Aerial Photographs and Photographs from World War I in Israel

Contribution of Professor Binyamin Ze'ev Kedar This collection of photographs presents a glimpse of aerial photographs of Eretz Israel alongside other photographs taken by German, Australian, New Zealand and British observers in World War I, during the years 1917-1918. The aerial photographs, most of which were taken by Squadron 300 and 304, aided the Ottomans in their war against the British. They illustrate how different parts of Eretz Israel looked at the end of the fourhundred-year Ottoman rule. The photographs were used to collect intelligence and provide information about military sites and military targets and Jewish and Arab settlements. The photographs show the considerable size of the Arab villages on the southern coastal plain of the country. Other photographs show the settlements of Rishon Letzion, Nes Tziona, Rehovot, Gedera, Petah Tikva, Kfar Sava and the Merhavia. This collection was given to the Yad Ben-Zvi's photo archive by Prof. Benjamin Ze'ev Kedar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Kedar used these images in his book "A View and Another View of Eretz Israel: Aerial Photographs from the First World War vs. Contemporary Photographs", (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and the Ministry of Defense, 1991). In this book, which was also published in English, photographs from the First World War were compared to aerial photographs of the photographer Moshe Milner, which were taken from similar angles 70 years later (1987-1991). These original photographs, that the author collected, were deposited in various archives around the world, including the British Imperial War Museum in London; The War Museum in Canberra, Australia, which coordinates the archives of Anzac, and the German War Museum in Bavaria, Germany (Munich), where the archives of the 300 and 304 squadrons, that fought in Eretz Israel, were found. The 304 Squadron was stationed in Merhavia for about ten months and its members photographed the pioneering activities of that period. Some of the aerial photographs document the area of Tel-Aviv-Yafo. The German squadron 300 served in Israel between the years 1916-1918. Most of their aerial photographs were taken in the North: Degania, Kinneret, Tzemach, Bitniya, Kfar Kana, as well as in the South: Be'er Sheva and Ramle. Read more