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Israel - Life World Library (1962) by Robert St. John ? Time-Life International ISBN: None Condition: Good Israel, 1962. A country only fourteen years old in its modern form, occupying a piece of land with several thousand years of history already attached to it and enough political, religious and historical significance to keep archaeologists, diplomats, theologians and newspaper editors permanently employed. Published by Time-Life International as part of its ambitious Life World Library series, Robert St. John?s Israel is a fascinating period portrait of the country during its earliest decades of statehood. And ?period portrait? really is the important phrase here. This is Israel before the Six-Day War of 1967. Before the Yom Kippur War. Before many of the borders, settlements, political arguments and diplomatic arrangements familiar from later decades had taken their modern form. In 1962, the State of Israel had existed for less time than many of the cars photographed in this book would now spend awaiting restoration. The country had been established in 1948 following the end of the British Mandate and the United Nations partition proposal, and had immediately fought a war with neighbouring Arab states. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs had been displaced during that conflict, while large numbers of Jewish refugees and immigrants were arriving from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. So from the beginning this was not exactly a nation enjoying a quiet administrative start-up period. There were refugees. Immigration camps. Housing shortages. Security concerns. Water shortages. Economic pressures. Border tensions. And the modest challenge of attempting to build functioning national institutions almost from scratch. Yet by 1962 Israel was already creating cities, industries, farms, universities, infrastructure and a distinctive national identity at remarkable speed. Time-Life naturally found plenty to photograph. Kibbutzim. New towns. Desert agriculture. Ports. Factories. Immigrant communities. Markets. Schools. Ancient archaeological sites. And enough serious-looking people standing beside irrigation equipment to reassure any 1960s reader that civilisation was moving firmly in the direction of progress. Irrigation was particularly important. Large areas of Israel are dry. Very dry. The sort of dry that makes a British hosepipe ban seem almost theatrical. Water therefore became one of the central practical challenges of the young state, and agricultural development depended heavily on irrigation, conservation and major infrastructure projects. Making the desert bloom became one of the great symbols of early Israeli nation-building. It also provided excellent opportunities for photographs of pipes. Mid-century publishers loved pipes. Preferably large ones. The kibbutz inevitably features prominently too. These collective communities became one of the most recognisable images of early Israel: agriculture, shared labour, communal living and idealism mixed together under considerable quantities of sunshine. To Western readers in the early 1960s, the kibbutzim seemed almost experimental. Part farm. Part village. Part political philosophy. Part place where everyone apparently knew how to repair a tractor. Whatever one?s politics, they represented an extraordinary attempt to organise daily life differently. Jerusalem, naturally, brings an entirely different scale of history. Few cities can make a modern political dispute look recent. Sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Jerusalem has been conquered, destroyed, rebuilt, besieged and argued over so many times that any ordinary municipal planning dispute must feel disappointingly modest. In 1962 the city itself was divided. West Jerusalem was under Israeli control. East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was under Jordanian control. The city would not come under unified Israeli control until the Six-Day War five years later. That alone gives photographs and descrip.
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