Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.31192/np.21.1.6
Israel: Origins and Emergence of Jewish State’s Name
Boris Havel
orcid.org/0000-0001-7809-9408
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The name of the Jewish State proclaimed in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948, was unknown to wider public until the very moment of its announcement. In the history of Yishuv and the secular Zionist movement, the name Israel appeared mostly in the context of Eretz Israel, which is Biblical term roughly corresponding to area otherwise known as Palestine. In other Zionist documents, such as Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, syntagm »Jewish State« was mostly in use. In the first important non-Jewish text, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, its name is »a national home of the Jewish people.« Only after David Ben-Gurion red the Declaration of Independence, the name of the newly established Jewish State in Palestine became widely known. Newly announced name was from the start not only generally accepted, but it has been understood as a self-evident by both Jews and non-Jews. In this article, historical meaning of Israel is clarified, an explanation for its absence in the Zionist terminology before 1948 is suggested, and a hypothesis of Ben-Gurion’s key role in naming the new Jewish State has been proposed.
Keywords
David Ben-Gurion; Eretz Israel; Israel; Palestine; Yishuv; Zionism
Hrčak ID:
295437
URI
Publication date:
13.3.2023.
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