The Creation of Israel was an Extraordinary Event, but Also a Normal One

Martin Kramer’s superb essay, “Who Saved Israel in 1947?,” together with his earlier and equally praiseworthy Mosaic article, “The Forgotten Truth About the Balfour Declaration,” exemplifies revisionist history at its best.

In these essays, Kramer shows that the widely accepted explanations of two major events in the history of Zionism—the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, endorsing the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, and the passage of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947, recommending the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state—are incomplete. The Balfour Declaration, he demonstrates, enjoyed official support extending well beyond Great Britain, the country that issued it, and the UN resolution came about because it had the endorsement not only of the American president, Harry Truman, but also of Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union.

These corrections are valuable not simply because setting the historical record straight is always a good idea. At a moment when the century-long Arab campaign against Zionism takes the form of seeking to undermine Israel’s political legitimacy, it is timely to note that, measured by the breadth of international support for its creation, Israel has as much legitimacy as any state has ever had.