Why Israel was named Israel?

Posted by Sigal Mendelson on December 31, 2009 under Israel history | Read the First Comment

Why was the name Israel chosen for the state of Israel? Who was Israel and what is its relation of the names Zion and Judah in the context of the state of Israel?

Over the past three thousand years, the name "Israel" has meant in common and religious usage both the Land of Israel and the entire Jewish nation. According to the Bible, Jacob is renamed Israel after successfully wrestling with an angel of God. The earliest archaeological artifact to mention "Israel" (other than as a personal name) is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated the late 13th century BCE) which refers to a people of that name. The modern country was named the State of Israel, after other proposed names, including "Eretz Ysrael" ("the Land of Israel"), Zion, and Judea, were rejected. In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett.

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About Dual Citizenship in Israel

Posted by Sigal Mendelson on December 30, 2009 under Aliyah | Be the First to Comment

The Israeli nationality law states that the Israeli law see Israel citizens which also have a foreign citizenship as citizens of Israel. This means that an Israeli citizen is entitled to have one citizenship or another more (dual citizenship), and that he would be considered a citizen of Israel regarding any matter, and an Israeli citizen only, as long as the his Israeli citizenship would remain relevant in terms of the Israeli law. For example, a citizen of Israel who also has a foreign citizenship is considered a foreign citizen (is this correct?) in accordance to the Israeli Security Service Law and is subject to a mandatory military service according to that law; he is considered a citizen of Israel regarding the criminal liability of Israeli civilians according to the Israeli Penal Law; and he is considered a citizen of Israel according to the Israeli laws of personal status, such as the authority jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts in the matters of marriages and divorces, according to the Israeli Rabinical courts jurisdictions law.

The K’neset, Israeli Parliament

Regarding entrance to Israel, staying in Israel and working in Israel, an Israeli citizen which also possesses a foreign citizenship is considered an Israeli citizen for all purposes. Therefore, he is entitled to enter Israel without a need of a visa, stay in Israel according to his own desire, engage in any profession and work with each employer according to the provisions of the Israeli law.

An exception to the permission of holding dual citizenship was determined in the additional law added to the Basic Law: the Knesset (חוק יסוד: הכנסת) (Article 16A) according to which Knesset members would not be able to pledge allegiance unless they have revoked their additional citizenship, if that would be possible according to laws of that country.

Courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Israel_Law 

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Christian Arabs in Israel

Posted by Sigal Mendelson on December 29, 2009 under Traveling in Israel | Read the First Comment

These days Israeli Arab Christians celebrate Christmas. Who are they and how many of them live in Israel, Gaza and Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip?

Arab Christians are culturally, linguistically and ethnically speaking Arab and are adherents of the Christian faith. Arab Christians are indigenous to the Arab world, with a presence there predating the 7th century Islamic expansion in Western Asia. Many Arab Muslims today were originally Arab Christians who converted to Islam for various reasons, chief among them, avoiding the payment of jizya, a tax for non-Muslim populations under Muslim rule. Most Levantine Christians are ethnic Arabs descended from the Kahlani Qahtani tribes of ancient Yemen (i.e. Ghassanids, Lakhmids, Banu Judham and Hamadan).

Church of the Holy Sepulcher

Courtesy JerusalemShots.com

The majority of the Maronite Patriarchs for the last 10 centuries descended from the widely known noble Qahtani Ghassanid Arabs that ruled the Levant in the Roman/Byzantine era and even some Frankish/Ghassanids.

Arab Christians made significant contributions to the Arab civilization and still do. Some of the top poets at certain times were Arab Christians, and many Arab Christians were physicians, writers, government officials, and people of literature.[4]

There have been occasional claims that the Maronites can trace their ancestry to Phoenicians. The Maronites were inhabitants of Orontes (Al-Assi) valley in Syria. They may be descendants of some Arab tribes which never converted to Islam or of a portion of Arameans. The eminent Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi (incidentally, a Christian) in his ‘A House of Many Mansions’ [1988] states (ch. 6): “It is very possible that the Maronites, as a community of Arabian origin, were among the last Arabian Christian tribes to arrive in Syria before Islam.. Certainly, since the 14th century, their language has been Arabic. Syriac, which is the Christian literary form of Aramaic, was originally the liturgical language of all the Semitic Christian sects, in Arabia as well as in the Levant and Mesapotamia.”[5]

There is also a portion of Arabic-speaking Christians which belong to the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people ethnic group. They use Syriac-Aramaic in their liturgy and some still speak it as a language. They are a separate ethnicity.

Some of the most influential secular Arab nationalists were Levantine Greek Orthodox Christians like Michel Aflaq, founder of the Baath Party, George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Constantin Zureiq.

Old City, Christian Quarter

Courtesy JerusalemShots.com

Israel, the West Bank and Gaza

About 75,500 Palestinian Christians live in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with about 122,000 Palestinian Christians living in Israel and an estimated 400,000 Palestinian Christians living in the Palestinian diaspora. Both the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Habash, and the founder if its offshoot, the DFLP, Nayif Hawatmeh, were Christians, as is prominent Palestinian activist and former Palestinian Authority minister Hanan Ashraw

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