There are fundamental [emphasis original] historical truths, unalterable as long as Zionism is not fully realized. These are:

1) The pressure of the Exile, which continues to push the Jews with propulsive force towards the country
2) Palestine is grossly under populated. It contains vast colonization potential which the Arabs neither need nor are qualified (because of their lack of need) to exploit. There is no Arab immigration problem. There is no Arab exile. Arabs are not persecuted. They have a homeland, and it is vast.
3) The innovative talents of the Jews (a consequence of point 1 above), their ability to make the desert bloom, to create industry, to build an economy, to develop culture, to conquer the sea and space with the help of science and pioneering endeavor.

These three fundamental truths will be reinforced by the existence of a Jewish state in a part of the country, just as Zionism will be reinforced by every conquest, large or small, every school, every factory, every Jewish ship, etc.

Our ability to penetrate the country will increase if we have a state. Our strength vis-à-vis the Arabs will likewise increase. The possibilities for construction and multiplication will speedily expand. The greater the Jewish strength in the country, the more the Arabs will realize that it is neither beneficial nor possible for them to withstand us. On the contrary, it will be possible for the Arabs to benefit enormously from the Jews, not only materially but politically as well.

I do not dream of war nor do I like it. But I still believe, more than I did before the emergence of the possibility of a Jewish state, that once we are numerous and powerful in the country the Arabs will realize that it is better for them to become our allies.

They will derive benefits from our assistance if they, of their own free will, give us the opportunity to settle in all parts of the country. The Arabs have many countries that are under-populated, underdeveloped, and vulnerable, incapable with their own strength to stand up to their external enemies. Without France, Syria could not last for one day against an onslaught from Turkey. The same applies to Iraq and to the new [Palestinian] state [under the Peel plan]. All of these stand in need of the protection of France or Britain. This need for protection means subjugation and dependence on the other. But the Jews could be equal allies, real friends, not occupiers or tyrants over them.

Let us assume that the Negev will not be allotted to the Jewish state. In such event, the Negev will remain barren because the Arabs have neither the competence nor the need to develop it or make it prosper. They already have an abundance of deserts but not of manpower, financial resources, or creative initiative. It is very probable that they will agree that we undertake the development of the Negev and make it prosper in return for our financial, military, organizational, and scientific assistance. It is also possible that they will not agree. People don’t always behave according to logic, common sense, or their own practical advantage. Just as you yourself are sometimes split conflicted between your mind and your emotions, it is possible that the Arabs will follow the dictates of sterile nationalist emotions and tell us: “We want neither your honey nor your sting. We’d rather that the Negev remain barren than that Jews should inhabit it.” If this occurs, we will have to talk to them in a different language—and we will have a different language—but such a language will not be ours without a state. This is so because we can no longer tolerate that vast territories capable of absorbing tens of thousands of Jews should remain vacant, and that Jews cannot return to their homeland because the Arabs prefer that the place [the Negev] remains neither ours nor theirs. We must expel Arabs and take their place. Up to now, all our aspirations have been based on an assumption – one that has been vindicated throughout our activities in the country.

David Ben Gurion, in a letter to his son, October 5, 1937

David Ben Gurion reading the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel © GPO/Hans Pin

When, in 1947, the United Nations' Partition Plan offered the opportunity to form a state both to the Jews and to the Arabs living in Palestine, it was the Jews who, while disappointed that their entire ancestral land was not included, accepted that offer and declared their state in 1948, and the Arabs outright rejected their portion of the offer, making no secret of their aspirations that there be only one declared state, for the Arabs who thenceforth named themselves the only authentic 'Palestinians'.  

 

As history documents, some 750,000 Arabs fled the area that Israel declared its nascent state, urged mostly by surrounding Arab leaders, many by fear of an impending war, many more awaiting the war's outcome when they were promised by those same Arab leaders they could return to an Israel-free Palestine after its defeat by the combined Arab armies. When the five Arab countries declared war on Israel, thousands of Arabs were evicted by force among the total who fled. 

 

When Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon attacked the new Israel, they fought against a newly-established military with raw recruits with barely basic military training who were in the battle of their lives and that of their fledgling state. Miraculously, Israel prevailed, and the five Arab armies in their failure to prevail and destroy the Jewish state suffered the humiliation of the true 'Nakba'. The Palestinians who had fled gathered in refugee camps in those countries, none of which with the exception of Jordan offered them the legitimacy of citizenship.

 

For Israel on the other hand, the 150,000 Arabs who remained and who were given full citizenship in the Jewish State, to become a significant portion of the population, growing over the years to over two million, absorption was no problem. For Jews living in Arab lands, on the other hand, where they had lived for millennia under Arab rule, the creation of the State of Israel left 950,000 Jews at the mercy of Arab governments who confiscated their goods and properties and expelled them.

 

Israeli military commander arrive in East Jerusalem, after Israeli forces seized East Jerusalem, during the Six Day War 1967. Left to Right: Major General Rehavam 'Gandhi' Ze'evi, major general Avraham tamir, Major General Uzi Narkis, General Moshe Dayan and Lt. General Yitzhak Rabin. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

 

Israel was grateful to welcome these Sephardic Jews to join the mostly Ashkenazic Europeanized diaspora Jews forming the new state. Displaced Arabs and expelled Jews almost equal in number, both considered refugees, were viewed differently by the United Nations; the Arabs consoled and empathized with, and a special arm of the United Nations dedicated to their  welfare (UNRWA), while no mention, much less notice was made of the somewhat greater number of Jews externally displaced, left to their own survival devices.

 

Israel gathered 3.3 million Jews from 150 diaspora countries, from European Holocaust survivors to Jews out of the Soviet Union as well as Jews from ancient communities in Ethiopia and elsewhere. All the while, fending off one Arab military attack after another until the final 1973 attack spearheaded by Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Judaic spiritual calendar. 

 

The Arab-Palestinian attacks against Jews that began in the 1930s, steadily escalated after 1948, to become constant terrorism. There is no other country in the world whose neighbours constantly spur themselves to unending terrorist attacks against an adjacent neighbour with ferocious intensity geared to mass slaughter. The focus of Arabs calling themselves Palestinians has never been to develop the institutions required for a functioning state; their economic survival was never in question, thanks to the United Nations and sympathetic Western benefactors.

Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary-General of the United Nations, meets with Yasser Arafat, Chairman of Palestine Liberation Organization, in Geneva. 27 June 1988. UN Photo.

 

Arab Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip have been patterned decade after decade by their leaders to dedicate themselves to the destruction of the Jewish state, with claims that it has been established on Arab-Palestinian-entitled land, not the ancestral homeland of indigenous Jews. Inculcating in the Palestinian Arab population the belief that there is no aspiration more sacred than that of a martyr, from children taught through school curricula and media promptings to honour those who have murdered Jews to the adults they become, proud of being part of a death cult.

 

The United Nations must take responsibility for the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in this Middle East contest between Jews and Arabs, but it has consistently favoured claims by the latter over the reality framing those by the former.