Israel - why all the fuss ? (part 3)

Miracles, schmiracles!

Miracles? Bah! There's no such thing as a miracle! Then how do we explain ...

(ii) 1947 : The Birth of the State of Israel

Since the end of the First World War Britain was the power in Palestine. It struggled on for thirty years, not doing a particularly good job, though admittedly it was an impossible situation trying to keep the peace in such a turbulent place. Eventually it became totally fed up with the terrorism of both the Arab and Jewish extremists and finally decided that enough was enough. Besides, it was having enough problems of its own, holding together the ailing and crumbling British Empire. All over the pink map the natives were revolting, those cheap holidays for the white colonialists were coming to an end (cheap holidays came back in the 1960s as package tours to Majorca and Benidorm). So they passed over the problem for the newly formed United Nations to sort out.

What was proposed was a partitioning of the land into three portions, an Arab state, a Jewish state and an international area based around Jerusalem. The Jewish state was to be a strange twisted area, lassooed at two points and destined to be the ugliest looking bit of geography on the map. The Arab state fared little better, being the photographic inverse of the Jewish state except for a large hole in the middle, the international state. Only a committee could have come up with such a hotchpotch!

On November 29th 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations met. Fifty seven nations voted. Naturally the Moslem countries - Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Afghanistan - voted against the plan, not wanting any official declaration of a Jewish nation in their midst.

Britain, to its shame considering its century-old relationship with the Jews, abstained; wounded pride at its failure in the area and its desire to cultivate oil-fields - sorry, I mean, relationships - with their Arab friends were contributory factors here.

The biggest miracle (though some may say historical mistake) concerned the attitude of Russia. Russia actually saw the Jewish Zionists, with their socialist leanings as potential allies in the Middle East. So Russia and its allies joined with Europe and most of the free world and voted for the partition plan. Without this unexpected support the United Nation partition plan would never have been accepted, needing a two thirds majority to be carried through.

It was carried through, and the State of Israel was born into the international community. Russia, in fact, became at that time, the young State of Israel's staunchest friend, even supplying it with much needed weapons, through communist Czechoslovakia, during the War of Independence. They saw Israel, with its network of kibbutzim , the communal farms,as a country just ready for their brand of communism.

But they were wrong. Israel was having none of that nonsense. They weren't stupid, they didn't want a repeat of the 'Egypt experience under Pharoah'. They had fought and won their battles as an independent nation, they didn't want to be bossed around by an empire-hungry dictatorship. Things went sour and eventually Russia severed all links with Israel in 1953.

Divine mandate?

Let's forget for a moment about how the land was divided up by the interested parties, all of whom, let's face it, having just their own interests in mind. Let's go back to the book that promised the land to the Jews in the first place.

In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God said to Abraham, "to your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girashites and Jebusites."

Now, if I'm not mistaken, that seems a pretty big inheritance. If we just look at the proposed width of this area we are covering land from inside Egypt to inside Iraq. And the land occupied by some of those tribes mentioned brings us, arguably, right into modern day Turkey! If the Bible is true then we are faced with an intriguing situation that Israel is not just going to survive, but, one day, its borders will make inroads into Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan! If you think Israel has enough troubles now, what's it going to be like then ?!