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NOTES ON FOUNDING OF
ISRAEL
Before deciding whether the U.S. should recognize Israel, Harry Truman
feared that Zionist aspirations would lead to a racial or a theocratic
state. Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann wrote Truman a series of letters
including one seven page, single-spaced, reassuring him that Zionists
intended a thoroughly secular state similar to ours and the British.
Truman confirmed that understanding in his May 14, 1948 recognition of
the provisional government no of "the Jewish state" (the Israeli wording
he crossed out) but of "the State of Israel."
Similarly, the oft-cited Balfour Declaration also rejected a Jewish
dominant or supremacist state:
His majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will se their
best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being
clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the
civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country." (Italics mine)
And certainly nothing in any of these early documents entitles Zionist
militias to massacre and ethnically cleanse non-Jews and prohibit their
return as has been the case now for 62 years. "The illegitimacy of their
ethnic cleansing was recognized in UN Resolution 194 of 1948, with the
restoration of Palestinians to their land a condition of Israel's 1949
admission to the UN."
Al Nakba Awareness Project
These photographs show that Palestine was not "a land without people":
www.palestinephotoproject.org. |
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By Central News Agency [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons
EDWIN MONTAGU
Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India and the only Jewish
member of the government, considered Zionism a threat to the Jews of
Britain and other countries. He denounced Zionism as a “mischievous
political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United
Kingdom.” Montagu rejected the idea of the Jews as a nation and argued
that the demand for recognition as a separate nation put at risk their
struggle to become citizens with equal rights in the countries in which
they lived.
Montagu was the second British Jew to enter the Cabinet, the inner
circle of government. However, he was strongly opposed to Zionism, which
he called "a mischievous political creed", and opposed the Balfour
Declaration of 1917, which he considered anti-semitic and whose terms he
managed to modify. In a memo to the Cabinet, he outlined his views on
Zionism thus: "...I assume that it means that Mahommedans [Muslims] and
Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put
in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with
Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France
with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be
regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be
treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also
citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test."[4] He
was opposed by his cousin Herbert Samuel, a moderate Zionist who became
the first High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine. (Reference
Link) |
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TRANSLATION OF THE ISRAELI DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE BY THE ISRAEL
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
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.
Large celebratory crowd outside the
Dizengoff
House (now called Independence Hall) to hear the declaration and
signing of Israel's Declaration of Independence, dated May 14, 1948.
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.
David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel)
publicly pronouncing the Declaration of the State of Israel, May 14
1948, Tel Aviv, Israel, in the old Tel Aviv Museum of Art building
on Rothshild St. Photographer: Shimon Rudolph Weissenstein.
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
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). |
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