UNMIA

On Thursday, May 8, from 12 - 1 pm
the UNM Israel Alliance and StandWithUs will be having a special celebration on campus for Israel’s 60th Anniversary!
Stop by our booth at the Student Union Building Plaza and listen to live Israeli music — and dance to Klezmer!
Michele Diel of Nahalat Shalom will be leading the dancing, and Cantor Finn Congregation Albert will be providing the live music!
FREE FOOD AND DRINKS!
Take a little break from your studies and worries, and stop by for some lunch and music!

Recording of Ben Gurion’s announcement of the founding of the State of Israel with scenes from the time (Hebrew). English Text

Yid With a Lid
Today Jews all across the world celebrated the Seventh Day of Passover, which is the day Moses Parted the Reed Sea and lead the Jews to safety. Its Ironic that on the anniversary of that day, another Exodus hero died. Yossi Harel, the ship commander whose attempt to bring Holocaust survivors to Palestine aboard the Exodus 1947 built support for Israel’s founding, died on Saturday. He was 90. Harel’s daughter Sharon said he died of cardiac arrest at his home in Tel Aviv.

Sixty years ago the Exodus, then called the USS President Warfield had its name changed for the last time as it embarked on what would be its last and most famous mission

As the world ramped up to WWII the British caved into Arab pressure (that would never happen now–would it ?) and refused to allow any Jews to enter what was then called Palestine. Many of those trying to get in were trying to escape the Holocaust, after the war, when the Exodus made its final journey, the British were stopping Holocaust Survivors from entering the holy land.

The Exodus voyage was an attempt to smuggle some of these Jews into …

By Ami Isserhoff Zionism-Israel.com

The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was to have been accompanied by creation of an independent Arab Palestinian state. Instead, a war broke out, and at the end of the war, between 600,000 and 711,000 Arab Palestinians had left their homes and were refugees. The defeat of the Arab Palestinians and the creation of the refugee problem is called the “disaster” (Nakba) by pro-Palestinians, and it is blamed on a supposed Zionist conspiracy to “ethnically cleanse” Palestine, and supposed forced expulsion of the Arabs from their homes.

Nakba: Arab Palestinian Refugees

It cannot be disputed that a large number of Palestinian Arabs were displaced during the Israel war of Independence. Their suffering is real. It cannot be disputed that the Jews (and later the IDF) carried out violent acts, often targeting civilians. The Irgun rolled barrels of explosives out of the backs of trucks in the Old City of Jerusalem and elsewhere, and the Haganah and Irgun attacked villages in various reprisal raids. They did it because the Arabs were terrorizing the Jews, attacking Jewish transportation and murdering people in ambushes. …