On the day of its proclamation, Eliahu Epstein wrote to Harry S. Truman that the state had been proclaimed "within the frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947". On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of United Nations adopted a resolution for re-establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine and called upon inhabitants of the country Israel’s founders made little of the declaration at the time. It took decades of work by figures of widely different political stripes to make it the towering document it is today. Rudi Weissenstein/Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, pronounces the Declaration of the State of Israel at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on May In the 1990s when the Israeli Supreme Court engaged in activism to protect civil rights of all Israel’s citizens, the Declaration of Independence was cited as the philosophical bedrock justifying judicial activism. The 37 signatories to Israel’s Declaration of Establishment were the members of the Provisional Council of State. Mishy Harman noted, “The group that did sign the document represented many factions of the Jewish population. In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodor Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country. The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world. However, on Friday, May 14, 1948 at 4 PM – eight hours before the official end of the British Mandate – David Ben Gurion read out Israel’s Declaration of Independence at a moving ceremony at the Tel Aviv Museum. In this seminar we will explore deep questions about Israel’s Declaration of Independence: Who wrote it, when, and why? What is included in it, and what is (conspicuously) absent? What is the Declaration’s structure, and what does that structure reveal about the document’s meaning and purpose? Finally, we will investigate the ways in which the Declaration has proved a lasting document The Palestinian Declaration of Independence formally established the State of Palestine, and was written by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and proclaimed by Yasser Arafat on 15 November 1988 (5 Rabiʽ al-Thani 1409) in Algiers, Algeria. The following is the text of Israel’s founding Declaration of Independence, as proclaimed by prime minister David Ben-Gurion, on May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, on behalf of the Provisional The Israeli Declaration of Independence was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion. It declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. In May of this year the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the first draft of Israel’s declaration of independence belonged to the nation and not to the family of the man who wrote it. (The family was trying to sell the draft, having fallen on hard times.) That would perhaps seem obvious, but less obvious—indeed, mostly forgotten—is the story of that man, Mordechai Beham, and his work. Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original. The 37 signatories to Israel’s Declaration of Establishment were the members of the Provisional Council of State. They were the representatives of Israel’s various communities and the leaders of the state-in-the-making. David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the community, and 24 others signed the scroll during the declaration of the state; 12 more members of the People’s Council (11 of them Introduction The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was approved at a festive session of the People’s Council, comprised of representatives of the yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) and the Zionist movement, on Friday, May 14, 1948, several hours before the British Mandate for Palestine came to an end. The Declaration consists of seven sections and stipulates six Israel’s Declaration of Independence, The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment, by Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler, Cambridge University Press, 2023 Declaring Israel’s Independence, by Martin Kramer, www.martinkramer.com, 2018. “Who wrote Israel’s Declaration of Independence?” I recently asked a class of Israeli undergraduates. “An assistant to Ben-Gurion Israel’s Declaration of Independence, The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment, by Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler, Cambridge University Press, 2023 Declaring Israel’s Independence, by Martin Kramer, www.martinkramer.com, 2018. “Who wrote Israel’s Declaration of Independence?” I recently asked a class of Israeli undergraduates. “An assistant to Ben-Gurion Amid war and turmoil, Israel’s founders thought to proclaim the inherent rights and freedoms of citizens and to emphasize the rights of minorities—even minorities with whom they were then at war. Mordechai Beham, who composed the first draft of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. (R. Beham.) Right: a portion of the draft, April 27, 1948.
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