A sabra or tzabar (, plural: tzabarim) is an informal-turned-formal modern Hebrew term that defines any Jew born in Israel. The term came into widespread use in the 1930s to refer to a Jew who had been born in Palestine (including the British Mandate of Palestine and Ottoman Palestine; cf. New Yishuv & Old Yishuv), though it may have appeared earlier. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Israelis have used the word to refer to a Jew born anywhere in the Land of Israel. The term alludes to a tenacious, thorny desert plant, known in English as prickly pear, with a thick skin that conceals a sweet, softer interior. The cactus is compared to Israeli Jews, who are supposedly tough on the outside, but delicate and sweet on the inside. In 2010, over 4,000,000 Israeli Jews (70%) were sabras, with an even greater percentage of Israeli Jewish youths falling into this category. In 2015, about 75% of Israel's Jewish population was native-born. In 2020, this had further increased to 78%. History The term came into widespread use within the Yishuv, or Jewish population of Palestine, in the 1930s, but it is thought to have been used as far back as the early 20th century, when it was used to refer to the first generation of native-born (Hebrew speaking) Jews produced by the Zionist movement, the children of the immigrants of the First Aliyah that began in 1881 in Romania. This generation of natives referred to themselves as "etrogim." The term "Tzabar" may have been used by immigrants of the Second Aliyah and the Third Aliyah, originally as an insulting term. The changing of the meaning of the term, to emphasize the softer interior rather than the roughness, was done by the journalist Uri Kesari, who himself was a sabra. Kesari published an essay, "We Are the Leaves of the Sabra!", on 18 April 1931 in the newspaper Doar HaYom in which he argued against the discrimination which was cast against the native-born by the new immigrants. The 1931 census of Palestine found that of a recorded Jewish population of 174,610, 73,195 people (42%) were born in Palestine. According to Israeli sociologist Oz Almog, who studied the sociological development of the term, the first glimmers of a new culture appeared around the time of World War I when the children of First Aliyah immigrants were already displaying