By Stan Goodenough
Dec 31, 2006
Fifty-eight years ago, in an unprecedented event, the national home of the Jewish people emerged once again on the map of the Middle East.
Nearly 2000 years earlier the Roman Empire had ordered its legions to erase the rebellious little country, killing two thirds of its people and driving the rest into captivity.
Scattered around the world, hated almost everywhere, persecuted in the north and the south, the east and the west, the size of the Jewish population barely grew – its numbers hacked back time and time again.
The "Enlightenment" brought some relief, and finally the nation was growing. At the same time, the hope of returning to their long-lost but always-beloved homeland grew too.
But just as that dream was becoming real, Satan used Hitler who, as Roman emperors Vespasian, Titus and Hadrian had done to the Jews in their realm, mass-murdered two-thirds of the Jews in his.
The Holocaust decimated European Jewry, but at the end of this darkest day in their often dark history, the light returned to rise and shine over Israe and Jerusalem.
In 1948, with Israel’s declaration of independence, the country’s population stood at 805.600.
This number more than doubled in the first four years of statehood, as Holocaust survivors poured into the land.
Since then, despite the unrelenting Muslim effort to wipe out the Jewish “stain” in their midst, the population has multiplied and multiplied again, as successive waves of new immigrants have landed on these shores.
And still they come. According to the Bible, they are being brought home for a reunion with their God.
As we go into 2007, the population of the 58-year-old State of Israel stands at 7.1 million – 5.4 million Jews, 1.4 million Arabs and 300,000 others.
Israel is still a miracle in the making.