In this episode we return to the history of Israel/Palestine, looking at how Israelis built a national community in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As we'll see, this project was neither as straightforward nor as easy as Zionist ideology supposed, complicated by the influx of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from both Europe and the Middle East in the late 1940s/early 1950s. The first part of the episode looks at the construction of the nascent Israeli state, while the second half focuses on the challenges brought on by the immigrants, who were in dire need of shelter, food and jobs. 

Note: this is the first of two episodes on the subject, which were originally recorded together.

jump links:

Intro (0:51)

Challenges of building a nation (2:40)

Building the Israeli state (16:06)

The challenge of immigration (32:08)

Ma’abarot (49:12)

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