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+The Declaration of the Establishment of
the State of Israel
T el Aviv, 5th Iyar 5708
(May 14, 1948)
Full text of the Declaration of Independence as approved by the
Provisional State Council on the day of the declaration of the state.
Emphases in the original.
E RETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious
and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural
values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book
of Books.
A fter 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.
S urvivors 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
A State is Born 11
the State of Israel
T el Aviv, 5th Iyar 5708
(May 14, 1948)
Full text of the Declaration of Independence as approved by the
Provisional State Council on the day of the declaration of the state.
Emphases in the original.
E RETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious
and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural
values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book
of Books.
A fter 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.
S urvivors 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
A State is Born 11
