Why were the Jews without a country before Israel?

Answer 1

Under the Roman Empire, Judea and the Galilee were semi-autonomous Jewish kingdoms under Roman rule until a series of revolts in the first and second centuries. Rome crushed these revolts, at very high cost, and when they crushed the last revolt, they took a huge fraction of the Jewish community as slaves and dispersed them through their empire, forbidding Jews to live in Jerusalem and for a while, forbidding Jews from teaching or studying Judaism. Jews managed to regain some rights, but under the Christian Byzantine Empire, Jews were still forbidden to live in Jerusalem and Jewish communities in Byzantine Palestine were tolerated but not encouraged. When the Islamic Caliph conquered Palestine, he allowed Jews to return, but as second class citizens. When the Crusaders conquered large parts of Palestine, they slaughtered the resident Jews, when Saladin drove the Crusaders from Jerusalem, her allowed Jews back in, but again, as second class citizens. That arrangement lasted until the British took Palestine in World War I. Throughout these years, when Jews were persecuted elsewhere, some raised money to buy land in Palestine. There was a big influx after the Spanish expulsion in 1492, and another starting in the 1890s as a result of Russian persecution. When Germany began persecuting Jews in the 1930s, more began to try to buy Palestinian land. The basic outline of the British partitioning of Palestine was based on the land ownership patterns of Jews and non-Jews at the time, but the two communities were so intermingled that large numbers of Jews ended up having to flee into the new Jewish state while large numbers of Arabs fled onto the Arab side, creating huge refugee problems on both sides.