ASIA!

The Birth of a Nation: Israel in pictures

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  A holocaust survivor bares the tattoo "field prostitute" on her chest

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  A soldier cradles a baby, numbered among the tens of thousands of Jews,
  heading to Israel in January 1949, after being detained by the British in transit in Cyprus.
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  Connections were what got David this exclusive photo of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat 
  
  and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  

  
  

  
  

  The two leaders shared this intimate moment as well as the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978,

  following secret talks that led to Israel's first peace treaty with her neighbours.

  That move led Egypt to be expelled from the Arab League and eventually cost Sadat his life.

  He was assassinated by Islamic extremists on the order of a fatwa.
  
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  The late Pope John Paul II visited Jerusalem's Wailing Wall in 2000, in the 22nd year of his papacy. 
  
  He followed tradition and placed a prayer in the wall's crevice, apologising for Jews suffering at
  
  the hands of the Christians for the past 2,000 years, and asked for forgiveness.
  
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  In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli forces overwhelmed the Arabs and captured Jerusalem. 
  For the first time in almost 2,000 years, the Jews finally regained control of Judaism's holiest site –
  the Western Wall of the last temple of King Solomon. This shot of the three paratroopers
  was taken just 20 minutes after the capture of the city.
  
  

  40 years later the trio revisited the site with Rubinger.

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  An Israeli soldier tends to a wounded comrade. Today, she is a proud mother whose eldest son himself is serving in the Army.

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  Rubinger muses at this photo taken during the 1948 war:
  "It is typical of the Israelis that none of the soldiers are standing at attention."
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  When asked why he was upside down, Israel's most respected founder David Ben-Gurion replied,
  
  "I have to stand on my head, so the State of Israel can stand on its feet."
  
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  David Rubinger's photographs are not solely of his own people, but of the Arabs as well with whom Israel's past,
  
  present and future are closely tied. This is a shot of an Arab girl scathed by Israeli attacks.