"Europe's displaced Jews in camps in Germany do not wish to return to their own countries, said Dr. Israel Goldstein of the American Jewish Conference, at a press conference yesterday."
"'Seventy-five to 90 percent make Palestine their first choice,' he declared." Here is a pretty middle-of-the-road type of article that explains the creation of British Palestine, the Jewish migration and the Arab unrest:
"Writing in his History of Zionism, Nahum Sokalow looked in to the future: 'The Jews have grown tired of their roll as the homeless Chosen People and would prefer to be a self-supporting small nation with a quiet spot of earth for themselves...'. The spot for which the Jews had yearned proved to be about as quiet as a live volcano."
The British reign over Palestine lasted 31 years; attached is an eyewitness account of the orderly withdrawal that took place during the summer of 1948, when the remaining elements of their colonial regiments lowered the Union Jack for the last time and boarded ships for home:
"Last week, from gently-heaving transports in Haifa harbor, men of Britain's 40th Royal Marines in khaki shorts and green berets, took a last look shoreward. Alongside the transports were the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Triumph, a cruiser and five destroyers... From shore came note by note the sound of a bugler blowing Last Post."
A fascinating read about how the previously embalmed language of Hebrew had been dusted off and born anew for the modern era. Hebrew in 1948 (the year that the U.N. recognized Israel as a nation) was largely seen as an inaccessible tongue known only to scholars - had existed for the past 4,000 years with a scant 8,000 words: this would now change as the language was permitted to live and grow once more. Today it is believed that Hebrew has between 60,000 and 150,000 words and that there are as many as 9 million people who speak the language worldwide.
Here is a 1937 article marking the significance of General Edmund Allenby's (1861 – 1936) march into the ancient city of Jerusalem in 1917. Written twenty years after the event, the article also marks the twentieth anniversary of the the Balfour Declaration - the British edict that declared British Palestine as the home of world Jewry. "A veteran of our Air Force with Jewish blood tells why he fought for Israel and why the Israelis, hopelessly outnumbered, won the war with the Arabs. His experiences taught him that the Palestinian Jews have been badly treated by the outside world and he says, 'The people of Israel are the most democratic in the world'" |