The Land of Israel, also referred to as the Holy Land or as Palestine, is the birthplace of the Jewish people and Judaism. It is where the Hebrews and Israelites established and developed Israel and Judah, and is also thought to be the region of development for the completed form of the Hebrew Bible; Jews, alongside the Samaritan people, are accredited as ethnic groups originating from the Israelites. Through the influence of Jewish prophets, many of whom were based in the Land of Israel, Jewish traditions came to serve as the basis of the Abrahamic religions. In the 1st century, the Land of Israel also became the birthplace of Christianity, the world's most widespread religion, based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has come under the sway or control of various polities, and as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups. In addition to the region's core significance to Judaism and Samaritanism, it is regarded with an especially high degree of holiness in Christianity, Islam, Druzism, the Baháʼí Faith, and a variety of other religious movements whose fundamental theological values trace back to Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch.
The State of Israel had a population of approximately 9,506,100 inhabitants as of May 2022. Some 73.9% were Jews of all backgrounds, 21.1% were Arab of any religion other than Jewish, while the remaining 5% were defined as "others", including people of Jewish ancestry deemed non-Jewish by religious law and persons of non-Jewish ancestry who are family members of Jewish immigrants, Christian non-Arabs, Muslim non-Arabs and all other residents who have neither an ethnic nor religious classification.
Zionism is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Jewish tradition as the Land of Israel, which corresponds in other terms to the region of Palestine, Canaan, or the Holy Land, on the basis of a long Jewish connection and attachment to that land.
Haredi Judaism consists of groups within Orthodox Judaism that are characterized by their strict adherence to halakha and traditions, in opposition to modern values and practices. Its members are usually referred to as ultra-Orthodox in English; however, the term "ultra-Orthodox" is considered pejorative by many of its adherents, who prefer terms like strictly Orthodox or Haredi. Haredi Jews regard themselves as the most religiously authentic group of Jews, although other movements of Judaism disagree.
Neturei Karta is a religious group of Haredi Jews, formally created in Jerusalem, then in Mandatory Palestine, in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisrael. Neturei Karta opposes Zionism and calls for a "peaceful dismantling" of the State of Israel, in the belief that Jews are forbidden to have their own state until the coming of the Jewish Messiah and that the state of Israel is a rebellion against God. While the Neturei Karta describe themselves as true traditional Jews, the more secular US-based Jewish Anti-Defamation League has described them as "the farthest fringes of Judaism".
Louis Sebastian Theroux is a British-American documentarian, journalist, broadcaster, and author. He has received three British Academy Television Awards and a Royal Television Society Television Award.
Shas is a Haredi religious political party in Israel. Founded in 1984 under the leadership of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Israeli Sephardi chief rabbi, who remained its spiritual leader until his death in October 2013, it primarily represents the interests of Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Jews.
Bnei Brak or Bene Beraq is a city located on the central Mediterranean coastal plain in Israel, just east of Tel Aviv. A center of Haredi Judaism, Bnei Brak covers an area of 709 hectares, and had a population of 212,395 in 2021. It is one of the poorest and most densely populated cities in Israel, and the 5th-most densely populated city in the world.
The World Zionist Organization, or WZO, is a non-governmental organization that promotes Zionism. It was founded as the Zionist Organization at the initiative of Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress, which took place in August 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. The goals of the Zionist movement were set out in the Basel Program.
The Religious Zionist Party, known as Tkuma until 2021 and still officially known as National Union–Tkuma, is a far-right, ultra-nationalist, Jewish supremacist, and religious Zionist political party in Israel.
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is an American non-profit pro-Israel organization. Founded in 1897, as the Federation of American Zionists, it was the first official Zionist organization in the United States. Early in the 20th century, it was the primary representative of American Jews to the World Zionist Organization, espousing primarily Political Zionism.
Gershon Harry Agron was a Russian-born American-Israeli newspaper editor, politician, and the mayor of West Jerusalem between 1955 and his death in 1959.
Bat Ayin is an Israeli settlement in Gush Etzion in the West Bank, between Jerusalem and Hebron. It was founded in 1989 by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg. It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council, with a population of less than 1,000, consisting mainly of "Ba'alei T'shuva" Jews with Hasidic tendencies. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli and US governments dispute this.
Jewish religious terrorism is religious terrorism committed by extremists within Judaism.
From the founding of political Zionism in the 1890s, Haredi Jewish leaders voiced objections to its secular orientation, and before the establishment of the State of Israel, the vast majority of Haredi Jews were opposed to Zionism. This was chiefly due to the concern that secular nationalism would redefine the Jewish nation from a religious community based in their alliance to God for whom adherence to religious laws were “the essence of the nation’s task, purpose, and right to exists,” to an ethnic group like any other as well as the view that it was forbidden for the Jews to re-constitute Jewish rule in the Land of Israel before the arrival of the Messiah. Those rabbis who did support Jewish resettlement in Palestine in the late 19th century had no intention to conquer Palestine and declare its independence from the rule of the Ottoman Turks, and some preferred that only observant Jews be allowed to settle there.
In these first special programmes (2003), Louis Theroux returned to American themes, working at feature-length, this time with a more serious tone than in his earlier Weird Weekends work. For example, Louis and the Brothel takes a sympathetic look at the sex workers working at a legal brothel in Nevada whereas Under the Knife takes a more critical look at the world of plastic surgery. Other programmes cover a wide variety of topics including law and disorder and Nazis.
Secularism in Israel shows how matters of religion and how matters of state are related within Israel. Secularism is defined as an indifference to, rejection, or exclusion of religion and religious consideration. In Israel, this applies to the entirely secular community that identifies with no religion and the secular community within the Jewish community. When Israel was established as a new state in 1948, a new and different Jewish identity formed for the newly created Israeli population. This population was defined by the Israeli culture and Hebrew language, their experience with the Holocaust, and the need to band together against conflict with hostile neighbors in the Middle East.
Otzma Yehudit is a far-right political party in Israel, which has been referred to as Kahanist and anti-Arab. It was originally formed as Otzma LeYisrael, which was established on 13 November 2012 by MKs Aryeh Eldad and Michael Ben-Ari, who split from the National Union to form a new party ahead of the 2013 elections.
Kahanism is an extremist religious Zionist ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach party in Israel.
The protest against conscription of yeshiva students was a mass rally held in Jerusalem on March 2, 2014. Its organizers called for a "million-man protest" against a proposed law overturning the exemption from military service for Haredi talmudical students and criminalizing those who refused to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. From 300,000 to 600,000 people gathered in one of the largest protests in Israeli history.
