Read here the new state because even then, everyone recognized there had once been another. As for the reference to Zionists – it was written in a time when the world did not judge Zionism to be evil, when they recognized it was, quite simply, the fulfillment of our dream, our hope.
Truman recognized it and hopes for peace
So, to those who have written to me to say that the US was opposed to the creation of Israel and only gave into “Zionist” pressure – I would say this proves you wrong. There was no time for such a lobby, such pressure. US recognition came eleven minutes after the State was declared and the US has been one of Israel’s staunchest allies ever since.
Tel Aviv is bombed, Egypt orders invasion
So much for Truman’s hope of peace – and ours. The Arabs had a choice – as we did. They could have settled for about 1/2 the land – and instead, they chose war. They lost. The rest, is history. Their wishing they had chosen a different path (a path that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in war and terrorism in the decades that followed) is too little, too late. You cannot reverse history and many decisions.
The Arabs wishing to rewrite history and return to 1948 or whatever lines…is somewhat equivalent to the Native Americans offering to give back $24 in exchange for Manhattan. In hindsight, it may not have been the best of decisions – but it is what it is…and that ship has sailed.
They bombed Tel Aviv – as they are threatening to do even today. They ordered an invasion, as they did again and again in the decades that followed. The one thing they have never tried…not then and not now…is to offer a genuine peace.
“Their wishing they had chosen a different path (a path that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in war and terrorism in the decades that followed) is too little, too late.
Sadly, I doubt there are many hardcore “Palestinians” who would have chosen a different path, even with the benefit of hindsight. Hatred of the Jews is so ingrained into their cultural/religious psyche that it appears to be an honor to die in the pursuit of murdering Jews. As you’ve said many times before, they worship death and destruction whereas Jews and Christians worship life and creation.
Joe
P.S. – Paula, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out Robert’s article about Vogue magazine on (his) Seraphic Secret blog. You’ll *love* the picture it paints about the fun-loving, artistic Syrian regime!
Of course, the thing to remember is that Jews are to Israel as native Americans to the Americas. It is the Arab Muslims (whose ancestry is not always quite as ‘Arab’ as everyone thinks – it includes a mix of just about everything, including Slavs from the Balkans, due to the Ottoman Muslim habit of moving populations around like pawns on a chessboard) who represent and proudly align themselves with an imperial invasion and occupation – with ambitions of Total World Domination – that began in the 7th century AD and lasted for over 1200 years. Those Jews who returned to eretz Israel after centuries of exile – during which they had remembered their homeland continually, and during which many individuals and groups had made the long and dangerous pilgrimage to Jerusalem to visit, or even to die and be buried there – to join those Jews who had somehow hung on in the land by teeth and toenails all along, during the centuries first of Byzantine Greco-Roman rule and then the even worse millennium-plus of the Muslim invasion and occupation, are not in any way analogous to the people of European ethnicity who invaded and colonised the Americas. Europeans – French, Spanish, Portuguese, English-speaking – were total strangers to the Americas; their ancestors had never lived or been buried there; they did not speak the languages, and their languages and ancestral lines were different from those of the natives; their ancestors did not even know that the New World existed. Whereas diaspora Jews returning to live in Israel were…a Levantine/ Middle Eastern people-group/ tribe **returning home**.
No European colonist, going to the Americas, could go straight to tombs where ancestors had been buried 2000 and more years before, to weep and pray there; because there were no such tombs, there was no such past history or connection. But that is what Diaspora Jews could do when they came to Israel after generations of exile.
The sacred places of the Europeans were not in the Americas; but for Jews, for some 3000 years – since long before England or Spain or France became nations -Jerusalem has been the focus of worship and longing.
– Australian reader