Page 5 - TORCH Magazine #23 - July 2023

Dividing the land
After 30 years of promises from Britain and other world leaders, in 1947 the Jewish people finally received formal approval from the United Nations General Assembly for the recreation of an independent Jewish state in the land of Israel. It is incredible that Israel was reborn just three years after the end of the Holocaust, the world’s largest genocide meant to wipe out all Jews. Israel was established not because of the Holocaust, but rather, in spite of it.
According to the UN Partition Plan, the Jewish people would receive a tiny fraction of the land originally set aside for them by previous agreements. The remaining portion was offered as an Arab state. UN Resolution 181 was passed on 29 November 1947. Jewish leaders, eager for nationhood, accepted
the offer of these disjointed fragments of land, but Arab leaders refused to accept, and vowed to wipe the new Jewish state from the face of the earth. Had the Arabs accepted their own state from the UN’s recommendations, it would have implied a recognition of Jewish rights and sovereignty. Instead, the Arabs prepared for war.
The Jewish acceptance of the UN’s recommendations meant that, for the first time in nearly 2,000 years, after centuries
of dispersion, exile, foreign oppression, and persecution, the Jewish people had a state to call their own – and they would protect it at all costs.
The Bible fulfilled
In a fulfilment of Isaiah 66:8, the nation of Israel was born in a day. Unlike some countries, there was no slow transition into statehood. Nor did Israel conquer a land and enforce occupation. Israel possessed the land legally granted by international agreement. But ultimately the recreation of Israel as a nation was a sovereign act of God in fulfilment of what He promised the Jewish people in the Bible.
Isaiah 66 also says that the birth of this nation will come before its labour, in other words before its birth pains. This analogy is opposite to medical science and in contrast to how most nations form, where the struggle happens before recognition. In the case
of Israel, as soon as its independence was declared, it had to fight for its survival and has continued to do so to this day.
War of Independence
After nearly 2,000 years of exile and foreign domination, the Jewish people
were once again free in their own land. On
14 May 1948, David Ben Gurion famously proclaimed Israel’s official independence and modern rebirth. Eleven minutes later, the president of the United States recognised this independence and many other countries followed. But celebrations were short-lived.
The following day five Arab armies (Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Iraqi) attacked Israel. The Secretary-General of the Arab League announced that the war against Israel would be “...a war of annihilation. It would be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.”
Israel received very little support in their war of survival. They had few weapons.
They had no artillery, no tanks and only 60 outdated planes. The total population of Israel was 650,000, with an army of only 60,000, although just 18,900 were fully armed. Short on manpower, resources and with almost no international assistance, Israel miraculously survived and even gained ground. However, independence came at a great cost. Israel lost 6,373 people in the war, which was nearly one percent of its entire population, and much of its economy was destroyed.
After more than a year of fighting and against all odds, the Arab nations made armistice agreements with Israel and withdrew. For the first time in two millennia, the Jewish people had a national home and a strong defence force.
Impact of the War
Israel regained more territory than it had initially been awarded in the UN Partition Plan, including half of Jerusalem (the other part of the city, which contained the Western Wall and Temple Mount was under Jordanian control, although Israel would later take this legally in the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel
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