November 29, 1947 – November 29, 2004

This BlogBurst piece is cross-posted by participating websites, to commemorate a milestone in Israel’s history. The list of the participating sites is appended at the end of this post.

November 29, 2004:

Anniversary of the UN vote on Resolution 181

Today is the anniversary of the UN vote on resolution 181, which approved the partition of the western part British-mandate Palestine into a predominately Jewish state and a predominately Arab state. (The UN partition plan, of course, included in their calculations the fact that mush of the British mandate was being ripped away from what had been allocated in 1921 for a Jewish National Home into Emir Abdullah’s Jordan).

The partition plan was approved by 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions.

The 33 countries that cast the “Yes” vote were: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussia, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Union of South Africa, USSR, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela. (Among other countries, the list includes the US, the three British Dominions, all the European countries except for Greece and the UK, and all of the Soviet-block countries.)

The 13 countries that voted “No” were: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen. (Ten of these are Moslem countries; Greece has the special distinction of being the only European country to have joined the Hall of Shame.)

The ten countries that abstained were: Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.

On November 30, 1947, the day following the vote, the armies of 5 Arab nations launched a war against the Jews of Palestine. This war was to be a genocidal war, as the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt invaded with the promise of “throw all the Jews into the sea”. Meanwhile, on the ground, Palestinian Arabs murdered six Jews in a bus making its way to Jerusalem. They murdered another Jew in the Tel-Aviv – Jaffa area. In large and small battles, the War of Independence would claim 6,000 Jews – 1% of the total Jewish population in 1948 Israel. Per capita, this loss is equivalent to the 3,000,000 American deaths or 300,000 Canadian deaths.

Throughout the territories of the Arab countries, Jews found themselves persecuted. The murders in Syria’s Aleppo are the best known, but all told 600,000 Jews were expelled from their homes – about the same number of Arabs that claim to have been expelled from their homes in Palestine (a claim that is dubious at best – many of those Palestinians left so they didn’t get in the way of the genocidal armies that were invading – armies that they openly supported). Nonetheless, despite the injustice that had been done to them, the new Jewish state took in the Jewish refugees as they fled their homes throughout the Muslim world. This act of compassion, of course, is far more than has been done by the Arab countries for their brethren, whom they have kept in squalid refugee camps for generations so as to put pressure on Israel.

Although the Arab aggression was marked by brashness, the Arab countries that invaded lost much of the territory that had been allocated to them under peaceful means. Bruised and bleeding, Israel prevailed nonetheless and remains till today the only democracy in the Middle East.

This is a list of participating sites, in alphabetical order of site name:

Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler

Arkansas Bushwacker

Armies Of Liberation

Bama Pachyderm

Biurchametz

Blimpish

Blithered

Blog Willy

Blue Rev

Canadian Comment