Israel

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, headquartered in Constantinople, now known as Istanbul, in modern day Turkey. That changed after World War I (1914-1918).  As the Ottoman Empire was on the losing side, it lost control of Palestine. Great Britain, on the winning side, administered the area from 1920 to 1948 under a mandate from the League of Nations.

As a result of anti-British violence in Palestine from both its Arab and Jewish communities, the British government announced its intention to end the mandate.  The United Nations was given the responsibility to determine what to do with Palestine.  

In May of 1947, eleven UN member states (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay, India, Iran, Yugoslavia, and Australia) were asked to recommend a solution. The first seven of the above recommended that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem administered as an international city.  The next three recommended a one state solution.  Australia abstained.

On November 29, 1947, by a vote of 33 to 13 (with 10 abstentions), the UN General Assembly approved the above partition plan, to take effect upon the withdrawal of British forces from Palestine at midnight on May 14, 1948.  While the majority of the Jewish community in Palestine accepted the partition plan, the majority of the Arab community rejected it.  Neighboring Arab states called for a military solution.

Sixty-nine years ago today, May 14, 1948, the Jewish leadership in Palestine, under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of the State of Israel within the borders approved by the UN partition plan.  Soon after, military forces from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq invaded the former Palestine, taking control of the Arab area, while at the same time attacking Jewish forces and settlements.

The war between the Jewish and Arab states lasted approximately nine months until March of 1949.  Armistice agreements, not treaties of recognition, were agreed to between Israel and its neighbors.  As a result of the war, the area of Israel expanded through the acquisition of about 60% of the UN designated Arab area of Palestine, plus West Jerusalem. In addition, Jordan annexed the remaining Arab area (plus East Jerusalem), with the exception of the Gaza Strip which was controlled by Egypt.  No Palestinian Arab state as approved by the UN was created.

When I was a student at Penn, I took an English course in which I was required to write an original composition of my choosing.  I wrote about the desire of the Jewish people to have a country of their own, Israel, a concept known as Zionism (a movement for the re-establishment and development of a Jewish nation).  My professor gave me a low grade, criticizing the concept I wrote about as "irrational."  

Theodor Herzl, a Jew, was born May 2, 1860 in the Kingdom of Hungary.  In 1894, he was the Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, covering the infamous Dreyfus Affair.  In December of that year, French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was unjustly convicted of passing military secrets to Germany.  He was a scapegoat for the French military high command who wanted to protect the real culprit, a French officer named Esterhazy.  

When Herzl heard chants of "Death to the Jews" from anti-Dreyfus demonstrators, he became a Zionist.  In 1897, he convened the First International Jewish Congress.  It set out a program to establish "for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine," their ancient homeland until the Diaspora was enforced by the Roman Empire in 70 A.D.  The Congress also established the World Zionist Organization to implement the program.

An important event in the timeline toward the establishment of the State of Israel occurred on November 2, 1917 when the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, declared "His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object."

Although Herzl died in 1904, well before his vision of the modern State of Israel came into fruition, he is buried there.  I visited his tomb in 1973.  It was a fascinating experience for me as a Jew who had lived all his life as a member of a minority in the USA to be in a place where he was among the majority in the land of the Jewish people, who have the same right to their own state as do other people on the planet Earth.  It is not an irrational concept!  

So today is Israel's sixty-ninth birthday.  Mazel tov.