Skip to content
ZAKHORIUM
PTEN

Date

1920CE

1920–1939

Jewish growth, the Arab revolt, and the 1939 White Paper closed the decade.

Political historyAntisemitism and persecution33.2350°N 35.5783°E
A World Upended: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

8 statements

Statements for this event

03

Jews rose from about 85,000, 12 percent, in 1914, to 475,000, about 31 percent, on the eve of war.

04

In 1920, an attack on Tel Hai killed eight Jews, among them Yosef Trumpeldor.

05

From 23 August 1929, five days of attacks killed 133 Jews, 60 of them in Hebron, and the British killed 116 Arabs.

06

Around 1936 the Haganah counted 10,000 fighters on active duty plus some 40,000 reserves.

01

By 1939, the Arab revolt had left nearly 5,000 Arabs and 415 Jews dead.

07

The Peel Commission proposed a Jewish state on the coast and in Galilee, and a larger Arab state joined to Transjordan.

08

The Zionist leadership accepted partition reluctantly; Revisionists and some religious Zionists rejected it.

02

The 1939 White Paper abandoned partition and limited immigration to 75,000 more people over five years.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
▮ loading geography

§ 02Museum

Objects and images

Each item states whether it is an ancient object, a modern photograph or a later artistic interpretation.

§ 03Historiography

What scholars debate

Positions shown side by side, unranked, as the source reports them. The source’s own assessment appears separately.

Scholarly debate · 01

Should the Peel partition have been accepted?

2 positions · no single answer · take a seat →

  1. A

    Grudging acceptance

    Zionist leadership

    It grudgingly accepted the plan while opposing the proposed size.

  2. B

    Rejection on principle

    Revisionists

    Jabotinsky refused any cutting of the land.

§ 04Network

Connections

    § 05Bibliography

    Further reading

    No specific reading recorded for this event.

    § 06Apparatus

    Sources on this page

    1. 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 412inspect
    2. 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 413inspect
    3. 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 411inspect
    4. 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 411inspect
    5. 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 411inspect
    6. 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 411inspect
    7. 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 412inspect
    8. 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 412inspect
    • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
    • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
    • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
    • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
    • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.