How Shall We Sing in a Strange Land?

Part of the final for my US History class this semester was to write a short essay on how the United States backed Israel at the beginning of her new country-hood in the 1940s. I thought I'd post it on here as well!

It has been said that World War I prepared the land for the people and that World War II prepared the people for the land. This statement is referring to the Jewish state of Israel in the center of an Arab dominated region, and the Jews who had been scattered across the world for thousands of years following the Roman Empire of Jesus’ time.

The forming of this Jewish state would not have happened were it not for the help of the former United States President, Harry Truman. Truman was a staunch supporter of God’s people, the Jews. He wanted them to have the land that had been granted them by Britain in the Balfour Declaration following World War I; in fact, Truman believed that indeed the Jews deserved a homeland. Although he had to go against his trusted advisor, friend, and hero, Secretary of State Marshall, President Truman did what he knew was right, and eleven minutes after Israel declared her independence, the United States became the first nation to fully back the new, yet ancient, country of Israel and her new Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.

While defending his stand on the Nation of Israel, President Truman often called to remembrance the 137^th Psalm. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a son; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?”