In all but one of the instances in which “rights” appear in the Israeli declaration, they refer to a collective right, not an individual one.

On May 14, 1948, Israel’s founders wanted to emphasize to the world that while the Jewish people had been born in the Land of Israel, its state was the adopted child of the United Nations.

Going by the usual telling of the founding, religious and secular Jews clashed over whether Israel’s declaration should evoke God’s covenantal promise. How accurate is that account?

The name Israel came by a process of elimination, because there wasn’t time to come up with anything better.

The declaration came together so hurriedly that if the drafters had argued for even a few hours more it would have read much differently.

The beginning of a new series investigating how the Israeli Declaration of Independence came about, and what the text reveals about the country it brought into being.