FOUNDED ON THE “ROCK OF ISRAEL”, THE JEWISH STATE ROSE PROVIDENTIALLY LIKE A PHOENIX, DEMONSTRATING THE POWER OF JEWISH HISTORY

ISRAEL, 65 YEARS YOUNG!

Israel shall endure forever!
Baruch Cohen, CIJR, Apr. 16, 2013

In memory of Malca z”l

In memory of all the victims of Israel’s wars, who gave their lives against unending Arab aggression.

On Friday May 14, 1948 (5 Iyar 5708) the State of Israel came into being with a population numbering 650,000.  Immediately the young state had to weather the assault of five regular Arab armies actively aided by one million Palestinian Arabs. It must be remembered that the Jewish State, the State of Israel, was born of a strong desire for sovereignty, independence and freedom and was won by the Jewish People, who had gathered their power and their strength against the onslaught of her enemies! Never again would there ever be another Holocaust.   Israel’s population today is eight million and growing. The State of Israel is here forever!

   “And I will give you peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid.” (Leviticus 26:6)    Am Yisroel Chai! Hag Sameach!

Arthur Szyk from his hagaddah.

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THE DECLARATION OF THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
Israel Minister of Foreign Affairs, May 14, 1948

On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over  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.

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 "Rock of Israel", 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). 

ISRAEL’S RESURGENCE: A SPIRITUAL CALCULUS

David M. Weinberg

Jerusalem Post, Apr. 11, 2013

Press reviews of the state of this country on its Independence Day commonly miss the spiritual, meta-historic significance of Israel’s achievement. They tend to calculate a balance sheet of successes and failures in defense, economy, democracy and peacemaking, but fail to fathom the processes at work behind the curtain of current affairs. It’s valid to apply temporal yardsticks of measurement to Israel, but such evaluations undershoot the deeper challenge: to understand the resurgence of Israel in grand historical terms; to discern the mystic movement, the divine drama – if you will, at play.

It cannot be otherwise. There is nothing global, or even massive, about the State of Israel in political terms. This is a small piece of earth. We Israelis are but a tiny fraction of the human family. In the sweep of history, there have been greater battles, larger transfers and emigrations of populations, bigger construction and technological projects, more eminently impressive displays of might. So in secular terms, Israel is not all that a big deal. But as vindication of spirit; as validation of tenacious faith; as proof of the Jewish People’s, indeed humanity’s, power to overcome – Israel’s establishment and advancement is a very big deal indeed.

History knows no parallel to the prophecies of the Bible, which foretold the break up of a people into a thousand pieces across the world, yet one destined to persevere for centuries and return to their indigenous homeland. This is a defy-all-odds saga of metaphysical union spanning centuries between a people, their G-d, and a land. This, wrote the late ambassador Dr. Yaakov Herzog, “is the celebration of a nation who, at the moment of ultimate nadir, of devastating Holocaust, rose from the ashes, armed with little more than conviction and a historical consciousness that promised renewal, to stake claim to their ancestry. This is redemption, providential consolation.

“The still small voice of Israel reborn has a significance overreaching the criterion of material capacity, extending beyond the boundaries of geographical dimension and the gradation of international status. Israel represents a vindication of faith and prayer through the ages; it is a symbol of revival, a message of hope, indeed a lasting evidence of the integrity of the spirit,” Herzog said.

At the 22nd Zionist Congress in 1946, Chaim Weizmann said: “[We] stand today six hundred thousand strong, with steady vision and unwavering courage… drawing sustenance, spiritual and material, from a grudging and neglected soil…. testimony to the irresistible force which drives our people to become free men and women once again on the land of our forefathers.”

This belief in the power of Jewish history, animated by ancient faith, explains much about Israel today. It explains our willingness to sacrifice so much for independence. It explains our drive to succeed in the arts and sciences and to share our advances with the world. It explains our attachment to Jerusalem. It explains why we sometimes stubbornly refuse to accept rational calculations of diplomatic cost and benefit politely impressed on us by well-meaning allies. It explains why those who consider history only in terms of national politics and international relations underestimate or misjudge us. They fail to understand that Israel is guided by an astral calculus that is not always perceptible. Our deep sense of historical mission blurs the lines between imagination and reality, between the possible and the feasible.

Not everybody in this country is religious in terms of the practice of traditional Judaism. But just about everybody is religious in the sense of feeling part of a grand meta-historic journey that is connected to spiritual powers and a moral heritage invested in the Jewish People that has sustained us and returned us to the Land of Israel. Consider the Talmud’s metaphor for the resurgence of Israel. “The Lord your God will turn your captivity… and gather you from all the nations,” speaks Deuteronomy 30:3. Read not “turn your captivity,” says the Talmud, but rather “return Himself” from captivity. In other words, G-d is returning to the Land of Israel too, bit by bit, along with us. His presence in the Land of Israel, and His protection, grows with every new immigrant stepping off the plane and every house we build.

Regrettably, many of us seem to have lost the capacity to think in providential terms; to discern historical movement, not momentary difficulty; to see the forest, not the trees; to disregard the mud and focus on the magnificent. On Independence Day, it is time to remind ourselves (and our global friends) of this prophetic perspective on the meaning and success of Israel.

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INDEPENDENCE DAY AND THE ZIONIST VISION

Isi Leibler

Jerusalem Post, Apr.14, 2013

As we launch into our 65th Independence Day celebrations it is timely to review and rationally assess the extent to which our Zionist objectives have been achieved. When the Jewish state was proclaimed in 1948, the 650,000 Jews who constituted the Yishuv were totally engaged in a desperate battle to repel the combined military forces of our Arab neighbours who from the outset were determined to deny Jewish sovereignty.

In their wildest dreams, the founders of our state fighting a war of survival could never have envisioned the dynamic and thriving nation of eight million citizens that would emerge from that maelstrom. Indeed, by any benchmark, taking into account numerous wars, failures and disappointments, this extraordinary Jewish nation-state will indisputably be recorded in the annals of history as one of the greatest successes of the past millennium.

There is no historical situation which remotely compares to the Jewish people’s renaissance and transformation into a Jewish nation. After being exiled for 2,000 years to all parts of the globe and having suffered endless cycles of discrimination, persecution, exile and mass murder culminating in the genocidal horror of the Shoah, we reconstituted ourselves into a nation state.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, an ingathering of the exiles took place with Jews from all over the globe flocking to find haven in the newly established Jewish state. There, against all odds, they bonded together into a melting pot of Shoah survivors, refugees fleeing persecution in Arab countries, Jews escaping from the underdeveloped societies of Ethiopia, and from discrimination in the former Soviet Union – and succeeded in creating one of the most vibrant and resilient societies in the world.

The ancient and sacred Hebrew language has been revived as a living, pulsating cultural force and lingua franca for Jews, uniting those from totally different cultures. There has been a renaissance of Torah study with greater numbers of Jews familiar with the traditional texts and teachings of Judaism than at any period in our history.

Who could possibly have imagined that a people, subjugated and powerless for 2,000 years, would emerge in a very short space of time, as a dominant regional military superpower able to deter and defend itself against the vastly numerically superior military forces of its combined regional adversaries? Who could have dreamt that this tiny, arid strip of land would become the fulcrum for a dynamic economy and emerge as the second-largest hi-tech start-up nation in the world, exceeded only by the United States? And as a special gift, on the eve of our 65th anniversary, this country, devoid of the oil reservoirs which have empowered some of our adversaries, virtually overnight became energy self-sufficient and is now even exploring markets to export its surplus gas resources.

Our spectacular success far exceeded the expectations of our idealistic founders. By any rational benchmark it would be deemed a modern-day miracle. And yet despite this, there are those in our midst who constantly whine about our failings and transform self-criticism into masochism. Instead of celebrating they predict doom and gloom. There is also a tiny, but highly vocal minority who disparages our achievements and complains about the sacrifices required to ensure our security and existence, some of whom even mock Zionism and challenge the merits of Jewish statehood.

Also there are some young Jews, never having experienced the dehumanizing impact of powerlessness on the Jewish psyche, who take the State of Israel for granted. They never underwent the chilling experience of their European antecedents in Europe who in the 1930s desperately sought – mostly unsuccessfully – to obtain entry visas to countries to escape the impending Nazi genocidal onslaught. And nor do they appreciate the soul-destroying impact of living in an environment of anti-Semitic incitement where Jews are considered pariahs and the mainstream media shamelessly promotes frenzied anti-Israel and anti-Semitic stereotypes.

However, despite the prevailing belief that after the revelation of the horrors of the Shoah, anti- Semites would become an extinct species, the world’s oldest hatred has returned with a vengeance, particularly in Europe, whose soil had been drenched in Jewish blood only a few years before Israel’s independence. The extent of the current European malaise is exemplified by youngsters in some public schools seeking to hide their Jewishness in order to avert torment or social exclusion. In many European cities there is also a growing reluctance to outwardly wear Jewish symbols like kippot to avoid random violence from hooligans in the street.

In Europe, especially in France, the UK, Scandinavia, Hungary, Greece, Ukraine and throughout South America there are daily reports of increasing anti-Semitic violence, of incitement and even murder. Whereas, in North America, where public opinion is strongly pro-Israeli, the campuses have been transformed into launching pads for visceral anti- Israelism and anti-Semitism….And yes, there are still many problems in Israeli society which must be overcome. There are too many poor people and we suffer internal divisions between religious and secular and between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. We all agree that we must continue striving for a better society to achieve the ultimate goal of becoming “a light unto the nations.”

But today, almost half the Jewish people are happily domiciled in Israel. The word happily should be stressed because despite our masochistic self-criticism and endless complaints, all polls show that Israelis are numbered amongst the happiest and most satisfied people in the world. Our numbers will increase and an ever-growing proportion of global Jewry will return to live in its homeland, increasingly out of choice rather seeking a haven.

Thus, as we celebrate Israel’s 65th anniversary, notwithstanding all the challenges and threats confronting us, we should remind ourselves of our humble origins and give thanks to the Almighty for having enabled us to be the blessed generation that is privileged to live in freedom in this extraordinary country, our ancient homeland.  Chag Sameach!

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On Topic

65 Years of Innovation, from Rummikub to the ‘God Particle’: Marcella Rosen, Times of Israel, Apr. 15, 2013 —While a great deal of international and media focus has been placed on Israel’s military conflicts, the country quietly has become an energetic, ambitious incubator of entrepreneurialism and invention. What follows is a timeline chronicling some of the most important and interesting innovations produced by Israelis during their country’s 65-year existence.

Independence Day for the Secular And Religious: David Newman, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 14, 2013—Tonight there will be an assortment of celebrations to commemorate Yom Ha’atzmaut. Most of the country will watch the official transition from Remembrance Day to Independence Day in the impressive ceremony which takes place on Mount Herzl and the lighting of the six torches by Israeli citizens representing different walks of life. That will be followed by a night of partying and fireworks.

In Israel We Feel at Home: Raanan Shaked, Ynet News, Apr.16, 2013—It's been 65 years and we haven't gotten used to it yet, huh? Sixty-five years, and it still seems like a big deal to us, that there is an entire country here that is totally ours, in our hands, under our control, without a responsible adult to actually tell us what to do.

Israelis Overwhelmingly Proud of Their Country, New Poll Shows: Aharon Lapidot, Israel Hayom, Apr. 15, 2013—Some 92% of Israel's Jews say they are very proud or somewhat proud of their nationality • A clear majority say they are Jewish first and only then Israeli, but sense of bond with Diaspora drops slightly • Israel's population reaches 8,018,000, a 4.8% increase from last year.

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