Israel

Exact numbers are not known, but it's estimated that as of 2014, there are 300,000 to 500,000 gay people in Israel, not including undocumented gay Palestinians living in Israel illegally (Escaping anti-gay discrimination and violence is is the number one reason Palestinians cross the border illegally).

Illegal gay Palestinian immigrants may add thousands more to that number.

Answer 1

Maybe because Israel is a Jewish Nation. It would make sense that most Jews would want to live safely and securely in a nation that supports their values, if they could.

Note:

Israel is the nation with more Jews among its population than any other nation, but it's not true that more than half the Jews in the world live there. According to figures as of mid-2009, Israel still comprises less than 50% of the world's Jewish population, with the rest spread among roughly 135 other nations.

Answer 2

First of all, most of the Jews don't live in Israel. The Jews living in Israel are still slightly less than 50% of the Jews in the world. But living in Israel has a great traditional value in Judaism, and Israel actively and openly, both religiously and secularly, welcomes Jewish immigrants, and it's expected that the Jews in Israel will be a majority of those in the world very soon.

The reason is very simple, without bending your ear or beating around the bush: Israel is an openly, proactively, ambitiously Jewish state, the place where Jews historically, culturally, spiritually, and secularly belong, and the only place in the world where Jews are welcome, period.

But still, for a short while, slightly less than half of the world's Jews live in Israel. The other slightly-more-than-half of the world's Jews are still spread out among 135 other countries.

Next subject:

This question has been coupled with the question "Why can only Jews live in Israel ?" ...

a question that cries out for a clear response.

It's true that Jews are a majority of Israel's population. But it is not true that any category is prevented from living in Israel. That means no categorical restrictions. Of all places on Earth, Israel understands the evil of restrictions against people based on what they are.

Israel has no official state religion, and no group, class, or category of persons is barred from Israeli residence and citizenship because of what they are. Residents, land owners, home owners, business owners, voters, full passport-holding citizens of Israel include Muslims, Christians, Palestinians, Druze, Seventh Day Adventists, Eastern religionists, non-religious, atheists, blacks, whites, yellows, ethnic Orientals, ethnic Arabs, all citizens have the vote, including their men and their women, and send their voting representatives to their local governments and to Israel's parliament.

The court that found a former president of Israel guilty of corruption and sentenced him to serve a prison term included a Jew, a woman, and a Muslim Arab, and there was no revolution or coup d'état preceding the verdict!

Is it necessary to point out how, in these respects, Israel is quite unlike other

countries in the region ?

There are several commonalities between these countries. They include that:

• They all have had coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea
• Parts of all of these countries were part of the Roman Empire in 100 C.E., under Christian control in 400 C.E., and under Islamic control by 1400 C.E.
• They are all, at least partly, in the northern and eastern hemispheres.
• They are all members or observers of the Union for the Mediterranean.

Until the fourth century, there was surprisingly little interest in knowing of the places associated with Jesus in the Bible. Then, Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, visited Palestine and identified, to her own satisfaction, every important place associated with the life of Jesus. They include the very place in Bethlehem where Jesus was born and the places in Jerusalem where he was crucified and buried. These are now important places of pilgrimage, although New Testament scholars say they are unlikely to have been the actual places where these events occurred.

The veneration of places and people subsequent to the close of the New Testament is a pecularly Catholic practice. Roman Catholics are always on the lookout for miracles and for places where miracles might have occurred, whereas non-Catholics are sceptical of these claims. Other sites include:

· Lourdes, where Bernadette Soubirous reported seeing a "small young lady" who came to be identified as Mary, mother of Jesus. The lack of any corroboration by other witnesses saw the local clergy ridicule her claims but then, as pilgrims began to arrive, they accepted them as true. The Catholic Church soon saw the commercial possibilities of these apparitions and aggressively marketed Lourdes as a place of pilgrimage. · Fatima in Portugal, where once again the Virgin Mary appeared to three small children. · Loreto, where there is a small house that Catholic tradition says was raised from its foundations in Nazareth and transported by angels across the Mediterranean that in May, 1291. Apart from certain documents considered spurious, no writer can be shown to have heard of the miraculous translation of the Holy House before 1472, which is 180 years after the event is supposed to have taken place. This holy site is now considered by some to be a minor embarrasment for the Catholic Church. · Guadalupe in Mexico where, according to the Guadalupe tradition, a poor Indian named Juan Diego saw a vision of the Virgin Mary on 9 December 1531 asking him to have a chapel built in her honour in Tepeyac, Mexico. The story seems to have remained unknown for over one hundred years until it appeared in a remarkable book by a priest named Miguel Sanchez. In 1996, Guillermo Schulenberg, the abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City opposed the canonisation of Juan Diego and questioned his historic existence, saying that Juan Diego was "a symbol, not a reality."

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/catholicism/visions-of-the-virgin-mary

Answer 1

The Yom Kippur War began when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel with the backing of other Arab nations. Forces from the two nations crossed the cease-fire lines at the Golan Heights and Sinai with another front opened by Egypt when it began attacking Israel across the Suez Canal, gaining the upper hand for the first four days of the war.

Answer 2

The Yom Kippur War began when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel with the backing of other Arab nations and of the Soviets. The attack took place on Yom Kippur in 1973, when most Israelis were in synagogues praying. Forces from Egypt and Syria crossed the cease-fire lines at the Golan Heights and Sinai. Egypt attacked Israel across the Suez Canal, gaining the upper hand for the first four days of the war. Israel was in serious peril, and 3,000 Israelis were killed in the fighting; but by the end of a couple of weeks, the Israelis had improved their positions considerably and completed their encirclement of Egypt's Third Army and the city of Suez, advancing to within 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Damascus and 101 kilometres (63 mi) from Cairo.
Egypt, Jordan and Syria all decided to launch a surprise attack agents Israel at the same time. Israeli forces not only managed to stop the advance but actually managed to take enemy ground, mainly because God was on there side.

Answer 1

According to the Bible and Qur'an, Israel is the home of Jews.

In 1948 the U.N offered to split Israel into 2 parts through UN Resolution 181. 1 for the Arabs and 1 for the Jews to live in Peace.

Jews agreed, Arabs didn't.

War...

Jews won.

Discussion about Arab Rejection of UN Resolution 181

More importantly is the reason by the Arabs didn't agree. The land was not evenly split. The Jews got more land than the Arabs. The Arabs should have gotten more due to their higher population compared to the Jews. Also, the land quality in terms of farming and in habitability was different. The Arabs got marshes and wastelands with no water, while the Jewish people got more fertile lands.

(although this Add On has nothing to do with why the Jews should have Israel, it helps explain why the Arabs didn't want them to have it other than the fact the land was promised to them by the British at the time)

Answer 1

According to historical, religious, legal, and political grounds, the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine at least partially, if not entirely, belongs to the Jewish people.

1) Historically: The Jews have an undeniable presence in the land from at least 700 BCE until 70 CE and this is proven not only by the Biblical account, but from Assyrian Ruins, Babylonian documents, Hellenistic inscriptions, and Roman volumes. Jews had a continuous presence in the land from 70 CE until the present day (even though they were nowhere near the majority) even though they were forcibly deported from the territory. The fact that they survived, as opposed to the Arameans or Hittites who were similarly exiled does not illegitimate their claims. For more on the history, please see the Related Question.

In addition to the population-part of the historical claim, Jews have physical ruins and cities that are very sacred to them in the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine. The city of Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Jewish Bible. The city of Nablus used to be the Northern Metropolis of Shechem. Hebron was the first capital of Ancient Israel whence Saul ruled and David ruled until he conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites. Even more recent sites like Masada document the Jewish presence and struggle to persevere.

2) Religiously: The Jewish claim to have a connection to the land of the British Mandate of Palestine is firmly grounded in their religion. Jews as early as the Babylonian exiles wrote about returning to the land because God had promised it to them. According to the Pentateuch, God promised Abraham that piece of land. (This promise is even acknowledged in the Qur'an 5:20-21 and 17:104.) Many Jewish Holy Sites are in Israel such as the Kotel Hama'aravi (Western Wall).

3) Legally: By international law, the Ottoman Empire took the territory from the Seljuks and Abbassids by internationally recognized conquest. The territory was ceded to the British as a Mandate by the Ottomans as a term of surrender in World War I. (Even though the British had promised the territory to both the Arabs and Jews during the War, neither promise is legally binding.) According to the terms of the Mandate, even though the British were in control, the League of Nations had official jurisdiction. In 1947, the British gave direct authority to the League of Nations' successor, the United Nations, in accordance with the terms of their Mandate. The UN passed the 1947 Partition Plan that gave both a Jewish State and an Arab State the Right to Declare Statehood. The fact that the Arabs decided not to immediately declare such a state does not make the Israeli declaration any less valid. (It is important to note that Palestine did declare statehood on these grounds in 1988, which further cements the legality of this view.)

4) Politically: Jews invested a lot in building the political and physical infrastructure of the land even before they had control. Jews built farms, trained military brigades, created political parties, studied government, and defended themselves. This created a system that was able to repel the Arab Attacks in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-9, secure expanded borders in the Six Day War of 1967, and hold those borders in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. Israelis were actually able to exert control over this territory.

Of course, this list is not exhaustive, but should capture the sentiment of the question.

Zionism is the belief that the Jews should have political self-sovereignty and is the patriotic sentiment behind the Establishment of the State of Israel.

Zionism was found in 1895, with Theodor Herzl's book: Der Judenstaat and further discussed in his book: Altneulandin 1902. As a result of these books, Secular European Jews began to actively discuss the possibility of creating a Jewish State.