[custom_adv] In November 1947, one day before the expected United Nations vote on partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the CIA urged President Harry Truman not to throw his weight behind the idea. [custom_adv] America would have to defend the new Jewish state when it faltered, the CIA’s secret memorandum warned, and “the Jews will be able to hold out no longer than two years.”Several months later, David Ben-Gurion was about to declare the establishment of the State of Israel. [custom_adv] Seated among the dozen or so men who would determine the fate of the state-to-be, he famously turned to one of his top military commanders, Yigael Yadin, and asked him if he thought a new Jewish state would survive the military onslaught that the Arabs would inevitably launch. [custom_adv] Yadin, who would later serve as chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, replied that he thought the Jewish state would have a 50-50 chance.Today, those bleak assessments feel like ancient history. As the modern Israeli state celebrates 70 years, the prevailing sentiment is one of extraordinary accomplishment. [custom_adv] American Jewish leaders were incensed in 1948 when Ben-Gurion came to the U.S. and spoke about the fledgling state as the new center of the Jewish world; today, that status is nowhere in doubt. [custom_adv] In 1948, there were some 650,000 Jews in Israel, who represented about 5 percent of the world’s Jews. Today, Israel’s Jewish population has grown ten-fold and stands at about 6.8 million people. [custom_adv] Some 43 percent of the world’s Jews live in Israel; this population overtook American Jews several years ago and is now the world’s largest Jewish community. [custom_adv] Israel’s birthrate, even among secular Jews, is higher than that of any other OECD country, and significantly higher than that of American Jews (who now account for some 34 percent of Jews worldwide) [custom_adv] The year is 1944, and they are Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps in Europe, still wearing the signs of their ordeal. They have just arrived at the new immigrants' reception camp at Atlit, during the British Mandate of Palestine. [custom_adv] Four years later, on May 14, Zionist Leader David Ben-Gurion announced to the world that the state of Israel would come into existence at midnight after the termination of the mandate and following the 1947 UN Vote on Partition. [custom_adv] Israel's Independence Day - Yom Ha'Atzmaut - is celebrated in Israel according to the lunar Hebrew calendar - and this year marked the 65th anniversary of the nation's independence on April 15 and 16. [custom_adv] During the 1950s, Israel was frequently attacked by Palestinian fedayeen, nearly always against civilians, mainly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, leading to several Israeli counter-raids. In 1956, Great Britain and France aimed at regaining control of the Suez Canal, which the Egyptians had nationalized.
