1948 JEWS HAVE RESTORED STATE OF ISRAEL:

[Gość: ZYD]

THE DECLARATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
May 14, 1948
On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over a Palestine
expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and
approved the following proclamation, declaring the establishment of the
State of Israel. The new state was recognized that night by the United
States and three days later by the USSR.

Text:

ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace
of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity
was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values
of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal
Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it
throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their
return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every
successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland.
In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma'pilim
[(Hebrew) - immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive
legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew
language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community
controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to
defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's
inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the
Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and
proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own
country.

This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November,
1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in
particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between
the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to
rebuild its National Home.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of
millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency
of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-
Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to
every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged
member of the comity of nations.

Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts
of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by
difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their
right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national
homeland.

In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed
its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations
against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and
its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who
founded the United Nations.

On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a
resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel;
the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such
steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that
resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the
Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.

This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their
own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE
ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-
ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH
OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF
ISRAEL.

WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the
Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May,
1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the
State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the
Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the
People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its
executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional
Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel".

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the
Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for
the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and
peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete
equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective
of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience,
language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all
religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the
United Nations.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and
representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the
General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring
about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.

WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-
up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of
nations.

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for
months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace
and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and
equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and
permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer
of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of
cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its
own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort
for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the
Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand
by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the
redemption of Israel.

PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE ALMIGHTY, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS
PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE
SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH
DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).


David Ben-Gurion
Daniel Auster
Mordekhai Bentov
Yitzchak Ben Zvi
Eliyahu Berligne
Fritz Bernstein
Rabbi Wolf Gold
Meir Grabovsky
Yitzchak Gruenbaum
Dr. Abraham Granovsky
Eliyahu Dobkin
Meir Wilner-Kovner
Zerach Wahrhaftig
Herzl Vardi Rachel Cohen
Rabbi Kalman Kahana
Saadia Kobashi
Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levin
Meir David Loewenstein
Zvi Luria
Golda Myerson
Nachum Nir
Zvi Segal
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman
David Zvi Pinkas
Aharon Zisling
Moshe Kolodny
Eliezer Kaplan
Abraham Katznelson
Felix Rosenblueth
David Remez
Berl Repetur
Mordekhai Shattner
Ben Zion Sternberg
Bekhor Shitreet
Moshe Shapira
Moshe Shertok



* Published in the Official Gazette, No. 1 of the 5th, Iyar, 5708 (14th May,
1948).