The Deadly Founding of the Jewish State

On May 15, 1948, the UK withdrew from Palestine. (It had been given a mandate over the territories after it defeated the Ottomans in World War I.) The evening before, David Ben-Gurion, President of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared Israel's statehood and independence. This prompted the Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and Saudi Arabian armies to invade Israel. Thus began the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Israelis beat back all of their attackers and established Israel as a state. To this day the war is known as the War of Independence in Hebrew and The Catastrophe in Arabic. President Truman notably recognized the State of Israel eleven minutes after its founding, making the United States the first country to do so. Some of the heaviest fighting occurred in Jerusalem, and several American diplomats witnessed it firsthand.  Ultimately, about 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, while some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled and became  refugees. Wells Stabler, at the time a vice consul and later an ambassador, had a few close calls with the violence that broke out and tragically watched several of his colleagues die, including Consul General Tom Wasson. In these excerpts, he tells of his experiences in Jerusalem at the beginning of the conflict. He was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in 1991.