Israel Independence Day, 2021

 (Last update: April 16, 2021)

The first week of the Hebrew month, Iyar, is busy. This first week is dedicated to two special days. Israel's Memorial Day comes first. Then, the very next day, we celebrate Israel's Independence Day.

Israel's Memorial Day was yesterday, April 14, 2021. It is solemn. It asks us to pause. It asks us to remember those who have been killed by enemies who seek to destroy us.  

This solemn day then gives way in the evening to Independence Day. On this day, Israel rejoices. We remember the miracles of our rebirth in 1947. We pause to recall how far we have come, from the very real threat of complete extermination (during our war of Independence) to today.

We have indeed come a long, long way. We have become one of the strongest nations in the world. We have become one of the most successful nations in the world, as measured by the OECD (the Organization of  Economic Cooperation and Development), a grouping of (in my opinion) the top 37 nations in the world (here).

To celebrate Israel's Independence Day, I bring to your attention what is commonly referred to as Israel's "Declaration of Independence". I do this this to help you understand something about Israel's essential nature--its character as the Jewish state.

There seems to be a serious question these days in Israel about Israel's essential nature. Some politicians want Israel to be a Liberal, Progressive Democracy, with "Jewish" nowhere in sight. If these politicians want "Jewish" at all in Israel, it would have to be 'behind closed doors'. In one form or another, they claim to want to return Israel to its founding roots--to be Democratic and Jewish--or, more simply, to be a Democratic "nation-of-its-citizens".

Back in 2016, then-US Secretary of State John Kerry declared that Israel can either be Jewish or a Democracy; but it cannot be both (here). Many in Israel agree. They want Israel to be a Liberal-Progressive state, not a Jewish state.

Nevertheless, others in Israel disagree. They see Israel as the Jewish state. They don't mind Israel having democratic tendencies. They just want Israel to return to its "Jewish roots".

Who is correct? Should Israel promote itself as the Jewish state? Or, should it promote itself only as a Democratic state?  

To help you attempt to answer these questions, I present to you Israel's "Declaration of Independence". It describes how Israel is to be framed. It defines what Israel is to be.  

Read what this document says. I suggest that you will be able to see what Israel was meant to be.

To assist you, I have highlighted every reference to what is 'Jewish" in this document --and what is "Democratic-Liberal-Progressive" in this document. My copy of this document comes from an Israeli government source here:

Official Gazette: Number 1; Tel Aviv, 5 Iyar 5708, 14.5.1948 Page 1

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel

The Land of Israel 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, defiant returnees, 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 community 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 community 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

--

Several comments:

First , the word, "Democracy" or any versions thereof, does not appear even once in this document.

Second, the words, "Progressive"  or "Liberal" do not appear even once in this document. Apparently, this document is really not at all about Democracy or Liberal or Progressive. It's about "Jewish".

This is an important observation. Apparently, some Israeli politicians do not know that Israel was founded as the Jewish state--as is clear from the document above. Instead, these politicians act as if Israel was founded to be a Liberal-Progressive Democracy.

Clearly, it was not. Indeed, Israel's founding document (above) is very clear: the modern State of Israel was not to be created as a Democratic-Liberal-Progressive state. Its founders intended to establish "the Jewish State". 

Third, several references above which I have highlighted as "Jewish" in nature may not appear so to some. But they all have a Jewish reference, either to Jewish liturgy, the Tanach, or to a commonly understood Jewish context. 

Fourth, this declaration has "Jewish" stamped all over it. It says explicitly that Israel is to be "the Jewish State" three times--and added a fourth such reference to Israel as "a Jewsh state". It does not at all have anything in it about "Liberal" or "Progressive" or even "Democracy".

This document is for Jews. It is about the Jewish people. It is about Jewish. It contains a number of references referencing the Jewish religion. 

This document is not a declaration for establishing a Democratic-Liberal-Progressive state. Today's politicians should understand this. Some do not. 

They have no idea what our founders intended. How can a nation's politicians not know what their nation's founders intended?

Fifth, this document does indeed refer to "freedom, justice and peace"--ideas professed by those who promote Democracy, Liberal and progressive ideas. However, while that may be true, we do have to note that this document nonetheless qualifies these ideas, not in terms of any Democratic-Liberal-Progressive tradition, but as ideas "envisaged by the prophets of Israel"--a distinctly religious, Jewish reference--thereby suggesting a Jewish-religious context, not a political context. 

Finally, while there are references to equality, social and political rights and freedom of religion, these concepts are not exclusive to any Liberal-Progressive-Democratic tradition. That is, a state does not have to be Liberal-Progressive-Democratic to offer these benefits.  

So, was Israel established to be a Liberal-Democratic-Progressive state, or a Jewish state? Read the above Declaration. The answer, I suggest, is clear. 

Happy 73rd birthday, Israel. Your pedigree is clear, is it not? You are the Jewish State.

It would certainly be nice if we began to act like we were Jewish. Perhaps some day we will start doing that.