In Finland, peace and quiet in isolation is often the object of the pastime. In Finland, fish houses are a rare. But wearing a sealed and insulated dry suit designed with space age fabric is not.
Splatoon
Nintendo announced that a series of Splatoon Amiibo figures would be released along with the game, Boy and Girl Inklings are sold separately and a Squid figure is sold only as a bundle with either the game or the two other Amiibos. People who pre-ordered "Splatoon" at GameStop were given a download voucher that gave them Splatoon-themed Mii costumes to use in "Super Smash Bros. For Wii U".
"Splatoon" was met with positive reviews. GamesRadar rated the game a 3.5 out of 5 stars. They said that the game was a refreshing take on the shooter genre but criticized some of the features like lobbies and Amibo-locked content. Destructoid rated the game 8.5. Chris Carter of Destructoid, said that "most of (the game's) shortcomings can be forgiven in my mind because of how damn fun it is."
1948 Palestine War
The 1948 Palestine War, also known as the War of Independence to Israelis (people from Israel), was a war between the new state of Israel, east Israelian Arabs, and the other states around Israel. The war began in 1947 after the announcement of the end of the British Mandate in Palestine (the British control of the region) and the separation of the land into two countries of the same size. By the end of the war in 1949 Israel had expanded (made bigger) its land beyond its given borders. The Arab state created in the UN Partition Plan (UN Separation Plan) never came into existence as its two largest parts of land, the Gaza Strip (small piece of land south of Palestine on the coast) and the West Bank (region east of Jerusalem and west of the Jordan River), went into the control of Egypt and Jordan one by one. The war continues to be an issue in the Middle East today. For Israelis, it shows the change from the Yishuv (the Jewish group in Palestine) to the state of Israel (even though the War of Independence took place). Other countries had to deal with the idea of loss and the difficulties of local arguments caused by the creation of a special Jewish State in a highly Arab region. Palestinians remember the war as The Nakba ("lit. Catastrophe," , "al-Nakba"), the war that broke up a growing nation and pushed its people away.
Beginning in 1881, European Jews began to move to Palestine in large numbers. These new immigrants mainly settled in the region under the banner of Jewish nationalism, known as Zionism. The goal of this nationalist movement was the creation of a Jewish state. Although at first friendly, relations between Arabs in Palestine and Jews from Europe became more bitter as the number of Jews moving grew.
During World War One, Arabs and Jews were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. To weaken the Empire, her enemies (Britain and France), began to offer land to peoples in sections of the Empire for launching resistance to the Ottomans. This included offering Palestine to various Arab leaders (including the Husayn family of Saudi Arabia). At the same time, the British offered control of Palestine to a Jewish state that didn't yet exist. Although this action led to nothing, it still encouraged greater movement of Jews to Palestine as well as a fear of losing regional control for the Palestinians. In 1936, responding to the growing Jewish population, Palestinian Arabs led an armed revolt against the British and Jews in Palestine. The revolt, led by the mufti and head of the Arab Higher Committee Hajj Amin al-Husayni, was the first large-scale expression of a sense of Palestinian nationalism. Though it ended with the British and Jews putting down the revolt, the resulting White Paper of 1939 proved it had been an influential piece of resistance. Under the 1939 White Paper, Jews could only send a further 75,000 immigrants over 5 years and the goal of giving over Israel to Palestine. This situation, two cultures competing against each other for Palestine, continued to be the case throughout World War Two. At the end of that conflict, the British Mandate in Palestine was near ending and the peoples of the region wanted a solution to the issue.
In 1947, the British gave the issue of competing peoples within Palestine to the United Nations. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine was tasked with fizing the issue of violence between the two groups and treating each side with fairness in the giving-out of land. On November 29, 1947, the Partition Plan was announced. Palestine would be divided into separate Jewish and Arab states of roughly equal size. Jerusalem would remain an independent city run by the UN. Finally, the British would leave the Mandate of Palestine by May 1948. At first, most of the international community supported the plan (including both the US and USSR) as well as the Yishuv. Palestinian Arabs, as well as the nations of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Transjordan (now Jordan) argued against the plan and pushed for a new one with an Arab state and a recognized Jewish minority. When that was not accepted, these nations moved for war by raising armies to fight the new state of Israel.
Given its recent status as a state, the Yishuv actually had one of the most well-organized and well-armed military forces in the region. This force fell under the control of the Haganah, a single state army and the army that would become the modern Israeli Defense Force (IDF)(the switch was made in late May 1948). By mid-May, the state of Israel had called up an army of 35,000. As the war continued into July, that number trended up to 65,000. At the end of the war, Israel had successfully brought up and armed 96,441 men to fight against the Palestinians and Arab nations. Additionally, Israel was unique for having a developed strategic plan and a simple command system. Under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, the minister of defense, the state of Israel could count on a force with unified leadership and a plan.
Unlike the Yishuv, the Palestinians had no unified force before the war began in late 1947. There were several paramilitary groups, but no single leader, structure or plan. Al-Husayni and the Arab Higher Committee tried to give the fighters a system. Yet, many disliked his leadership and did not think of the committee as the voice of Palestinians. Still, al-Husayni successfully created a rag-tag force known as the Holy War Army made up of new volunteers and paramilitary forces. This army and the other Palestinian fighters, however, lacked modern weapons and supplies. Though al-Husayni pushed the Arab League (a collection of majority Arab nations) for greater support and control to direct the course of the war, the League blocked him.
The nations of the Arab League that joined in the war against Israel were Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria (there was a smaller force from Saudi Arabia and Yemen under Egyptian command). Despite having the League to bind them, at the start of the war there was no single League commander. Each country mobilized its own force for its own goals. The force was thus not one League force but a collection of forces. The final force from the Arab League, the Arab Liberation Army, was a force of 4,000 volunteers from across the Middle East which worked out of Syria. While the nations of the Arab League surrounded Israel, they did so as different countries.