Pre-1948 Movies of Palestine/Eretz Israel!

The folk over at Israel’s History – a Picture a Day have noted that  85,000 films of the “giant newsreel archive, British Pathé” are now available to the public. These “. . . include newsreels from Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948.”

See for example the 8 minute silent video of a variety of scenes from the land in 1940(!) including a sea plane landing on the Dead Sea (at 4:38 min.) and scaffolding at the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—including the famous “immovable ladder” (at 5:38 min.).

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History of “Palestine/Eretz Yisrael” in Old Photographs!

I have spent over 15 years of my adult life in Israel but have always found it tricky to keep track of all the twists and turns of the history of the people of the land during the “modern period.”

Over the past few months I have followed a web site called “Israel’s History – a Picture a Day” and have found it a very enjoyable “bite size” way of learning the history of the land during this complex period.

The site has assembled old photos from the Library of Congress (USA) on a whole host of topics along with their descriptive commentary.  This I appreciate(!) for there is no way that I could take time to sort through all the photos in the Library of Congress and think about their significance.

IMHO these folk have provided a very valuable source of visual and textual information on the interaction of the Turks, Arabs, Brits, and Jews (etc.) in the Land!