This Year In Jerusalem ...

Guilt created the reality of the State of Israel.

Rewarding the determination of Zionists who began migrating to Palestine in the late 19th Century, there to join the scattered Orthodox Jews already established in a minority of Jews cleaving to their historical homeland.

The UN General Assembly presidium approved the Partition Plan for Palestine, Resolution 181, in 1947. In May of 1948, Israel declared itself a state. Winston Churchill in his wisdom saw the need for a Jewish place of refuge, the restoration of a Jewish homeland and was influential in persuading others in a position to make decisions, in favour of support.

Among those voting in the packed UN Assembly 33 states had voted "yes"; 13 "no"; and there were 10 abstentions. Those who voted against were predictably the Arab and Muslim states; surprisingly abetted by Greece, Cuba and India. Cuba remains hostile to Israel to this day, and Israeli relations with India have warmed to a beneficial mutual respect, reflected in partnership in trade and technology.

The "ayes" were just as predictable, with some notable surprises. The United States, the countries of the British Dominion; Western Europe, most of Latin America, and amazingly - the Soviet Bloc. Russia had suffered greatly during the Second World War, and it's felt that this was the moral impetus for it to extend compassion toward the Jews.

Sixty years later, and there are scant few countries of the once-British Dominion that stand with Israel. Britain and France are luke-warm and at arms' length. Germany extends a hand of support. Countries of Latin America find themselves largely more concerned with the plight of the hard-done-by Palestinians. Russia blows hot and cold and hasn't been averse to materially assisting Palestinian terror groups.

Britain packed up her troops and prepared to leave British-mandated Palestine. Glad to leave that impossible region of competing interests and bitterly contested territory. Badly bruised by an excess of violence committed against the British presence by the Irgun and the Stern Gang, themselves victims of the compliment returned by British troops.

Pre-Partition, a desperate and brutal para-military bearing an eerie resemblance to the Islamist jihadists of today proved that Jews could be as efficiently lethal in battling their perceived enemies as their innumerable enemies around the world were in their ongoing determination to eradicate the Jews from the face of the earth.

When the General Assembly of the United Nations authorized the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to recommend a solution to the Palestine conundrum, which both the indigenous Palestinian Arabs and the homeless Jews, led by their Zionist champions contested, the Arabs felt fairly complacent that the decision would come down in their favour.

How could they anticipate that Russia, which had always favoured the Arabs and which had been consistently anti-British, would let them down. Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet deputy foreign minister delivered a speech to the General Assembly that astounded all who heard him as he spoke of "the Jewish people's exceptional and indescribable sorrow and suffering" through the Holocaust.

He spoke of the homeless, the displaced persons camps across Europe burgeoning with Jewish men, women and children rescued from concentration camps, listlessly awaiting a decision on their dispersal; invitations to emigrate to accepting countries to enable them to begin life anew. He stated it would be only right to allow Jewish self-determination in a homeland of their own.

And he offered the solution of partitioning Palestine into two states; one Jewish, one Arab. When, on November 29, 1947, Partition passed with a two-thirds majority in the UN General Assembly, the Arab delegations walked out of the plenary session, declaring the resolution invalid, while the Zionists were beside themselves with joy.

Clearly, to the Jews, this represented their age-old dream of returning some day to Jerusalem - their fabled city of spiritual renewal - come true. To the Palestinian Arabs this was a confounding imposition on the reality of their existence; their geography pulled out from under their very feet as the world sacrificed them to Europe's and the West's assuaging of guilt.

To the Arabs, the expunging of guilt - by this clear and unequivocal declaration of acceptance of a Jewish homeland in their ancient place of residence, of two millennia of persecution of The Wandering Jew - was a personal assault upon them. They harboured no guilt for the aeons-long humiliation and persecution of an ancient tribal people.

Since time immemorial one tribe, one nation, one country after another has raided, conquered, occupied another, and a slow but inexorable integration of the peoples occurred to result in an eventual assimilation. Alternately, the vanquished peoples dispersed, settled elsewhere, dreamed for several generations of their old "homeland", then accepted the reality of their new geography.

As recently as the last century, the early portions of the 20th Century, malleable borders have been re-assigned, in Russia, in Germany, in Africa, in Asia, and people learned, despite themselves, to accommodate to their new reality. A reality which, in later years, occasionally settled into a consolidated accomplishment; in other instances, an accomplished breach.

The Palestinian Arabs have chosen - goaded and encouraged by their brethren from surrounding Arab states - to refuse this geographical and social reality imposed upon them by the collected world powers. That same authority that rushed to the assistance of the then-displaced Palestinians, in their refugee camps, and which has, under the auspices of the UN, provided shelter and all the necessitates of life, ever since.

These were choices, and admittedly not very good choices. For an entire people to submit to victimhood, to cherish that neurosis, to prefer to thrust opportunity further away from the advancement of their settled futures in favour of becoming perpetual beggars holding out their cup for the world's sustenance and pity.

They most certainly were hard done by. Time passes, and opportunities arise, to be accepted and made the most of. Instead, the choice was to bitterly oppose and militantly threaten. Israel, after 60 years of existence, starting out as a tiny enclave of scant-few citizens, having to resort to violent defence of their birthright, has since blossomed into a strong, vibrant, savvy, entrepreneurial success.

In economic terms Israel is the envy of much of the world. Her technology, educated elite, scientists, medical community, business ethic, cultural and artistic excellence, agricultural prowess make her stand out as a success in every conceivable way, as a proud country of grand achievements.

Pity that skeleton in her closet insists on rattling its bones so bloody inconveniently.

Israel will do what she can to make amends. Long may she reign.