In 1948, we were born as a nation that was on the verge of annihilation every day – every single day of that year, and the following year, and the following year. Every day was a day that was a gift from God because we were supposed to be destroyed. All of our enemies all around us were contemplating day and night, “How are we going to destroy them?” In 1948, two hours after we – about two hours, less than that – after we declared statehood, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt invaded. And if that’s not enough, even Iraq invaded. And if that’s not enough, the local Arabs started from within. And we ended up the war with 30% more land than we had when we started the war. And doing that with what? Two aircraft – but, we needed to hold the stick in one hand and throw the bomb with the other – and five armored vehicles and tens of thousands of soldiers that had absolutely no experience. They had just survived death camps, like my grandparents.
It’s a miracle. Now, they tried to take some of Israel’s victories to West Point to teach officers how to fight a war. They looked through all the stories of the wars, and they just threw it all away to the garbage because you cannot teach anything from it. The Israelis didn’t do anything great. God fought everywhere for them. West Point cannot take Israel’s wars and teach anything. In 1948, Psalm 83 was fulfilled. All the nations that Psalm 83 mentions are all the countries around us, and He even says, “And Assyria even joined them” – Iraq of today – and what is it that they wanted from us in 1948? Oil? Gas? We had none of these. They wanted us to be cut off from being a nation because we had just changed the name from Palestine to Israel. So that was that war. And look, how many of you here were alive in the last 10 years? You see, in the last 10 years, we, the generation that lives right now, we’ve seen an amazing, amazing transition from Israel being small, vulnerable, insecure, dangerous, and very poor to Israel being safe, secure, and prosperous. So much so that we’re held today as the eighth most powerful nation on planet earth. Amir Tsarfati