Exploring the Israeli Declaration of Independence Based on a sheet by David Schwartz

David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) publicly pronouncing the Declaration of the State of Israel, May 14 1948, Tel Aviv, Israel, beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, in the old Tel Aviv Museum of Art building on Rothshild St.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan dividing the land of Palestine then controlled by the British into a Jewish and Arab state. Shortly after this vote, the British government decided that British rule would end on midnight May 14th, 1948. The Jews would have the right to declare a state at 12am, May 15th, 1948 which falls out on the 6th of Iyyar on the Jewish calendar.
Fast forward a few months to the 5th of Iyyar, Friday May 14th, 1948. Debate raged in the Jewish council convened by David Ben Gurion about the new Jewish state’s Declaration of Independence. Religious members of this Jewish assembly insisted that this declaration mention the God of Israel while many secular Zionists opposed any mention of God. One political party insisted the declaration be signed at midnight when the British mandate officially expired. The religious parties asserted that such a situation would mean that the state would be “born in sin” and threatened to leave the convention as the Sabbath approached. A compromise satisfying both the secular majority and the religious delegates seemed impossible.
David Ben Gurion realized that to succeed any declaration of Jewish statehood required all the stakeholders to agree. He proposed that rather than refer to God, Israel’s declaration would end with a mention of placing trust in Tzur Yisrael, The Rock of Israel, a biblical term used as a synonym for God but one that could be interpreted differently by members of the assembly possessing a more secular outlook. [see Zionism: The Birth and Transformation of an Ideal,by Milton Viorst
available at https://tinyurl.com/39zvane2]

The ingathering of exiles, settling, and cultivating the Land follow.
~ What new reasons for declaring the state are given in this section?
~ Why mention Herzl and the Balfour Declaration?

Signed by: 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

Comparison of the Israeli and American Declarations of Independence
Noteworthy similarities and differences exist between the American and Israeli Declarations of Independence. Both declarations assert independence and the right of their populations to control their own destinies, free from legislative impositions and despotic abuses. In the Israeli case, however, immediate past history was included, and it reflected earlier Jewish catastrophes and the prospects of potential physical annihilation. Both declarations sought self-determination, liberty, and freedom, derived their claims based on human and natural rights, promised safeguards for the individual, and proclaimed an interest in commerce or economic growth.
The Israeli Declaration of Independence contained a list of historical claims to the land of Israel. The Declaration cited benchmark historical events when the international community sanctioned the Jewish state’s legitimacy, particularly the acknowledgement to build a national home given by the League of Nations (1922) and by the United Nations (1947) to establish a Jewish state. While there were skirmishes going on between Americans and the British when the American Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, when Israel declared its independence it was in the midst of a full-fledged war for survival with the local Arab population and surrounding Arab states. The on-going war notwithstanding, the Israeli Declaration of Independence includes a declaratory statement offering “peace and amity” to its neighbors and the request “to return to the ways of peace.” Both declarations made reference to a higher authority: the Israeli Declaration of Independence does not mention religion, but it closes with the phrase “with trust in the Rock of Israel [Tzur Yisrael].” The choice of this phrase was Ben-Gurion’s verbal compromise, made to balance strong secular and religious pressures. Any precise mention of religion might have required mention of religious practice, which could have created enormous social fragmentation in the early fragile years of the state. By contrast, the American Declaration of Independence appealed to the “Supreme Judge, protection of the Divine.”
https://israeled.org/resources/documents/israel-declaration-independence/