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Independence Day |
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The official date given by the United Nations in their partition vote for the creation
of the two new entities was May 15th, 1948.
Thus, May 14th was to be the last day of the British Mandate. At 4 p.m.,
the British lowered their flag and immediately the Jews raised their own.
It was a flag designed in 1897 by the First Zionist Congress. It was
white (the color of newness and purity), and it had two blue stripes
(the color of heaven) like the stripes of a tallit, the prayer shawl, which
symbolized the transmission of Jewish tradition. In its center was the
Star of David.
Thus on May 14, 1948 at 4:00 p.m., Hay Iyar, the 5th of Iyar, Israel
declared itself a state. After 2,000 years, the land of Israel was once
more in the hands of the Jews. David Ben Gurion read the
Declaration of Independence over the radio:
"The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.
Here the 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...
"Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the
countries of the dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their
return and restoration of their national freedom.
"Accordingly we, the members of the National Council met together in
solemn assembly today and by virtue of the natural and historic right of
the Jewish people and with the support of the resolution of the General
of the United Nations, hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish
state in Palestine to be called Israel...
"We offer peace and amity to all neighboring states and their peoples
and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for
the common good of all... "With trust in the Rock of Israel, we set our
hands to this declaration at this session of the Provisional State Council
in the city of Tel Aviv on Sabbath Eve, 5th Iyar 5708, 14th day of May 1948."
Everyone was dancing in the streets. But not for long.
Almost immediately five Arab countries declared war and
Egypt bombed Tel Aviv.
And immediately it was plunged into war as five of the neighboring Arab states
attacked. These Arab states had previously voted against the UN partition of
Palestine and now simply refused to recognize that historic and democratic vote.
Little Israel, which had virtually no heavy artillery, no tanks, no airplanes, had to
defend itself against Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq! That's 600,000
Jews against 45 million Arabs, while the United Nations did nothing.
And yet the Jews won. It was nothing short of a miracle.
But the victory was bittersweet. The Old City of Jerusalem -- including the Jewish
Quarter and access to the Kotel, the Western (Wailing) Wall -- fell to the Jordanians.
The Jews were driven out of the Old City, and their homes and synagogues looted
and destroyed.
Jordanians barred Jewish access to any holy sites within the Old City, and the
world again did not lift a finger to protest that the religious rights of a people were
being violated.
(For fascinating details about the War of Independence, see The Pledge by
Leonard Slater.)
NEW BORDERS
The War of Independence had lasted 13 months. Some 6,000 Israelis died or a full 1% of
the Jewish population at that time.
(If that had happened in America, proportionally, 2.5 million people would have died. As
upset as America was about the Vietnam War, it lost 52,000 soldiers in that war.)
Mt. Herzl, the national cemetery, is full of graves without names. These are graves of
Holocaust survivors who made it to Israel only to be handed a gun in order to fight for
the survival of the Jewish nation. No one had time to get to know their names. They went
down in history only as Yossi or Hershel or Moshe. It is a tragic thing to see all these graves
marked "Plony" (which is the Israeli version of "John Doe.")
The War of Independence was Israel's costliest war.
The end of the war defined the borders of the new State of Israel in a radically new way.
The borders were not the ones that the UN defined in their partition vote. In sum total,
Israel got more land, though it lost the Old City of Jerusalem.
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