On May 14, 1948, in the auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed to the world the formation of the state of Israel. Behind this moment lay the drama of thousands of years of history. Yet the most dramatic chapter was still to come, for even as the declaration was being made, Arab armies were massing, determined to strike a death blow at the new nation.

To face difficult odds was nothing new for the Jewish people. In the days of the Old Testament, they had been forced to battle first surrounding hostile tribes, and then the invading armies of mighty empires. Driven from Palestine, they endured almost two thousand years of bitter persecution in country after country. In the nineteenth century, when a return to Israel first began to grip the Jewish imagination, it was deemed impossible by the world, and denounced by the Jews themselves. After World War II, when the uprooted Jewish population of Europe united in making a homeland of their own, Arab hostility, British power politics, and UN impotence seemed to spell doom for the project.

Here is the remarkable story of a nation that transformed itself under fire from a hastily improvised organization into a mature political body, and from a rag-tag army into an extraordinarily effective fighting force.

Vivid with a sense of men and events, this is the story of the fierce conflict that attended one of the miracles of modern times, as one of the oldest nations on earth was reborn as one of the youngest.

From the dust jacket