We, members of the people’s council representatives of the Jewish community of Eretz Israel and of the Zionsit movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British mandate over Eretz Israel and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel to be known as the State of Israel.
- May 15, 1948

The Arab response:

“We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down…” - Iraqui prime Minister Nuri Said.

“…. Jihad, a holy war. This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre…The millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean…" - The secretary General of the Arab league, Azzam Pasha

“ I declare a holy war. My Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!” - Haj Amin Al Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem

Promising beginnings wouldn’t you say? The United Nation’s Resolution on November 29, 1947 gave Arabs and Jews each their respective countries. But this flew right over the heads of pretty greedy Arab politicians. Oy! if they only agreed, think of the thousands of lives Jewish and Arabic that would have lived, of the plenty and beauty possible in the Middle East. But the Jewish dream for peace and prosperity was met by cannons and tanks.

The Jews fought to protect themselves, their families, their communities, and their country, with the lion conviction of the once walking dead, who understood the language of threats better than any other people. Jews from Arabic countries in their fleeing from the lands they lived in for over a thousand years underscored the same hatred and venom Jews experienced around the world.

But whereas the Jews who came into Israel were welcomed in open arms and settled even if at the beginning in tents for no other housing was available, the Arab refugees, who escaped in the hopes of coming back are still sitting in squalid camps, for no Arab country wants them. But I am ahead of myself, am I not? I said it was an epic, a love story.

Did they have any guns against the seven armies that swept into Israel immediately after the Declaration of Independence? Airplanes, tanks, armored vehicles? Would you believe Molotov cocktail bottles, scrap metal refurbished into rifles and sheets to cover buses with? Demolished airplanes bought for scrap rebuilt to fly? Eventually with donations, Israelis were able to buy ammunition, but they were always under equipped.

How did they communicate those Jews from scores of different countries and different languages? The superficial answer is they improvised between Yiddish, Arabic, and Hebrew. The heartfelt answer is, they communicated with one heart that pounded the same message. “Since we want it, it will be a reality.”

With this power the Israelis achieved the impossible, they freed the besieged city of Jerusalem, sadly losing the Old City. They recaptured the settlements which were initially overrun by the Arab armies that swept into Israel, then astonishingly, they pushed into the Sinai Peninsula. They would give it up, but recapture it time and time again.

They achieved the impossible dream. They rose like the Sphinx from the ashes of persecution and the Holocaust and rebuilt the State of Israel.