EDITOR’S NOTE: We are currently in the Jewish year 5786, now more than 78 years since the greatest miracle in modern times, the rebirth of the Jewish state. The “dry bones” came back to life, just as God had told the prophet Ezekiel they would thousands of years before. Here is a look back at how this great miracle took place and the cost of seeing Israel become reality.
No people have ever been as plagued, pursued, pressured, and persecuted throughout history as the Jewish people. Many attempts at annihilation have been made, dating all the way back to Pharaoh in Egypt, but none have succeeded. That is because God has made an eternal promise which can never be broken. The Jewish people will always exist. The nation of Israel is the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. No scheme of man or human decree can undo what God has promised.
The Jewish people were conquered and scattered again and again—by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans, who took Israel captive. Following the destruction of the Temple and one final revolt, the Romans dispersed the Jewish people throughout their empire and forbade them from living in the land of their ancestors. For hundreds of years, the Jewish people roamed the earth with no place to call home. They were discriminated against, persecuted, faced the Inquisition and the pogroms. But all those pale compared to the horror of the Holocaust.
During World War II, Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, declared the Jews were not the Chosen People, that the Aryan race was. He determined to resolve what he called the “Jewish problem,” and disseminated the belief that the Jewish people were responsible for anarchy, dishonesty, and the ruin of civilization, government, and finance. History reveals that Adolf Hitler and his “Final Solution” were responsible for the deaths of six million Jewish men, women, and children while the world turned a blind eye to his determination to destroy. This “hide your head in the sand” attitude allowed Hitler room to carry out his plan for mass murder. When the war ended, the tragedy they had suffered made it clear to the world that the Jewish people needed a homeland—a place where they could live and defend themselves. And so the process of establishing a new state of Israel began.
The Rebirth of Israel
Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, Great Britain took control of the ancient land of Israel and most of the surrounding countries. Under what was known as Mandatory Palestine, the British governed the land. Despite the earlier declaration by Lord Balfour that the British government supported the creation of a Jewish state, no serious steps were taken to bring that to pass. Despite that failure, Jewish people from around the world began moving to Israel.
By 1931, seventeen percent of the population of Mandatory Palestine was Jewish, an increase of six percent since 1922. Immigration would soon peak after the Nazis rose to power in Germany, causing the Jewish population in British Palestine to double.
In the mid-1930s, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam arrived from Syria and established the Black Hand, an anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organization. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants. By 1935, al-Qassam had enlisted several hundred men. The cells were equipped with bombs and firearms used to kill Jewish settlers in the area, as well as engaging in a campaign of vandalism aimed at Jewish settler plantations. By 1936, escalating tensions led to the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
In response to Arab pressure, British authorities greatly reduced the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Those restrictions remained until the end of the Mandate, a period which coincided with the Nazi Holocaust and attempts by Jewish refugees to escape Hitler’s Europe. As a consequence, the majority of Jewish entrants to Palestine were considered to be illegal, further increasing tension.
Though the Allies succeeded in defeating Germany in World War II, the long years of fighting took a heavy toll on the British government. The famed empire on which “the sun never sets” was strained to the breaking point. The last thing England wanted was another round of fighting in the Middle East. Having determined that appeasing the Arab governments was more important than anything else, they actively worked to prevent further Jewish immigration to Israel.
In March of 1947, the Exodus set sail for Israel. Aboard was a Christian Zionist Methodist minister, John Stanley Grauel. He was closely connected with the Haganah but was there on the ship ostensibly as an undercover correspondent for the Churchman, an Episcopal journal. With that designation, he secured a visa from the British Consulate in Paris, enabling him to legally enter Palestine. His assignment was to make certain the world knew of the events surrounding the ship.
Once he had arrived in Europe, Grauel’s job was to arrange for the transfer of refugees from displaced persons camps to the Exodus. His tasks were many and varied—cook, distributor of supplies, administrator, and contact person between the refugees and the crew. The ship steamed toward Palestine with more than 4,550 refugees packed aboard. Just as she neared Haifa on the Mediterranean coast, the ship was rammed by the British Royal Navy cruiser Ajax, in a convoy with five destroyers, and was boarded by sailors.
This was not an easy task, as the SS Exodus had been fortified with barriers and barbed wire to discourage such actions. The British reportedly bombarded the ship with tear gas grenades in order to subdue the passengers. Captain Ike Aronowicz and his crew challenged the boarding party. One crew member, First Mate William Bernstein, a sailor from California, and two passengers were bludgeoned to death.
The ship that had brought such hope to so many had been attacked by the British navy a mere 17 miles offshore, in international waters. It was a wanton act of piracy, for which the Royal Navy commanders were never charged. Grauel later reported that as the Exodus staggered into the port at Haifa, those still able to stand gathered on the deck of the ship and sang “Hatikvah,” the hymn of hope.
Grauel, the only passenger onboard with a valid visa, was arrested but soon escaped with help from none other than the future mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek (who would become a very dear friend of mine years later) and the Haganah. He was approached by a reporter, who was a member of the Jewish organization.
The unnamed reporter shepherded Grauel to the men’s room, from which he was whisked out a back door into a waiting car displaying American press credentials. The Jews on board the Exodus were then forced to disembark in Haifa and were eventually unwillingly returned to British-controlled camps in Germany.
Grauel was summoned to Kadimah House in Jerusalem to give a first-hand account of his experiences during the voyage with the refugees to the United Nations Committee on Palestine. As he stood before that group, he leveled his heartfelt accusations regarding the treatment of the Jewish passengers on the Exodus. He later said of his testimony: “There was great gratification for me in knowing that my eyewitness report was now a matter of record. Inherent in the nature of the relationship between Christians and Jews was the fact that because I was a Christian, in this situation my testimony would be given greater credence than that of a Jewish crew member.”
Grauel’s witness proved to be an effective means of gaining compassion and support for the Jewish cause. His eloquent speech to the UNSCOP later earned him the moniker of “the man who helped make Israel possible.” Prime Minister Golda Meir believed it was Grauel’s recounting of the events surrounding the Exodus that persuaded the UN to support the creation of a Jewish state.
After five weeks of study in Palestine, the UNSCOP group returned to the General Assembly in September 1947 with a report containing both a majority and a minority plan. The majority proposed a Plan of Partition with Economic Union; the minority proposed an Independent State of Palestine. With only slight modifications, the Plan of Economic Union was recommended and came up for a vote on November 29, 1947.
The vote was contentious, and the outcome was far from certain. Supporters of a new Jewish state, including U.S. President Harry Truman, used every diplomatic tool available to encourage nations that were on the fence to vote for the resolution and to encourage those that would not vote for the plan to abstain from voting. When the vote was held, the Resolution carried by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions and the groundwork for the rebirth of Israel was laid.
As expected, the Arab states, which constituted the Arab League, that had voted against the resolution refused to accept it. It was clear to everyone that war would follow. At the time, Arab and Jewish Palestinians fought openly to control strategic positions in the region. In the weeks prior to the end of the Mandate, the Haganah (the clandestine military wing of the Jewish leadership that became the basis for the Israeli Defense Force) launched a number of offensives to gain control over all the territory allocated to the Jewish state by the UN, capturing the towns of Tiberias, Haifa, Safad, Beisan and, in effect, Jaffa.
Early in 1948, the United Kingdom announced it would terminate the Mandate in Palestine ahead of schedule—on May 14. In response, President Harry S Truman proposed UN trusteeship rather than partition, stating that “unfortunately, it has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means.” Further, he commented that “…unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land. Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result.”
On May 14, 1948, the day on which the British Mandate expired, the Jewish People’s Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and approved a proclamation declaring the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael, to be known as the State of Israel. In an official cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General on May 15, 1948, the Arabs stated publicly that various Arab governments were “compelled to intervene for the sole purpose of restoring peace and security and establishing law and order in Palestine.”
That same day, Arab regular army forces from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq joined smaller units from Saudi Arabia and Yemen to fight against the Jewish forces. They were in many cases, trained and equipped by the British. Very few countries would have anything to do with support of Israel. One of the few that sold military equipment to the fledgling state was Czechoslovakia. Though they were fighting with antiquated equipment and often against superior numerical opponents, the men and women of the Israel Defense Forces were fighting for more than their lives; they were fighting for their homeland and their people.
In addition, the fledgling Israeli army was strengthened by thousands of volunteers from around the world, many of them Christians who joined the fight, often against the wishes of their own governments. These men, known in Israel as the Machal (Volunteers from Outside the Land of Israel) risked and, in many cases, gave their lives so that the Jewish state could live. Most of these volunteers were veterans of the Second World War, and their assistance and experience were invaluable to the Jewish forces.
When the war broke out, many intelligence experts, including the CIA and the British Foreign Ministry, expected that the Arabs would eventually win. But such evaluations did not take into account either the spirit of the IDF or the divine blessing that strengthened their hands for war. That initial campaign lasted nearly a year with Israel emerging victorious, but at a very high price.
By December 1948, Israel controlled most of that portion of the Mandate including Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of Jordan, the area that today is called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip, now controlled by the Palestinian Authority and the terrorist organization, Hamas. Prior to and during this conflict, 713,000 Palestinian Arabs fled their original lands to become Palestinian refugees due, in part, to a promise from Arab leaders that they would be able to return when the war had been won. The war came to an end with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors.
The rebirth of Israel was far more than just an unprecedented political event. It was also a long-prophesied spiritual event. More than 2,000 years before Israel was reborn, God came and spoke to the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel found himself standing before a valley filled with dry bones…human bones. As the prophet gazed upon the scene, God asked him if these bones could live, to which Ezekiel wisely replied, “O Lord God, YOU know!” (Ezekiel 37:3). What happened then must have been quite a sight to behold.
God told Ezekiel to speak to the bones and command them to live. The prophet wrote: “So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them…Then He said to me, ‘…These are the people of Israel…My people. I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel’” (Ezekiel 37:7-12).
God told Ezekiel this vision was the future of the House of Israel. Just as these dry, dead bones had been restored to life, so Israel would be restored. God would bring the children of Israel from among the nations in which they had been scattered. He would gather them from the four corners of the earth and restore them to their own land. He did exactly as He promised. Though century after century passed and the cause seemed hopeless, the dream refused to die, both in the hearts of Jewish people and in Bible-believers who understood the prophetic Scriptures.
And when the time was right—in May of 1948—the nation of Israel was “born in a day,” just as God’s Word had foretold.
