Extension recieved

The Survivors

●​ Millions of people had been displaced by the war, including hundreds of thousands of
Holocaust survivors. The Allied armies and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration provided aid for the displaced persons, helping them return to their
original countries. Many Jews refused to go. Most of their loved ones were dead, and the
lives they knew before were shattered. Other Jews returned to their towns and villages
only to find they weren't wanted. In Poland, antisemitism was so bad that some Jews
were attacked by their former neighbors.

Underground Resistance

●​ The Jewish underground militias in Palestine used force to pressure Britain to change its
policies. For 18 months the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi sabotoged railway tracks and
attacked police posts, airfields, and radar installations. Cooperations among the Jewish
militias fell apart after the bombings of the British military and civilian headquarters in
Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on July 22, 1946. About 90 people were killed. It was
bombed because it was the British military and civilian headquarters in the hotel.

The Jewish Refugees

●​ In January 1947, hurt from severe economic problems and unable to effectively address
the competing demands of the Arabs and Jews, Britain handed over the problem in
Palestine to the UN, which created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
(UNSCOP). Composed of representatives of eleven neutral countries, UNSCOP was
assigned the task of investigating the situation and reporting on it to the UN General
Assembly.

Exodus 1947

●​ The Exodus 1947, a former American passenger ship that the Haganah had acquired
and renamed, set sail for Palestine from France in July 1947 with over forty-five hundred
Jewish refugees aboard, including 655 children. As it neared Palestine, the British raided
it. The passengers tried to defend themselves, and a short battle ensued: two refugees
and one Jewish crew member died, and thirty people were injured. The British towed the
ship to Haifa’s harbor, forced the refugees onto British navy transports, and returned
them to Europe. When they arrived in France, they declared a hunger strike.
Newspapers gave the story front-page coverage of how UNSCOP witnessed the events
in Haifa, calling it the Exodus 1947, a “floating Auschwitz.” The incident helped sway
world opinion in favor of the Zionists.

The UN Plan

●​ UNSCOP recommended the cessation of the British mandate. A majority of the

and threatened war. They outnumbered Jews two to one in Palestine, yet were to
receive only about 45% of the territory. Why, they protested, should they pay the price for
Europe's persecution of the Jews? The Jews, who believed the Balfour Declaration had
promised them a much larger territory, nevertheless accepted the partition plan, which
promised them self-rule and unlimited immigration. On November 29th, 1947, the UN
General Assembly voted on the partition plan. The final vote was 33 in favor and 13
against, with 10 abstentions. The British announced they would leave Palestine and May
1948. So, the reason why it is important is British finally left Palestine, and Jews had the
majority of Palestine.

Israel’s War of Independence

●​ Finally, on the morning of May 14, 1948, the British lowered their flag at the Government
House in Jerusalem. At 4 pm, Jewish leaders gathered in the Tel Aviv Museum under a
portrait of Theodor Herzl. Ben-Gurion banged his gavel to bring the gathering to order,
and the crowd spontaneously began singing “Hatikvah.” Ben-Gurion then read the Scroll
of Independence, proclaiming, “We members of the People’s Council, representatives of
the Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael and of the Zionist movement… hereby proclaim
the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Yisrael, to be called the State of Israel.”

Fighting for Control of Palestine

●​ In mid-April, Irgun and Lehi fighters attacked the Arab village of Deir Yassin, along the
Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, killing more than 100 civilians. Hearing of the violence, many
Arabs in the surrounding areas fled. Days after the attack, Arab militiamen ambushed a
ten-vehicle convoy of Jewish doctors and nurses headed for Hadassah Hospital,
murdering more than 70 Jews.
●​ Between December 1947 and May 1948, as the British looked on, hostilities raged
between the Zionists and the Arabs. In the early months of the fighting, the Jews were
on the defensive. The road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was cut off, and the Jewish
community in Jerusalem was under fire. In mid-March, an arms shipment from
Czechoslovakia helped the Haganah gain the offensive. By early May, it had captured
Haifa, Jaffa, and most of the Galilee.

The Palestinian Refugees

●​ The Naqba “Catastrophe.” During the war, more than 700,000 Arabs fled or were forced
from their homes in the territory that became the state of Israel, and when the war was
overcome, the Israeli government did not allow them to return. The catastrophe was that
during the war, there were more than 700,000 Arabs, and after the war of the world, only
more than 150,000 Arabs remained under Israel’s authority.

Golda Myerson Meir

●​ Golda Mabovitch was born in Kiev in 1898, immigrated to the US with her family, and
became a schoolteacher and passionate Zionist. In 1921, she and her husband, Morris
Myserson, settled on Kibbutz Merhavyah in Palestine.
●​ Golda Meir signed Israel’s declaration of independence. She later became the foreign
minister of Israel from 1956 to 1966 and became Israel’s fourth prime minister in 1969.
She died in 1978.

A flood of Newcomers

●​ A flood of newcomers from Middle Eastern and North African countries, some of the
oldest Jewish communities in the world, these Jews were referred to as Eidot Hamizrach
(Congregation of the East) or Mizrahi (eastern) Jews.
●​ Nearly half the newcomers were Holocaust survivors, including 136,000 DPs. The other
immigrants arrived from Middle Eastern and North African countries.
●​ In a secret airlift called Operation Magic Carpet, about 47,000 Jews from Yemen were
brought to Israel. Many walked hundreds of miles across rugged terrain to the British
colony of Aden, where the Joint Distribution Committee cared for them until American
planes could fly them to safety. Between 1950 and 1951, 120,000 Jews were evacuated
to Israel from Iraq and the operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Since tens of thousands of
Jews arrived from Morocco and Libya.
●​ The ma’abarot were makeshift shantytowns.

Palestinians as Pawns

●​ Using the Palestinian Arab refugees as pawns in a game of politics served the purposes
of both the Arab and the Israeli government. Arab governments, with the exception of
Jordan, refused to accept the refugees as citizens of their own countries because theu
wanted the refugee problem to be a thorn in Israel’s side.
●​ So, they kept the Palestinians anger the frustration would grow and their plight would be
on display for the world to see. Israel, for its part, wanted to pressure the Arabs to
negotiate a peace treaty. So it refused to compensate the Palestinians until a more
comprehensive agreement could be worked out.

The Challenges of Diversity

●​ Many long-established Israelis looked down on Mizrahi Jews, showing little regard for
their customs and traditions, and government policies encouraged Mizrahi Jews to shed
their cultural distinctiveness and assimilate into Israeli society.

A Foundation of Challenges and Achievements

●​ By the early 1950s, major problems that continue to confront Israel today were already
clear—in particular, social inequality, the status of Israeli Arabs, the conflict with Israel’s
Arab neighbors, and the problem of the Palestinian refugees. But the founders of the
modern State of Israel also had achieved many successes. After two thousand years,
they had reestablished an independent Jewish state. Moreover, in just a few years, Israel
Extension recieved

had doubled its population and had transformed diverse groups of people, each with its
own culture, language, and set of views, into a single people working toward a common
future.