[17] Early Israeli culture was largely defined by communities of the Jewish diaspora who had made aliyah to British Palestine from Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

[18] As of 2013, Israel's population is 8 million, of which the Israeli civil government records 75.3% as Jews, 20.7% as non-Jewish Arabs, and 4.0% other.

280,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank,[20] 190,000 in East Jerusalem,[20] and 20,000 in the Golan Heights.

[21] Among Jews, 70.3% were born in Israel (sabras), mostly from the second or third generation of their family in the country, and the rest are Jewish immigrants.

Approximately the same number are descended from immigrants from Arab countries, Iran, Turkey and Central Asia.

Other languages spoken in Israel include Russian, Yiddish, Spanish, Ladino, Amharic, Armenian, Romanian, and French.

[26] In recent decades, between 650,000 and 1,300,000 Israelis have emigrated,[27] a phenomenon known in Hebrew as yerida ("descent", in contrast to aliyah, which means "ascent").

[28][better source needed] The CBS traces the paternal country of origin of Israeli Jews as of 2010 is as follows.

[citation needed] There are about 7,000 Maronite Christian Israelis, living mostly in the Galilee but also in Haifa, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.

This recognition comes after about seven years of activity by the Aramean Christian Foundation in Israel – Aram, led by IDF Major Shadi Khalloul Risho and the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, headed by Father Gabriel Naddaf of the Greek-Orthodox Church and Major Ihab Shlayan.

[citation needed] The African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem is a small religious community whose members believe they are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

Most of the over 5,000 members live in Dimona, Israel although there are additional, smaller, groups in Arad, Mitzpe Ramon, and the Tiberias area.

"[43] The group, which consists of African Americans and their descendants, originated in Chicago in the early 1960s, moved to Liberia for a few years, and then immigrated to Israel.

[44] A number of immigrants also belong to various non-Slavic ethnic groups from the Former Soviet Union such as Tatars, Armenians, and Georgians.

For the most part the original Finnish settlers intermarried with other Israeli communities, and therefore remain very small in number.

A check in late 2011, published in Ynet reported that the number just in Tel Aviv is 40,000, which represents 10 percent of the city's population.

There is also a significant African population in the southern Israeli cities of Eilat, Arad and Beer Sheva.

[citation needed] In 2013 a three-judge panel of the Supreme Court of Israel's headed by Court President Asher Grunis rejected an appeal requesting that state-issued identification cards state the nationality of citizens as "Israeli" rather than their religion of origin.

The court's decision responded to a petition by Uzzi Ornan, who refused to be identified as Jewish in 1948 at the foundation of the state of Israel, claiming instead that he was "Hebrew."

[54] In the ruling, Justice Hanan Melcer noted Israel currently considers "citizenship and nationality [to be] separate.

"[55] The term "Israelite" refers to members of the Jewish tribes and polities of the Iron Age known from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical historical and archaeological sources.

The term "Israeli", by contrast, refers to the citizens of the modern State of Israel, regardless of them being Jewish, Arabs, or of any other ethnicity.

[citation needed] The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed in c. 720 BCE by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its population was forcibly restructured through imperial policy.

The southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE), inherited by the Achaemenid Empire, conquered by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), ruled by the resulting Hellenistic empires, from which it regained authonomy and eventually independence under the Hasmoneans, conquered by the Roman Republic in 63 BCE, ruled by the client kings of the Herodian dynasty, and finally transformed into a Roman province during the first century CE.

The British establishment of colonial political boundaries allowed the Jews to develop autonomous institutions such as the Histadrut and the Knesset.

[56] The resulting influx of Jewish immigrants, as well as the creation of many new settlements, was crucial for the functioning of these new institutions in what would, on 14 May 1948, become the State of Israel.

It tends to be very eclectic and contains a wide variety of influences from the Diaspora and more modern cultural importation: Hassidic songs, Asian and Arab pop, especially by Yemenite singers, and Israeli hip hop or heavy metal.

[citation needed] Courses of Hebrew and English are mandatory in the Israeli matriculation exams (bagrut), and most schools also offer one or more out of Arabic, Spanish, German or French.