I’ve been reading My Life, by Golda Meir, and it’s a real eye-opener. It details the life of this amazing woman, and her part in the struggle for an autonomous Jewish state in Israel, and what they went through to establish it. I knew the British resisted their efforts during and just after WW2 to settle in Palestine, but I was amazed at the extent to which they went, to block that settlement.
Anyway, I just read a passage that describes the airlift of Yemeni Jews into Israel in late 1948. These Jews had been isolated as a people in Yemen for 2000 years or so, having been relocated there by the Romans, and serving as serfs and slaves since then, with no rights at all. Golda describes meeting the first planeload, and talking with an old man who had just gotten off the plane. She asked “Had you ever seen or been on a plane before?”
He replied “No, I never had even seen one up close.”
She said “You must have been terrified.”
“No, I was not. Why would I be frightened? I remembered the prophecy in Isaiah: ‘You shall mount up with wings of eagles’”
And she writes “Then he recited the whole passage from Isaiah, blessed God, and said “This was the fulfillment of that prophecy – why should I be afraid?”
I read that with tears streaming down my face – the simple faith of these people in God’s promise to preserve them was amazing!
This book will be a permanent part of my own personal library, and I highly recommend it for all who would like to learn more about what has been happening in Israel and the Middle East.
