STATE THAT OFFERED HOPE FOR SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST
JEWS from Eastern Europe had been arriving in Palestine – part of which would later become Israel – even before 1917, when the Balfour Declaration set in motion the creation of the Jewish state. Among those who came after the end of the Second World War in 1945 were many survivors of the Holocaust. In May 1948, when Israel came into existence, five Arab nations – Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon – invaded but were defeated by the Israeli military. From 1948 to 1951, nearly 700,000 immigrants – many of them from refugee camps in Germany, Austria and Italy – arrived to settle in Israel.