c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel declared its independence, and ever since, the world’s only Jewish state has repeatedly confounded its hostile neighbors who have unsuccessfully tried to destroy it.

And for 51 years, Israel has often disappointed both its friends and critics living outside the country who continually offer gratuitous advice about what Israel should or should not do as a nation-state.

Happily, Israel has escaped both dangers. It has survived bloody wars and terrorism without succumbing to the generally wrong advice of outsiders who always”know what is best”for Israel.

This pattern of wars and advice existed even before Israel achieved its independence.

In the months leading up to May 1948, many world leaders, including two prominent U.S. cabinet members, tried to prevent or postpone Israeli statehood. American Secretary of State George Marshall and Defense Secretary James Forrestal opposed Israeli independence, and their views carried great weight in the United States and overseas.

They argued that American support of Israel would jeopardize U.S. relations with oil-rich Arab states, and besides, a nascent Jewish state would be easily over run by the numerically superior Arab armies of the region.

David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and the man who read aloud his nation’s Declaration of Independence, later wrote that Marshall was”a true friend … and one of the world’s outstanding soldiers …. He begged me to wait for a more favorable political climate, yet it could not deflect us from our chosen course … if we did not live up to it … it might be generations or even centuries before our people were given another historic opportunity. We decided to go ahead.” Less than 20 minutes after Israeli independence was proclaimed, President Truman disregarded the advice of Marshall and Forrestal, and gave American diplomatic recognition to the new State of Israel.

Some American Jewish leaders of that time also urged a go-slow policy. Shaken by the murder of 6 million Jews in Europe during the Holocaust and fearful of continuing domestic anti-Semitism, they argued against statehood,counseling delay until the Jewish people had psychologically and spiritually recovered from the Holocaust. After 2,000 years of waiting for an independent Jewish state, what did a few more years matter?

In the months before Israeli independence, a guerrilla war escalated in the Holy Land between Arabs and Jews. In November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The British mandate in Palestine ended on May 14, 1948, and full-scale war began with the Arab armies determined to destroy the embryonic Israeli state.

The birth process of a human being is never simple or painless; neither is the birth process of most nations. Few if any nation-states are”immaculately conceived”or peacefully born. Like so many other nations, an independent Israel came into the modern world amidst war, pain, blood, invasion, and agony, as well as with an inner strength and will to survive.

During the past 51 years, Israel has never known one day of true peace. Despite its treaties with Egypt and Jordan and the slow peace process with the Palestinians, Iraq and Syria still remain officially at war with Israel.

And the threat of nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction emanating from Iran is constant.

And, once again, just as in 1948, various governments and public leaders are offering unsolicited advice to Israel.

The European Union recently called for an end of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. Instead, the city would become a”corpus separatum”under a vague international administration. The EU’s wicked advice is a recipe for disaster and has been totally rejected by Israel.

Sometimes Israel receives not only advice, but dire threats. It is a bizarre situation as grim diplomatic messages flow into Jerusalem warning that economic aid will be suspended, trade with other countries will wither, and diplomatic isolation will ensue if Israel does not follow the course demanded by the so-called family of nations, many of whom do not have formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

But one thing is different from 1948.

Today, the American Jewish community and Jews throughout the world have no doubts about the transcendent importance of an independent Israel. Adin Steinsaltz, a leading rabbi in Israel, has said it best:”Judaism without a state is like a person without a body …. Judaism cannot be fulfilled only in the synagogue. First, we are a community, then we are a city, Jerusalem, and then we must be a state.”

DEA END RUDIN