2 Friday, April 21, 1919

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Purely Commentary

By Philip -
Slomovitz

Yom Ha'Atzmaut Symbolized by Prophecy
and the Legacy of Emphasis on Peace

Yom Ha'Atzmaut — a Day of Commemoration for All Jews

Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, is a day of celebration for Jews
everywhere.
The 31st anniversary of Israel's rebirth will be marked, appropriately, in a holiday
spirit. It marks the end of homelessness for Jews who choose to live under a flag designed
for Jewish statehood. ,
Centuries of persecutions, which reached the depths of degradation with the
Holocaust, ended with the defiance representative of libertarianism imbedded in the
Zionist ideal that came to fruition with statehood.
Centuries of helplessness came to an end in the sense that with the state of Israel the
Jewish people acquired an address. Now from Jerusalem comes not only the Layv but also
the power that goes with people who have spokesmen with power to speak for them in the
council of nations.
This is the significance of Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, the fulfill-
ment of Prophecy and the strengthening of the backs of Jews who were until that fateful
day of May 14, 1948, under subjection, humiliated by bigotry and oppression. -
While rejoicing in the historic national achievements, Israel and Jewry do not forget
the past. Acclaiming the triumphs of statehood, there are the recollections of the losses
sustained by martyrdom.
Therefore, Yom Ha'Atzmaut is preceded by Days of Remembrance, observed to pay
honor to the memory of those who gave their lives al kiddush ha-Shem, for the
sanctification of the Holy Name in the Holocaust and those who died defending the state
of Israel.
These are inseparable devotions — the commemoration of the freedoms attained in
the reborn Eretz Yisrael and never forgetting the sacrifices by those who retained Jewish
identity and the heroes who gave reality to the attainment of sovereignty for their
homeland.

* *

*

Israel's Independence Day associates with Prophecy. The day's historic occurrence
was the fulfillment of the hopes of the exiled that thei, homelessness would end, that
Prophecy would be realized, that the Day of Judgment would be the Day of Liberation.
Scriptures are replete with the predictions of the oncoming liberation.
Yom Ha'Atzmaut, therefore, commands the turning of the pages of Scriptures, of
Torah readings, to these:

•

And the Lord said unto Abram: Get thee out of thy country and from thy
Kindred and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee. And I will
make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and
thou shalt be a blessing.

— Genesis 12:1

And I will give unto thee and unto thy seed after thee the land wherein thou art
a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their
God.

— Genesis 17:3

The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is mine.

— Leviticus 25:23

One law and one judgment shall be for you and for the stranger that sojourneth
with you.

— Numbers 15:16

And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig
tree, from Dan to Beersheba.
— I Kings 5:5

Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and they that return to her with
righteousness.

— Isaiah 1:27
History's lessons may be unique. In the instance of the People Israel, they are
heartening. The realization of the historic merits the rejoicing which will echo in Jewish
communities throughout the world on Wednesday.

* * *

For Yom Ha'Atzmaut there also is the emphasis on peace. Here, too, the thoughts,nc
all Jews must turn to the traditional.
Jewry's liturgical texts are filled with the ideal of peace. Shalom may well be rated -a.
the most popular, the most frequently used word in prayers, in poetry, in historical
accounts.
These are exemplary:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into prun-
inghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn
war any more.

— Isaiah 2:4

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good
tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth
salvation.

— Isaiah 52:7
. . . God created the world only so that there should be peace."
— Bamidbar Rabba 1:17

On three things the world stands: on justice, on truth and on peace. And all
three are one, for when justice is done, truth is confirmed and peace is made."

— Yerushalmi, Ta'anit 4:2

If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not given peace to the land, the sword and
the wild beasts would have laid the earth desolate.

— Derekh Eretz Zuta

The gentile poor are to be supported together with the Jewish poor, and the
gentile sick visited together with the Jewish sick, and the gentile dead buried with
the Jewish dead, in the interests of peace.

— Gittin, 61a
. . . for it is with peace that the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring Jerusalem

the tidings of redemption, for it is with peace that the Holy One, blessed be He, will
console Jerusalem.

• — DevarimRabba 5, 15

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be
within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and compan-
ions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be with thee.

— Psalms, 122:6-8

Prophecy fulfilled in statehood, hope sustained for peace — these are the blessings
granted this generation.
What else could possibly add to the glory of this day? Prophecy, insistence on peace,
the dignity of a people holding fast to great traditions that make its Independence Day
one suitable for humanity, without restrictions as to race or- faith?
It is in this spirit that Yom Ha'Atzmaut merits the salutations: Hag Sameakh,
Happy Holiday, Happy Yom Ha'AtzMaut!

Israel's Declaration of Independence

(Continued fro& Page 1)

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 interna-
tional sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish
people and Eretz Yisrael 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 reestablishing in Eretz Yis-
rael 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 Yisrael, 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 free-
dom 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.
On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations Gen-
eral Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establish-
ment of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael; the General Assem-
bly required the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael 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 Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael
and of the Zionist Movement, are here assembled on the
day of the termination of the British Mandate over Eretz
Yisrael and, by virtue of our national 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 Yisrael, to be known as the state of Israel .. .
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish im-

migration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster
the development of the country for the benefit of all inhabi-
tants; 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 ajid culture; it
will safeguard the Holy Places of all religioni; and it will be
faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Na-
tions.
THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with
the agencies and representatitres 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 Yisrael.
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 inhabi-
tants 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 neighboring states and
their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness
and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and
mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its
oum land. The state of Israel is prepared to do its share in
common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle

.

`Never Again' an Inerasable
Motto ... Arab Terrorists
Fail to Understand It

Israel's celebrations are preceded by recollections of
the past. Remembrance Day always precedes Yom
Ha'Atzmaut.
This Sunday will be such a day, and it has been so
designated by the President and Congress 'of the United
States as a tribute to the victims of Nazism and of those who
fell in the - battles for Israel's freedom.
When the Nazis imposed upon their Jewish victims the
Yellow Badge, Jews proclaimed that they will wear it with
pride. No one can impoe endless degradation upon people
who will live to proclaim the glory of the Lord and of life
itself.
•
How tragic, therefore, that Arab terrorists should have
repeated their inhuman acts with the brutal murders .at
Nahariya.
"Sheer murder" is the way Moshe Dayan describe A..
"Sheer murder" is how history will judge the beasts
who made innocent children and their parents the targets
of what they call war but which is in reality insanity and
bestiality.
"Never again" remains the motto of the Jewish-people.
The Holocaust will not be repeated in Germany or any-
where else and will not be transplanted into Israel. If the
terrorists do not understand it now, they will learn it with
their own losses and what must be their eventual eradica-
tion from civilized society.

East.
WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Dias-
pora to rally round the Jews of Eretz Yisrael in the tasks of
iminigration 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 Almighty, we affix our signa-
tures 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).