Coin Notes::
Few cities in the world can boast a history as long and colorful as that of Jaffa. It is one of the oldest cities in the world surviving to this day, and became famous even before Jerusalem. The land called Canaan, later Israel, is located at the meeting-point of three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe. Every trade route and conquering army had to pass through this land, and Jaffa served as its major Mediterranean port. The Bible tells us of Jonah who fled from Jaffa; Greek mythology recounts how Perseus saved Andromeda here. The Crusaders saw in Jaffa the port nearest Jerusalem. The world-famous citrus produce of Israel bears this city’s name. In 1909, residents of Jaffa established the City of Tel Aviv. Today old Jaffa is united withTel Aviv and a center of arts.

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Jaffa, in Hebrew Yafo, and also called Japho or Joppa, the southern and oldest part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, is an ancient port city in Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical stories of Jonah, Solomon and Saint Peter as well as the mythological story of Andromeda and Perseus, and later for its oranges.

Ancient Jaffa was built on a 40 metres (130 ft) high ridge, with a broad view of the coastline, giving it a strategic importance in military history. The tell of Jaffa, created through the accumulation of debris and landfill over the centuries, made the hill even higher.

Middle Bronze Age

The city as such was established at the latest around 1800 BCE.

Late Bronze Age

Jaffa is mentioned in an Ancient Egyptian letter from 1440 BCE. The so-called story of the Taking of Joppa glorifies its conquest by Pharaoh Thutmose III, whose general, Djehuty hid Egyptian soldiers in sacks carried by pack animals and sent them camouflaged as tribute into the Canaanite city, where the soldiers emerged and conquered it. The story predates the story of the Trojan horse, as told by Homer, by at least two centuries.

The city is also mentioned in the Amarna letters under its Egyptian name Ya-Pho (Ya-Pu, EA 296, l.33). The city was under Egyptian rule until around 800 BCE.

Hebrew Bible: conquest to return from Babylon

Jaffa is mentioned four times in the Hebrew Bible, as a city opposite the territory given to the Hebrew Tribe of Dan (Joshua 19:46), as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon’s Temple (2 Chronicles 2:16), as the place whence the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish (Jonah 1:3) and again as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for the Second Temple of Jerusalem (Ezra 3:7).

Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the territorial border of the Tribe of Dan, hence the modern term “Gush Dan” for the center of the coastal plain. The tribe of Dan did not manage to dislocate the Philistines from Jaffa, but many descendants of Dan lived along the coast and earned their living from shipmaking and sailing. In the “Song of Deborah” the prophetess asks: “דן למה יגור אוניות”: “Why doth Dan dwell in ships?”

After Canaanite and Philistine dominion, King David and his son King Solomon conquered Jaffa and used its port to bring the cedars used in the construction of the First Temple from Tyre.

The city remained in Israelite hands even after the split of the united Kingdom of Israel.

Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian periods

In 701 BCE, in the days of King Hezekiah (חזקיהו), Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded the region from Jaffa. After a period of Babylonian occupation, under Persian rule, Jaffa was governed by Phoenicians from Tyre.

Hellenistic to Byzantine periods

Alexander the Great’s troops were stationed in Jaffa. It later became a port city of the Seleucid Empire until it was taken over by the Maccabees (1 Maccabees 10:74-76) and ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty. According to Josephus, however, the harbor at Jaffa was inferior to that of Caesarea.

During the First Jewish-Roman War, Jaffa was captured and burned by Cestius Gallus. The Roman Jewish historian Josephus (Jewish War 2.507-509, 3:414-426) writes that 8,400 inhabitants were massacred. Pirates operating from the rebuilt port incurred the wrath of Vespasian, who razed the city and erected a citadel in its place, installing a Roman garrison there. ^{ation needed]}

The New Testament account of Saint Peter bringing back to life the widow Dorcas (recorded in Acts of the Apostles, 9:36-42, takes place in Jaffa, then called in Greek Ἰόππη (Latinized as Joppa). Acts 10:10-23 relates that, while Peter was in Jaffa, he had a vision of a large sheet filled with “clean” and “unclean” animals being lowered from heaven, together with a message from the Holy Spirit telling him to accompany several messengers to Cornelius in Caesarea Maritima. Peter retells the story of his vision in Acts 11:4-17, explaining how he had come to preach Christianity to the gentiles.

In Midrash Tanna’im in its chapter Deuteronomy 33:19, reference is made to Jose ben Halafta (2nd century) traveling through Jaffa. Jaffa seems to have attracted serious Jewish scholars in the 4th and 5th century. The Jerusalem Talmud (compiled 4th and 5th century) in Moed Ketan references Rabi Akha bar Khanina of Jaffa; and in Pesachim chapter 1 refers to Rabi Pinchas ben Yair of Jaffa. The Babylonian Talmud (compiled 5th century) in Megillah 16b mentions Rav Adda Demin of Jaffa. Leviticus Rabbah (compiled between 5th and 7th century) mentions Rav Nachman of Jaffa. The Pesikta Rabbati (written in the 9th century) in chapter 17 mentions R. Tanchum of Jaffa. Several streets and alleys of the Jaffa Flea Market area are named after these scholars.

During the first centuries of Christianity, Jaffa was a fairly unimportant Roman and Byzantine locality, which only in the 5th century became a bishopric. A very small number of its Greek or Latin bishops are known.

Israel (/ˈɪzriəl, ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל‬; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل‎), officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest. The country contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel’s economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state’s sovereignty over Jerusalem has only partial recognition.

Israel has evidence of the earliest migration of hominids out of Africa. Canaanite tribes are archaeologically attested since the Middle Bronze Age, while the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age. The Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel around 720 BCE. Judah was later conquered by the Babylonian, Persian and Hellenistic empires and had existed as Jewish autonomous provinces. The successful Maccabean Revolt led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom by 110 BCE, which in 63 BCE however became a client state of the Roman Republic that subsequently installed the Herodian dynasty in 37 BCE, and in 6 CE created the Roman province of Judea. Judea lasted as a Roman province until the failed Jewish revolts resulted in widespread destruction, expulsion of Jewish population and the renaming of the region from Iudaea to Syria Palaestina.^[34] Jewish presence in the region has persisted to a certain extent over the centuries. In the 7th century the Levant was taken from the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs and remained in Muslim control until the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Ayyubid conquest of 1187. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the Levant in the 13th century until its defeat by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 19th century, national awakening among Jews led to the establishment of the Zionist movement in the diaspora followed by waves of immigration to Ottoman and later British Palestine.

In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency, and rejected by Arab leaders. The following year, the Jewish Agency declared the independence of the State of Israel, and the subsequent 1948 Arab-Israeli War saw Israel’s establishment over most of the former Mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by neighboring Arab states. Israel has since fought several wars with Arab countries, and it has since 1967 occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip (still considered occupied after 2005 disengagement, although some legal experts dispute this claim).  It extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is the world’s longest military occupation in modern times. Efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have not resulted in a final peace agreement. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have been signed.

In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state. Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature. Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 32nd-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2017. The country benefits from a highly skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East, and has one of the highest life expectancies in the world.