President Harry Truman delivered the opening address at the United Nations at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in 1946. One year later the U.N. helped create the state of Israel.

By DAVID OATS

On the eastern rim of the Mediterranean there is a small section of earth that, although only half the size of New Jersey, had been the very center of the universe for the mapmakers of antiquity, the destination of all the roads. Palestine.

In the converted ice skating rink at the N.Y. City Building in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the late fall of 1947, the delegates of 56 of the 57 members of the United Nations General Assembly would be called upon to decide the future of that sliver of land.

The fledgling United Nations had been meeting at Flushing Meadows for over a year, when in November of ’47 its members participated in a debate that stirred unparalleled emotions. Each of its members could in some way trace a part of its spiritual heritage to Palestine. In the post-war world and the wake of the Holocaust, they would decide on a proposal that called for the splitting of that ancient territory into two separate states – one Arab, one Jewish.
 
Never Again
After the end of World War II, the Jewish people came face to face with an overwhelming and ghastly reality. Six million Jews had been systematically killed. Their cry was, “Never Again.” Their preoccupation was now with the task of gathering the survivors of the Holocaust into Palestine as quickly as possible and constructing a strong and self-reliant society so that such a horror could never take place again.

And it was at Flushing Meadows in Queens that history came to a crucial moment.

In that autumn of 1947, the Jews – and most of the world – had beseeched the United Nations to grant a Jewish state. The debate in the cavernous grey hall was intense.

To the Arabs – and above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine – the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed an injustice imposed upon them by Western imperialism for a crime they did not commit.

For Britain – the nation that had administered Palestine for 30 difficult years – the debate offered an end to a nightmare; two years after the end of World War II it was the only place on the globe where British soldiers were still dying in conflict.

In a direct order from the White House, President Harry S. Truman told the U.S. Delegates at Flushing Meadows to “damn well deliver the partition or there will be hell to pay.” Yet, on the date originally set for the crucial vote, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 1947, the prospect of defeat hung heavy over the hall.

A two-thirds majority was needed to pass the resolution. To offset the votes of the Arab-Moslem nations alone, the Jewish Agency, which represented the Zionist movement, needed 22 votes, more than a third of the General Assembly. After a 2,000-year wait, the Jewish people concluded they would have to wait a little longer to find the votes needed to secure the partition’s passage.

The Vote
After a long debate, at five o’clock, Assembly president Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil gaveled down the last speaker and solemnly informed the gathering at New York City that the vote would be taken. An aide handed Ranha a basket containing 56 slips of paper, each representing a nation in the hall. He extended his hand and slowly drew the name of the country whose vote would begin the roll call. He unfolded the paper and stares at the delegates assembled before him. “Guatemala,” he announced.

Silence fell over the hall. Even the press gallery was hushed as delegates, spectators and newsmen sat in awe of the solemn decision which was about to take place. As the delegate from Guatemala rose, a piercing Hebrew cry as old as time sounded from the silence of the Assembly hall. From the spectators gallery an old man shouted, “Ana Ad Hoshiya,” – “O Lord, Save us.”

Six thousand miles away from the New York City Building, in the midnight blue of this November night, the people of Jerusalem waited for the decision that a handful of men would soon make that would decide the fate of their land.

Over a crackling radio, Golda Meir sat alone, noting each vote on a notepad that brought her closer to a lifetime’s dream.

In the Arab sector, a Palestinian leader declared that “a group of old men at Flushing Meadow will not decide the fate of our people.”
Shortly after sundown, the vote was over. The United Nations had voted to create the State of Israel.

Just as Paris had lived its liberation night, and London and New York had celebrated the end of the war, Jewish Jerusalem now erupted into an explosion of joy as doors were flung open and neighbors called out to each other in the dark, “We have a state!” At the White House, Truman declared, within moments of the vote, that the United States formally recognized the new State of Israel.

Meantime, in front of the City Building in Queens the crowds danced around the United Nations’ circle of flagpoles and later broke into the singing of the Hatikva. On Nov. 29, 1947, the past and future of a great and sacred land were joined as the destiny of a new nation and an ancient people was decided at Flushing Meadows.