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About — Founding

The birth of the state

From a dream of return — to the proclamation of independence on the 5th of Iyar 5708.

The road to independence

The long road home

The idea of the people’s return to their land lived in prayers and songs for many centuries. At the end of the 19th century it took shape as a political movement — Zionism — whose goal was the creation of a national home in the Land of Israel.

The road to independence was long and hard: waves of immigration, the building of the land, two world wars, and the Holocaust of European Jewry. After all this, the world recognized the people’s right to a state of their own.

Chronicle

Steps toward 14 May 1948

  • 1897
    The First Zionist Congress in Basel, led by Theodor Herzl, proclaimed the goal of creating a national home for the Jewish people.
  • 1917
    Britain expressed support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
  • 1947
    On 29 November the UN General Assembly voted to partition the mandate territory into two states — a Jewish one and an Arab one.
  • 14 May 1948
    On the eve of the end of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion read out the Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv. The State of Israel was proclaimed.
  • 1948–49
    The next day the young state came under attack; in a hard war, Israel held on to its existence.
5 Iyar 5708

The Declaration of Independence

In the evening, shortly before the end of the British Mandate, the Declaration of Independence was read out in the Tel Aviv museum. It proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel — “a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.”

The text holds a promise of freedom, justice, and peace, of equal rights for all inhabitants regardless of faith or origin, and an outstretched hand to its neighbors. From that moment the people once again had a state of their own.

HaTikvah

“The hope of two thousand years — to be a free people in our own land.”
Symbols

The marks of a young state

דגל

The flag

A blue-and-white flag with the Shield of David between two stripes — modeled on the tallit, the prayer shawl.

התקווה

The anthem “HaTikvah”

“HaTikvah” — “The Hope”: an anthem of the two-thousand-year hope to return to Zion, to Jerusalem.

מנורה

The menorah emblem

The Temple menorah between two olive branches — a symbol of light and peace in the state’s emblem.