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Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century
"The twentieth century has often been a bloody one for Jerusalem. But it has also been a century of creativity and satisfaction, exuberant life, determination, civic achievement, and perpetual hope." —from Jerusalem in the Twentieth CenturyJerusalem today is a vibrant, flourishing city, the capital of an independent nation, and the vital center of worship for three world religions. Yet, one hundred years ago—a mere moment in time to a city celebrating its 3,000th anniversary—Jerusalem was a provincial town, an outpost of the Ottoman Empire ruled from Constantinople. The extraordinary transformation of Jerusalem, from the twilight of Turkish rule to the advent of the twenty-first century, is an epic struggle of passionate political, cultural, and spiritual forces. Often tragic, always fascinating, the remarkable history of contemporary Jerusalem is essential to our understanding of the Middle East.
The story of modern Jerusalem is unparalleled in its dramatic juxtaposition of growth and prosperity with unyielding, bitter, and violent strife. It is a city, in the words of author Martin Gilbert, "cursed, even amid its great social, religious, and cultural renaissance, by recurring conflict." The Balfour Declaration of 1917, with its promise of a Jewish National Home, ushered in an era of rapid expansion in self-governing institutions, particularly in the areas of health and education. Yet, the seeds of disagreement were sown when, even though Jerusalem's majority population had been Jewish since the mid-nineteenth century, the British appointed an Arab as mayor. The hard-fought Battle of Jerusalem in 1948 and the victorious creation of the State of Israel were followed by the devastating division of the city—until the Six-Day War of 1967 stunned the world and brought about an uneasy reunification. In 1994, the triumphant signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty ended forty-six years of hostility. However, uncertainty remains as, today, the tentative hope of the peace accords, punctuated by the harshness of Intifada, seems more fragile than ever in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Covering every facet of the legendary city's life—political, cultural, architectural, intellectual, religious, and social—Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century is history at its most lucid and compelling. And who better than Martin Gilbert to encompass the full scope and meaning of this protean city in a dynamic era? Here, the distinguished historian and acclaimed author of Rebirth of a City has created a vivid, authoritative work, rooted in contemporary sources and scholarship, and drawing equally on his own vast, intimate knowledge of the city and its people.
Acclaim for Martin Gilbert's earlier work Rebirth of a City
"Mr. Gilbert has written a lively book, full of excellent quotations—roundly outspoken and often eloquent." —John Gross The New York Times
"His mastery of the source material and his artful use of these materials produce a riveting, charming, and moving account—proving that Mr. Gilbert is not only a first-rate historian but a good storyteller." —The Washington Times
"Mr. Gilbert's scholarship is impeccable." —Colin Thubron Sunday Telegraph (London)
The story of modern Jerusalem is unparalleled in its dramatic juxtaposition of growth and prosperity with unyielding, bitter, and violent strife. It is a city, in the words of author Martin Gilbert, "cursed, even amid its great social, religious, and cultural renaissance, by recurring conflict." The Balfour Declaration of 1917, with its promise of a Jewish National Home, ushered in an era of rapid expansion in self-governing institutions, particularly in the areas of health and education. Yet, the seeds of disagreement were sown when, even though Jerusalem's majority population had been Jewish since the mid-nineteenth century, the British appointed an Arab as mayor. The hard-fought Battle of Jerusalem in 1948 and the victorious creation of the State of Israel were followed by the devastating division of the city—until the Six-Day War of 1967 stunned the world and brought about an uneasy reunification. In 1994, the triumphant signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty ended forty-six years of hostility. However, uncertainty remains as, today, the tentative hope of the peace accords, punctuated by the harshness of Intifada, seems more fragile than ever in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Covering every facet of the legendary city's life—political, cultural, architectural, intellectual, religious, and social—Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century is history at its most lucid and compelling. And who better than Martin Gilbert to encompass the full scope and meaning of this protean city in a dynamic era? Here, the distinguished historian and acclaimed author of Rebirth of a City has created a vivid, authoritative work, rooted in contemporary sources and scholarship, and drawing equally on his own vast, intimate knowledge of the city and its people.
Acclaim for Martin Gilbert's earlier work Rebirth of a City
"Mr. Gilbert has written a lively book, full of excellent quotations—roundly outspoken and often eloquent." —John Gross The New York Times
"His mastery of the source material and his artful use of these materials produce a riveting, charming, and moving account—proving that Mr. Gilbert is not only a first-rate historian but a good storyteller." —The Washington Times
"Mr. Gilbert's scholarship is impeccable." —Colin Thubron Sunday Telegraph (London)
- GenresHistory
428 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1996
About the author
Martin Gilbert
250 books434 followersThe official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin Gilbert was a scholar and an historian who, though his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”
Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”
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Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”
https://twitter.com/sirmartin36
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 30, 2016
In this highly readable and informative history Martin Gilbert highlights the history of the 3000 year old City of David, from 1900, when it was a small provincial Ottoman town (with a Jewish majority since 1840) until the 1990s.
In 1900 Jerusalem had a population of 70 000 made up of 45 000 Jews and 25 000 Arabs.
British census reports show that the increase in Jerusalem's population between 1921 and 1933 amounted to 20 000 Jews and 21 000 Arabs. These Arab immigrants came, like the Jews, from distant lands, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Yemen, as well as Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon.
It has been proved beyond doubt by documentation and records that Arab immigration into the Palestine Mandate was indeed greater than Jewish migration into the Holy Land during the British Mandate period.
This was documented and apparent long before Joan Peters gathered and displayed these findings in From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.
The author documents how even at the beginning of the twentieth century Jews, including children, were attacked in the streets by Moslem and Christian Arabs and, as recounted by a Christian visitor to Jerusalem in 1904, a Mrs Freer, "Jewish children, girls especially have to be protected mainly from the other children, Christian and Moslem. On the way to and from school; one frequently wonders at the patience- the heritage of centuries- with which Jews ignore the insults shouted after them in the streets, and considering how much they contribute as citizens of Jerusalem, it is sad that large sums of money should be paid for permission to pray beside the western wall of the Temple enclosure, to the villagers of Siloam for not disturbing the graves east of the village, and to the Arabs for letting alone the Jewish share of the tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem".
Gilbert recounts the capture of the city by the British in 1917, and the triumphant entry into Jerusalem by General Allenby.
He recounts the crude anti-Semitic statements of the " Executive Committee of the Haifa Congress of the Palestine Arabs" which cannot be distinguished in it's statements about the Jews around the world from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or from German Nazi propaganda.
He recounts the Arab pogroms in which Jews were attacked and murdered and Jewish women and girls raped in Jerusalem, during the Arab pogroms of 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1939-1939.
The British reacted each time by restricting Jewish immigration into the Palestine Mandate at a time when Jews were under threat from Nazism ,in Europe.
He also recounts how the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini turned the issue of the Temple Mount from a religious one into an explosive racial and political one by the use of crude propaganda including faked photographs depicting Jews hosting the Star of David flag from the Temple Mount and even Jews with machine guns attacking the Dome of the Rock.
The Arabist anti-Israel lobby, especially the international media has through the years perfected these techniques, the highlights perhaps being the staged blood libel falsely blaming Israel for the death of a young Arab, Mohammed Al Dura in 2000, who it was subsequently found could not have been hit by Israeli fired bullets and was probabely not killed at all, and a faked massacre of Arabs which never took place, at Jenin in 2002.
In response to the White Paper preventing Jews from entering their ancient homeland, Winston Churchill speaking on the 23 May 1939, in the House of Commons opposed the new policy of allowing the Arabs to exercise a veto on all Jewish immigration after five years.
'He knew that since the publication of his own White Paper in 1922, more Arabs had emigrated to Palestine than Jews, despite that White Paper's declaration that Jews could enter Palestine virtually without restriction. Emphasising the point Churchill declared " So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased even more than all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population. Now we are asked to decree that all this is to stop and all this is to come to an end. We are now asked to submit, and this is what rankles most with me, to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda".
The author records the bloodshed of the last years of the British Mandate and the War of Independence.
It is worth noting that millions around the world have been brainwashed with the image of Arabs being 'expelled from their homes by the Jews" while the destruction of Jewish homes, suburbs and villages, in areas taken by the Arabs is airbrushed out of history. For example how many people know of the destruction of Jewish synagogues in East Jerusalem, including the Hurva, after it was captured by the Arabs in 1948.
Similarly we are continually reminded of the King David Hotel bombing by the Irgun freedom fighters and the death of Arabs after the Irgun and Lehi fighters captured the Arab outpost of Deir Yassin, which had been used as a base by Iraqi and Syrian soldiers to murder Jews on the roads.
But we hear nothing of the Ben Yehuda Street bombing, the bombing by British terrorists helping the Arabs (shadows of today's International Solidarity Movement) of the Palestine Post, the attack of the Hadassah medical convoy to Jerusalem in 78 doctors and nurses were butchered.
Gilbert also details the great building of the city by the Jews and Israel from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Mount Scopus dedicated in 1918, the many hospitals and homes, including the Hadassah hospital of whcih the first cornerstone was laid in 1934, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial set up in 1953.
He also records the dire poverty of the Jews of Jerusalem in the early years of statehood and the absorption of hundreds of thousands of destitute Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
But the world hates Israel because she lifted her people from the dirt of poverty into a a first world nation?
He go's on to describe the Six Day War in which Israel survived a war forced on them by Egypt, Syria Iraq and Jordan and how so contrary to the Arabs the Israelis, even in the thick of the fighting took care to avoid damage to any Christian, Moslem or Jewish holy places.
He recounts the reunification of Jerusalem and the return of Jews to the East of the city, as well as the care taken to protect the welfare of the Arab inhabitants of the city which has mainly been answered by Arab terror against Jews, in which thousands of Jews have died.
The book ends on the note of the failed 1993 Oslo Peace Accord and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The beginnings of ruthless homicide bombings carried by terrorist gangs are written about.
They had began soon after Israel signed the Peace Accords with the PLO which Arafat would so cynically break on every point.
In 1900 Jerusalem had a population of 70 000 made up of 45 000 Jews and 25 000 Arabs.
British census reports show that the increase in Jerusalem's population between 1921 and 1933 amounted to 20 000 Jews and 21 000 Arabs. These Arab immigrants came, like the Jews, from distant lands, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Yemen, as well as Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon.
It has been proved beyond doubt by documentation and records that Arab immigration into the Palestine Mandate was indeed greater than Jewish migration into the Holy Land during the British Mandate period.
This was documented and apparent long before Joan Peters gathered and displayed these findings in From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.
The author documents how even at the beginning of the twentieth century Jews, including children, were attacked in the streets by Moslem and Christian Arabs and, as recounted by a Christian visitor to Jerusalem in 1904, a Mrs Freer, "Jewish children, girls especially have to be protected mainly from the other children, Christian and Moslem. On the way to and from school; one frequently wonders at the patience- the heritage of centuries- with which Jews ignore the insults shouted after them in the streets, and considering how much they contribute as citizens of Jerusalem, it is sad that large sums of money should be paid for permission to pray beside the western wall of the Temple enclosure, to the villagers of Siloam for not disturbing the graves east of the village, and to the Arabs for letting alone the Jewish share of the tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem".
Gilbert recounts the capture of the city by the British in 1917, and the triumphant entry into Jerusalem by General Allenby.
He recounts the crude anti-Semitic statements of the " Executive Committee of the Haifa Congress of the Palestine Arabs" which cannot be distinguished in it's statements about the Jews around the world from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or from German Nazi propaganda.
He recounts the Arab pogroms in which Jews were attacked and murdered and Jewish women and girls raped in Jerusalem, during the Arab pogroms of 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1939-1939.
The British reacted each time by restricting Jewish immigration into the Palestine Mandate at a time when Jews were under threat from Nazism ,in Europe.
He also recounts how the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini turned the issue of the Temple Mount from a religious one into an explosive racial and political one by the use of crude propaganda including faked photographs depicting Jews hosting the Star of David flag from the Temple Mount and even Jews with machine guns attacking the Dome of the Rock.
The Arabist anti-Israel lobby, especially the international media has through the years perfected these techniques, the highlights perhaps being the staged blood libel falsely blaming Israel for the death of a young Arab, Mohammed Al Dura in 2000, who it was subsequently found could not have been hit by Israeli fired bullets and was probabely not killed at all, and a faked massacre of Arabs which never took place, at Jenin in 2002.
In response to the White Paper preventing Jews from entering their ancient homeland, Winston Churchill speaking on the 23 May 1939, in the House of Commons opposed the new policy of allowing the Arabs to exercise a veto on all Jewish immigration after five years.
'He knew that since the publication of his own White Paper in 1922, more Arabs had emigrated to Palestine than Jews, despite that White Paper's declaration that Jews could enter Palestine virtually without restriction. Emphasising the point Churchill declared " So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased even more than all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population. Now we are asked to decree that all this is to stop and all this is to come to an end. We are now asked to submit, and this is what rankles most with me, to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda".
The author records the bloodshed of the last years of the British Mandate and the War of Independence.
It is worth noting that millions around the world have been brainwashed with the image of Arabs being 'expelled from their homes by the Jews" while the destruction of Jewish homes, suburbs and villages, in areas taken by the Arabs is airbrushed out of history. For example how many people know of the destruction of Jewish synagogues in East Jerusalem, including the Hurva, after it was captured by the Arabs in 1948.
Similarly we are continually reminded of the King David Hotel bombing by the Irgun freedom fighters and the death of Arabs after the Irgun and Lehi fighters captured the Arab outpost of Deir Yassin, which had been used as a base by Iraqi and Syrian soldiers to murder Jews on the roads.
But we hear nothing of the Ben Yehuda Street bombing, the bombing by British terrorists helping the Arabs (shadows of today's International Solidarity Movement) of the Palestine Post, the attack of the Hadassah medical convoy to Jerusalem in 78 doctors and nurses were butchered.
Gilbert also details the great building of the city by the Jews and Israel from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Mount Scopus dedicated in 1918, the many hospitals and homes, including the Hadassah hospital of whcih the first cornerstone was laid in 1934, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial set up in 1953.
He also records the dire poverty of the Jews of Jerusalem in the early years of statehood and the absorption of hundreds of thousands of destitute Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
But the world hates Israel because she lifted her people from the dirt of poverty into a a first world nation?
He go's on to describe the Six Day War in which Israel survived a war forced on them by Egypt, Syria Iraq and Jordan and how so contrary to the Arabs the Israelis, even in the thick of the fighting took care to avoid damage to any Christian, Moslem or Jewish holy places.
He recounts the reunification of Jerusalem and the return of Jews to the East of the city, as well as the care taken to protect the welfare of the Arab inhabitants of the city which has mainly been answered by Arab terror against Jews, in which thousands of Jews have died.
The book ends on the note of the failed 1993 Oslo Peace Accord and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The beginnings of ruthless homicide bombings carried by terrorist gangs are written about.
They had began soon after Israel signed the Peace Accords with the PLO which Arafat would so cynically break on every point.
October 9, 2008
There have to be better books out there on Jerusalem or Israel.
August 2, 2025
Eminent historian Martin Gilbert provides a highly detailed yet depressing account of Jerusalem in the 20th Century. From being ruled by the Ottoman Turks and then the British, the incessant Arab revolts from the 20s through the 40s, the wars of Independence, Six Days and Yom Kippur, the Intafada, and ending with the Rabin assassination, there is not one period that is not replete with violence. Although it is safer to walk the streets of Jerusalem today, not much has changed in the 30 years since this book was written.
June 9, 2024
This is a well-written book that gave me hours of good reading. It would make an excellent resource for writing term papers or other types of research. I used it as a recreational read, and although I got bogged down in places, I still give it five stars.
May 13, 2014
I love the way Gilbert seems to stitch together a narrtive from mostly eyewitness accounts. Not as good as his Holocaust,, but still woth reading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews