14 May 1948 — David Ben-Gurion proclaims the establishment of the State of Israel.
The Second World War had ended, and the world was celebrating victory over Nazism. In that war, only one third of Europe’s nearly nine-million-strong Jewish community survived, but for them the ordeal was not yet over. After the war, the British imposed even stricter limits on Jewish repatriation to Palestine. In response, the “Jewish Resistance Movement” was created, aiming to fight the British authorities for free entry into the country. Despite the naval blockade imposed by the British and the patrolling of the borders, between 1944 and 1948 about 85,000 people were clandestinely—often by dangerous routes—transported to Palestine. The situation in the country was extremely unstable, virtually a crisis, and the British government was forced to hand the resolution of the Palestine problem over to the United Nations. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 33 to 13, adopted a resolution to partition Palestine into two states. On 14 May 1948, the day the British Mandate was due to expire, David Ben-Gurion, at a meeting in the Tel Aviv Museum, read out the Declaration of Independence of the new state, which received its official name—Medinat Yisrael (the State of Israel).
The following year, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) passed a law establishing a national holiday on the 5th day of the month of Iyar, which became known as Yom Ha’atzmaut—Independence Day.