What God Says is Best: A History of Modern Israel
We live in a time when it is becoming increasingly popular to be hateful toward Israel or apathetic at best. Regardless of how the rest of society treats Israel, it is vitally important that we continue to align ourselves with God’s love for Israel and the Jewish people. He has inherently demonstrated through the ages that His plans and purposes for Israel are firmly established.
It's important to note that while the Romans expelled the majority of Jewish people in 70 CE and spitefully changed the name of the Jewish homeland from Judea to Palestina (Palestine), the Jewish people have always been present in the land of Israel. A portion of the Jewish population remained in Israel throughout the years of Jewish exile while the rest settled around the world and became the Jewish diaspora.
Did you know that after 400 years of brutal rule of the Holy Land by the Ottoman empire, the Turks surrendered Jerusalem to a British army cook who was lost looking for eggs?! It was 1917. Britain was locked in World War 1 against Germany and its allies. The Turks were allied with Germany. Past attempts to oust the Turks had failed. General Edmund Allenby was then appointed and ordered to liberate Jerusalem by Christmas. (Allenby was a devout Christian.) After months of bloody fighting and some major miracles, Allenby’s forces surrounded Jerusalem on the night of December 8.
Early next morning, the British officers, hearing a rooster in a nearby village, summoned their little cook (Private Murch) and sent him off to get eggs. In describing the cook, Colonel Vivian Gilbert wrote, “Murch hardly gave the impression of a smart British soldier. His tunic was so covered with grease and filth. The toe-cap of one boot was missing, exposing to view a very red big toe, framed in a ragged grey woolen sock. His pith helmet, one size too small had lost its original shape and had a twisted and drunken appearance.”
Murch got lost in the mist, stumbling up and down rocky hills, until he stumbled into a crowd of people waving white flags and trying to kiss him. A carriage drew up, and a well-dressed man in a red fez greeted him in English, and said “You are British soldier? I want to surrender the city please. Here are the keys!” “I don’t want yer city!” said the bewildered little cook in a thick cockney accent, “All I want is some eggs!”
The man in the fez was, in fact, the Mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein al-Husseini. The cook refused the keys, and he had to wait a whole two days to officially surrender the keys to General Allenby! Thus began the British rule over the Holy Land.
The British
Mandate
Arthur James Balfour in Tel Aviv, Israel
Under the terms of the Mandate, Britain’s principle obligation was to facilitate the implementation of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, which pledged and committed: “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.”
In July 1922, the British divided Palestine into two administrative districts. Jews would be permitted only in the west side. In 1946, the British had partitioned Palestine and created an independent Palestinian-Arab state – Trans Jordan, before it was called Jordan.
British soldiers search Arab men for weapons in Jerusalem on Nov. 2nd, 1921. The 4th anniversary of the Balfour Proclamation, was a day of Arab protest in Palestine
United Nations Resolution to create Jewish and Arab states side by side
On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted with a two thirds majority to partition western Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. Israel accepted. The Arabs rejected it and launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish state. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini stated: “I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers. Murder them all!”
Declaration of Independence of the State
of Israel
On May 14th, 1948, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declared the establishment of a Jewish state. The age-old dream finally had finally become reality. As David Ben Gurion read the Declaration of Independence, the new land received again its old Biblical name ISRAEL. (Until that moment the land had been called Palestine, the name the Roman emperor Hadrian gave, in a dire effort to wipe out the name of ISRAEL, 1800 years before.)
Sustained Arab Aggression against Israel
In dealing with her enemies, Israel has always striven for peace, yearned for it, made endless endeavors to achieve it; but unfortunately, these good will gestures have often been met with aggression. Since the establishment of the modern state of Israel, Israel has faced multiple existential threats from its enemies including but not limited to the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, 2014, 2023, etc.
Growing Antisemitism in the U.N. and around the world
Despite efforts to educate on the Holocaust and combat Jewish hatred, antisemitism has steadily been growing over the years, on a global scale. In 1975, the U.N passed a resolution stating that “Zionism is racism”. This resolution led to the birth of yet another new strain of an ever-mutating virus of antisemitism- a hatred of Jews, that has now spread as a great epidemic online, on university campuses, and on the streets of many cities.
Each year, the U.N in multiple sessions, often uses its mechanisms and institutions to dehumanize and delegitimize the State of Israel. In the current 2023 Hamas- Israel conflict, the U.N, has come under criticism from Israel for its failure to unequivocally condemn Hamas for its atrocities. Recently, Michal Cotler Wunsh, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating antisemitism, addressed the U.N. and said, “We are not going to stand by and senselessly get slaughtered like we were during the holocaust. 2023 is not 1943! The Jews will defend themselves even to the last child…even if the U.N. keeps silent.” Watch her powerful speech below:
Call To Action
John Bunyan said, “What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it!” God’s word says He loves Israel, and He will defend it. He calls us to do the same. Keep passionately supporting and praying for Israel. Isaiah 62:1 “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.”
We are in a critical time in history for the nation of Israel. Want to engage more?
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