On May 14, Israel celebrates its Independence Day, or Yom Ha’atzmautin in Hebrew. On this day in 1948 David Ben Goerion, the new Israeli prime minister, declared the independence of the Jewish state. Its Arab residents and neighbours did not agree…
The Chessmen Museum is in the possession of an abstract copper chess game, made in Israel. Because chess is a popular game in the still young country, May 14 is an appropriate date to see how the Jewish state of Israel came into being.
Always on the run?
Looking back on history, we can see that the Jewish people have spread out all over the world. This was often related to oppression. In the 19th century, movements such as nationalism gained ground in the Western world and anti-Semitism became more violent, resulting in the creation of Zionism. This movement advocated a motherland for all Jews, established in the Promised Land of the Thora. In this Promised Land however, which at that time was called Palestine and was part of the Ottoman Empire, the Arabs were the biggest population. In the 19th century, only 3% of the population in Palestine was Jewish.
During World War I the Ottomans sided with the Germans, which didn´t work out well for them. The vast empire, at the time also known as the sick man of Europe, had started to collapse at the beginning of the 20th century. After its downfall in 1918, the allies distributed large parts of the Ottoman Empire between each other. Palestine was placed under the mandate of the British government. This meant that the intention was for the country to become independent at some point in time. During the process of becoming independent, Great Britain kept an eye on things.
The end of the mandate
After World War II and the Holocaust, the Zionists wanted to unite all the remaining Jews, or at least the victims of the war, in an independent Jewish Israel. However, over a million Palestinians already lived in the designated land and they were not waiting for nearly as many new residents. The plan of the United Nations was to divide the country in half and to place Jerusalem under their control. In the original plan, the Jews were designated a little bit over half of the country. The Arab world did not support this distribution of the land because as residents and landowners, they were entitled to a much larger area. Even so, the plan to divide Palestine into two states was accepted in a UN resolution on November 29, 1947.
What happened next has been hidden from the history books for decades. The Jewish army executed terrorist attacks against the Palestinian citizens to chase them out of the country. Entire villages were exterminated, including the elderly, women and children. Many Palestinians fled to neighbouring Arab countries. Before the British mandate ended, the majority of the people had left the country. Great Britain itself, as well as the United Nations, did not intervene during the massacres.
A safe Jewish state
When the independent Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948, the world reacted in different ways. The USA for example, accepted the independence immediately and many other western countries followed suit. After the Holocaust and the associated feelings of guilt, the idea of an independent Jewish state had received a lot of support. Nearby Arab countries were not happy though: the next day Syrian, Egyptian Lebanese, Jordanian and Iraqi troops invaded the country and Tel Aviv was bombed.
The discord between the countries was big though, and they had also hoped to get their way after these attacks. The Jewish army, however, defeated the invading troops. An additional disadvantage for the Arab inhabitants of the area was that, at this point, there wasn´t much left of the borders established in the UN plan of 1947. Through its victory, Israel claimed even more territory. The few remaining Arab residents often decided to cut their losses and during these turbulent years many of them ended up fleeing to refugee camps just across the borders.
Neverending conflict
The Israeli politics of bullying and looking the other way not only caused a civil war but also a profound and on-going hatred of the original inhabitants against the Jews. Fortunately, historical research into the origins of the Jewish state has provided new insights. It is no longer maintained that, after the Holocaust, the Jews settled down in an empty country, specifically selected for them. The Palestinians were always a majority. History books have started to be carefully rewritten.
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