SUPERSTITIONS

One of the superstitions I have come across many times is that the State of Israel would not exist had it not been for the concentration camps.


That presumes two facts which are not accurate.


The first one is that the State of Israel would not have existed without the vote of the UN or the massive guilt which made that vote possible.

This is incorrect. The UN was largely immaterial, as the Jews in the land were determined to get the British out. Had there not been a UN vote, and had the British not despaired of maintaining their authority, events would eventually have both forced the British Mandate out and the State of Israel in to being, and the Jewish underground would have continued to expedite that happening - with as a result a proclamation of independence. We can see from the British blockade, and subsequent arming of the Arabs, that the UN vote was largely meaningless.

A state comes into existence because of those who make it so, not the benevolent clucking of people on the sidelines. That the state of Israel came into existence is because Zionists were determined - the world was largely apathetic, or actively attempting to make it not happen.

Five Arab armies, with much outside help and support, could not prevent the state of Israel coming into existence. How thoroughly over-estimated then is the actual importance of the UN and its guilt-weighted voting.



The other fact incorrectly assumed is that it was a massive influx of concentration camp survivors which made it possible for a state to be created (this despite most of them still being in Europe at the time).

It was already inevitable before the war that Israel would become a state - it was more so after the war. The concentration camp survivors may indeed have sped up the inevitable (by showing that there was a need for a Jewish state in the yishuv), but their number did not make inevitable.

In that immediately following Israel's independence the population expanded enormously, drawn from not only Europe but also the entire Middle-East, it might however make sense to argue that it was NOT the refugees that made Israel possible, but Israel that made refugees welcome, and made it possible for refugees to become non-refugees again. There is a definite link, but it is not causal in the way it is commonly presumed to be.


No one gave the Jews a state, the Jews built a state.
There was no state to give, but there eventually was a state to call into existence.


I despise the idea that 'Israel exists because of the concentration camps'. Israel exists despite the concentration camps.