1954 Official HAGGADAH & SEDDER For INDPENDENCE DAY Jewish HEBREW Judaica ISRAEL


1954 Official HAGGADAH & SEDDER For INDPENDENCE DAY Jewish HEBREW Judaica ISRAEL

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1954 Official HAGGADAH & SEDDER For INDPENDENCE DAY Jewish HEBREW Judaica ISRAEL:
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DESCRIPTION : Here for sale is a RARE , One of the FIRST EDITIONS of the \"HAGGADAH For The DAY OF INDEPENDENCE \" which waspublished in 1954 ( Fully dated) , Only five years after the establishment of theINDEPENDENT STATE of ISRAEL and its 1948 WAR of INDEPENDENCE, Being one of afew attempts to create such INDEPENDENCE HAGGADAH , Attempts which didn\'t bringmuch fruits untill nowdays . This is an OFFICIAL HAGGADAH which was published by the Israeli GOVERNMENT , The MINISTERY of EDUCATION and CULTURE. This UNIQUEHAGGADAH for INDEPENDENCE DAY wasbased on the legendary 1952 IDF \"Haggadah of Independence\" by Aharon Meged who was forofferden to be used and its copiers were destroyed by the IDF military Rabbinath. This thrilling INDEPENDENCE HAGGADAH follows quite accurately the traditional CEREMONY of thePESSACH HAGGADAH . The Haggadah is named : FESTIVAL READINGS for the INDEPENDENCE DAY SEDDER - All the familliar elements from the Passover Haggadahare present in this INDEPENDENCE HAGGADAH only with an entirely differentZIONIST TEXT , Adapted to the event of the INDEPENDENCE DAY , The WW2, The JEWISH VOLUNTEERS , The HOLOCAUST , The ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, The 1948 WAR OF INDEPENDENCE , The ESTABLISHMENT of the INDEPENDENT STATE of ISRAEL , The SCROLL OF INDEPENDENCE etc . Original illustrated SC. Impressive calligraphy. 6 x 8 . 16 pp excluding the cover leaves. Very good condition. Used. clean. Tightly bound. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS ISimages ) . Will be sent inside a protective envelope . PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : Shipp worldwide via expedited registered airmailis $17 .Will be sent in a special protective rigid sealed packaging. Handling within 3-5 days after payment. Estimated duration 14 days.

The Passover Haggadah and the Haggadah of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Asa Kasher \"The great Hebrew holiday.\" The first Yom Ha\'Atzama\'ut was received with those words in the address delivered by the chairman of the \"First Knesset of Israel, meeting on the first anniversary of Israel\'s independence, greeting the dear Hebrew holiday.\"Yosef Sprintzak described Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut with phrases such as \"the new Hebrew holiday\" because they seemed appropriate to people of his day. Two words always reappear in those descriptions, and they are both deep and fascinating. However, it seems that they have lost their significance with the passing years.One word, ha\'ivri [\"the Hebrew\"] has fallen out of common usage because its sense has split into several different meanings: \"the Jewish,\" \"the Israeli,\" and so forth. This reflects an interesting and important historical process, but this is not the place to deal with it.The other word, hag [\"holiday\"], is still commonly used in reference to Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut, but it does not serve as a living and accurate description, but rather as a \"frozen\" expression. Usually, Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut is celebrated as a vacation, a time for relaxation or entertainment, rather than as a holiday marked by joy or activities informed by some special spirit of the day. This reflects an interesting an important cultural process, which I shall presently address.It is self-evident that not every special day is a holiday. A memorial day is not a holiday. It is less obvious that even a special day involving more joy than sorrow can also fail to meet the definition of a holiday. Such, for instance, is the 18th of Iyyar, known as La\'G Ba\'Omer. One tradition connects it with the outbreak of the Great Revolt, a second tradition claims that it marks the end of a great plague, while a third associates it with R. Shimon bar Yohai. Everyone who is loyal to these traditions experiences the day as a point of transition from a period of mourning to one of joy, but it is not considered to be a holiday.(I could not find the expression Hag Lag Ba\'Omer in any culturally significant text, with the exception of a few children\'s songs: Levin Kipnis\'s Kashteinu al K\'teifeinu (written in 1921), includes the line \"It is the holiday of Lag Ba\'omer for us [hag lag ba\'omer lanu], a joy for a girl and a boy.\" Ora Morag\'s Heitz va\'Keshet (1979) opens with the words, \"On the holiday of Lag Ba\'Omer, I was told by Tomer.\")The State of Israel established Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut as a holiday. Here is how the law from the year 5709 puts it: \"The Knesset hereby proclaims that the day of the 5th of Iyyar is Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut which shall be celebrated every year as a state holiday.\" It is not difficult to understand why the members of the first Kenesset saw fit to celebrate the day of the proclamation of the state\'s founding as a holiday. All of them belonged to a world in which Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut marked the historical transition from being a people living under foreign rule - be it in the Diaspora or in the Land of Israel - to being a nation \"that exists independently in its own sovereign state,\" to quote from Israel\'s Declaration of Independence. The significance of this transition is so deep, so pervasive, so jarring, that it is appropriate for it to be marked by a holiday.Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut is a natural holiday for a Jew who lived through this transition, even more so for a Jew who participated in the struggle to bring about the transition. Such people find the joy of national independence inside themselves because they had \"left Egypt\" themselves. I recall myself as a wee ear-witness, listening to the broadcast of the ceremony proclaiming the establishment of the state. I remember the strains of Hatikva rising up from our radio for the first time in the State of Israel. Even today, every time I sing the anthem or hear it sung at a ceremony, I am flushed with emotion as I recall the first time it was sung in an independent Israel.So it is for a Jew who witnessed the establishment of the political independence of the Jewish People. So it is for someone like myself, who experienced it as a small child. But what of those who were born here at that time? And what of those who were born here a decade later, or twenty years later, or on the state\'s fiftieth anniversary? It would seem that the stirring voice of the establishment of our independence cannot echo naturally or automatically in their hearts, for they were born into independence, they grew up as children of independence, they came into their own as the sons and daughters of \"a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.\" (In the original version of Imbar\'s Hatikva, the \"ancient hope\" is \"return to the land of our fathers, to the city where David encamped.\" It is not hard to notice the crucial difference between dwelling in our father\'s land and being a free nation in our land.) Independence is the landscape of their birthplace. The establishment of independence is a story passed down in the family or read from the pages of history books. That is why, in their world, Yom Ha\'Atzama\'ut can be a day of celebrations, but it cannot be a genuine holiday.Nonetheless, one whose cultural world has roots in the Jewish tradition will be greatly surprised by how rapidly the perception of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut as \"the State\'s holiday\" has degenerated. From the standpoint of that tradition, the exodus from Egypt was a single ancient event, but we still find \"a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt\" in the formulation of the Kiddush every Sabbath eve. Every Seder night we learn that, in the Haggadah\'s words, \"in each and every generation, one is required to see himself as if he had left Egypt.\" Two thousand years after the event, the Passover Haggadah invites us to reenact the exodus for ourselves. It would seem that one may fulfill this obligation by trying to identify with our fathers and mothers, the original people who left Egypt as they were in themselves. However, it seems preferable to bring the exodus to us rather than to bring ourselves to the exodus. In order to \"see himself as if he had left Egypt,\" one must identify his own present \"Egypt\" and commit himself to leave it in the future. To my mind, this \"Egypt\" is idolatry, understood in its broadest and deepest sense, but I shall not dwell upon that here. (I have written on it at length in my Yahadut ve\'Elilut, Misrad ha\'Bitchon - Hotza\'a la\'Or, Tel-Aviv 2004.) Yom Ha\'atzma\'ut could have remained a genuine holiday for the generations if it had developed a similar tradition in a parallel spirit: \"In each and every year, one is required to see himself as if he had been in Israel on the day of its establishment.\" If such a tradition had developed naturally it would have created the means by which one could fulfill the obligation to see himself as if he had been present in Israel at the moment of its founding. An idea known to us from alternative version of the Haggadah\'s text could have offered a starting point: \"In each and every generation, one is required to show himself as if he had left Egypt.\" (This is the formulation found in Yemenite Haggadahs and in several of the older printed editions. See my grandfather HaRav Menachem Mendel Kasher\'s Haggadah Sheleima, Jerusalem 5721, pg. 64.) How does one fulfill his obligation \"to show himself\"? The basic answer offered to us by the Jewish tradition is to do so by means of ceremonies and texts. There is no holiday without its own particular ceremonies and there is no holiday lacking its own particular texts to be read. Take note: this is not a matter of a ceremony carried out by the High Priest, but rather, of a ceremony in which every individual person takes part. We are not referring to texts sung by the Levites in the Temple, but of texts that every individual is to recite together with the other participants. Such is the holiday of Passover and such is the holiday of Sukkot in the Jewish tradition. Such can be the holiday of Atzma\'ut.This is the place to recall the question asked by the son, while the section beginning \"The Torah spoke of four sons\" stands in the background. It is one of the foundational elements that shaped the entire Haggadah: When your son asks you tomorrow, saying: \"What are the testaments and the laws and the ordinances?\" (Devarim 6:20). On Passover, the answer is already prepared, waiting for us in the Haggadah. If Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut were a real holiday, a prepared answer would also have to be waiting for us: the significance of the ceremony is such and such, and everyone should say it aloud.Part of the possible answer is obvious. The Seder night expresses the importance and significance of the exodus from Egypt, so that one will honor that which possesses such importance and organize his life by the light of that which bears such importance. Similarly, Hag Ha\'Atzma\'ut can express the importance and significance of the political independence of the Jewish People in its historical homeland, in order to honor that which bears such importance and in order that one shape one\'s life by the light of that which bears such significance.Another part of the answer, which is especially appropriate for our generations, is not immediately obvious.We are used to saying that the State of Israel was founded on the 5th of Iyyar, 5708. Thus, the precise title of the \"Declaration of Independence\" is the \"Declaration of the Founding of the State of Israel.\" On that day, the State of Israel was founded as a political and legal entity, but the process of founding the State of Israel in the broadest sense of that historical expression began on that day but has yet to be completed. We have not finished founding our state. We have not finished removing the Jewish People from exile, and we have yet to remove the exile from within the Jewish people. We have not finished establishing the inner relationships of the state, including its identity and constitution, and we have yet to finish establishing the state\'s external relations, particularly those involving the neighboring nation. As a result, each of us can still play a part in the historical process of state building. Each of us can still shoulder responsibility for a part of this stirring process. Hag Ha\'Atzma\'ut can also express that idea through ceremonies and texts. A little before the State of Israel\'s first birthday, the Knesset discussed a proposal by Israel\'s first government concerning \"the Sovereignty Day Law.\" The first minister of education and culture, M.K. Zalman Shazar (who was later to become the third president) suggested that the day of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut should be determined by the Hebrew calendar. M.K. Prof. Ben-Zion Dinur (who would later serve as minister of education and culture in four governments), presented four elements that appear in each of Israel\'s holidays: historical memory, the \"idea,\" the symbol, and the \"organicness\" - which refers to the natural connection between the holiday and its particular historical memory and idea.Dinur suggested that the historical memory be that of the victory in the War of Independence, that the idea be sovereignty, and that the symbol be the Flag. One can question the details of these proposals, but here we shall only consider the fourth element, the \"organicness,\" in the broad sense of the day\'s connection to history as the idea of political independence is expressed within the course of history, \"to be like every other nation, existing autonomously in its own sovereign state\" - both in periods in which that goal was an object of longing and struggle as well as in times of further development after sovereignty was already established.I believe that there is only one way to make Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut into a genuine holiday, a holiday that will merge naturally into the history of the Jewish People as a nation which is \"autonomous\" in every important aspect of is existence. That is the way of ceremonies and texts that bear a clear relationship to the Passover Haggadah which is known to us from the Seder night. The notion of creating an \"Independence Haggadah\" along the lines of the Passover Haggadah offers three advantages. First; although that by its very nature, any such Haggadah for Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut is bound to contain significantly novel material in central sections of its content, its strong connections to the Passover Haggadah will immediately invest it with deep historical roots. The Haggadah for Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut will be a new text possessing ancient roots. Far from involving paradox, this will represent a unique cultural achievement. Second, the employment of texts will constitute a natural element of similarity between the Passover Haggadah and a reasonable Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadah. Just as the Passover Haggadah is the foundational text of a ceremony, so too the Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadah can be a text designated for a ceremony, be it in the format of the Seder night or in some other format - on the night following Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut, for instance. Third, the main characteristics of the texts will constitute a natural element of difference between the Passover Haggadah and a reasonable Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadah: while the traditional Passover Haggadah does invite new ideas, they must take the shape of textual commentary or marginal discourses. In contrast, a successful Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadah will be able to include new material, even on a yearly basis, just as long as the permanent textual selections are repeated every year, as befits a text that is meant to live within a tradition.Starting from the first years of the state\'s existence, several attempts have been made to shape the character of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut. Some of these succeeded, including the ceremony at Har Herzl, which opens the day, and the Israel Awards ceremony, which closes it. Others did not last. The attempts to compose a Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadah are the most interesting. The number of such Haggadahs is not small, but it is not large, either. I own tens of such Haggadahs, and it is reasonable to assume that my collection is not comprehensive. Personally, I find each and every one of them interesting. I have edited a selection of passages from them in the past (Ben Haggadah le\'Atzma\'ut, Perakim be\'Toldat Ha\'Ra\'ayon shel \"Haggadah le\'Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut\", privately published, Ramat Gan 2000), and I shall take a later opportunity to write about them at length, both descriptively as well as evaluatively. For the present I would like to mention two especially unusual Haggadahs. One was composed in Hebrew, but was never published. The other presents itself as based upon the former, but it only appeared in the English language and was published in the USA. I find both of them fascinating, and their comparison is instructive.I am referring to two Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadahs that were written in a strictly religious context. That is their rare characteristic in the world of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadahs. Every Yom Ha\'atzma\'ut Haggadah reveals a clear connection to the Passover Haggadah, if it be through the use of four cups of wine, four questions of Ma Nishtana, the four sons, and so forth. It is rare for a Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadah to be written by a real rabbinic personality for a religious audience, marking Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut as a holiday possessing religious content - not just a religious flavor or style, but genuine religious significance.First, I came across the Haggadah for Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut published by the \"Rabbinical Advisory Committee\" of the United Jewish Appeal in the USA in 1978. It is intended for a \"family, synagogue, or communal Seder in honor of Israel\'s Independence Day.\" Its first introduction is written by Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, chairman of the committee, a leading Orthodox rabbi in the USA who later became chancellor of Bar Ilan University. According to the introduction, it was Rabbi Lookstein who first thought of writing the Haggadah. He then brought up the idea before Rabbi Shelomo Goren, who was then serving as the Chief Rabbi of Israel. A surprise awaited me at this point of the story. The idea \"won immediate interest\" from Rabbi Goren, who was even willing to offer his active cooperation. The resulting Haggadah is \"based upon a text composed by Rabbi Shelomo Goren. In addition, the Haggadah includes an introduction (in English) written by Rabbi Goren himself.The formulation of the Haggadah is fascinating. For instance, it includes a new practice based upon the old custom of \"the fifth cup\" which I knew from the house of my father, Shimon Kasher and from the house of my grandfather, Rabbi Menachem Mendle Kasher (see his Haggadah Sheleima, pp. 161-178). It also includes, for example, a renewel of \"an ancient custom, the hanging of a meggilat mizrah\" on the wall facing Jerusalem. The Haggadah comes equipped with its own colorful meggilah upon which the verse from Isaiah (62:1) is written in decorative script: For Zion\'s sake I shall not be silent and for Jerusalem\'s sake I shall not be still, until her justice emerge resplendent and her salvation burn like a torch. I shall describe this Haggadah more fully elsewhere.From the moment I saw from the title page of the Haggadah that it was based on a Hebrew version written by Rabbi Goren, I sought to find the Hebrew original. Rabbi Goren\'s family members and students were unaware that he had composed a Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadah. Even after they allowed me to search for it in his archives, I found nothing. Finally, after much toil, his family members found the lost document, the \"Haggadah for the Night of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut for the Thirtieth Year of the State of Israel\" written by Rabbi Goren. According to its short introduction, \"Its purpose\" was \"to lend the Atzma\'ut holiday a spiritual-national dimension, and to incorporate it into the stages of the vision of redemption of the Jewish People, and into the course of its history. Its practical aim is to establish a uniform family framework for the Atzma\'ut holiday, which had heretofore failed to consolidate a character, form, and content bearing religious, historical, and spiritual significance.\" The text of the \"Haggadah for the Night of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut\" is fascinating and even surprising when compared with the English Yom Ha\'atzma\'ut Haggadah. A detailed analysis is in preparation and will be published in the future. (I offer my thanks to Rabbi Goren\'s daughter and son for their efforts and for permitting me to publish the Haggadah. I am indebted to my friend Eli Har-Tov for his great help in this matter).Rabbi Shelomo Goren, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, and Rabbi Prof. Joseph Lookstein, paved sections of the road to the fashioning of Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut in the spirit of the Jewish tradition. They imagined the desired destination of that road as \"a uniform family framework for the Atzma\'ut holiday.\" Today, it seems inescapable that we must change our picture of the final form of the holiday. There can be no uniform framework for all families; rather each family must preserve its own tradition. There can be no single text for all families; rather, there should be family texts preserved by family tradition; texts bearing clear resemblance to the Passover Haggadah on the one hand, while on the other hand they must also include much novelty and not a little flexibility, allowing renewal to take place in the body of the text itself, and not merely in its margins. The spectacle of hundreds and thousands of different Yom Ha\'Atzma\'ut Haggadahs will not only be breathtaking; it will also offer an opening for constant ideological and practical reinvigoration.Prof. Asa Kasher holds the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair in Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice at Tel Aviv University. Vered Levi-Brazili\'s (Hebrew) book, 17 Conversations with Asa Kasher, was recently published by Hotza\'at Kinneret, Zemorah-Beitan, Or Yehudah 2005. *********** Haggadot for the new Jew By Yair Sheleg \"How is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights since we came to this country we were under foreign, hostile rule that reined us in malevolently, and this night in our own state we are celebrating and we are able to redeem the wilderness and dry [swamps] ... On all other nights we are scattered in two separate camps - fathers from sons, and we all engage in the great work of building. This night we all recline at the same table.\" This quotation, which is taken from the Kibbutz Ma\'agan Michael Haggadah for 1949, typifies an outstanding aspect of the Passover Haggadot that were written in the kibbutz movement: the use of the traditional text, with \"adjustments\" to the spirit of the age - in this case, the first year of the establishment of the state. In the same spirit the Beit Ha\'emek Haggadah of 1951 inserted a new text into the story of the four sons: \"The wise son, what does he say? What are all the political parties, movements and factions that boast in our young country and interfere in matters of state at such a fateful time? ... The wicked son, what does he say? What do you need this work for? Every day there are new immigrants, who eat our bread and take our apartments ...- and just as he has removed himself from the community, you too must remove him from the community: In principle he is the type who loves only himself, the person who does not remember his own condition as a new immigrant.\" To the part about \"Pour out Thy wrath upon the gentiles,\" in 1945 Kibbutz Ein Gev added a sentence to mention the Holocaust that had only just ended and to say that the best thing to do is to drop the accounting with the gentiles and turn our backs on them: \"And those who have survived the terrible upheaval have resolved no longer to be in the shadow of the gentiles and to set their sights on the land of the Patriarchs that is being reborn.\" All of these quotations are taken from a luxurious album that has just been published, \"Yotzim behodesh ha-aviv\" (\"Going Out in the Month of Spring\") in which there are selected extracts and photographs from hundreds of kibbutz Haggadot that were written in this country since the inception of the kibbutz movement. (The publication is a cooperative project of four research institutes named after fathers of the labor movement: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, the Ben-Gurion heritage Institute, Yad Tabenkin and Yad Ya\'ari.) Muki Tzur, a leading researcher of the kibbutz movement, is responsible for the contents, and the design - which is no less important - is the work of an artist and curator from Kibbutz Hama\'apil, Yuval Danieli, who has also added a brief analysis of the graphic element in the kibbutz Haggadot. During the research phase, Tzur combed through a number of the major archives of the labor movement, among them the holiday archives at Kibbutz Beit Hashitta and Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan, the archive of Hakibbutz hadati (the religious kibbutz movement) and the National and University Library in Jerusalem. He discovered more than 500 Haggadot, all of which were written during a relatively short period - between the 1930s and the 1960s. In his estimation, the total number is more like 1,000 Haggadot: \"We know that there are many kibbutzim that put out a lot of Haggadot in limited editions, only a few dozen copies, which never got to the major archives.\" For the sake of comparison: In the catalog of traditional Passover Haggadot prepared by Avraham Ya\'ari in 1960 that maps all the period from the invention of printing to that year, there are altogether 2,717 Haggadot. A short look at the \"sample pages\" from the Haggadot that appear in the boom explains the plenitude: Many of these Haggadot were not at all intended as sacred texts to be read year in and year out in the same way. Indeed, they look like a series of festive skits for Passover - and in any case they vary from kibbutz to kibbutz and from year to year at a given kibbutz. Only at later stages, when the kibbutz movement became established, did its various branches begin to publish standard Haggadot for all the kibbutzim that belonged to the same stream: the Kibbutz Haartzi Haggadah, the Kibbutz Hameuchad Haggadah and more. In fact, the production of the Haggadot themselves was already a relatively established stage of the movement. Tzur\'s research found that the first kibbutz Haggadah was written in 1928, about 20 years after the kibbutz movement was founded, and even it was not written by kibbutz members proper, but rather by members of a training group in Kolosova in Poland, who were waiting to immigrate to Palestine. The kibbutz Haggadot that were written here appeared only in the 1930s (first at Ein Harod). Before that, the kibbutz Seders where characterized by anarchism: The traditional text was open in front of them and here and there they even read from it, but the main thing was not the text - traditional or new - but rather the experience of togetherness, the singing and the dancing.The kibbutz Haggadah was in effect a symbol of the entire process of the Zionist revolution, and especially that of the labor movement: the creation of a \"new Jew,\" one who gives new and secular meaning to the Jewish tradition, its values and its holidays. Thus, they created new and timely versions of the traditional text, just as they inserted into the Haggadah completely new texts from the literature of the period. Tzur: \"The assumption was that Hebrew literature was a continuation of the canonical holy literature and therefore extracts from the new Hebrew literature are prominent in the Haggadot.\" The Passover Haggadah was especially apt for the labor movement people because it symbolizes the two freedoms they upheld: national freedom and social-human freedom - from the chains of enslavement. Tzur notes that the \"innovative\" Haggadah was indeed characteristic of the kibbutzim and the bodies that were influenced by them, like the training farms abroad or the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade during World War II, as well as the Jewish leftist movements in general, even those that were opposed to Zionism. ****** The 1948 Israeli WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, known by the Israelis predominantly as War of Independence (מלחמת העצמאות) and War of Liberation (מלחמת השחרור), was the first in a series of wars fought between the newly declared State of Israel and its Arab neighbors in the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict.The War commenced on the termination of the Mandate on 15 May 1948 following a previous phase of war of 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, commenced in Arab rejection of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (UN General Assembly Resolution 181) that would have created an Arab state and a Jewish state. The War was fought mostly on the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine, and for a short time also on the Sinai Peninsula. While the 1948 war was concluded with the 1949 Armistice Agreements it has not marked the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict.Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Allied Supreme Council met at the Villa Dechavan in San Remo, Italy, 18 April–26 1920 to settle the final terms of the peace treaty with Turkey. The decisions of the conference mainly confirmed those of the First Conference of London (February 1920), and broadly reaffirmed the terms of the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 16 May 1916 for the region\'s partition and the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917. The San Remo Agreement stated that \'the mandatories chosen by the Principal Allied Powers are: France for Syria and Great Britain for Mesopotamia and Palestine.\' The high contracting parties agreed further that the territorial boundaries of these regions would be \'determined by the Principal Allied Powers\'.In the case of Palestine the borders were agreed between the British and French in two separate conventions: the Franco-British Convention of 23rd December 1920 on Certain Points Connected with the Mandates for Syria and the Lebanon, Palestine and Mesopotamia and the Agreement Between the British and the French Governments Respecting the Boundary Line Between Syria and Palestine from the Mediterranean to El Hammé, 1923.During meetings in Cairo and Jerusalem between Winston Churchill and Emir Abdullah in March 1921 it was agreed that Abdullah would administer the territory of Transjordan (initially for six months only) on behalf of the Palestine administration. In the summer of 1921 Transjordan was included within the Mandate of Palestine, but excluded from the provisions for a Jewish National Home.On 24 July 1922 the League of Nations approved the terms of the British Mandate over Palestine and Transjordan. On 16 September the League formally approved a memorandum from Lord Balfour confirming the exemption of Transjordan from the clauses of the mandate concerning the creation of a Jewish national home and from the mandate\'s responsibility to facilitate Jewish immigration and land settlement.In 1922 the population of Palestine consisted of approximately 589,200 Muslims, 83,800 Jews, 71,500 Christians and 7,600 others (1922 census). However, this area gradually saw a large influx of Jewish immigrants (most of whom were fleeing the increasing persecution in Europe). This immigration and accompanying call for a Jewish state in Palestine drew violent opposition from local Arabs, in part because of Zionism\'s stated goal of a Jewish state, which many Arabs believed would require the subjugation or removal of the existing non-Jewish population.Under the leadership of Haj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the local Arabs rebelled against the British, and attacked the growing Jewish population repeatedly. These sporadic attacks began with the riots in Palestine of 1920 and Jaffa riots (or \"Hurani Riots\") of 1921. During the 1929 Palestine riots ( Pogroms), 133 Jews were killed, 67 of them in Hebron, and 355 wounded. By the time the British intervened 116 Arabs were also killed in the fighting.The Great Arab Revolt (1936–1939) and its aftermathIn the late 1920s and early 1930s several factions of Arab society became impatient with the internecine divisions and ineffectiveness of the Arab elite and engaged in grass-roots anti-British and anti-Zionist activism organized by groups such as the Young Men\'s Muslim Association. There was also support for the growth in influence of the radical nationalist Independence Party (Hizb al-Istiqlal), Indian Congress Party. Most of these initiatives were contained and defeated by notables in the pay of the Mandatory Administration, particularly the mufti and his cousin Jamal al-Husayni. The death of the preacher Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam at the hands of the British police near Jenin in November 1935 generated widespread outrage and huge crowds accompanied Qassam\'s body to his grave in Haifa. A few months later a spontaneous Arab national general strike broke out. This lasted until October 1936. During the summer of that year thousands of Jewish-farmed acres and orchards were destroyed, Jews were attacked and killed and some Jewish communities, such as those in Beisan and Acre, fled to safer areas.In the wake of the strike and the Peel Commission recommendation of partition of the country into a small Jewish state and an Arab state to be attached to Jordan, an armed uprising spread through the country. Over the next 18 months the British lost control of Jerusalem, Nablus, and Hebron. During this period from 1936–1939, known as the Great Arab Revolt or the \"Great Uprising\", British forces, supported by 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police, suppressed the widespread riots with overwhelming force. This resulted in the deaths of 5,000 Palestinian Arabs and the wounding of 10,000. In total 10 percent of the adult male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled (see Khalidi, 2001). The Jewish population had 400 killed; the British 200. In another significant development during this time the British officer Charles Orde Wingate (who supported a Zionist revival for religious reasons[) organized Special Night Squads composed of British soldiers and Haganah mercenaries, which \"scored significant successes against the Arab rebels in the lower Galilee and in the Jezreel valley\" by conducting raids on Arab villages. The squads were rumored to have used excessive and indiscriminate force, which has been cited by Israeli academic Anita Shapira. The Haganah mobilized up to 20,000 policemen, field troops and night squads; the latter included Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan. Significantly, from 1936 to 1945, whilst establishing collaborative security arrangements with the Jewish Agency (see below for details), the British confiscated 13,200 firearms from Arabs and 521 weapons from Jews.In assessing the overall impact of the revolt on subsequent events Rashid Khalidi argues that its negative effects on Palestinian national leadership, social cohesion and military capabilities contributed to the outcome of 1948 because \"when the Palestinians faced their most fateful challenge in 1947–49, they were still suffering from the British repression of 1936–39, and were in effect without a unified leadership. Indeed, it might be argued that they were virtually without any leadership at all\".The attacks on the Jewish population by Arabs had three lasting effects: First, they led to the further development of Jewish underground militias, primarily the Haganah (\"The Defense\"), which were to prove decisive in 1948. Secondly, the attacks solidified general sentiment that the two communities could not be reconciled, and the idea of partition was born. Thirdly, the British responded to Arab opposition with the White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish immigration. However, with the advent of World War II, even this reduced immigration quota was not reached. The White Paper policy also radicalized segments of the Jewish population, who after the war would no longer cooperate with the British.The British Mandate administration and training of local Arabs and JewsFrom 1936 onward the British government facilitated the training, arming, recruitment and funding of a range of security and intelligence forces in collaboration with the Jewish Agency. These included the Guards (Notrim), which were divided into the 6,000 to 14,000-strong Jewish Supernumerary Police, the élite and highly mobile 6,000–8,000 strong Jewish Settlement Police and the Special Night Squads, the forerunner of Britain\'s Special Air Service regiments. There was also an élite strike force known as the FOSH, or Field Companies, with around 1,500 members, which were replaced by the larger HISH or Field Force in 1939.The SHAI, the intelligence and counter-espionage arm of the Haganah, was the forebear of Mossad.The British had enlisted 6,000 Palestinian Arabs during World War II and 1,700 Palestinian Arabs were recruited into the Trans-Jordanian Frontier Force or T.J.F.F. . In addition the British supplied officers, such as John Bagot Glubb Pasha for the Jordan\'s Arab Legion, and supplied the Egyptian army with trucks, rifles and airplanes. The British army therefore was intimately involved, ironically, in the training of both sides for the coming conflict.World War IIOn 6 August 1940 Anthony Eden, the British Secretary of State for War, informed Parliament that the Cabinet had decided to recruit Arab and Jewish units as battalions of the Royal East Kent Regiment (the \"Buffs\").At a luncheon with Chaim Weizmann on 3 September Winston Churchill approved the large-scale recruitment of Jewish forces in Palestine and the training of their officers. A further 10,000 men (no more than 3,000 from Palestine) were to be recruited to Jewish units in the British Army for training in the United Kingdom.Faced with Field Marshal Rommel\'s advance in Egypt, the British government decided on 15 April 1941 that the 10,000 Jews dispersed in the single defense companies of the Buffs should be prepared for war service at the battalion level and that another 10,000 should also be mobilized along with 6,000 Supernumerary Police and 40,000 to 50,000 home guard. The plans were approved by Field Marshall John Dill. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Cairo approved a Haganah proposal for guerrilla activities in northern Palestine led by the Palmach arm of the Haganah, as part of which Yitzhak Sadeh devised Plan North for an armed enclave in the Carmel range from which the Yishuv could defend the region and from which they could attack Nazi communications and supply lines, if necessary. British intelligence also trained a small radio network under Moshe Dayan to act as spy cells in the event of a German invasion.After much hesitation, on 3 July 1944 the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On 20 September 1944 an official communiqué by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Zionist Flag was officially approved as its standard. It included more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine organized into three infantry battalions and several supporting units.As soon as the war ended British policy reverted to that of the period immediately before the war. Arms were confiscated and some Haganah members were arrested and tried, one notable case being that of Eliahu Sacharoff, who received a sentence of seven years\' imprisonment for possession of two stolen firearms cartridges.UN Partition Plan On 29 November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan, UN General Assembly Resolution 181, to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. Each state would comprise three major sections, linked by extraterritorial crossroads; the Arab state would also have an enclave at Jaffa. With about 32% of the population, the Jews would get 56% of the territory, an area that then contained 499,000 Jews and 438,000 Palestinians, though this included the inhospitable Negev Desert in the south. The Palestinians would get 42% of the land, which then had a population of 818,000 Palestinians and 10,000 Jews. In consideration of its religious significance, the Jerusalem area, including Bethlehem, with 100,000 Jews and an equal number of Palestinians, was to become a Corpus Separatum, to be administered by the UN.Although some Jews criticized aspects of the plan, the resolution was welcomed by most of the Jewish population. The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan as \"the indispensable minimum,\" glad as they were with the international recognition, but sorry that they didn\'t get more.Arguing that the partition plan was unfair to the Arabs with regard to the population balance at that time, the representatives of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League firmly opposed the UN action and even rejected its authority to involve itself in the entire matter. They upheld \"that the rule of Palestine should revert to its inhabitants, in accordance with the provisions of [...] the Charter of the United Nations.\"According to Article 73b of the Charter, the UN should develop self-government of the peoples in a territory under its administration.1947–1948 Civil War in mandatory PalestineIn the immediate aftermath of the United Nations\' approval of the Partition plan, the explosions of joy amongst the Jewish community were counterbalanced by the expression of discontent amongst the Arab community. Soon thereafter, violence broke out and became more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came one after the other, killing dozens of victims on both sides in the process.Summarizing the military assessments of the British, Jewish Agency and the Arabs, historian Benny Morris writes, \"all observers—Jewish, British, Palestinian Arab, and external Arab—agreed on the eve of the war that the Palestinians were incapable of beating the Zionists or of withstanding Zionist assault. The Palestinians were simply too weak.\"During the period beginning in December 1947 and ending in January 1948, it was estimated that nearly 1,000 people were killed and 2,000 people were injured. By the end of March, the figure had risen to 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded. These figures correspond to an average of more than 100 deaths and 200 casualties per week; in a population of 2,000,000.From January onwards operations became more militaristic, with the intervention into Palestine of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments who divided up around the different coastal towns and reinforced Galilee and Samaria.Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of Holy War.Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply the city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical and more and more died in this process. By March, Al-Hussayni\'s tactic had paid off. Almost the entirety of Haganah\'s armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of the Haganah members who tried to bring supplies to the city were killed. The situation for those who dwelt in the Jewish settlements in the highly-isolated Negev and northern Galilee was even more critical.Since the Jewish population was under strict orders obliging them to hold their dominions at all costs, the situation of insecurity across the country affected the Arab population more visibly. Up to 100,000 Palestinians, chiefly those from the upper classes, left the country to seek refuge abroad or in Samaria.This situation caused the U.S. to retract their support for the Partition plan, thus encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinians, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the partition plan. The British, on the other hand, decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Jordan.Although a certain level of doubt took hold amongst Yishuv supporters, their apparent defeats were due more to their wait-and-see policy than to weakness. Ben-Gurion reorganized the Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in the country had to receive military training. Due to funds gathered by Golda Meir from sympathizers in the United States, and assisted by Stalin\'s support for the Zionist cause at the time, the Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to sign very important armament contracts in the East. Other Haganah agents retrieved stockpiles from World War II, which helped equip the army further. Operation Balak allowed arms and other equipment to be transported for the first time by the end of March.Ben-Gurion assigned Yigael Yadin the responsibility to come up with a plan in preparation for the announced intervention of the Arab states. The result of his analysis was Plan Dalet, which was put in place from the start of April onwards. The adoption of Plan Dalet marked the second stage of the war, in which Haganah passed from the defensive to the offensive.The first operation, named Operation Nachshon, consisted of lifting the blockade on Jerusalem. Fifteen hundred men from the Haganah\'s Givati Brigade and the Palmach\'s Harel brigade went about freeing the route to the city between 5 April and 20 April.The operation was successful, and enough foodstuffs to last two months were shipped to Jerusalem and distributed to the Jewish population. The success of the operation was added to by the death of al-Hussayni in combat. During this time, and beyond the command of Haganah or the framework of Plan Dalet, troops from Irgun and Lehi massacred more than 100 Arabs, mostly civilians, at Deir Yassin, a move that had an important impact on the Palestinian population, and one that was criticised and lamented by all the principal Jewish authorities of the day.At the same time, the first large-scale operation of the Arab Liberation Army ended in a debacle, having been roundly defeated at Mishmar Ha\'emek and having lost their Druze allies through defection.Within the framework for the expansion of Jewish territory foreseen by Plan Dalet, the forces of Haganah, Palmach and Irgun intended to conquer mixed zones. Whether ethnic cleansing was the intention, encouraged, or merely accepted, Palestinian society was shaken. Tiberias, Haifa, Safed, Beisan, Jaffa and Acre fell, resulting in the flight of more than 250,000 Palestinians.The British had, at that time, essentially withdrawn their troops. The situation pushed the leaders of the neighbouring Arab states to intervene, but their preparation was not finalized, and they could not assemble forces that would be able to turn the tide of the war. The majority of Palestinian hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Jordan\'s monarch, King Abdullah I, but he had no intention of creating a Palestinian-run state, instead hoping to annex as much of the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine as he could. He was playing a double-game, being just as much in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League.In preparation for the offensive, Haganah successfully launched Operations Yiftah and Ben Ami to secure the Jewish settlements of Galilee, and Operation Kilshon, which created a united front around Jerusalem.Golda Meir and Abdullah I met on 10 May to discuss the situation, but the meeting was inconclusive and their former agreements were not confirmed. On 13 May, the Arab Legion, backed by irregulars, attacked and took Kfar Etzion where 127 out of the 131 Jewish defenders were killed and the prisoners massacred.On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the state of Israel, and the 1948 Palestine war entered its second phase, with the intervention of several Arab states\' armies the following day.Political objectivesThe YishuvBenny Morris points out Yishuv s aims evolved during the war.Initially, the aim was \"simple and modest\": to survive the assaults of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. \"The Zionist leaders deeply, genuinely, feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the Holocaust, which had just ended; the Arabs\' public rhetoric reinforced these fears\". As the war progressed, the aim of expanding the Jewish state beyond the UN partition borders appeared: first to incorporate clusters of isolated Jewish settlements and later to add more territories to the state and give it defensible borders. A third and further aim that emerged among the political and military leaders after four or five months was to \"reduce the size of Israel\'s prospective large and hostile Arab minority, seen as a potential powerful fifth column, by belligerency and expulsion.\"Morris has argued that although, by the end of 1947, the Palestinians \"had a healthy and demoralising respect for the Yishuv\'s military power\" they believed in decades or centuries \"that the Jews, like the medieval crusader kingdoms, would ultimately be overcome by the Arab world\".On the eve of the war the number of Arab troops likely to be committed to the war was about 23,000 (10,000 Egyptians, 4,500 Jordanians, 3,000 Iraqis, 3,000 Syrians, 2,000 ALA volunteers, 1,000 Lebanese and some Saudi Arabians), in addition to the irregular Palestinians already present. The Yishuv had 35,000 troops of the Haganah, 3,000 of Stern and Irgun and a few thousand armed settlers.On 12 May David Ben-Gurion was told by his chief military advisers, \'who over-estimated the size of the Arab armies and the numbers and efficiency of the troops who would be committed\', that Israel\'s chances of winning a war against the Arab states was only about even.Yishuv forcesIn November 1947, the Haganah was an underground paramilitary force that had existed as a highly organised, national force since the riots of 1920–21, and throughout the riots of 1929, and Great Uprising of 1936–39 It had a mobile force, the HISH, which had 2,000 full time fighters (men and women) and 10,000 reservists (all aged between 18 and 25) and an elite unit, the Palmach composed of 2,100 fighters and 1,000 reservists. The reservists trained 3–4 days a month and went back to civilian life the rest of the time. These mobile forces could rely on a garrison force, the HIM (Heil Mishmar, lit. Guard Corps), composed of people aged over 25. The Yishuv\'s total strength was around 35,000 with 15,000 to 18,000 fighters and a garrison force of roughly 20,000 The two clandestine groups Irgun and Lehi had 2,000–4,000 and 500–800 members, respectively. There were also several thousand men and women who had served in the British Army in World War II who did not serve in any of the underground militias but would provide valuable military experience during the war. Walid Khalidi says the Yishuv had the additional forces of the Jewish Settlement Police, numbering some 12,000, the Gadna Youth Battalions, and the armed settlers. Few of the units had been trained by December 1947.In 1946 Ben-Gurion decided that the Yishuv would probably have to defend itself against both the Palestinian Arabs and neighbouring Arab states and accordingly began a \"massive, covert arms acquisition campaign in the West\". By September 1947 the Haganah had \"10,489 rifles, 702 light machine-guns, 2,666 submachine guns, 186 medium machine-guns, 672 two-inch mortars and 92 three-inch (76 mm) mortars\" and acquired many more during the first few months of hostilities. The Yishuv also had \"a relatively advanced arms producing capacity\", that between October 1947 and July 1948 \"produced 3 million 9 mm bullets, 150,000 mills grenades, 16,000 submachine guns (Sten Guns) and 210 three-inch (76 mm) mortars\". Initially, the Haganah had no heavy machine guns, artillery, armoured vehicles, anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons, nor military aircraft or tanks.Sources disagree about the amount of arms at the Yishuv\'s disposal at the end of the Mandate. According to Karsh before the arrival of arms shipments from Czechoslovakia as part of Operation Balak, there was roughly one weapon for every three fighters and even the Palmach armed only two out of every three of its active members. According to Collins and LaPierre, by April 1948 the Haganah had managed to accumulate only about 20,000 rifles and Sten guns for the 35,000 soldiers who existed on paper.According to Walid Khalidi \"the arms at the disposal of these forces were plentiful\".1948 Arab-Israeli War First phase: 14 May 1948–11 June 1948 The British mandate over Palestine was due to expire on 15 May, but Jewish Leadership led by future Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared independence on 14 May. The State of Israel declared itself as an independent nation, and was quickly recognized by the United States, the Soviet Union, and many other countries.Over the next few days, approximately 1,000 Lebanese, 5,000 Syrian, 5,000 Iraqi, and 10,000 Egyptian troops invaded the newly-established state. Four thousand Jordanian troops invaded the Corpus separatum region encompassing Jerusalem and its environs, as well as areas designated as part of the Arab state by the UN partition plan. They were aided by corps of volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen.In an official cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General on 15 May 1948, the Arab states publicly proclaimed their aim of creating a \"United State of Palestine\" in place of the Jewish and Arab, two-state, UN Plan. They claimed the latter was invalid, as it was opposed by Palestine\'s Arab majority, and maintained that the absence of legal authority made it necessary to intervene to protect Arab lives and property.Israel, the United States and the Soviets called the Arab states\' entry into Palestine illegal aggression, while UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie characterized it as \"the first armed aggression which the world had seen since the end of the [Second World] War.\" China, meanwhile, broadly backed the Arab claims. Both sides increased their manpower over the following months, but the Israeli advantage grew steadily as a result of the progressive mobilization of Israeli society and the influx of an average of 10,300 immigrants each month.On 26 May 1948, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was officially established and the Haganah, Palmach and Irgun were dissolved into the army of the new Jewish state. As the war progressed, the IDF managed to field more troops than the Arab forces. By July 1948, the IDF was fielding 63,000 troops; by early spring 1949, 115,000. The Arab armies had an estimated 40,000 troops in July 1948, rising to 55,000 in October 1948, and slightly more by the spring of 1949.All Jewish aviation assets were placed under the control of the Sherut Avir (Air Service, known as the SA) in November 1947 and flying operations began in the following month from a small civil airport on the outskirts of Tel Aviv called Sde Dov, with the first ground support operation (in an R.W.D. 13) taking place on 17 December. The Galilee Squadron was formed at Yavne\'el in March 1948 and the Negev Squadron was formed at Nir-Am in April. By 10 May, when the SA suffered its first combat loss, there were three flying units, an air staff, maintenance facilities and logistics support. At the outbreak of the war on 15 May the SA became the Israeli Air Force, but, during the first few weeks of the war, with its fleet of light planes it was no match for Arab forces flying T-6s, Spitfires, C-47s and Avro Ansons and indeed the main Arab losses were the result of RAF action in response to Egyptian raids on the British air base at Ramat David near Haifa on 22 May during which 5 Egyptian Spitfires were shot down. It was also during this time that the balance of air power began to swing in favor of the Israeli Air Force following the purchase of 25 Avia S-199s from Czechoslovakia, the first of which arrived in Israel on 20 May. This created the ironic situation of the young Jewish state using derivatives of the Bf-109 designed in Nazi Germany to help counter the British-designed Spitfires flown by Egypt. The first raid on an Arab capital followed on the night of 31 May/June 1 when three Israeli planes bombed Amman. By the fall of 1948, The IDF achieved air superiority and had superiority in firepower and knowledgeable personnel, many of whom had seen action in World War II.The first mission of the IDF was to hold on against the Arab armies and stop them from destroying major Jewish settlements, until reinforcements and weapons arrived.The heaviest fighting would occur in Jerusalem and on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, between Jordan\'s Arab Legion and the Israeli forces. Abdullah ordered Glubb Pasha, the commander of the Jordanian-led Arab Legion, to enter Jerusalem on 17 May, and heavy house-to-house fighting occurred between 19 May and 28 May, with the Arab Legion succeeding in expelling Israeli forces from the Arab quarters of Jerusalem as well as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. All the Jewish inhabitants of the Old City were expelled by the Jordanians. Iraqi troops failed in attacks on Jewish settlements (the most notable battle was on Mishmar HaEmek), and instead took defensive positions around Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarm.On 24 May 1948 IDF forces at Latrun-consisting of the 7th Armoured Brigade (Israel) and the Alexandroni Brigade-attacked the Arab Legion forces in Operation \"Bin-Nun A\" and on 1 June 1948 the same IDF forces again attacked Latrun Arab Legion forces in Operation \"Bin-Nun B\". Both attacks failed and both Brigades suffered heavy casualties of a total of 139 killed.In the north, the Syrian army was blocked in the kibbutz Degania, where the settlers managed to stop the Syrian armored forces with only light weapons. One tank that was disabled by a Molotov cocktail is still present at the kibbutz. Later, an artillery bombardment, made by cannons jury-rigged from 19th century museum pieces, led to the withdrawal of the Syrians from the kibbutz.During the following months, the Syrian army was repelled, and so were the Palestinian irregulars and the ALA.In the south, an Egyptian attack was able to penetrate the defenses of several Israeli kibbutzim, but with heavy cost. This attack was stopped near Ashdod.The Israeli military managed not only to maintain their military control of the Jewish territories, but to expand their holdings.First truce (11 June 1948–8 July 1948 The UN declared a truce on 29 May which came into effect on 11 June and would last 28 days. The cease-fire was overseen by the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte. An arms embargo was declared with the intention that neither side would make any gains from the truce. At the end of the truce, Folke Bernadotte presented a new partition plan that would give the Galilee to the Jews and the Negev to the Arabs. Both sides rejected the plan. On 8 July, before the expiration of the truce, Egyptian General Naguib renewed the war by attacking the Negba position of Israel.Second phase (8 July 1948–18 July 1948)The ten days at the height of the summer between the two truces were dominated by large scale Israeli offensives and a defensive posture from the Arab side. Operation Dani was the most important Israeli offensive, aimed at securing and enlarging the corridor between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by capturing the roadside cities Lydda (later renamed Lod) and Ramle. Following their capture, the residents of Lydda and Ramle, some 50,000 Palestinians, left the city, in the largest single exodus of the war.In a second planned stage of the operation the fortified positions of Latrun, overlooking the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, and the city of Ramallah, were also to be captured but this part of the operation failed.The second plan was Operation Dekel whose aim was to capture the lower Galilee including Nazareth. The third plan, to which fewer resources were allocated, Operation Kedem was to secure the Old City of Jerusalem.Operation DaniLydda (Lod was mainly defended by the Jordan Army, but also local Palestinian militias and the Arab Liberation Army were present. The city was attacked from the north via Majdal al-Sadiq and al-Muzayri\'a and from the east via Khulda, al-Qubab, Jimzu and Danyal. Bombers were also used for the first time in the conflict to bombard the city. On 11 July 1948 the IDF captured the city.The next day, 12 July 1948 Ramle also fell to the hands of Israel.15 July–July 16 an attack on Latrun took place but did not manage to occupy the fort. A desperate second attempt occurred (18 July) by units from the Yiftach Brigade equipped with armored vehicles, including two Cromwell tanks, but that attack also failed. Despite the second truce, which began on 18 July, the Israeli efforts to conquer Latrun continued until 20 July.Operation DekelWhile Operation Dani proceeded in the centre, Operation Dekel was carried out in the north. Nazareth was captured on 16 July and when the second truce took effect at 19:00 18 July, the whole lower Galilee from Haifa bay to the Sea of Galilee was captured by Israel.Operation KedemOriginally the operation was to be executed on 8 July, immediately after the first truce, by Irgun and Lehi. However, it was delayed by David Shaltiel, possibly because he did not trust their ability after their failure to capture Deir Yassin without Haganah assistance.The Irgun forces that were commanded by Yehuda Lapidot (Nimrod) were to break through at The New Gate, Lehi was to break through the wall stretching from the New Gate to the Jaffa Gate and the Beit Hiron Battalion was to strike from Mount Zion.The battle was planned to begin on the Sabbath, at 20:00 Friday 16 July a day before the Second Cease-fire of the Arab-Israeli war. The plan went wrong from the beginning and was postponed first to 23:00 and then to midnight. It was not until 02:30 that the battle actually began. The Irgunists managed to break through at the New Gate but the other forces failed in their missions. At 05:45 in the morning Shaltiel ordered a retreat and to cease the hostilities.Second truce: 18 July 1948–15 October 194819:00 18 July, the second truce of the conflict went into effect after intense diplomatic efforts by the UN.On 16 September, Folke Bernadotte proposed a new partition for Palestine in which Jordan would annex Arab areas including the Negev, al-Ramla, and Lydda. There would be a Jewish state in the whole of Galilee, internationalization of Jerusalem, and return or compensation for refugees. The plan was once again rejected by both sides. On the next day, 17 September, Bernadotte was assassinated by the Lehi and his deputy, American Ralph Bunche, replaced him.Third phase (15 October 1948–20 July 1949)Israeli operationsBetween 15 October and 20 July Israel launched a series of military operations in order to drive out the Arab armies and secure the borders of Israel.On 24 October, the IDF launched Operation Hiram and captured the entire Upper Galilee, driving the ALA and Lebanese army back to Lebanon. It was a complete success and at the end of the month, Israel had not only managed to capture the whole Galilee but had also advanced 5 miles (8.0 km) into Lebanon to the Litani River.On 15 October the IDF launched Operation Yoav in the northern Negev. Its goal was to drive a wedge between the Egyptian forces along the coast and the Beersheba-Hebron-Jerusalem road and ultimately to conquer the whole Negev. Operation Yoav was headed by the Southern Front commander Yigal Allon. The operation was a huge success as it shattered the Egyptian army ranks and forced the Egyptian forces to retreat from the northern Negev, Beersheba and Ashdod. On 22 October the Israeli Navy commandoes sank the Egyptian Flagship Amir Faruk.On 22 December the IDF drove the remaining Egyptian forces out of Israel, by launching Operation Horev (also called Operation Ayin). The goal of the operation was to secure the entire Negev from Egyptian presence, destroying the Egyptian threat on Israel\'s southern communities and forcing the Egyptians into a cease-fire.The operation was a decisive Israeli victory, and Israeli raids into the Nitzana and the Sinai peninsula forced the Egyptian army, which was encircled in the Gaza Strip, to withdraw and accept cease-fire. On 7 January a truce was achieved. Israeli forces withdrew from Sinai and Gaza under international pressure.On 5 March Operation Uvda was launched. On 10 March the Israelis reached Umm Rashrash (where Eilat was built later) and conquered it without a battle. The Negev Brigade and Golani Brigade took part in the operation. They raised a hand-made Flag (\"The Ink Flag\") and claimed Umm Rashrash for Israel.UN Resolution 194 In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 which declared (amongst other things) that in the context of a general peace agreement \"refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so\" and that \"compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return.\" The resolution also mandated the creation of the United Nations Conciliation Commission. However, parts of the resolution were never implemented, resulting in the Palestinian refugee crisis.*************** The Israeli Declaration of Independence (Hebrew: הכרזת העצמאות‎, Hakhrazat HaAtzma\'ut or Hebrew: מגילת העצמאות‎ Megilat HaAtzma\'ut), made on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar, 5708), the day the British Mandate expired, was the official announcement that the new Jewish state named the State of Israel had been formally established in parts of what was known as the British Mandate for Palestine and on land where, in antiquity, the Kingdoms of Israel, Judah and Judea had once been.It has been called the start of the \"Third Jewish Commonwealth\" by some observers. The \"First Jewish Commonwealth\" ended with the destruction of Solomon\'s Temple in 586 BCE, the second with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the crushing of Bar Kokhba\'s revolt by the Roman Empire in the year 135.In Israel the event is celebrated annually with the national holiday Yom Ha\'atzmaut (Hebrew: יום העצמאות‎, lit. Independence Day), the timing of which is based on the Hebrew calendar date of the declaration (5, Iyar, 5708). Palestinias commemorate the event as Nakba Day (Arabic: يوم النكبة‎, Yawm al-nakba, lit. Catastrophe Day) on 15 May every year.The General Assembly of the United Nations had resolved that \'No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants on the ground of race, religion, language or sex.\' and that a declaration to that effect would be made to the United Nations by the Provisional Government of each proposed State before independence. The General Assembly resolution mandated that the stipulations contained in the Declaration were to be non-derogable, they were to be \'recognized as fundamental laws of the State and no law, regulation or official action shall conflict or interfere with these stipulations, nor shall any law, regulation or official action prevail over them.\' The Declaration did promise that the State of Israel would ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex, and guaranteed freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture. However, the Knesset maintains that declaration is neither a law nor an ordinary legal document.The Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that the guarantees were merely guiding principles, and that the Declaration is not a constitutional law making a practical ruling on the upholding or nullification of various ordinances and statutes. Whenever an explicit statutory measure of the Knesset leaves no room for doubt, it is honored even if inconsistent with the principles in the Declaration of Independence.While the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been a goal of Zionist organisations since the late 19th century, it was not until 1917 and the Balfour declaration that the idea gained the official backing of a major power. The declaration stated that the British government supported the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. In 1936 the Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, though it was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the 1936-39 Arab revolt.In the face of increasing violence, the British handed the issue over to the United Nations. The result was Resolution 181, a partition plan to divide Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish state was to receive around 56% of the land area of Mandate Palestine, encompassing 82% of the Jewish population, though it would be separated from Jerusalem, designated as an area to be administered by the UN. The plan was accepted by most of the Jewish population, but rejected by much of the Arab populace. On 29 November 1947, the plan was put to a vote in the United Nations General Assembly The result was 33 to 13 in favour of the plan, with 10 abstentions. The Arab countries (all of which had opposed the plan) proposed to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, but were again defeated. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal from the territory (15 May 1948), though the UK refused to implement the plan, arguing it was unacceptable to both sides. .*********** The Israeli Declaration of Independence (Hebrew: הכרזת העצמאות‎, Hakhrazat HaAtzma\'ut or Hebrew: מגילת העצמאות‎ Megilat HaAtzma\'ut), made on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar, 5708), the day the British Mandate expired, was the official announcement that the new Jewish state named the State of Israel had been formally established in parts of what was known as the British Mandate of Palestine and on land where, in antiquity, the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah had once been. The event is celebrated annually in Israel with a national holiday called Yom Ha\'atzmaut (Hebrew: יום העצמאות‎, lit. Independence Day), the timing of which is based on the Hebrew calendar date of the declaration (5, Iyar, 5708). Palestinians commemorate the event as Nakba Day (Arabic: يوم النكبة‎, Yawm al-nakba, lit. Catastrophe Day) on 15 May every year Background While the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been a goal of Zionist organisations since the late 19th century, it was not until 1917 and the Balfour Declaration that the idea gained the official backing of a major power. The declaration stated that the British government supported the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. In 1936 the Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, though it was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the 1936-39 Arab revolt. In the face of increasing violence, the British handed the issue over to the United Nations. The result was Resolution 181, a partition plan to divide Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish state was to receive around 56% of the land area of Mandate Palestine, encompassing 82% of the Jewish population, though it would be separated from Jerusalem, designated as an area to be administered by the UN. The plan was accepted by most of the Jewish population, but rejected by much of the Arab populace. On 29 November 1947, the plan was put to a vote in the United Nations General Assembly. The result was 33 to 13 in favour of the plan, with 10 abstentions. The Arab countries (all of which had opposed the plan) proposed to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, but were again defeated. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal from the territory (15 May 1948), though the UK refused to implement the plan, arguing it was unacceptable to both sides. United Nations stipulations A longstanding diplomatic precedent required that religious and minority rights in the territory of newly created states be guaranteed and placed under international protection. That was particularly true of those cases where the Great Powers had assisted in the restoration of sovereignty over a territory. The UN resolution on \"The Future Government of Palestine\" contained both a plan of partition and a Minority Protection Plan.[1] It placed minority, women\'s, and religious rights under the protection of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. The plan provided specific guarantees of fundamental human rights. The new states had to acknowledge the stipulated rights in a Declaration, which according to precedent was tantamount to a treaty.[2] The resolution stated that \"the stipulations contained in the declarations are recognized as fundamental laws of State, and no law, regulation or official action shall conflict or interfere with these stipulations, nor shall any law, regulation or official action prevail over them.\"[3] The resolution also required that the Constitution of each State embody the rights contained in the Declaration. Abba Eban said that the rights stipulated in section C. Declaration, chapters 1 and 2 of UN resolution 181(II) had been constitutionally embodied as the fundamental law of the state of Israel as required by the resolution.[4] The instruments that he cited during the hearings were the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, and various cables and letters of confirmation addressed to the Secretary General. Mr. Eban\'s explanations and Israel\'s undertakings were noted in the text of General Assembly Resolution 273 (III) Admission of Israel to membership in the United Nations, 11 May 1949. Drafting the text The declaration was first drafted by Zvi Berenson, the Histadrut trade union\'s legal advisor and later a justice of the Supreme Court, at the request of Pinchas Rosen. A revised second draft was made by three lawyers, A. Beham, A. Hintzheimer and Z.E. Baker, and was framed by a committee including David Remez, Pinchas Rosen, Haim-Moshe Shapira, Moshe Sharett and Aharon Zisling.[5] A second committee meeting which included Ben-Gurion, Yehuda Leib Maimon, Sharett and Zisling produced the final text,[6] which was approved in a meeting of Moetzet HaAm at the JNF building in Tel Aviv on 14 May, starting at 1:50. It ended at 15:00, an hour before the declaration was due to be made, and despite ongoing disagreements, with a unanimous vote in favour of the final text. During the process, there were two major debates, centering around the issues of borders and religion. On the border issue, the original draft had declared that the borders would be that decided by the UN partition plan. While this was supported by Rosen and Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit, it was opposed by Ben-Gurion and Zisling, with Ben-Gurion stating, \"We accepted the UN Resolution, but the Arabs did not. They are preparing to make war on us. If we defeat them and capture western Galilee or territory on both sides of the road to Jerusalem, these areas will become part of the state. Why should we obligate ourselves to accept boundaries that in any case the Arabs don\'t accept?\"[5] The inclusion of the designation of borders in the text was dropped after the provisional government of Israel, the Minhelet HaAm, voted 5-4 against it.[6] The Revisionists, committed to a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River (that is, including Transjordan), wanted the phrase \"within its historic borders\" included but were unsuccessful. The second major issue was over the inclusion of God in the last section of the document, with the draft using the phrase \"and placing our trust in the Almighty\". The two rabbis, Shapira and Yehuda Leib Maimon, argued for its inclusion, saying that it could not be omitted, with Shapira supporting the wording \"God of Israel\" or \"the Almighty and Redeemer of Israel.\"[5] It was strongly opposed by Zisling, a member of the secularist Mapam. In the end the phrase \"Rock of Israel\" was used, which could be interpreted as either referring to God, or the land of Eretz Israel, Ben-Gurion saying \"Each of us, in his own way, believes in the \'Rock of Israel\' as he conceives it. I should like to make one request: Don\'t let me put this phrase to a vote.\" Although its use was still opposed by Zisling, the phrase was accepted without a vote. At the meeting on 14 May, several other members of Moetzet HaAm suggested additions to the document. Meir Vilner wanted it to denounce the British Mandate and military but Sharett said it was out of place. Meir Argov pushed to mention the Displaced Persons camps in Europe and to guarantee freedom of language. Ben-Gurion agreed with the latter but noted that Hebrew should be the main language of the state. The writers also had to decide on the name for the new state. Eretz Israel, Ever (from the name Eber), Judea, and Zion were all suggested, as were Ziona, Ivriya and Herzliya.[7] Judea and Zion were rejected because, according to the partition plan, Jerusalem (Zion) and most of Judean mountains would be outside the new state.[8] Ben-Gurion put forward \"Israel\" and it passed by a vote of 6-3.[9] The debate over wording did not end completely even after the Declaration had been made. Declaration signer Meir David Loewenstein later claimed that \"It ignored our sole right to Eretz Israel, which is based on the covenant of the Lord with Abraham, our father, and repeated promises in the Tanach. It ignored the aliya of the Ramban and the students of the Vilna Gaon and the Ba\'al Shem Tov, and the [rights of] Jews who lived in the \'Old Yishuv\'.\"[10] Vote On 12 May the Minhelet HaAm was convened to vote on declaring independence. Three of the members were missing; Yehuda Leib Maimon and Yitzhak Gruenbaum were stuck in besieged Jerusalem, whilst Yitzhak-Meir Levin was in the United States. The meeting started at 1:45 and ended after midnight. The decision was between accepting the American proposal for a truce, or declaring independence. The latter option was put to a vote, with six of the ten members present supporting it: For: David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett (Mapai), Peretz Bernstein (General Zionists), Haim-Moshe Shapira (Hapoel HaMizrachi), Mordechai Bentov, Aharon Zisling (Mapam). Against: Eliezer Kaplan, David Remez (Mapai), Pinchas Rosen (New Aliyah Party), Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit (Sephardim and Oriental Communities). Chaim Weizmann, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and soon to be the first President of Israel, endorsed the decision, after reportedly asking \"What are they waiting for, the idiots?\"[5] Proclamation ceremony The ceremony to proclaim independence was to be held in the Tel Aviv Museum (today known as Independence Hall) but was not widely publicised as it was feared that the British Authorities might attempt to prevent it or that the Arab armies might invade earlier than expected. An invitation was sent out by messenger on the morning of 14 May telling recipients to arrive at 15:30 and to keep the event a secret. The event was to start at 16:00 (a time chosen so as not to breach the sabbath), and was to be broadcast live as the first transmission of the new radio station Kol Yisrael. The final draft of the declaration was typed at the JNF building following its approval earlier in the day. Ze\'ev Sharef, who had remained at the building in order to deliver the text, had forgotten to arrange transport for himself. Ultimately, he had to Flag down a passing car and ask the driver (who was driving a borrowed car without a license) to take him to the ceremony. Sharef\'s request was initially refused but he managed to persuade the driver to take him.[5] The car was stopped by a policemen for speeding while driving across the city though a ticket was not issued after it was explained that he was delaying the declaration of independence.[9] Sharef arrived at the museum at 15:59. At 16:00, Ben-Gurion opened the ceremony by banging his gavel on the table, prompting a spontaneous rendition of Hatikvah, soon to be Israel\'s national anthem, from the 250 guests.[9] On the wall behind the podium hung a picture of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and two Flags, later to become the official Flag of Israel. After telling the audience \"I shall now read to you the scroll of the Establishment of the State, which has passed its first reading by the National Council\", Ben-Gurion proceeded to read out the declaration, taking 16 minutes, ending with the words \"Let us accept the Foundation Scroll of the Jewish State by rising\" and calling on Rabbi Fishman to recite the Shehecheyanu blessing.[9] Signatories As leader of the Yishuv, David Ben-Gurion was the first person to sign. The declaration was due to be signed by all 37 members of Moetzet HaAm. However, twelve members could not attend, eleven of them trapped in besieged Jerusalem and one abroad. The remaining 24 signatories present were called up in alphabetical order to sign, leaving spaces for those absent. Although a space was left for him between the signatures of Eliyahu Dobkin and Meir Vilner, Zerach Warhaftig signed at the top of the next column, leading to speculation that Vilner\'s name had been left alone to isolate him, or to stress that even a communist agreed with the declaration.[9] When Herzl Rosenblum, a journalist, was called up to sign, Ben-Gurion instructed him to sign under the name Herzl Vardi, his pen name, as he wanted more Hebrew names on the document. Although Rosenblum acquiesced to Ben-Gurion\'s request and legally changed his name to Vardi, he later admitted to regretting not signing as Rosenblum.[9] Several other signatories later Hebraised their names, including Meir Argov (Grabovsky), Peretz Bernstein (then Fritz Bernstein), Avraham Granot (Granovsky), Avraham Nissan (Katznelson), Moshe Kol (Kolodny), Yehuda Leib Maimon (Fishman), Golda Meir (Myerson), Pinchas Rosen (Felix Rosenblueth) and Moshe Sharett (Shertok). Other signatories added their own touches, including Saadia Kobashi who added the phrase \"HaLevy\", referring to the tribe of Levi.[11] After Moshe Shertok, the last of the signatories, had put his name to paper, the audience again stood and sung Hatikvah, accompanied by the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. Ben-Gurion concluded the event with the words \"The State of Israel is established. This meeting is adjourned.\"[9] Aftermath Eleven minutes after the Declaration of Independence was signed, President Truman de facto recognized the State of Israel,[12] followed by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi\'s Iran (which had voted against the UN partition plan), Guatemala, Iceland, Nicaragua, Romania and Uruguay. The Soviet Union was the first nation to fully recognize Israel de jure on 17 May 1948, followed by Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Ireland and South Africa.[13] The United States extended official recognition after the first Israeli election, as President Truman promised,[14] on 31 January 1949.[15] The declaration was followed by an invasion of the new state by troops from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known in Israel as the War of Independence (Hebrew: מלחמת העצמאות‎, Milhamat HaAtzma\'ut). Although a truce began on 11 June, fighting resumed on 8 July and stopped again on 18 July, before restarting in mid-October and finally ending on 24 July 1949 with the signing of the armistice agreement with Syria. By then Israel had retained its independence and increased its land area by almost 50% compared to the UN partition plan of 1947. Following independence, Moetzet HaAm was transformed into the Provisional State Council, which acted as the legislative body for the new state until the first elections in January 1949. Many of the signatories would play a prominent role in Israeli politics following independence; Moshe Sharett and Golda Meir both served as Prime Minister, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi became the country\'s second president in 1952, and several others served as ministers. David Remez was the first signatory to pass away, dying in May 1951, whilst Meir Vilner, the youngest signatory at just 29, was the longest living, serving in the Knesset until 1990 and dying in June 2003. Eliyahu Berligne, the oldest signatory at 82, died in 1959. Status in Israeli law The declaration stated that the State of Israel would ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex, and guaranteed freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture. However, the Knesset maintains that the declaration is neither a law nor an ordinary legal document.[16] The Supreme Court has ruled that the guarantees were merely guiding principles, and that the declaration is not a constitutional law making a practical ruling on the upholding or nullification of various ordinances and statutes. Whenever an explicit statutory measure of the Knesset leaves no room for doubt, it is honored even if inconsistent with the principles in the Declaration of Independence.[17] In 1994 the Knesset amended two basic laws, Human Dignity and Liberty and Freedom of Occupation, introducing (among other changes) a statement saying that \"the fundamental human rights in Israel will be honored (...) in the spirit of the principles included in the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel\". The scroll Although Ben-Gurion had told the audience that he was reading from the scroll of independence, he was actually reading from handwritten notes because only the bottom part of the scroll had been finished by artist and calligrapher Otte Wallish by the time of the declaration (he did not complete the entire document until June).[10] The scroll, which is bound together in three parts, is generally kept in the country\'s National Archives, though it is currently on display at the Israel Museum.

1954 Official HAGGADAH & SEDDER For INDPENDENCE DAY Jewish HEBREW Judaica ISRAEL:
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