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I don't have much to say about your post, but I'm wondering if someone could give me a summary of the political factors involved in Israel's creation back in the 50's or provide me with a good link. I don't understand very well what happened.

Here's the picture I have of it currently: There was a huge Zionism movement in Europe after WW2 and the holocaust, and the heart of this movement was the desire for a homeland in the Middle East. So the United Nations (or was it Britain, or NATO?) decided to give them a country in the middle of Palestine despite the fact that a million people or something in this ballpark lived there already.

Am I close? What motivated the UN/Britain/whoever? It seems obvious to me that they wouldn't have done it from the goodness of their hearts. Did they want a military foothold there because of the oil or what?

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In 1956, Britain used Israel to attack Egypt and regain control of the Suez canal. However, the US was extremely unhappy about that. It's hard to say why the US, USSR, Britain, France, and China supported the UN partition, because all those countries had differing political interests.

At the time though, there was a lot of hooplah about human rights and peace and stuff like that. The Universal declaration of human rights was written around that time, and signed by a lot of different countries. I think people around the world were shocked about the genocide against the jews, and wanted to do something to help them.

A cynical viewpoint would be that the zionist terrorist organizations had grown too powerful for britain to control, and so Britain was just taking what they thought was the winning side by supporting a UN partition. Explaining the suport from the other countries is maybe a bit harder, but probably not beyond the ability of good historical scholarship.