On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, in a room at the Museum of Fine Arts in Tel Aviv, was preparing to speak.
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This ceremony for the proclamation of the birth of the new State was organized in haste, the situation did not allow waiting for the end of the British mandate. The name “Israel” was chosen that morning by the National Council.
This solemn moment materializes for Ben-Gurion and his companions the culmination of a destiny that surpasses them. The realization of a project which bordered on utopia, as the return of a people to their "promised land", within a national home in Palestine and after an exile of two millennia, seemed unrealizable.
This proclamation concretizes for Ben-Gurion five decades of tireless combat, which saw the founding father of Israel evolve from socialist activist to nationalist warrior.
Speakers: Denis Charbit: Professor of political science at the Open University of Israel
Avi Shlaim: Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford
Alain Dieckhoff: Research Director, Center for International Studies, CNRS.
Elie Barnavi: Historian, former Israeli ambassador to France
Ben-Gurion, a state at all costs
A film by Edoardo Malvenuti
©AMP