Israel Independence Day

Israel Declares Independence

On Friday afternoon in the Tel Aviv Museum, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Provisional State Council, declares Israel’s independence. The United States is the first country to recognize the new and already besieged state of Israel.

partition plan

U.N. Approves Partition Plan

The United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 181 by a vote of 33-13 with 10 abstentions. The Resolution recommended the creation of separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, linked by an economic union.

Today in Israeli History|November 29, 1947

Jerusalem’s King David Hotel Is Bombed

Members of the Irgun, a Jewish military organization that is absorbed into the IDF during the 1948 War, bomb the British administrative headquarters in Palestine, based in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Twenty-eight British, forty-one Arabs, and seventeen Jews are killed.

Arab Congress Rejects Partition

At the conclusion of a four-day conference in Cairo, Egypt, Arab leaders adopt the Resolutions of the Inter-Parliamentary Congress. The conference and resolutions are a response to the British Peel Commission Report of 1937.

Today in Israeli History|October 11, 1938