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The Arab reaction was immediate and violent. Charging that the Jew had usurped Arab land, the combined armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria marched on Israel the following day and bombers attacked Tel Aviv. The Arabs were roundly drubbed. Outnumbered at first by 20 to 1, Israeli soldiers outfought, outmaneuvered and outgunned the Arabs, who were finally forced to ask for a cease-fire after eight months of fighting. But although they put down their guns, the Arabs still refused to recognize the existence of Israel. Their pride was stung, and they swore vengeance. During the war, moreover, 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from the land of their own ancestors; they filed sullenly into refugee camps across Israel's borders, where they have stayed for 19 bitter years, waiting to return.
New Image. With the war won, Israel soon became a sort of modern miracle. From the DP camps of Europe, from the remote wastes of Yemen, from the middle-class suburbs of England and America, Jews poured into Israel, were declared citizens, and went to work. The population tripled in 16 years. Supported by massive private donations (more than $2 billion) from world-wide Jewry, by equally massive U.S. aid ($1.6 billion) and by reparations payments from West Germany ($822 million), the nation sprang almost overnight from a picturesque wilderness to an enclave of clanging energy. Deepwater ports were dredged, power and irrigation plants built, modern cities and industries created. The desert bloomed, the orange trees blossomed, and Israel was suddenly the land of milk and honey. For 14 wondrous years, its gross national product soared by at least 10% a year, until by 1964 Israel had achieved a standard of living that rivaled Western Europe's.
Nor was the miracle confined to the tiny Jewish homeland. "Israel," says Ben-Gurion, "has created a new image of the Jew in the world—the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism. The state has straightened the backs of Jews in every country." In place of many of the old stereotypes of the Jew emerged a bronzed and bare-chested figure somewhat larger than life: the sabra (native-born Israeli), who took that name from the fruit of the cactus that thrives in his land, a handsome, romantic idealist who furrowed his fields rather than his brow and was equally adept at digging wells for his country and graves for its enemies.
Polyglot Population. The Israelis achieved social miracles as well—if on a more modest scale. The waves of postwar immigrants threw together Jews of all possible backgrounds and appearances, from the brown-skinned illiterate Yemeni to the bearded Orthodox Jews of East Europe's ghettos to the sport-shirted sophisticates of the West. Gathered from 100 different countries of the Diaspora, they spoke 100 languages and worshiped their God according to the divergent traditions of myriad Jewish sects. Though many modern Jews pay only lip service to their religion, Orthodox Jews dominated Israeli society and lawmaking from the first, are responsible for the many restrictions and proscriptions (no public bus service on the Sabbath, the refusal of restaurants to serve milk and meat at the same meal) that make Israel a sort of secular theocracy.