Israel's First Perilous Days With More To Follow

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

     Out of Auschwitz and into Israel;  Again, their life was on the line....

A Holocaust survivor, Siggi B. Wilzig has made an astonishing journey from being an Auschwitz survivor, coming to the USA as a penniless immigrant, only to become a wealthy Wall Street Legend.  He was speaking before an audience on a happy occasion and a few of his remarks were about happenings to him in Auschwitz.  

"How can we understand such horror?" he asked his audience.  "Still, I never gave up my belief in the Almighty.  He may have created rats and poisonous snakes and Nazis, but He also created beautiful birds, butterflies---and for Jews----the greatest miracle of all:  ISRAEL, a homeland for the Jewish people."

  Upon their announcement of the birth of Israel on May 14, 1948, Golda Meir and others had little time to celebrate.  

5 minutes after Israel's birth, Israel was attacked in what was called, The War of Independence, which really started on the 29th of November 1947, 74 years ago.  The Arabs responded to the announcement of the state of Israel that would happen and when they heard of the United Nations resolution on Palestine, became violent and this violence lasted until the signing of the armistice agreements in 1949.  Instead of a welcome wagon, the Jews were fighting for their very lives.

From the beginning of April 1948, units of Arab irregulars crossed into the country from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to reinforce local Arabs in their attacks upon Jewish localities and in an attempt to block the main roads.                                      

On 14 May 1948, the territory of Israel was invaded by the irregular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and a Saudi-Arabian contingent.  The next day, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, proclaimed in Cairo, Egypt:

   "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and Crusades."

Israel had just missed being exterminated by the Nazis. 6 million had been "exterminated "already. Survivors were then entering the land from the Holocaust, walking skeletons off of ships, exhausted and weak. 

The Egyptian army reached a point 30 km south of Tel Aviv.  Arab forces besieged Jerusalem.  The Iraq army traversed the coastal plain to a point 15 km from the Mediterranean and threatened to cut Israel in two.  The Syrian army, advancing westward into Upper Galilee, was set to amputate Israel's  "image" in the north.  

Israel, with a population then of only 650,000 and its army poorly equipped, drove back the invading forces.  The Israel army penetrated into the Sinai peninsula in the process of driving out the Egyptian invaders.  Moses and Joshua led 603,550 from Egypt and arrived in Canaan with 601,730, having lost 1,820 in the 40 year trek, So our 2nd Israel started off with 79,270 more than their original ancestors.  

                                                  

6,000 Israelis were killed in the War of Independence---more than in all the subsequent wars combined.  

After the Arab armies had been driven back, a truce was called and negotiations for an armistice began.

                     Ralph Bunche,  Acting Mediator in Palestine, 1948, Director, division of Trusteeship, U.N., Professor, Harvard University Cambridge, MA:  Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel.

In the course of 1949, separate armistice agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In each agreement, it was laid down that the purpose was "to facilitate the transition from the present truce to permanent peace.  In 1949, nobody foresaw that instead of leading to peace, the armistice agreement with Egypt would after 7 years, end in war (1956), and the agreements with Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, after remaining in force for 18 years, also end in war (1967).                       

On Yom Kippur 1973, the people of Safed, Israel stood as one. On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel's forces in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Despite initial Israeli setbacks, Kissinger, now both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, believed that Israel would win quickly. The war ended on October 22nd with Kissinger handling the agreements. 

The attacking Syrian forces had reached within 12 miles of the city, about the same as from Gresham, Oregon to Ladd's Addition in Portland.  In the 1st few days, there were so many air raid warnings that most of the people were not sure if it was an alert or the sound of the all-clear signal.  People did what they could.  Women went to work at the new hospital, sterilizing instruments for the operating rooms, wrapping bandages, helping to prepare medication in the pharmacy, washing floors.  Children, on street corners, directed ambulances to the new hospital, or collected food and warm clothing.  Others blacked out headlights with mud, or made tape from paper, flour and water to paste on windows for protection against concussion.  High school students organized themselves as stretcher bearers;  girls became nurses overnight.

Those students who spoke English and French were used in the operating rooms as  translators for the doctors who had come from all over the world to stand with Israel.  Civilian men with cars brought wounded from the forward and stations to the hospital and as soon as they could be moved, onto Nahariya, Akko and Haifa to make room for the newly wounded.  The casualties were coming in a steady stream.  The people were tense and edgy.                

Two men had been driving for the better part of 3 days, and Elice Pearl said, "You know, there's a group of little kids sitting on the side of the road throwing dirt under the cars on their way to the hospital.  I'm going to give those little monsters a swift kick in the tail the next time I see them."

Three hours later they spoke, and Ben asked about those kids.  Elice told Ben that he had stopped and shouted to them, "Why the goodness are you throwing dirt on the road in front of the cars?  They answered me, "Mr, there's a hole in the road, and our wounded soldiers are passing over it.  We're keeping it level so the hurt soldiers won't bounce."

On Yom Kippur 1973, the souls of the people of Safed appeared before the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be judged.  We stood as one before G-d, and we stood as one against our enemies.  On both occasions we proclaimed, "Here Oh Israel, The Lord Our G-d Is One."

The afterbirth has taken its time being discharged, and has been made up of war after war that was never wanted, but look at what Israel has become;  an outstanding tiny state full of outstanding people trying to maintain the lessons that Moses had taught .  

Resource:

Change of title: 11/24/21

UNSTOPPABLE, the unbelievable true story of Siggi B. Wilzig's astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless immigrant to Wall Street legend.  

Tanakh, Stone Edition

Facts About Israel, published by the Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign affairs, Jerusalem

Legends of Safed, by Dov Silverman, American-Israeli, principal of Safed's high school, whose son was killed in an auto accident shortly after making Aliyah, and our friend.  

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/arab-israeli-war-1973#:~:text=On%20October%206%2C%201973%2C%20Egypt,that%20Israel%20would%20win%20quickly.