Austin PellizzerIn the class “100 years of Conflict” within the Near East, I found the most interesting was the period just post-World War One and the Arab revolt decades of the 1920s-1930s.
I find this era the most exciting and significant in the region. With the recent collapse of the Ottoman Empire port-Great War, how the European powers drew up the borders laid an essential road for the future of the Near East and its neighbours. Many ethnic communities were divided, and families split as new nations’ lands were established and created without considering the traditions and preexisting ways of life. As this was a time for many Arab majority communities in these regions to start a new national identity, this as a whol, can still be seen to this day.
In regards to the Arab revolts, I found this particularly interesting as this laid the groundwork for Israel’s military and defence; as we saw with the uprisings in 1935-1939, this helped form the Haganah. Much of the Jewish resistance from these decades aided in shaping the national identity of not just the Jewish state in 1948 but also the Israel Defence Forces created shortly after. As a whole, the aspect of Jewish defence from the earliest inceptions of this history is still enshrined in the national consciousness of the modern, thriving Israeli state, which I find to be most interesting.
