FINAL WARNING: The Shining Star
Irgun Zvai Leumi (led by Menachem Begin), worried that a Jewish State
would not materialize, began attacking Arabs. Time magazine reported
that they “stormed the village of Deir Yasin and butchered everyone in
sight. The corpses of 250 Arabs, mostly women and small children,
were tossed into wells.” Rather than risking the possibility of further
massacres, the Arab settlers fled the country to live in neighboring
countries.On April 29, 1947, the UN took on the responsibility of settling the
Palestinian situation. Facing a Jewish refugee crisis because of mass
emigration into Palestine that they could no longer control, England
acceded to Resolution 181 of the newly-founded United Nations which
called for a partition of the British-ruled area into separate Jewish and
Arab states, with Jerusalem as a separate entity administered by the
UN. Palestinian Jews approved the plan, but Palestinian Arabs and
neighboring Arab countries rejected it.On May 14, 1948, the British Union Jack in Jerusalem was lowered, and
at 4 p.m., David Ben-Gurion (the first Prime Minister) read the
Declaration of Independence over the airwaves in a radio broadcast
from the Tel Aviv Museum. At 6:10 p.m. President Truman made an
official statement of recognition, making the United States one of the
first countries to extend diplomatic recognition to the new independent
state of Israel.In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Andrei Gromyko, the Russian
Ambassador, announced his support for an independent Jewish State
in Palestine, and urged the Arabs to accommodate them. The entire
Communist bloc voted to support Israel. They followed their show of
support with a strong program which included financial support and
military equipment. The Soviet Union was hoping that Israel would
become another communist satellite. When it became apparent that
Israel would not go communist, Russia discontinued diplomatic
relations with them on February 23, 1953, and the Cominform
denounced Zionism as an “agency of American imperialism.”Another variation of one of the numerical theories given earlier
purports to indicate the foretelling of the establishment of Israel as an
independent Jewish State, and the end of the dispersal of the Jewish
people throughout the world. The calculation goes like this: 2,520