Chapter 4 – Society, Justice and Equality: Human Capital and a Diverse Society

1. Read together a short passage from Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Explain that the
Declaration was written by the founders of the State of Israel, representing different political
parties and ideological streams and that it expresses the core values and beliefs of the newly
established state.
2. Write the following statements from the Declaration on the board and ask participants to
suggest how each might be expressed in real life:
• “It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants.”
• “It will be founded upon the principles of liberty, justice and peace as envisaged by the
prophets of Israel.”
• “It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants
irrespective of religion, race or sex.”
• “It will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”
3. Explain that Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel and presented
the Declaration of Independence. However, alongside these achievements came many
challenges involved in running a newly established country.
We will now practice making such decisions ourselves.
Divide participants into groups of three or four.
Each group receives the following task: You are the Government of Israel in 1951. You must
decide how to allocate the state budget while remaining faithful to the values expressed in
the Declaration of Independence.
Background: (Hand out the following information sheet to each group)
Between 1948 and 1951, Israel experienced massive waves of immigration. From the
establishment of the state in May 1948 until the end of 1951, a period of only three and a half
years, the country’s population doubled, growing from approximately 650,000 to around
1.3 million people. Most of the immigrants were forced to flee their countries of origin. Many
were Holocaust survivors or victims of persecution. They arrived with little or no property and
almost no financial resources. The majority did not have higher education qualifications and did not speak Hebrew. The State of Israel had no significant natural resources and faced a
severe water shortage. The Arab states, along with many other countries, did not recognize
the existence of the state and maintained no trade relations with it.
There was a shortage of basic food supplies, and the country struggled to provide enough
food for the entire population. There was also a severe shortage of housing to accommodate
the new immigrants. Israel was a small state surrounded by hostile countries that opposed its
very existence.
You have a budget of 100,000 Palestine pounds. You must decide how to allocate this budget
over the coming year among the following areas:
• Food for the population: meat, milk, vegetables, and bread
• Investment in security: the army, weapons industries, and defense systems
• Education and Hebrew-language instruction for children and young people
• Education and Hebrew-language instruction for adult immigrants
• Establishment of universities and higher education institutions
• Investment in technology and scientific research
• Development of local industry
• Housing: building homes, neighborhoods and towns
• Culture and sport: theatres, libraries, museums, and investment in various sports
4. Sharing Decisions: Bring the groups back together and ask each group to present how it
allocated its budget.
Discussion:
• Which values guided your decisions?
• What conflicts arose between different values?
• How did you resolve those conflicts?
• Is it possible to build an equal and just society under such difficult conditions?
• Why is it important for the State of Israel to be a just, equal, and good society for all its
citizens?
• Was this only an early Zionist dream, or is it still possible to realize it today?

The Zionist vision of Herzl, and later of Ben-Gurion, was to establish a national home for the
Jewish people, but not only a home. They envisioned a society that would serve as a model to
the world: a place that would be equal, progressive, modern and tolerant. Reality presented,
and continues to present, many challenges: immigration from across the globe, difficult
physical conditions, wars, social gaps within the population and more. The vision enshrined
in the Declaration of Independence is not merely an aspiration. It is something that can be
realised in practice every day, in every moment.
To conclude, we return to Herzl’s words:
“I once called Zionism an infinite ideal and I truly believe that even after we attained our
country, the Land of Israel, it will not cease to be an ideal; for Zionism, as I understand it,
includes not only the aspiration to secure a legally recognised homeland for our wretched
people, but also the aspiration to moral and spiritual perfection.”
— Theodor Herzl, March 1904 (from an article entitled Our Hope, published shortly before his
death).