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Halamish uncovers the history of immigration in Israel. Immigration was intrinsic to the nature of Zionism as a national liberation movement, which aspired to establish a sovereign Jewish entity in a territory distant from the places in which most of its potential constituency resided. Zionism diagnosed living in exile as a minority in other peoples' lands as the root of the Jewish problem. The remedy prescribed--a sovereign Jewish state--was preconditioned on gathering a critical demographic Jewish mass in their prospect state. From the mid-1920s Palestine, and then Israel, have been the main destination for Jewish migration. In contrast to the conventional periodization of the history of the Yishuv, delineated by waves of immigration, the common landmarks of Israel's history are wars and military operations. Nonetheless, just like the history of the Yishuv, that of Israel witnessed an almost constant flow of immigrants.

Halamish seeks to situate the October 7, 2023 attack on the Gaza Strip by Israel in the context of the history of Zionism and Israel. Kishinev and the Holocaust reverberate loudly in her analysis, alongside the 1929 riots in Palestine and a number of key moments in the broad historical view that she lays out. How Zionism is understood, and how Israel's leaders interpret the circumstances in which they operate, she suggests, will have crucial ramifications for what impact October 7th will prove to have on Israel's future

During the Mandate period, the struggle for Palestine was essentially a demographic race between the Jewish minority and the Arab majority, with the Mandate authorities determining the rules of the game. While the proportion of Arabs to Jews at the end of WWI was 11:1, by the eve of WWII, it was approximately two-thirds Arabs to one-third Jews, and remained as such until the outbreak of the 1948 War, with 600,000 Jews in the country and twice as many Arabs. The primary source of growth in the Jewish population was immigration whereas the rate of growth among the Arabs was due almost exclusively to natural population increase. The article surveys and analyzes the role of demography in shaping the policy and practice of the three sides of the Palestine triangle from the formulation of the Balfour declaration in 1917 to the 1947 United Nations’ partition resolution. The main contention is, that demographic calculations and estimations were behind the positions on the three main issues around which the conflict in Mandatory Palestine revolved: immigration, the establishment of institutions of representative self-government and the acquisition of land by Jews.

The movie Exodus (1960) is the saga of a ship laden with Jewish European refugees sailing to British-ruled Palestine, and the story of the Zionist struggle against the British up to the beginning of the 1948 war between the Arabs and the Jews. The content of the movie, the timing of its release, and its vast distribution created complex relations among the movie and the events that took place in the years 1945-1948; the historiography of those years; the private and collective memory; and, to some extent, Israel's history. This article presents and interprets these multidirectional relations, arguing that, because of the movie's popularity and the way it portrayed historical events, Exodus changed history in a number of ways. The film's plot ingredients and their sequence diverge from \"what really happened\"; the movie itself was an event in the history of early 1960s Israel; and as a result of its location on the axes of Israeli history and the evolution of the historiography of the pre-state period, Exodus had an enormous influence on the presentation of history.

The movie Exodus (1960) is the saga of a ship laden with Jewish European refugees sailing to British-ruled Palestine, and the story of the Zionist struggle against the British up to the beginning of the 1948 war between the Arabs and the Jews. The content of the movie, the timing of its release, and its vast distribution created complex relations among the movie and the events that took place in the years 1945–1948; the historiography of those years; the private and collective memory; and, to some extent, Israel's history. This article presents and interprets these multidirectional relations, arguing that, because of the movie's popularity and the way it portrayed historical events, Exodus changed history in a number of ways. The film's plot ingredients and their sequence diverge from “what really happened”; the movie itself was an event in the history of early 1960s Israel; and as a result of its location on the axes of Israeli history and the evolution of the historiography of the pre-state period, Exodus had an enormous influence on the presentation of history.

The article critically examines Mapam's activity regarding the Military Government imposed on Arab-populated areas between 1948 and 1966. It analyzes and compares the party's declared stand and its parliamentary activity with the role played by the issue as a factor in coalition negotiations. The article contends that the issue of the Military Government did not serve as a crucial factor in Mapam's decision either to join the coalition or to stay out of it. It also claims that Mapam did not have a direct influence on the actual decisions concerning the Military Government, due to Mapai's dominance in the Israeli political system in those years. The article suggests that the case of Mapam and the Military Government sheds light on the modus operandi of the Israeli political system prior to the Six Day War, on the extent of Mapai's dominance of the political system in Israel prior to the 1977 political upheaval, on the limited role and influence available to small parties in a dominant party system, and on the inherent conflict and potential collision between security considerations and democracy.

The article focuses new light on immigration from Yemen to Mandatory Palestine in a broad context. Figures clearly indicate that the magnitude of immigration from Yemen was impressive, both in absolute and relative numbers, in all comparable parameters. The article offers some explanations for both the preference given to Yemeni Jews in immigration to Palestine and the claims that they did not get their appropriate just share in immigration certificates. This was due, in part, to the complex mechanism of regulating Jewish immigration to Palestine at that time and the multifaceted considerations involved in distributing the immigration certificates. It is written from a Palestine perspective, and does not deal with Yemeni immigration policy and its impact on the composition of the immigration flow.

The article focuses new light on immigration from Yemen to Mandatory Palestine in a broad context. Figures clearly indicate that the magnitude of immigration from Yemen was impressive, both in absolute and relative numbers, in all comparable parameters. The article offers some explanations for both the preference given to Yemeni Jews in immigration to Palestine and the claims that they did not get their appropriate just share in immigration certificates. This was due, in part, to the complex mechanism of regulating Jewish immigration to Palestine at that time and the multi-faceted considerations involved in distributing the immigration certificates. It is written from a Palestine perspective, and does not deal with Yemeni immigration policy and its impact on the composition of the immigration flow. Reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press

The reality of this immigration wave is what Halamish skillfully weaves into her narrative and analysis of Zionist immigration policy during the 1930s, in which she shows how Jews from German-speaking countries were far from the majority of immigrants during any particular period of this wave of immigration. Additional topics worthy of note are her discussion of the \"transfer agreement\" that enabled German Jews to transfer a large portion of their capital to Palestine, and her analysis of the key by which immigration certificates were distributed among various countries. Yet another unique facet of the book is the fact that Halamish takes the term \"immigration policy\" to its zenith, not stopping her tale at the moment that the immigrant set foot on Palestinian soil but continuing the process, discussing the bureaucracy behind immigrant absorption and not only immigration.