Source https://assets-decoders.lemonde.fr/doc_happens/231213-fresque-israel-palestine/structure.txt
Guests were asked to keep the reason for their visit secret. Vain. It's the worst kept secret right now. Company cars line up in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. It's 4 p.m. We must hurry before Shabbat begins. When the British mandate in Palestine expired on Friday, May 14, 1948, several hundred people gathered at the foot of the building, holding their breath.
Inside, the faces are serious. Beneath an intimidating portrait of the journalist Austro-Hungarian Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), reads out the declaration of independence of the new state to representatives of all parts of the Jewish community.
Its terms were the subject of heated negotiations. Especially the relationship to God. Too present for secularists, then deleted from the text to the anger of religious people and finally reintroduced in a discreet form. Tzur Yisrael – “the rock of Israel” – is an appropriate expression because it is ambivalent. It can be understood as a reference to the Creator in Judaism, but also from a political perspective to the Jewish people. David Ben-Gurion's voice does not tremble. Still, she is overcome with emotion as she reads the statement in front of the microphones.
It is a voluntary promise in very uncertain times, given in the name of the dead of the Shoah, in response to two thousand years of exile and for generations to come. The text proclaims “the creation of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.” Founded on “freedom, justice and peace,” it establishes the development of the country “for the benefit of all its inhabitants” and ensures “the greatest possible social and political equality,” “without distinction of religion, race or sex.” ” Equality, no discrimination: the state’s socialist roots are clearly evident.
David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), during the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, in Tel Aviv, May 14, 1948. UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE / UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY
Here we are seventy years later. Israel is an adult who does not prevent existential crises. It is 4 a.m. on July 19, 2018 and the lights in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, have not yet been turned off. It's time for a selfie. We have come a long way from the black and white that David Ben-Gurion perpetuated. This photo shows elected officials of Likud, the largest right-wing party, surrounding its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What are they celebrating? The adoption by 62 votes to 55 of a historic and controversial text that defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people.” A general expression. The context is not.
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