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Make sure sound is on. Click on the triangle. Video will start in a few seconds...  The Hatikvah, Israel's national anthem, was written by Naftali Hertz Imber, a Galician Jewish poet, in Zolochiv in the Ukraine in 1878 as a nine – stanza poem named "Tikvatenu" (Our Hope). The poem was an expression of Imber's thoughts and feelings for the establishment of Petah Tikva, one of Israel's first Jewish settlements. Following the poem's publication as part of Imber's first book – "morning star" (Hebrew – Barkai) the poem was adopted as the "Hoevei Zion" anthem as well as the Zionist movement anthem, , later on, in 1897, during the first Zionist Congress. The melody (of folk origin) was arranged by Samuel Cohen, a Moldavian immigrant. The lyrics were also later on revised by the Rishon LeZion settlers. The anthem's underlying message is about "hope" the wish of attaining national independence…

HIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel, Oct. 30, 2008An Israeli archaeologist has discovered what he believes is the oldest known Hebrew inscription on a 3,000-year-old pottery shard ˍ a find that suggests Biblical accounts of the ancient Israelite kingdom of David could have been based on written texts.A teenage volunteer discovered the curved shard bearing five lines of faded characters in July in the ruins of an ancient town on a hilltop south of Jerusalem. Yossi Garfinkel, the Israeli archaeologist leading the excavations at Hirbet Qeiyafa, released his conclusions about the writing Thursday after months of study.He said the relic is strong evidence that the ancient Israelites were literate and could chronicle events centuries before the Bible was written. This could suggest that some of the Bible's accounts were based on written records as well as oral traditions ˍ adding credence to arguments that the Biblical account of history is more than myth.The…

Today, November 2, the Balfour Declaration is 91 years old. It was the crucial first official recognition of Jewish national aspirations. Although the declaration itself had little legal status, it was later incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with Turkey and the Mandate for Palestine, adopted unanimously by the League of Nations in the San Remo Resolution of 1920. This lent Zionism a legitimacy enjoyed by few national movements before or since. Perhaps most astonishing today, the leader of the Arab movement, King Faisal, supported the declaration when it was referred to in the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 1919. Although many have since attempted to deny the central nature of the document and its relationship to the Mandate, that's not how its British drafters saw things. In fact, as stated in the 1937 Royal Commission Report, "the primary purpose of the Mandate, as expressed in its preamble and its articles, is…