Milestone
It happened against all odds. Sixty years ago this month, on November 29, 1947, in a building left over from the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, the fledgling United Nations did something Jewish people had been dreaming of, praying for, and dying for since 586 B.C. In a vote of 33 for, 13 against, and 10 abstentions, the ancient ancestral homeland of Abraham, David, and Jesus was partitioned. UN Resolution 181 divided Palestine, which had been governed by the British since 1917, into two entities: one Jewish, one Arab.
In a plan to solve the problems between the Jewish people and the Arabs, the UN attempted to create two homelands from a piece of real estate roughly the size of the State of New Jersey. To Islam it was a slap in the face, an atrocity of the highest proportion that would ultimately be rejected and intensify terrorism against Jews in the region. To the Jewish people, it was a hope. Governing themselves in their ancient land was something they had longed to do for centuries.
There had been many attempts to enable the Jewish people to live “officially” again in the land God promised them in His Word. Theodor Herzl and the World Zionist Organization, the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations, and numerous congresses and Zionist meetings had proposed creating a homeland for the Jewish people on the land where they had once been the main settled population for more than 1,600 years. But nothing happened until November 29, 1947.
Radio waves and print media carried the details of that historic event around the world for all to grasp. To all who properly understood God’s Word, it was memorable. It was biblical prophecy being fulfilled in their lifetime, right before their eyes. To the Jewish people, it was a beginning, a step that would lead to the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948.
As we mark the 60th anniversary of that historic UN resolution, we urge our fellow believers in Christ to pray for our Jewish friends and especially “for the peace of Jerusalem: May they prosper who love you” (Ps. 122:6).
