Foreign News 1948: Middle East Birth of a Nation Israel

MIDDLE EAST Birth of a Nation Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

—Proverbs 27:1

Between one pink dawn and another over the Moabite hills last week came The Day. It brought forth events sufficient to crowd aside the worries of tomorrow. To the Jews of Palestine this day brought a state of their own, the first in 1,878 years. To the British it brought the loss of a 10,460-square-mile base in the Mediterranean—and relief from a burden they had snatched up with imperial optimism 31 years ago. To the Arabs, it brought a tautening of determination and a more sober assessing of their chances for victory.

Shortly after sunrise on May 14, the Union Jack flapped down from its staff over Government House, on Jerusalem's Hill of Evil Counsel. Without farewells from Jew or Arab, the British Governor General, tired-looking General Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham, flew to Haifa in an R.A.F. plane. There, at 10:05 a.m., he stepped into a naval launch and was sped out to the light cruiser Euryalus. On the dock, a bagpiper skirled the melancholy tune of The Minstrel Boy. Precisely at midnight, the Euryalus passed the three-mile limit of Palestine's territorial waters. From Royal Navy headquarters atop Mount Carmel a flare shot up, arched slowly, and fell flaming among the tall dark cypresses on the mountain slope. The British mandate had ended.

A few hours after Cunningham left the docks at Haifa, 400 Jews gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum under the watchful eyes of Haganah Bren-gunners. The 13 men who would rule the new Jewish state sat down at a long table on a raised dais. Over their heads were white Zionist flags bearing two pale blue stripes and a blue Star of David. The assemblage rose to sing the Zionist anthem Hatikvah—"The ancient longing will be fulfilled, to return to the land . . . of our fathers . . ."

A stocky man with a halo of electric white hair, dressed in a light blue suit and tie and white shirt, fiddled nervously with his glasses and papers, looked frequently at his watch. On the dot of 4 p.m., David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of the Jewish state, banged the table with his fist and began to read. As he reached the words proclaiming "the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called Israel,"* the audience cheered and wept.

In the two hours that remained before sundown, when the Jewish Sabbath would begin, Tel Aviv's jubilant people danced in the streets, paraded with blue-&-white streamers and Star of David flags, prayed in their synagogues, with tears and cheers waved off truckloads of Haganah youths headed for the frontiers.

Unhindered now by the British, the refugee ship Andria brought 360 immigrants into Haifa. Other ships brought war supplies to Tel Aviv. The new government announced its adherence to the principles of the U.N. Charter. At 21 minutes past midnight, Palestine time, President Truman announced: "The U.S. Government recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new state of Israel."