The modern State of Israel was established on 14 May 1948 when Labour Party leader David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the Jewish state. The background was an awakened commitment in the mid-19th century for a separate country among Jews in the dispossession ring. Pogroms and anti-Semitism in Europe also contributed to the development. In November 1917, the British Empire declared its support for the proposal to establish a Jewish homeland in the then British Palestine Mandate through the Balfour Declaration.

At the San Remo Conference of 19-26 April 1920, the victorious powers of World War I reaffirmed the Balfour Declaration’s formulation of the ‘national home of the Jews’ in the area. In July 1922, the League of Nations (LoN), the forerunner of the United Nations, recognised the historic bond between the Jewish people and the British Mandate of Palestine, which then included the entire area on both the west and east sides of the Jordan River.

In September 1922, the NF and the UK then divided the area so that the Jewish National Home would include the area west of the Jordan River, one fifth of the original area. The area east of the Jordan River became Transjordan, which was renamed Jordan in 1948, the year of the war, to recognise the country’s ownership of the areas west of the Jordan.

Following the Holocaust of World War II, in which six million Jews were murdered, the UN General Assembly proposed on 29 November 1947 that the British Mandate of Palestine be divided into a Jewish and an Arab state. This was accepted by the Jews but rejected by the neighbouring Arab countries. Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq, plus token forces from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, instead attacked Israel when the state was declared, a war that Israel won.

The Bible describes how King David captured Jerusalem more than three thousand years ago and settled there himself. The place was then named the city of David (1 Kings 2:11, 2 Samuel 5:5).
These words about David confirm that the Jewish people have had a relationship with Jerusalem for around 3,000 years, as confirmed by extensive archaeological finds.
After King David’s death, his son Solomon built the Temple on the site now known as the Temple Square. The Ark of the Covenant was moved to the Holy of Holies and for more than 1,000 years Jerusalem was the undisputed capital of Israel.

About 400 years after the temple was built, the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and took the Jewish people into captivity. After 70 years in Babylon, the Jewish people returned to the land to rebuild the temple. This temple was then expanded by King Herod the Great just before the beginning of our era, but was destroyed again, this time by the Roman general Titus almost 2000 years ago.

Despite entry bans, deportations and massacres by the various empires that dominated the area in different eras, there has always been a Jewish presence in the country. Moreover, for the many Jews scattered around the world, the dream of returning to Israel was kept alive for centuries. Several times a year, wherever they were in the world, they prayed the classic prayer: ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’

The city has been occupied by Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans and British, but Jerusalem has never been the capital of any country other than Israel.
In 1949, the State of Israel declared Jerusalem its capital. The year before, the city had been divided after Jordan occupied the eastern part – expelling Jews and demolishing synagogues.
In 1967, Jordan and 12 other Arab countries formed a coalition against Israel, but this aggression was repelled in the 1967 Six-Day War, when East Jerusalem also came under Israeli control. In 1980, the Israeli Knesset passed the “Jerusalem Law”, which declares all of Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel.

At the end of the 19th century, Jerusalem had only around 20,000 inhabitants and was an insignificant and abandoned city on the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire. At the time, Jerusalem had never been a capital of any country other than Israel. It was captured in 1917 by General Allenby of the British Empire.
The population grew as Jewish immigration increased after the turn of the century and in November 1947 the UN partition plan for the British Mandate of Palestine proposed that Jerusalem should be an international zone for 10 years, after which the city’s inhabitants would decide its future in a referendum. The Arab side did not accept the partition plan and attacked Israel in May 1948 to destroy the newly formed state, a war that Israel won instead.
East Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967, before Israel gained control of the entire city. In 1980, the Knesset passed the “Jerusalem Law”, which declared that a united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The UN passed a resolution opposing the law and the Netherlands – one of the few countries to have its embassy in Jerusalem at the time – moved its embassy to Tel Aviv under pressure from the Arab world. Christians from the Netherlands and elsewhere established the “International Christian Embassy” as an act of solidarity with Israel’s decision to choose Jerusalem as its capital.

Since Jordan lost control of both East Jerusalem and the western side of Jordan in 1967 and subsequently forced the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) out of the country through war, nationalist demands for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital have grown.
The Islamic Conference, with over 50 member countries, decided in March 2016 that ‘the central issue’ for all the world’s Muslims is the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem. The Vatican, the EU, the UN and Russia have positioned themselves politically, religiously and economically behind this claim for the final status of the city. No other city in the world is facing the same interest from the international community.

Modern European history shows that the Jewish people’s place in the community has been challenged and needs to be defended. Israel is a democratic state with an independent judiciary and a free press. It enjoys both freedom of expression and a high level of religious freedom, which is unique in the Middle East. Today, Israel is in a vulnerable situation with a number of dictatorships and terrorist organisations in the region, several of which want to destroy the State of Israel.
Israel also occupies a vulnerable position in world politics. Time and again, the UN and other international bodies have given in to dictatorships and totalitarian regimes that have joined forces in international forums to pass anti-human rights, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel proposals.

By providing historical background, overview and balance, fighting anti-Semitism and defending the right of the Land of Israel and the Jewish people to exist, we are simultaneously defending democracy, human rights and human dignity both in the Middle East and in the rest of the world.
By supporting Israel, Christians defend their spiritual belonging. The Bible describes how God made a covenant with Israel to bless the whole world. Salvation comes from the Jews, Jesus said. We as Christians have been grafted into the true olive tree through our faith. Replacement theology – the idea that Christians have replaced the Jewish people in God’s actions in history is both wrong and has weakened the Church, as well as obscured and politicised the theology of the Church.
Good and true relations with the Jewish people and the land of Israel will enrich both the Christian church and society at large.

Many believing Jews are waiting for the Messiah. The Messiah in Judaism is the coming saviour, the victor who will crush the head of the serpent, deliver and triumph over sin and death, and gather the Jewish people into the land of Israel. The Messiah will also bring all the nations of the world to worship God.
The Old Testament, the part of the Bible shared by Jews and Christians, describes the Messiah as a king or high priest descended from King David who will rule the Jewish people during the Messianic age. These biblical promises that the Messiah will save the Jewish people are still valid today.
Jesus himself was Jewish and preached to the Jewish people. The first disciples of Jesus were Jews. The first church to be established in Jerusalem was initially an entirely Jewish phenomenon. These believing Jews worshipped in the temple, celebrated the Jewish festivals and kept the scriptures. Even when non-Jews began to come to faith in large numbers, the leading figure, St Paul, who was himself a Jew, chose to address first the synagogues and then all non-Jews as he preached the Gospel on his missionary journeys.

The belief that Jesus is the promised Messiah distinguishes the Christian faith from Judaism. The history of the Christian Church, often characterised by replacement theology and anti-Semitism, has subsequently contributed to creating distance from the Jewish people.
Although the majority of Jews today do not see Jesus as their Messiah, there are many Jews both in Israel and in other parts of the world who define themselves as both Jews and believers in Jesus. Belief in the Trinity, on the other hand, is considered idolatry by Jewish rabbis, who also believe that a Jesus-believing Jew is not a true Jew. However, Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah should still be eligible for the State of Israel’s Law of Return if they have Jewish parents or grandparents.

The day of rest is mentioned at the very beginning of the first book of the Bible, where God creates the world and then rests on the seventh day and blesses it. The Sabbath is thus celebrated in memory of how God created the world and involves refraining from all creative work, devoting oneself to the family, studying the Torah and resting. The Sabbath was also part of the covenant God made with the Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt.
Shabbat is celebrated every week, from sunset on Friday evening until “three stars appear” on Saturday evening.
The Shabbat celebrations begin with the lighting of candles and a feast. On Saturday morning, a service is held where a passage from the Torah is read and expounded.

Here are some examples:
(All Bible references are taken from the Swedish Folk Bible 2015)

Deuteronomy 30:3-5 (NKJV)
“Then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors.”

Nehemiah 1:9 (NKJV)
“But if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’”

Jeremiah 29:14 (NKJV)
“I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.”

Ezekiel 11:17 (NKJV)
“Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “I will gather you from the peoples, assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.” ’”

Ezekiel 20:34 (NKJV)
“With a strong hand and an outstretched arm and an outpouring of wrath I will bring you out from among the nations and gather you from the lands where you have been scattered.”

Zephaniah 3:20 (NKJV)
“At that time I will bring you home, then I will gather you, for I will make you a honour and a praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I end your captivity before your eyes, says the Lord.”

The ideological basis of the Holocaust was the anti-Semitic and racially ideological worldview of National Socialism, in which the Aryan, Germanic race was described as superior while the Jews were described as inferior and as part of an evil world conspiracy.
A contributing factor was Darwinian explanatory models of social relations with an emphasis on natural selection and the law of the jungle. In addition, Jewish legal consciousness challenged the lawlessness cultivated in Nazi Germany and Hitler claimed that “conscience is a Jewish invention”.
The Holocaust required years of propaganda in which Jews were gradually dehumanised.
The replacement theology of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, anti-Semitism and appeasement of nationalist ideologies passivised the Church, giving leeway at the decision-making level for National Socialism to carry out the Holocaust.
The indifference shown by the countries of the world, for example at the Evian Conference in the summer of 1938, to the “Jewish refugee question” in Germany and Austria became a confirmation and an opportunity for Hitler to proceed with the “final solution”.
Nazi Germany’s so-called euthanasia programme Aktion T4 – which murdered tens of thousands of disabled people – initiated on 1 September 1939 was also a trial balloon to see how German public opinion would react. After protests from the public and church communities, Aktion T4 was cancelled in August 1941, but continued unofficially until the end of the war.

All sectors of society were involved in or aware of the Holocaust: media, judiciary, politics, business, education, culture and church, etc. The extensive bureaucracy and organisation to enable the Holocaust genocide of millions of people on the European continent required a large part of society and a majority of European countries to be either active in the project or passive without protesting. Also, the war situation in Europe itself and the terror that the police state of Nazi Germany exercised over its population created a widespread fear that paved the way for the Holocaust.

In mid-August 2020, diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates were normalised, with direct flights and open phone lines being some of the results. For the first time ever, phone lines to Israel were unblocked by the UAE.
The agreement was reached via a phone call between US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed.
In a joint statement, the three leaders said that the UAE and Israel had ‘agreed to cooperate and set a roadmap to establish bilateral relations’ and that Israel had agreed to stop the annexation of the so-called West Bank.

A few weeks after the Israel-UAE agreement, Bahrain also signed a peace agreement with Israel. Bahrain, together with Saudi Arabia, has authorised flights to and from Israel to fly over its airspace. Bahrain was one of the first Arab countries to abandon its boycott of Israel when it signed a free trade agreement with the United States in 2005.

In October 2020, Israel and Sudan agreed on a deal to normalise their relations. Sudan has been involved in several wars against Israel and after the 1967 Six-Day War – which was preceded by threats from Arab countries to try to annihilate Israel again – the Arab League decided in Khartoum in September that year to say three historic ‘no’s: ‘No to peace with Israel, no to recognising Israel and no to negotiations with Israel.

In December 2020, Morocco followed the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan in establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
At the same time, the United States recognised Morocco’s claim to the disputed Western Sahara region. Morocco had then been officially at war with Israel since 1948, when the country had a large Jewish population of around 250 000. The 1948 anti-Jewish riots that accompanied the declaration of Israel eventually forced the majority of Moroccan Jews to flee to Israel.

The above agreements mean that there are now six Arab countries that have made peace with Israel. In 1978, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and in 1994 Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is an intergovernmental organisation founded by the then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson in 1998. In 2016, the IHRA adopted a definition of antisemitism that has also been adopted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights: “Antisemitism is a particular view of Jews that can be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Linguistic and physical expressions of antisemitism are directed against Jewish or non-Jewish persons and/or their property, as well as against Jewish institutions and religious centres”.
This definition was further reinforced by the Swedish government in 2020 with eleven examples included. These include Holocaust denial, comparing Israel’s policies to Nazism, and holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.
Anti-Semitism thus means treating and judging Jews differently – based on, for example, hostility, prejudice or discrimination – than other people for the sole reason that they are Jewish.

Anti-Semitism has different starting points.
– Nazi ideology was based on the alleged superiority of the “Aryan” and Germanic races and described a struggle between their own race and the Jewish race (and others) that had to be defeated or destroyed.
– Following the failure of neighbouring Muslim countries to destroy the state of Israel in 1948, anti-Semitic stereotypes have become commonplace in school textbooks, media and political agitation in many Arab countries.
– Replacement theology and hatred of Jews throughout Church history is another source of Jewish persecution and anti-Semitism.

Today, a large proportion of the Jewish people live in the State of Israel, and modern anti-Semitism is also directed against the Jewish state. Researcher Henrik Bachner’s doctoral thesis The Return: Anti-Semitism in Sweden after 1945 describes a far-reaching continuity between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism after the Second World War.
Anti-Zionism is a form of racism that calls for the end of the Jewish state and its annihilation. The IHRA describes various forms of anti-Zionism directed against the State of Israel, including:
– accusing Jews as a people or Israel as a state of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
– accusing Jewish citizens of other countries of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
– denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel has a racist basis.
– applying double standards by demanding behaviour that is not expected or required of any other democratic nation.
– using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterise Israel or Israelis.
– making comparisons of modern Israeli policies with those of the Nazis.
– holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.

The Book of Esther in the Bible describes how, 2,500 years ago, the prince Haman plotted to exterminate the Jews of the Persian Empire when Ahasuerus was king. Queen Esther, herself Jewish, saved the Jewish people from annihilation by working with Mordecai to expose the plot.
Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman world empires occupied and subjugated Israel in biblical times.
The Bar Kokhba revolt from 132 to 135 AD against Roman occupation led to the expulsion of most of the Jewish population from the area and the construction of the Temple of Jupiter on the ruins of the destroyed Jewish Temple. The Jews, expelled from Jerusalem, then lived in the “diaspora” until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
During the Crusades 900 years ago, Jerusalem was besieged and a cruel massacre wiped out the city’s Jewish and Muslim populations.
In the 14th century, a wave of Jewish persecution swept across Europe.
In 1290, all Jews were expelled from England, in 1394 the same happened in France and in 1421 the Jews of Austria were expelled.
In 1492, the Spanish royal couple declared that all Jews who did not leave the country would be executed. Around 200,000 Jews whose ancestors had lived in the country for hundreds of years were forced to flee.
The pogroms in Tsarist Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 19th century led to hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing these often religiously and nationalistically motivated persecutions.
In the late 19th century, the Dreyfus Affair took place in France, a political judicial scandal in which the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced to life deportation to Devil’s Island for high treason. The Jewish officer was later exonerated and the charges against him were revealed as a miscarriage of justice. During the trial, which was covered by journalist Theodor Herzl, French anti-Semites called for all Jewish officers to be forced out of the army and later for all Jews to be expelled from France. The Dreyfus affair attracted international attention and led Theodor Herzl to realise that European anti-Semitism would never improve, which helped him write the book “Der Judenstaat” and initiate the First Zionist Congress, which declared the goal of creating a Jewish state.
The Holocaust was the largest genocide in history, with around six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany in the period surrounding World War II. The genocide was carried out by identifying and segregating Jews, then rounding them up in ghettos on occupied land and deporting them to concentration and extermination camps where they were exterminated through systematic murder.

People who are born into a Jewish family, have a Jewish background or have converted to Judaism are considered Jews. A rabbinical definition is that those who have a Jewish mother are labelled as Jews.

The Roman general Titus subjugated the Jewish people and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. A few decades after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Roman Emperor Hadrian wanted to make Jerusalem a Roman metropolis and banned all Jewish traditions. Many Jews then rebelled under the leadership of Bar Kokhba.

In 135, the revolt was finally crushed and Hadrian decided to wipe out the Jews and their religion. He sold all Jewish prisoners into slavery, banned the teaching of the Torah, renamed the province Syria Palaestina and replaced synagogues with Roman temples.

Hadrian’s efforts contributed to the Jewish people not regaining control of their homeland for over 1800 years.
The 1947 UN partition plan called for the British Mandate of Palestine to be divided into Jewish and Arab states, which was rejected by the Arabs. When, in accordance with this UN decision, the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, Egypt occupied Gaza while Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria, now known as the West Bank. Until the 1967 Six-Day War, there were no strong international demands for a Palestinian state.
When the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, proclaimed an independent Palestine in Gaza in 1948, Egypt cancelled it, while Transjordan’s King Abdullah I named himself ‘King of Arab Palestine’ and annexed the West Bank.

King Abdullah was assassinated by supporters of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, in July 1951 while visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Since the Six-Day War, the Palestinian movement has established itself in the West Bank and Gaza with massive support from the international community.
It was not until 1988 that Jordan renounced all claims to the West Bank, the same year that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) declared the independence of the Arab state of Palestine. The state was immediately recognised by the Arab world and by the Soviet communist states (no Western European country except Sweden and Iceland has yet recognised the state of Palestine).

The main religious holidays:
– Shabbat: The seventh day which is a day of rest
– Rosh Hashanah: The Jewish New Year
– Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement, when the High Priest confessed the sins of the people and offered sacrifices in the Temple. Today it is a day of fasting, prayer and worship when people ask God and man for forgiveness.
– Sukkot: Feast of Tabernacles: commemorates the desert migration from Egypt to Canaan.
– Simchat Torah: celebration of the joy of the law, dancing with the Torah scrolls.
– Chanukah: Celebrated in honour of Judas Maccabeus’ rededication of the Jerusalem Temple.
– Tu Bishvat: New Year of the trees.
– Purim: Celebrated in honour of Queen Esther, who saved the Jews from Haman’s attack.
– Passover: Celebrated to commemorate the rescue from the Angel of Death at the Exodus from Egypt.
– Shavuot: harvest festival and celebration of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai.
– Tisha B’Av: day of fasting recalling how both the First and Second Temples were destroyed on this day.

Other Israeli holidays and commemorations
– Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Memorial Day.
– Yom Hazikaron: day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism
– Yom Ha’atzmaut: Israeli Independence Day
– Yom Yerushalayim: Jerusalem Day, commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem.
– Yom HaAliyah: celebrated to honour those who immigrate to Israel.
– 30 November is a modern national day of remembrance for those who fled neighbouring Arab countries and Iran when the State of Israel was declared, for the flight and suffering of these Jews.

Jewish holidays are often celebrated on the occasion of an event mentioned in the Old Testament – Tanach – or in Jewish history. God instructs the Jewish people to celebrate the biblical festivals, as part of their worship life but also as an educational tool to pass on historical, philosophical and spiritual knowledge to the next generation.
“On this day you are going out, in the month Abib. 5 And it shall be, when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, which He swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, that you shall keep this service in this month. 6 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. 7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days. And no leavened bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters. 8 And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, ‘This is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt.’” -Exodus 13:4–8 (NKJV)

The biblical festivals thus have a message and serve as a reminder of key events and important principles in the relationship between God and man and in interpersonal relations.

The West Bank is an area west of the Jordan River historically known as Judea and Samaria.

After the 1948 Arab war of aggression against the newly formed Israeli state, the area was occupied and annexed by Transjordan, which changed its name to Jordan to mark its ownership of the area west of the Jordan River. All Jews were then expelled from the area – without any international protest.

Israel seized the area from Jordan in 1967 and it is doubtful whether the concept of occupation is applicable, partly because Jordan no longer (since 1988) claims the West Bank and partly because the West Bank was taken in the context of a defensive war against attacking neighbouring countries.

Following the 1993 Oslo Accords, the West Bank was divided into three administrative parts, the final status of which would be subject to a future settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Areas A (under the political and military control of the Palestinian Authority) and B (under the control of the Palestinian Authority but with joint Israeli and Palestinian security) have no Israeli inhabitants and it is dangerous for Jews to live in these areas. There are over 2 million Arabs in the West Bank.

According to the UN, there are 650,000 Jews living in Area C (under Israeli rule), of whom just over 220,000 live in East Jerusalem.
There are 1.9 million Arabs in Israel with full Israeli citizenship, while Jews living in the West Bank must be protected by the Israeli authorities for security reasons.

At the heart of the conflict is the consistent refusal of most Arab leaders to accept the State of Israel and a Jewish population in the region. The Arab world, with its 422 million inhabitants and almost 600 times the land area of Israel, has fought several wars against Israel with the stated aim of throwing the Jews into the sea and wiping out the Jewish land. In 1948, the UN partition plan was rejected by the Arab countries and when Jordan captured East Jerusalem, all Jewish inhabitants were immediately expelled.

Around 700,000 Jews were forced to flee the Arab world after the 1948 War of Independence when the attacking Arab armies failed to destroy Israel.

The majority of Muslim and Arab countries still refuse entry to people with Israeli passports.
Arabs who left their homes in the wake of the 1948 Arab war of aggression against Israel have received the full backing of the international community, unlike Jewish refugees from the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Europe’s Jews and Jewish refugees from Iran and the Arab world.

While all other UN refugee interventions through the UNHCR are about integrating and including refugees in their new environment, the UN agency UNRWA instead aims to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee situation. No other refugees in the world can inherit their refugee status for generations.

After losing several wars of aggression against Israel, the Arab League said no to peace with Israel, no to negotiations with Israel and no to normalisation of relations with Israel at a summit in the Sudanese capital Khartoum shortly after the 1967 Six-Day War.
At the same time, the Arab world changed tactics. With Egypt and Jordan losing control of what is now defined as the Palestinian territories, the Muslim world after 1967, with the help of the communist dictatorships of the Warsaw Pact and with the support of the Socialist International, raised the demands of the Muslim population for independence as a means of exerting pressure on Israel. Before 1967, there was no strong national Palestinian movement in Gaza or the West Bank.

Never before in history has there been an independent country called Palestine, and Jerusalem has never been the capital of any country other than Israel.

Compared to the rest of the Middle East, where the proportion of Christians has fallen dramatically in recent years, Israel enjoys a high degree of religious freedom and freedom of expression even for Messianic Jews, although Messianic Jewish communities or individuals have been harassed by Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox groups.

The Israeli Declaration of Independence, read in May 1948 by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, reads:
‘Israel will ensure full equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, regardless of religion or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will protect the holy places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the United Nations Charter.’

In March 1992, the Knesset adopted a Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty, which declares Israel a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that fundamental human rights – such as the right to freedom of religion, conscience and expression – are protected in Israel, as they are part of a person’s dignity as a human being.

Israel is a Jewish state with large religious minorities. About 75 per cent are Jews, 20 per cent are Arabs who are mostly Muslims but there is also a large group of Christians. Almost 400,000 Israelis have no religion or practise religions other than those mentioned above.
Jewish organisations in Israel reject Jews who believe in Jesus as part of Judaism. The stumbling block is the view of Jesus as the Messiah and the doctrine of the Trinity, which is dismissed as idolatry. Several Jewish organisations in Israel argue that the biblical prophecies invoked by Messianic Judaism (from, for example, Isaiah 53) as evidence of the Messiah’s suffering and death have been misinterpreted.

In addition to outright wars of aggression, the Arab world has long used economic leverage to weaken Israel. The oil crisis of the 1970s is a clear example of how countries with good relations with Israel were penalised by oil-rich Arab countries with some of the most repressive despots in the Middle East.

Arab League member countries also boycotted non-Israeli companies doing business with Israel. Companies that did business with companies that in turn did business with Israel were also blacklisted. Several Arab countries have left the Arab boycott.
Israel has only been marginally affected by these economic boycotts. In 2020, Israel was among the 20 countries in the world with the highest GDP per capita, according to Forbes business magazine.

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has been launched by Palestinian activists with the stated aim of isolating Israel economically, academically, culturally and politically. Ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv in May 2019, the BDS movement called on artists and musicians to boycott the music festival because of Israel’s hosting.
The day before the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv, the German Parliament decided to label the BDS movement as an anti-Semitic organisation.

‘The argumentation patterns and methods used by the BDS movement are anti-Semitic,’ the German Parliament stated. The motion noted that the BDS campaign, which calls for labelling Israeli products with ‘do not buy’ labels, is reminiscent of the Nazi regime’s boycott of Jewish businesses.
At the end of July 2019, the US House of Representatives also voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution rejecting the BDS boycott movement. The resolution argued that the BDS movement ‘undermines the possibility of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by demanding concessions from only one side and encouraging Palestinians to forgo negotiations and rely instead on international pressure.’

During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire lost Gaza to the British Empire, making it part of the British Mandate of Palestine under the League of Nations. The Gaza Strip was intended to become part of an Arab state in the 1947 UN partition plan, but the plan never materialised because Egypt conquered the territory during the war with Israel the following year. Egypt then formally annexed Gaza.

When the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, who during the Second World War recruited Bosnian Muslims into Hitler’s Waffen-SS, subsequently proclaimed an independent Palestine on Gaza, the decision was cancelled by Egypt.

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip after the 1967 Six-Day War. The Oslo Accords of 1993 gave the Palestinian Authority control of Gaza and the Israeli army left the area. In 2005, Israel forcibly evacuated all Israeli residents from the Gaza Strip and today there are no Jews living in the area.

Many of the Palestinian population are supported by UNRWA as second, third and fourth generation refugees.
Since 2001, more than 20,000 missiles have been fired from Gaza at civilian targets in Israel. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza are backed by Iran, and the Israeli army has made repeated incursions into the area to defuse launch pads and missile sites.

Both Egypt and Israel have imposed a blockade on Gaza since Hamas came to power in 2007. Both Egypt and Israel justify the blockade by saying that it is needed to prevent arms smuggling.

Israel is nicknamed the ‘Startup Nation’ and ranks first in the world in terms of the number of startups per citizen. In Israel, one company is started annually for every 1 400 people, compared to France which has 0.112 startups per the same number of inhabitants. Germany has 0.056 start-ups per 1 400 inhabitants, while the corresponding figure for the United Kingdom is 0.21.

Technology companies such as Facebook, Apple, IBM and Microsoft have all chosen to establish research and development centres in Israel. Jews, who make up just 0.2 per cent of the world’s population, have received over 20 per cent of all Nobel Prizes.
One reason for this trend is the power of example and the contagious nature of success. Israel is also a very small place, which facilitates communication. The country’s exposed location and its people’s habit of facing great challenges have confirmed the adage that necessity is the mother of invention.

Israel’s culture of innovation and technological influence around the world is also linked to the fact that it has been forced to prioritise its defence industry for its survival. The military service trains leaders who are given great responsibility and think outside the box. Technological innovations created to defend the country then reach a civilian market. Israel’s intelligence service is at the forefront of cyber espionage, which in turn spills over into the IT industry.

Behov, brist och svårigheter har gett Israel en överlevnadsstrategi som efterfrågar lösningar som både är kreativa och snabba. En hög nivå av kunskapsdelning mellan de olika aktörerna i Israel bidrar till snabb utveckling och efterfrågade lösningar som hjälper globala företag.
Som en förföljd grupp har judar alltid varit tvungna att jobba hårdare för att nå toppen. Judiska familjer har alltid betonat utbildning och den judiska kulturen främjar kritiskt tänkande, analys och debatt.

During almost 2000 years of dispossession, Jews have needed to read and study to practice Judaism. Literacy prevented them from assimilating, and literacy and economic development are linked. Jewish exclusion has given Jews a scepticism that can question both authorities and established ‘truths’.

Israel, nicknamed the ‘Startup Nation’, leads the world in the number of startups per citizen. In Israel, 1 company is started annually for every 1400 people, compared to France which has 0.112 startups per the same number of inhabitants. Germany has 0.056 startups per 1,400 inhabitants, while the corresponding figure for the United Kingdom is 0.21.

Technology companies such as Facebook, Apple, IBM and Microsoft have all chosen to establish research and development centres in Israel. Jews, who make up only 0.2% of the world’s population, have been awarded over 20% of all Nobel Prizes.

One reason for this development is the power of example and the contagious nature of success. Israel is also a very small place, which facilitates communication. The country’s exposed location and the population’s habit of facing major challenges have confirmed the adage that necessity is the mother of invention.

Israel’s culture of innovation and technological influence around the world is also linked to the fact that it has been forced to prioritise its defence industry for its survival. The military service trains leaders who are given great responsibility and think outside the box. Technological innovations created to defend the country then reach a civilian market. Israel’s intelligence service is at the forefront of cyber espionage, which in turn spills over into the IT industry.

Needs, shortages and difficulties have given Israel a survival strategy that calls for solutions that are both creative and fast. A high level of knowledge sharing between the various actors in Israel contributes to rapid development and in-demand solutions that help global companies.

As a persecuted group, Jews have always had to work harder to get to the top. Jewish families have always emphasised education and Jewish culture promotes critical thinking, analysis and debate.

During almost 2000 years of dispossession, Jews have needed to read and study to practice their Judaism. Literacy prevented them from assimilating and literacy and economic development are linked. Jewish exclusion has given Jews a scepticism that can question both authorities and established ‘truths’.