West Germany offered to pay Israel reparations for the Holocaust, touching off a heated and violent debate over whether Israel should accept. Was it a critical windfall for a poor nation, or nothing more than blood money?

Who is a Jew, according to the State of Israel? And where do you put all the new immigrants when there isn't enough housing? And what is the impact on Mizrahi Jewish refugees and Palestinian land abandoned during the war?

The Palestinians weren't the only refugees. Nearly one million Jews were pushed out of the Middle East and North Africa in revenge for the creation of Israel. Ancient Jewish communities were uprooted as hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jews) poured into Israel.

For the Palestinians who left Israel -- whether by force or voluntarily -- Israel's War of Independence was a nakba (catastrophe). The war's end in 1949 left over 720,000 Palestinian refugees. Why they left, what happened to them, and how much responsibility Israel bears is the focus of today's episode.

The War of Independence left multiple narratives in its wake, from the Jews who lost 1% of their population to the war, to the Arab-Israelis who fell under martial law.

Don't know your Prime Minister from your President? Israeli politics has been big in the news in 2019 -- so here's how the government works, and why Israel voted left for the first thirty years of its existence.

When the IDF seized the town of Lydda from Arab forces during the War of Independence, Ben Gurion ordered the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Was it justified? Was it just?

The War of Independence continues as the Egyptian army uses the Gaza Strip to make a run for Tel Aviv. They were stopped by the new Israeli Air Force, which had to source parts, planes, and pilots from all over the world.

Barely a month after declaring independence, a fight on the beach in Tel Aviv almost splits Israel in two. As the army struggles to supply the Jewish side of Jerusalem, the Israel Defense Forces and the Irgun open fire on each other over a ship called the Altalena.

Within hours of declaring independence, Israel was invaded by five Arab armies. In the middle of an existential war, the government made its first decision: to proclaim Israel open for Jewish immigration.