued the

first call for the creation of a Jewish state and also
convened the First Zionist Congress with a goal of
encouraging further Jewish migration to what they
had begun calling Israel. Following Herzl's death in
1904, increased persecution in Russia led to a
second wave of Jewish immigration.
During World War I, the British encouraged both an
Arab Revolt and the idea of a Jewish homeland in
order to gain the support of both groups. Although
this strategy allowed them to gain support in the
War, it also increased tensions between Jews and
Muslims living in Palestine as their expectations went
unmet and their nationalism grew.
Following the conclusion of World War I, the British
promises of territort in the Middle East were not
realized. As the Ottoman Empire lost its control of
the area, Palestine, which still hosted an Arab
majority, became an area of conflict, with antiZionist riots occuring in April of 1920 and May of
1921. In the wake of these riots, the League of
Nations ruled that Palestine would come under
British command until they were more "civilized" and
deemed capable of governing themselves.
Through the early 1930s, several different partition
plans were propseds as more and more Jewish
people moved into Palestine. While the Peel
Commission suggested a partition into the states of
Israel and Palestine in 1937, the British rejected this
idea and stated that Palestine would become an
official Arab-ruled state within 10 years in 1939.
The conversation surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict changed when millions of Jews were killed in
the Holocaust, in part because of a general refusal of
Western nations to accept them as refugees into
their countries. This sparked a revival of the Zionist
movement calling for a Jewish state of Israel.

(discussion of UN committee charged with the

resolution of the Israel-Palestine problem, UNSCOP
discuss allocation of land and the problem of giving
Jewish minority a majority of the land Jerusalem
declared an international city)
Following the UN's decision regarding the area, the
British pulled out of Palestine and left them to selfgovernance. Immediately after the resolution in
November of 1947, the first instance of fighting
between the two new states broke out. Although this
conflict was sometimes considered the first IsraeliPalestinian conflict, scholars have more recently
begun to view it as something of a proxy for nations
that would ultimately become embroiled in the Cold
War. In spite of this fighting, the State of Israel was
established in May of 1948.
On May 15, 1948, the same day that Israel became a
state, a combination of Arab forces from the
surrounding Middle-Eastern nations invaded Israel.
Although a majority of the states in the Middle East
featured an Arab-Muslim majority, their soldiers were
relatively untrained and had no sense of unity. The
Israeli soldiers, in comparison, were fighting for their
newly created state and, in some cases, had spent
time training with British armies to fight in World War
II.
By July of 1949, the Israeli forces had defeated their
neighboring nations and reached peace agreements.
As a part of these agreements, the Jewish minority
gained control of an even larger percentage of the
land in what was formerly Palestine.