When in March of 1948 the United States proposed suspending the partition of the Holy Land, and the creation of a trusteeship with an international peacekeeping force (specifically to include a sizeable Egyptian military contingent), the Arabs rejected this in favour of all-out war.
The results were disastrous for the Arabs, who since then have kept up the drumbeat of violence, and forced their "Palestinian" refugees into squalid camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and elsewhere.
Even massive British assistance to the Arabs could not prevent the survival of Israel - the warplanes and other materiel given to Iraq, the training and arming of the Arab Legion in Jordan, the military aid to the Saudis, and tactical assistance and military intelligence given to the Arab forces, as well as the subsidizing of the Arab League (much a creation of the British in any case), did not assure the Arabs of victory.
Rather, despite all this, and despite their overwhelming numeric and strategic superiority, hubris and squabbling guaranteed that the defeat of the Arabs would seem that much more catastrophic.
Since then, the Arabs have maintained much the same posture that resulted in their trouncing sixty years ago, with substantially the same results in subsequent donnybrooks.
From 1948 onward the Israelis have defended themselves against Arab aggression, and the Arabs have concentrated on sinking any hope of an independent Palestine.
The Arabs still demand all of the Holy Land; since that is not possible, they energetically promote factionalism and sabotage each other.
We know what Arab unity meant in Lebanon - the Arabs fought each other by proxy, and that country has never recovered from the kind attention.
We are seeing it now in Iraq - the Saudis and Egyptians fund the Sunnis, the Iranians fund the Shia, the Turks bomb the Kurds, and all parties accept foreign funding to slaughter religious minorities.
Arab assistance to other Arabs is indeed "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre", in the words of Arab League Secretary-General Abd ar-Rahman Azzam.
Key engineers of this eventuality, the unwitting traitors to the Arab side, proved their value in 1948 by their incompetence and chicanery.
Let us briefly list a few of them in gratitude:
Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, who wished for the extermination of Jews like his friend and hero Adolf Hitler;
Sayyid Muhammad as-Sadr, prime-minister of Iraq, who gratefully accepted British aid to that end;
King Abdallah of Jordan, who tried to expand his kingdom by driving the Jews into the sea;
Fawzi al Kawkji, Field Commander of the Arab forces, Syrian mercenary, and ex-Nazi, whose ineffective tactics and sheer incompetence failed to un-impress his employers.
And, let us not forget, all the rulers of the Arab world, who collectively conspired to divide themselves in unity against the Jews, succeeding only in the disenfranchisement of their own people and the despoilation of all dreams of the Arab umma - the violence they have, in sixty years, applied to their own societies, keeps the Arab world down and undeveloped more effectively than any foreign boot ever could.
As a lagniappe, let us also mention Mahatma Ghandi, who exemplifies the mentality that continues to inform the misguided rhetoric regarding this conflict.
To quote: "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French."
It is a remarkably ignorant statement. It betrays a complete lack of historical awareness, and that man's opportunistic concommity with anyone who opposed the British. One suspects that there may have been more than a few Nazi-sympathizers among his followers.
Oh wait. There were.
They certainly enjoyed themselves during the partition of Hindustan, as it gave them a chance to apply the methods of their idols to the pesky problem of refugee columns.
Very effective, gentlemen, bravo - your kind attention to the members of the other side during the "population exchanges" proved how well you worshipped.
As do likewise your modern descendants, the Muslim Jihadis and Hindu Nationalists.
The heartfelt sincerity of those who slaughtered refugees during partition in India matched that of the good Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis, and that of the Arabs who wished to drive the Jews into the sea.
It is a continuing miracle that the rape, pillage, and slaughter planned by the benevolent leaders of the Arab world did not happen.
The beginning of Israel was a blessing.
Without the Arabs, there might not have been such a blessing.
It was the Arabs who created the Haganah and the Irgun during their insurrection against the British before World War Two (1936 - 1939).
It was also the Arabs who by their intransigence and fanaticism created the IDF in 1948.
It is the Arabs who by their continued hate, irrationality, and denialism have ensured that Israel will continue to exist - because there is no other choice.
Gentlemen, you Arabs remain an inspiration (and a blessing).
We are grateful.
