May 14, 1948

Proclamation of Independence

Israel’s independence was declared by David Ben-Gurion at the home of the first mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, as the British Mandate for Palestine expired and British forces were withdrawing.

The leadership of the Jewish community, the Jewish National Council, gathered before the onset of the Sabbath to usher in the birth of the Jewish state. “A vision of generations fulfilled: Jewish state established,” Haaretz proclaimed the following Sunday in its first issue after the declaration. The front page of the May 16 paper also contained a notice from the provisional government declaring the repeal of the hated British White Paper, which had severely constrained Jewish immigration to the country.

The decision to call the newborn country the State of Israel actually came rather late. In the May 14 issue of Haaretz, citizens of the still-undeclared state were given a glimpse of their new postage stamps, emblazoned with the slogan “doar ivri” (“Hebrew post”). When they were printed, the name of the country was still not known.

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