A History of the Jews by Mark Wildes, Esq. http://www.shopndrop.com/frameit.cgi?lit/art/histjews.shtml The Jews began as a slave people. Along with other groups living near the ancient Nile, the Jews lived as slaves for many years serving the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, building for them the great pyramids and the ancient cities of Pithom and Raamses. Tens of thousands of Jews died, but unlike all the other peoples enslaved by the ancient Egyptians, the Jews somehow managed to escape into the Sinai desert, sometime around the year 1300 BCE. They proceeded through the dessert, attacked by warring tribes, but eventually arrived at their promised land. After a series of battles, the Jews were finally able to live in peace in their land, building themselves a Temple under their great and wise leader King Solomon. Neighboring countries, however, such as the Assyrians, attacked. But the Jews held out until the year 586 BCE. Nevuchadnetzar, King of Babylon, after having defeated both the Assyrian and Egyptian armies, swept into Israel, destroying the Jewish Temple, murdering women and children, and deporting the survivors to Babylon. For all intense and purposes, Jewish history should have ended at this point, with the remaining Jewish minority assimilating into Babylonian culture. But there were Jews who retained their distinct identity and when the Persian Empire toppled the Babylonian empire, the new Persian leader, Cyrus the Great, allowed the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild their Temple. Approximately 42,000 Jews returned to Israel and 70 years after the destruction of the first Temple, the Jews rebuilt their Temple and returned to Israel, becoming the first people in history to regain a land they had lost more than a half a century earlier. The Greeks, under Alexander the Great, defeated the Persian Empire and now ruled over the Jews in Judea. They outlawed the practice of Judaism and converted the Jewish Temple into a place of idol worship and paganism. The Jews under their own Hasmonite Kingdom or the Macabees successfully revolted against the Greeks; the only minority group ever to expel the Greek empire from their land - from Jerusalem. As Greece withdrew, Rome quietly expanded its empire around Israel and, in 40 BCE, having replaced Greece as "the" world power, Rome dispatched an army of 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry to conquer Jerusalem and take it from the Jews. There were a number of rebellions against the Romans but they were all suppressed. Thousand were killed, the Jewish Temple was razed to the ground and once again, the survivors fled into the diaspora. In the diaspora, the Jew, no longer in his land, near his Temple, was now more vulnerable than ever. What followed were centuries of Christian Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Cossacks, Pogroms, State-sponsored anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and around the world and finally -- the Holocaust. Once again, for all intense and purposes, that should have been the last chapter in the history of the Jews. But it wasn't. In 1948, for the first time in recorded history, a people twice exiled from its land returned to establish an independent state. On May 14 of that year, the State of Israel was created. The very next day, 5 Arab armies descended on the ragged band of Holocaust survivors, and fewer than 45,000 Jews faced the combined military forces of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Trans Jordan. The secretary general of the Arab League proclaimed over the airways: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre." But somehow the Jews held out, and a month after the war broke out, the UN declared a cease-fire -- and the Jews had a state. The PLO and other groups were created to try to fight and terrorize the Jews from within Israel. But, once again, the Jews somehow maintained themselves. Finally, in May of 1967, Egyptian forces began mobilizing along Israel's southern border, and Syrian forces began preparing for battle along the Golan Heights, Israel's Northern border. Nasser, the President of Egypt ordered the UN Emergency forces that were stationed there to withdraw, and on May 18, 1967 the "Voice of the Arabs" proclaimed on the airways: "The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence." The Syrian Defense Minister, Hafez Assad, announced: "The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." On May 30th, King Hussein of Jordan entered into a defense pact with Egypt, whereupon Nasser announced that, "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the border of Israel -- while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation." On June 4th, Iraq joined the military alliance with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and the President of Iraq declared: "Our goal is clear -- to wipe Israel off the map." 465,000 troops, 2800 tanks and 800 aircraft encircled the tiny and infant State of Israel. Rather than wait to be attacked, Israel struck preemptively. On June 5, 1967 the entire Israeli air-force (with the exception of 12 fighters assigned to protect Israeli air space) took off at 7:14 am, while the Egyptians were eating breakfast. In less than 2 hours, 300 Egyptian aircraft were destroyed. Israeli fighters were then sent to attack the Jordanian and Syrian air forces as well as one airfield in Iraq. By the end of the first day, almost the entire Egyptian and Jordanian and half the Syrian air forces had been destroyed on the ground. While most IDF forces were fighting the Egyptians and Jordanians, a small heroic group of soldiers were left to defend the northern border against the Syrians. And it wasn't until the Jordanians and the Egyptians were defeated that the Israeli army was able to send reinforcements to the Golan Heights where Syrian gunners had control of the strategic high ground. On June 9, after 2 days of heavy air bombardment, Israeli forces succeeded in breaking through Syrian lines. It took only 3 days for Israeli forces to then defeat the Jordanian legions. On the morning of June 7, 1967, the order was given to recapture the Old City of Jerusalem. Israeli paratroopers stormed the city and secured it before Defense Minister Moshe Dayan arrived with Chief of Staff Yitzchak Rabin to formally mark the Jewish people's return to their historic capital and their most holiest site. In just 6 days, Israel defended herself from complete annihilation, reunified Jerusalem, captured the Sinai, the Golan heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israeli troops marched to the Kotel, the Western Wall, the last remaining wall that encircled the ancient Jewish Temple, and the then Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Moshe Goren, blew a Shofar to celebrate the return of the people of Israel to the heart of the land of Israel -- to Jerusalem. In 1892, the great American writer and poet, Mark Twain, wrote: "What is the secret to the Jew's immortality?" If I may be so bold as to offer a possible answer to Mr. Twains excellent question: What is the secret to the Jew's immortality? God. The Jews never for a moment imagine that their continued existence, against all odds, is a simple coincidence, some fluke of history. All historians and sociologists will tell you that in the history of mankind, minorities or ethnicities living within a majority culture, have either been physically destroyed or completely assimilated -- except the Jew. What greater proof does one need in the existence of God than the Jew's history. You don't need to be religious person to see that something beyond us is making sure the Jews continue to exist. Why were the Jews the only people to survive Egyptian slavery, the only people to repel the Greek Empire from their midst? How does tiny Israel continue to endure with so many powerful enemies on her borders? The most avowed secularists who fought in 1967 claim that they witnessed miracles in those 6 days and found themselves crying and praying at the Western wall when it was all over. God is the secret to the Jew's immortality.