“A car bomb explodes in the Russian Compound shortly after midnight… A car bomb explodes on Shlomtzion HaMalka Street… Bombing attack in [the] restaurant at 1:45pm, located at the intersection of King George & Jaffe Streets… A car bomb exploded at 2:00pm on Horkonous Street… A blast at about 8:00am on HaNeve’im Street… A triple bombing attack on the Ben-Yehuda Pedestrian Mall and Jaffe St.… A shooting attack on Jaffe Street at 4:20pm left two persons dead and 51 wounded.”

One of the two foregoing paragraphs describes the situation in Jerusalem, circa 1947, on the verge of Israeli statehood, while the other is a collection of news reports from Jerusalem, just a few months ago. The difficulty in distinguishing the Arab violence directed against the Jews for attempting to establish sovereignty in Israel from that directed against the Jews for attempting to defend that sovereignty, 55 years later, is not coincidental. The Arabs have never accepted the existence of a Jewish national entity, of any size, in the predominantly Moslem Middle East. Their consistently hostile and terror-inducing actions speak far louder than platitudes issued on the White House lawn or before the UN General Assembly.

Remarking on this phenomenon, towards the start of the “Oslo War”, former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael “Raful” Eitan told Israel Radio that the Arab violence faced by Israel today reminded him of the situation the Jews of the Land of Israel faced in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when Eitan himself was a teenage fighter in the pre-State Palmach underground. The interviewer, apparently a bit taken aback by the old-timer’s comparison, said sarcastically, “Still, there have been a few changes since then.”

“Like what?” asked Raful.

When the young interviewer explained that we now have an independent state, something we did not have then, Eitan replied, “So what? So we declared a state for ourselves. Does that matter to anyone?”

To the Arab enemies of Jewish sovereignty, it does not matter at all. That is why the same acts of terrorism that were carried out before the declaration of Israeli independence are carried out today. The descendants of those Arabs who massacred and expelled the Jewish community of Hebron in 1929, now shoot at the members of the renewed Jewish community in Hebron. Those Arabs who killed hundreds of Jews during the Arab riots of 1936-39 went on to produce offspring, who have now also killed hundreds of Jews over the past eight years. The chants heard during the Arab riots of 1929, 1936-39 and the period preceding Israeli independence – "Itbach al-Yahud! (“Slaughter the Jews!”) - are heard again in our streets and in the streets of the world’s capitals, as well.

However, throughout it all, in the 54 years of Israel’s existence it has changed from a place where, in the 1950’s, food and basic supplies were rationed, to a place where Israeli technology companies regularly pull down foreign investments of millions of dollars and Moody’s Investors Service has given Israel an A2 credit rating. It has developed a free press unheard of in the Middle East, as was evident even in the large number of newspapers available in pre-State times. It has reinvigorated the Jewish faith, after European Judaism was all but exterminated in the Holocaust. It has gone from a place where an immigrant’s first dwelling was likely to be a tent, to a place where immigrants are upset when they discover that they cannot import a car more than two years old. It has gone from a place where Jewish pioneers died while clearing malaria-infested swampland, to a place where modern-day Jewish pioneers are working on a cure for heart disease. It has changed from a place struggling to survive, to a place criticized for doing so too successfully.

The real secret of the Jewish state, however, is its people. Israel is an amalgam of Jews from all over the world, drawn to it by faith and nationhood, taking part in a great ingathering of exiles. The population of Israel in 1948 was about 600,000, but within three years, the population had more than doubled, as 687,000 Jews flooded Israel’s shores. The majority of those early immigrants were Holocaust survivors from displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy, much of what remained of the Jewish communities of Poland and Bulgaria, and nearly the entire Jewish populations of Libya, Yemen, and Iraq. All together, since 1948, the Jewish State has absorbed 2.7 million immigrants, all the while facing determined enemies intent on its destruction.

Above all, of course, stands the larger, dramatic story of the Jewish people, predicted in the Bible, but wholly unpredictable. “Eternal” empires have faded from history, but the Jewish State was reconstituted after almost 2,000 years of dormancy. The chronology of events bespeaks volumes: The Land of Israel sees its first centralized Jewish state in circa 1020 BCE; it is conquered by the Babylonians a little over 400 years later, and the Jews are exiled. The Babylonian empire eventually gives way to the Persians and, less than a generation later, its native sons return to rebuild the center of Jewish life at the time, the Temple in Jerusalem. After the Persians give way to the Greeks, the Hasmoneans (Maccabees) rebel and establish the Second Jewish Commonwealth, about 160 BCE. That state exists for approximately 240 years, until it is eventually crushed by the Romans, who later transform themselves into the Byzantines. In 614, the Persians take the Land of Israel from its previous captors. Then, in 636 CE, the Moslem Arab hordes come from the Arabian peninsula and impose their own “occupation” on the Land of Israel. Eventually, they give way to the Crusaders in the Middle Ages. Then another “liberator” arrives, the Kurdish Salah e-Din (Saladin). His rule is replaced by the Mameluks of Egypt and eventually by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Towards the end of that imperial rule, in the late 1800’s, the Jews begin to return once again, turning desolate swampland into gardens, towns and farms. After the British Empire takes the land from the Sick Man of Europe, it is but a short time until it is returned to the Jews once again. In 1948 CE, the Third Jewish Commonwealth is established in the Land of Israel. Throughout all of the conquests by foreign interlopers, Jews have maintained a constant presence in the Land of Israel. Thus, since the Babylonian exile of Judea, there has been no independent state constituted wholly by native sons of the Land of Israel, with the exception of those Commonwealths established by the Jews.

No one can halt the progress of the return of the Land’s native sons and the establishment of their Third Commonwealth. Least of all, the aging, two-bit gangster from Egypt who is holed up in Ramallah.