Some authentic photos that I found in family archives, dating to the British Mandate era.

After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the Middle East for centuries, has collapsed. Britain and France received a mandate from the Leauge of Nations to govern the region temporarily. Britain's mandate in Palestine eventually lasted 3 decades. It was a time of great development and modernization in the Holy Land, but also the period in which the Israeli-Arab conflict emerged.

On the occasion of Israel's 60 Independence Day, I have uploaded a selection of photos published 50 years ago, on Israel's 10th Independence Day.

Typically for the time and place, most of the photos deal with collective experiences and man-manned environment rather than with individual experiences or nature's beauty. Many photographers focused on documenting Israel's achievements, and not because they were enlisted for that job. They were simply, genuinely overwhelmed by the existence and development of the young state.

All the photos are scans from the book "Be'Asor Le'Yisrael" (On Israel's Decade), edited by Avraham Herman and Yigael Yadin. There are no individual credits for the photos.

This is an incomplete account of the war between Israel and the Hizbullah Shiite guerillas in Southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side. The war lasted between July 12 and August 14, 2006. It is commonly referred to as the Second Lebanon War in Israel, and as the July War in Lebanon.

During the war, Hizbullah have fired 3,970 rockets and missiles across Northern Israel, which killed 57 people (including 12 reserve soldiers), wounded hundreds, traumatized thousands, displaced about 500,000 people and threatened about 2 millions. The last Israeli victim of the war is a Haifa resident who died of severe wounds on August 29, 2007, more than a year after the war ended.

107 Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon during the war and 2 others were killed after the ceasefire. The last Israeli soldiers left Lebanon on October 1, 2006.

Estimates of the number of Lebanese killed in the war vary from about 850 to 1,200, of which roughly 500 were Hizbullah men.

On January 2007 the Israel Defence Force Cheif of Staff, Dan Halutz, resigned from office following a critical report about the Lebanon war. On June 2007 the Minister of Defence, Amir Peretz, was forced to resign after he lost his party leadership. The Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has remained in office until September 2008, when he resigned due to allegations of corruption.