r/HistorySnap

The Founding of Tel Aviv
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The Founding of Tel Aviv

In 1909, a number of Jewish residents decided to move to a healthier environment, outside the crowded and noisy city of Jaffa. They established a company called Ahuzat-Bayit and with the financial assistance of the Jewish National Fund purchased some twelve acres of sand dunes, north of Jaffa. In 1910, the suburb was named Tel Avivafter Nahum Sokolow’s translation of Altneuland, Herzl’s fictional depiction of the Jewish State.

Meir Dizengoff was Tel Aviv’s first mayor serving in that capacity from 1911 until his death in 1936. The main street in today’s sprawling city is named after him. 
Today, Tel Aviv is the heart of the conurbation known as Gush Dan in which over one third of the country’s population lives. This area extends from Rishon Le-Zion, Holon and Bat Yam in the south to Herzliya in the North. To the east lies Petah Tikva. Tel Aviv is situated on the shore of the Mediterranean sea.

u/-Mount-Everest — 2 days ago
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The Battle for Jerusalem

One of my favorite historical pictures-

At the end of the 6 days war

u/-Mount-Everest — 2 days ago
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Operation Entebbe — 1976

The photo shows the kidnapped upon their return to their country.

One of the most famous and remarkable operations in Israeli history took place on July 4, 1976.

An Air France passenger plane was hijacked by terrorists and forced to land at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The hijackers held more than 100 passengers hostage inside the airport's old terminal.

Israel decided to launch a rescue operation nearly 4,000 kilometers from Israel. A force consisting of members of Sayeret Matkal, the Paratroopers Brigade, Golani Brigade, and other units secretly flew to Uganda.

The Israeli forces arrived at the airport during the night, surprised the guards, eliminated the hijackers, and rescued most of the hostages. The entire operation lasted less than two hours.

The operation came at a heavy cost. Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu, the commander of the ground assault, was killed during the rescue. Three hostages were also killed, while another hostage, Dora Bloch, who had been taken to a hospital in Entebbe, did not survive.

The operation became one of the most famous symbols of Israel's military capabilities and is still regarded as one of the most daring hostage-rescue operations in modern history.

u/-Mount-Everest — 2 days ago
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Degania: The First Kibbutz

Degania, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee where the Jordan River flows out of the lake, is the first kibbutz in the world, founded in 1910. The kibbutz movement, which would become one of the most significant social experiments of the 20th century, began here with a small group of young Jewish immigrants who wanted to create a new kind of community: collective, egalitarian, agricultural, and self-reliant.

The Founders and the Idea
The founders of Degania were young idealists from Eastern Europe, primarily from Russia and the Russian Pale of Settlement, who rejected both the capitalism of the West and the traditional Judaism of the shtetl. They arrived in Ottoman Palestine as part of the Second Aliyah, the wave of immigration between 1904 and 1914, burning with the conviction that a new kind of Jew required a new kind of society.

They wanted to build that society on shared labor, shared property, and a return to the land. The group called itself a kvutza, meaning “group,” and chose the name Degania from the Hebrew word dagan, grain, reflecting their agricultural purpose and their hope for abundance.

The early years were brutal: malaria from the swampy Jordan valley, poverty, the backbreaking demands of farming in a subtropical climate with primitive tools, and the isolation of a small community far from the Ottoman towns. The physical and psychological toll broke many of the original settlers.

Those who stayed created a model that would be replicated in over 270 kibbutzim across the country, shaping Israeli society, culture, and agriculture for the next century.
Degania Israel Alef and Degania Bet
In 1920, a group of younger members who wanted to raise families in a slightly larger, more flexible community broke away to establish a second settlement immediately adjacent to the original.

The original Degania became known as Degania Alef (A) and the new settlement as Degania Bet (B). The two kibbutzim stand side by side to this day, sharing geography and history but functioning as independent communities. Together they represent the founding generation of the kibbutz idea, the experiment that proved the model was viable and launched a movement.

u/-Mount-Everest — 3 days ago

Iranian women cheering the departure of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in January 1979, two months before Hijabs were made mandatory by Ayatollah Khomeini

u/GaryGaulin — 11 days ago

Leader of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, confirms Mohammad Mossadegh's appointment to the position of Prime Minister. Iran, 1951

Following a confirmation vote in the Iranian Majlis (Parliament), Mosaddegh was officially appointed by the Shah, who held the constitutional authority to issue the royal decree.

While Mosaddegh was a secularist, his strategy effectively made him a "useful idiot" for the Islamist movement by shattering Iran's institutional stability and fracturing the secular center. By forming a tactical alliance with hardline clerics like Ayatollah Kashani for short-term political gain, he gave radical political Islam unprecedented mainstream legitimacy and political infrastructure. Furthermore, his intense anti-Western rhetoric and populist street mobilization laid the ideological and tactical blueprints that Ayatollah Khomeini later hijacked, leaving the mosque as the only organized force capable of filling the political vacuum and establishing a brutal theocracy in 1979.

While often romanticized as a flawless champion of democracy, Mohammad Mosaddegh's tactical missteps inadvertently laid the groundwork for the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Here is the historical evidence showing how his strategies shattered Iran's secular center and empowered radical Islamists:

  • The Secular-Islamist Alliance of Convenience: Despite being asecular, Western-educated nationalist, Mosaddegh formed a tactical alliance with hardline clericAyatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashanito mobilize the "religious masses" and drive out British influence. This move effectively mainstreamed political Islam, bringing Kashani’s fundamentalist mobs (such as the violently extremistFada'iyan-e Islam) into the heart of the government to act as political enforcers against opponents.
  • Shattering Institutional Stability: When faced with legislative gridlock, Mosaddegh bypassed the constitution entirely. In August 1953, he held a highly controversial andfraudulent referendum to dissolve the Majlis (Parliament). The vote claimed a 99.94% approval rating, largely because "Yes" and "No" voters were forced to cast their ballots in separate tents, eliminating the secret ballot and allowing for severe voter intimidation. This effectively destroyed Iran's fragile democratic framework.
  • Fracturing the Secular Center: Mosaddegh's increasingly autocratic power grabs alienated his original moderate and secular base. As members of his ownNational Frontresigned in protest, he became heavily reliant on emergency dictatorial powers and an unofficial alliance with the radical, Soviet-backedTudeh Party. By cannibalizing the secular middle, he polarized the country into two extremes.
  • Writing the Populist Blueprint:Mosaddeghismshifted Iranian politics away from institutional development and toward a discourse of heavy confrontation, anti-Western isolationism, and street-level populist mobilization. Decades later, Ayatollah Khomeini directly hijacked this exact playbook—merging fierce anti-imperialist rhetoric with religious zeal—to mobilize the masses for the Islamic Revolution.
  • Creating the Vacuum the Mosque Filled: By destroying the parliament and fracturing the liberal opposition, Mosaddegh paved the way for the 1953 coup. In the ensuing decades, the Shah violently suppressed the remnants of both the secular National Front and the Marxist Tudeh Party. Because the secular opposition was systematically dismantled, theclerical network operating out of the mosqueswas left largely intact. By 1979, the mosque was the only organized civic infrastructure capable of filling the political vacuum, allowing the clerics to establish a brutal theocracy.

Also See: https://www.reddit.com/r/HistorySnap/comments/1vkcojn/iranian_women_cheering_the_departure_of_mohammad/

u/GaryGaulin — 9 days ago

'Glory to the Soldier-Liberator!' — Soviet poster (1984) showing a Red Army soldier being embraced by a liberated concentration camp prisoner.

u/Mountainmannew — 10 days ago
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A traffic jam at the Brandenburg Gate between East and West Berlin on the first Saturday after the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 11, 1989.

u/Front-Coconut-8196 — 13 days ago
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The Communist Pseudoscience Hiding Inside Civic Nationalism. The conservative belief that peoples can be remade without limit rests on an old communist denial of inherited nature.

celina101.substack.com
u/EwMelanin — 10 days ago