Jerusalem (special) --When Teddy Kollek, the former longtime mayor of Jerusalem, thinks of Israel's upcoming 49th birthday, he remembers how in 1948 U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall warned David Ben-Gurion and other leaders of the Jewish Agency that to declare an independent state would be certain suicide for the Jewish people.

Marshall predicted "that all the Arabs would attack us, that they would wipe us out, that nothing would be remaining of us," Kollek recalled in a telephone interview with HERITAGE. 

"We had altogether 600,000 Jews in what was then Palestine and he (Marshall) advised us not to declare a state," Kollek added. "There was a great debate in the small circle of the Jewish Agency Executive."

The Jewish Agency decided to hold a ceremony on the afternoon of May 14th to announce that Israel would become a state at the stroke of midnight "only on the insistence of Ben-Gurion who believed that we were ready for any attack and who knew that for the first time both the United States and Russia had supported the declaration of Jewish state in the United Nations," Kollek said.

Prior to independence, Kollek had been working as a Jewish Agency representative in the United States trying to locate arms for the Hagganah's certain fight against the Arabs. He flew home to Palestine on the 12th or 13th of May "and was very lucky to get an entrance ticket" for the ceremony in Tel Aviv at which independence would be declared.

"You can imagine that the atmosphere was very electric; very, very expecting," Kollek said. "There was the executive (members) of the Jewish Agency sitting up on a kind of a stage," and on the floor in front of them, "most people were standing and so was I, until Ben-Gurion stood up and made his speech."

There were approximately 200 spectators, and "most had been invited guests from some time before -- very few had come in the last minute and were allowed in like me," Kollek recalled. 

"The excitement was terrific. This was a state for which we had waited for 2000 years. In that room there was great tension. It was absolutely quiet. Nobody said a word. Nobody breathed. We were all waiting for this declaration of Mr. Ben Gurion."

And when Ben-Gurion finally read the declaration, "then there was great enthusiasm, hand clapping, and people embracing each other. And in the streets (where the ceremonies were heard over the radio), people were dancing and singing and there were great demonstrations of joy."

The elation did not last long, Kollek said. "On the same night we had the first air attack from the Egyptian Air Force on Tel Aviv. We, at the time, had no air force at all, which was one of the reasons people advised us not to declare the state."

The Egyptian bombs caused no casualties, Kollek recalled. "We were all in an office together with Mr. Ben Gurion sending out cables nominating people to be ambassadors in Paris, in Washington, in London, wherever, when the first bombs fell. The fact that nobody was really hurt was a great boon."

The war that followed "was a cruel war--we lost one percent of our population, 6,000 out of 600,000-- a tremendous proportion," Kollek said. "If you compare it to things like Vietnam, it is a tremendously different proportion."

"But we fought this war and we won and we had a state," Kollek said. "People told us we won't last a month, we won't last three months, and now we have lasted 49 years and we are going onto our 50th year.

"We have lasted, we have gotten through many difficult times externally and internally, even as now we are in a difficult time internally as well," Kollek said. "But that we have lasted 49 years, it shows that we will last."