Historical context of Israel's war on Gaza

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You didn't link to the tweet you quoted, but I found it here via Google.


And, unfortunately, it is probably a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, it would be no surprise if many Palestinians were to conclude that the only solution, for them, would be to slaughter Israeli Jews, if only the Palestinians, rather than the Israelis, were the ones with the power to do so and get away with it.

I wish I knew how to break everyone out of this cycle of genocidal hatred. Somehow. there needs to be some way of humanizing both sides to each other while, somehow, making some sort of real progress toward justice and equality.

In any case, the Israelis are the ones in a position of greater power, so the Israelis are the main ones who will need to be pressured to make it happen.


Probably not anything the Palestinians can do on their own. My guess is that what's needed, at this point, is more inter-religious dialogue involving Jews, Muslims, and Christians, both in Israel/Palestine and here in the U.S.A.


Very interesting.

Looks like Israel and the preceding Zionist movement has had a long series of different imperial sponsors, including the U.K. (intermittently), Russia (briefly, in the late 1800's), the Soviet Union (briefly, in 1948), the French (in the 1950's and 1960's), and then the U.S.A. (ever since 1970-ish).

You have agreed with an assertion I have made a number of times that both sides have a number of legitimate reasons to expect the other side to slaughter them if they had the ability to do so. The context of these are the cycle of abuse and violence since the zionist project was introduced to Palestine.

Up until a certain point the “Arab-Israeli conflict” as it was called was seen as a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims. For a number of years now the religious aspect especially the Muslim part at least here in the states has been almost completely deemphasized in favor of nationalism and oppressor and oppressed races.

Editors Notes:
I have a hard time not seeing the “Go back to Poland” chant as not referencing Auschwitz.

I don't remember it being described as a religious conflict back in the 1960's and 1970's. Back then, I remember it being described as Israel vs. "the Arabs," primarily the surrounding Arab states (especially Egypt and Syria) rather than the Palestinians themselves. Occasionally we also heard about "Palestinian" (as well as "Arab") terrorist groups.

I don't remember hearing much about Islamism until after the Iranian revolution in 1979. After that, we began to hear more and more about "jihadists," some of whom were portrayed in Western media as good guys (in the Soviet–Afghan War of 1979 to 1989) and others as bad guys (various militant groups in the Middle East, including Hezbollah and Hamas).

Then, after 9/11/2001, the U.S.A. was gripped by a huge wave of anti-Muslim panic, of which various right wing Zionists fanned the flames as a way to try to whip up sympathy for Israel.

Israel’s 70th anniversary, which falls on
April 19 (by the Hebrew calendar), coincides
with a resurgence of interest in David BenGurion, Israel’s founding father. In addition
to new biographies, most notably by Anita
Shapira (2014) and Tom Segev (Hebrew,
2018), the Ben-Gurion revival probably owes
most to a 2016 film, Ben-Gurion, Epilogue,
directed by Yariv Mozer. Made up mostly of
excerpts from a long-lost film interview
given by Ben-Gurion in 1968, during his
twilight years, the documentary ran in
Israeli theaters and on TV and was screened
by almost every Jewish film festival
worldwide.

At the time of the 1968 interview, Ben-Gurion was eighty-two and living in Sde Boker, a desert
kibbutz where he did chores like any other member. Notwithstanding the occasional
pronouncement, often in a prophetic register, he’d faded from public life. Friends looked for
ways to mitigate his isolation and boredom; politicians mostly ignored him. Most of his
biographers would concur with Tom Segev: “Ben-Gurion’s old age was sad, degrading,
superfluous. . . . Like many people, he lived a few years too long.”

Which makes it strange to see a new generation embracing this late-life Ben-Gurion—or perhaps
not so strange. He lived long enough, after all, to witness the June 1967 war, and then to issue
opinions about what should be done with the territories Israel occupied in that war. There will
always be those who, to clinch a present-day argument, resort to citing a long-dead “founding
father,” and Ben-Gurion, Epilogue supplies one very useful quotation. In the documentary, BenGurion says: “If I could choose between peace and all the territories that we conquered last year [in the Six-Day War], I would prefer peace.” (He made exceptions for Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights.)

Not surprisingly, this provided the theme for most of the press commentary about the film and
for its reviews. “Ben-Gurion Favors West Bank Withdrawal in Footage from 1968,” proclaimed the
headline of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Screen Daily went so far as to claim (erroneously)
that he had predicated peace with the Arabs upon Israel’s withdrawal from “all of the territories”
it conquered in 1967.

Thus did the film deliberately summon forth Ben-Gurion’s ghost for a contemporary purpose.
“It’s not a film about history, it’s not a nostalgic film,” its director has said. “It’s a film relevant to
Israel today.” According to the official synopsis, Ben-Gurion’s “clear voice provides a surprising
vision for today’s crucial decisions and the future of Israel.”

But does it, really? It would be an elementary mistake to allow his “clear voice” circa 1968 to
muffle his even clearer voice circa 1948, when he was at the height of his powers, both political
and analytical. At Israel’s very birth, Ben-Gurion not only advocated territorial acquisition in
war. He also fostered the conviction that Israel shouldn’t finalize its borders.

Nor was this just a personal preference. Ben-Gurion put the issue to a vote of the yishuv’s leaders.
If any vote may be said to have made the new state of Israel, it would be this one. It was closely
contested—decided, indeed, by a margin of one.

Unfortunately, beyond a small circle of Israeli historians, the details of this vote are little known
—the reason being that 1948 was a year of war, and most histories of 1948 are military rather than
political histories. (Both Dan Kurzman’s Genesis 1948 and Benny Morris’s 1948, for example,
share the same subtitle, “The First Arab-Israeli War,” and both are decidedly military histories.)
Then, too, there had been the very public November 1947 vote in the United Nations General
Assembly for the partition of Palestine into two states, which had provided a spectacle of high
drama before the cameras as well as much lore about behind-the-scene maneuvering.

But while the UN vote licensed the creation of a Jewish state, the UN failed to act to implement
its own decision. So it was the voting of the Zionist leaders themselves, behind closed doors, that
was both crucial and decisive in the establishment of the state.

The voting took place on May 12, 1948, three days before the end of the British mandate, in the
People’s Administration, a kind of proto-cabinet. But here things become complicated. The
standard story has it that a vote was held on whether to accept a truce in the fighting already
raging between the Arabs and the Jews. That would have delayed the declaration of a state,
perhaps indefinitely. Then a second vote was held on the question of the whether the new state
should announce its borders.

As we shall see, the story of the first vote has almost entirely overshadowed the story of the
second. Yet, as we shall also see, the evidence that the first vote even took place is questionable.
Not so for the second vote, in which, by five to four, the founders deliberately declined to be
bound by the map of the Jewish state that had been included in the UN partition plan, or to
delineate any borders for the state at all. Ben-Gurion himself came to regard this latter vote as
among his greatest political triumphs, and one he underlined time and time again.
Let’s begin with a sketch of the background.

I. November 1947–May 12, 1948
Tucked in a residential side street near the Habimah Theater in Tel Aviv is the Jewish National
Fund House. Built in the late 1930s in the Bauhaus style, for the last 30 years the structure has
served as an educational center and museum. It doesn’t appear in most guidebooks because it’s
open only to groups. Most Israelis and tourists who want to learn about Israel’s beginnings never
visit it, instead finding their way to a building, now known as Independence Hall, on Rothschild
Boulevard. There, on May 14, 1948, the cameras would record Ben-Gurion’s solemn declaration of
the state and the festive signing ceremony.

But before Israel could be proclaimed, it had to be born. That birth took place in the Jewish
National Fund House. During the month prior to the state’s declaration, the building hosted the
People’s Administration, the proto-cabinet, and the People’s Council, a kind of proto-parliament,
both of them established by order of the Zionist Executive on April 12, 1948 in anticipation of the
end of the mandate. It was exactly one month later, May 12, in a second-floor meeting room, that
ten of the thirteen members of the People’s Administration met in a marathon session to decide
upon a course of action.

Those around the table that day had witnessed too much Jewish history. They had seen the
population of the yishuv grow tenfold in 30 years—but had also seen the Jewish people in
Europe almost totally destroyed in fewer than five. And in the past year alone, history’s wheel
had started to turn again. In February 1947, Britain announced that it would be leaving Palestine,
and then handed over the question of the country’s future to the United Nations. In November,
the UN General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority, passed the partition resolution.

Most of the yishuv rejoiced at November’s UN vote: since the time of Herzl, the creation of a
Jewish state had been the dream and aim of political Zionism. Now it seemed within grasp. But
Palestine’s Arabs, supported by Arabs elsewhere, rejected the resolution root and branch. From
November onward, a civil war raged between Jews and Arabs even as the British prepared for
their final departure, which they had set for the following May 15.

As the Jews began to gird themselves for a great battle, many in the international community
grew alarmed at the intensified violence. Their alarm grew when Arab states announced that
they would come to the aid of the Palestinian Arabs once the British left. A regional war now seemed likely, and no one could be certain how it might end. And so, by the spring of 1948, some
of the governments that had supported partition began to backtrack.

Of these, the most important was the United States. As early as November 1947, the CIA had
estimated that even if the Jews might at first seem to be winning, eventually they would lose:

"The Jewish forces will initially have the advantage. However, as the Arabs gradually
coordinate their war effort, the Jews will be forced to withdraw from isolated
positions, and having been drawn into a war of attrition, will gradually be defeated.
Unless they are able to obtain significant outside aid in terms of manpower and
matériel, the Jews will be able to hold out no longer than two years."

The fear was that, in this eventuality, the United States would come under political pressure to
save the yishuv, an enterprise that according to the Pentagon would require at least 50,000
American troops. Would it not be better to forestall such an outcome by aborting the partition
plan and putting the country under a “temporary” UN trusteeship, preceded by a UN-sponsored
cease-fire? The mandate could thus be prolonged, and a Jewish state deferred. “With such a truce
and such a trusteeship,” announced President Harry Truman in March, “a peaceful settlement is
yet possible; without them, open warfare is just over the horizon”—and that warfare would
“infect the entire Middle East.”

Right up to the eve of the British departure, therefore, the United States pressed the leaders of
the yishuv, as well as its American Zionist supporters, to accept the trusteeship proposal, or at
least the UN-sponsored truce. Most famously, on May 8, 1948, U.S. Secretary of State George
Marshall, a skeptic on Jewish statehood, met in Washington with the shadow foreign minister of
Israel, Moshe Shertok (later Sharett). Marshall began by acknowledging that the Jewish forces
had won an initial string of victories—consolidating their hold on most of the territory allotted to
the Jewish state and a few areas allotted to the Arab state as well—but dismissed this as but a
“temporary success.” In the longer run, he warned Shertok, there was “no assurance” that
fortune might not turn against the Jews.

“I told Mr. Shertok,” Marshall reported to President Truman,
that they were taking a gamble. If the tide did turn adversely and they came running
to us for help they should be placed clearly on notice now that there was no warrant
to expect help from the United States, which had warned them of the grave risk which
they were running.

Marshall’s message came through loud and clear: postpone your state, and accept a truce. (The
Americans spoke of a three-month cease-fire.) If you roll the dice, and you lose, don’t expect
salvation from us.

II. The Lore Surrounding 1948
According to the lore that would surround 1948, warnings like Marshall’s plunged some leaders
of the yishuv into doubt. After all, until now the yishuv had faced only Palestinian Arab militias.
If the Zionists declared a state, they would face invasion by Arab states like Egypt, Transjordan,
and Iraq, fielding conventional military forces armed and trained by the British over many years.
The prospect of such all-out war was frightening, and here the Americans were proposing a
truce; would it perhaps be sensible to accept it?

VI. The Vote that Did Occur
The real choice the People’s Administration faced wasn’t whether to declare a state, but what sort
of state to declare. Would it be a state within the borders of the UN partition plan of the previous
November? Or would it be a state whose borders would be determined by the fortunes of war?

Six months earlier, the yishuv had hailed the UN vote as the greatest Zionist achievement since
the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Despite deep reservations about the resolution’s map, the
mainstream Zionist leadership had accepted the plan in its totality. “We were resigned in 1947 to
receiving the rump end of Palestine,” Ben-Gurion later recalled,

"in accordance with the United Nations settlement. We didn’t think that settlement
very fair since we knew that our work here deserved a greater assignment of land. We
didn’t, however, press the point and prepared to abide scrupulously to the
international ruling come the day of our independence."

Over the following months, even as international support for implementation of the UN plan
eroded, Zionists clung to it all the more tenaciously. It was their anchor against the shifting
currents of policy in Washington, London, and Moscow. As the mandate wound down, Zionists
insisted that, to the extent possible in light of Arab rejection, the plan be honored to the letter.
So when the May 12 meeting took up the content of the declaration, there arose this question:
what sort of reference should be made to the UN partition plan? Having insisted that others hew
to the plan, could the Zionist movement do otherwise? Would, for instance, the Jewish state be
declared “in the framework” of the plan? That would be the most legitimate form, and the one
likeliest to win international recognition for the new state.

But it also posed a dilemma. On the one hand, a declaration of total adherence to the UN plan
would imply acceptance of its map; on the other hand, a declaration that the state was
established only “on the basis” of the UN partition plan would imply a diminished commitment
to that map. The dilemma was acute because in the intervening fighting the Jews had already
occupied some territory, mostly to relieve isolated and besieged settlements, that the UN plan
had assigned to the proposed Arab state. Should the Jews seek to reassure the international
community that they weren’t bent on expansion? Or should they prepare the case for possible
annexation?

The Berlin-born Felix Rosenblueth (later Pinhas Rosen) was a member of the People’s
Administration (New Aliyah party). A jurist, he would later become Israel’s first minister of
justice, a portfolio he would hold three times. Some weeks earlier, he had assumed responsibility
for drafting a declaration of statehood.

In the May 12 session, Rosenblueth insisted that the state be declared “in the framework” of the
UN partition plan and that its borders be defined accordingly. As a matter of law, he contended, “it is impossible not to treat borders.” He had also distributed in advance a proposed draft in
which the People’s Council “declares a free, sovereign Jewish state in the borders set forth in the
resolution of the UN General Assembly of November 29, 1947.”

Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit, a lawyer and judge (and future minister of police), supported
Rosenblueth with a legal argument of his own:

"Regarding borders, I agree with Rosenblueth. It’s not credible to declare an authority
without defining its scope. This can draw us into complications. . . . What the state
publishes is the law in the territory of the state. . . . When a state arises, it declares the
limits of its borders."

This was just the sort of moment Ben-Gurion knew how to seize. In a rebuttal described by Sharef
as “trenchant,” Ben-Gurion took strong exception to the arguments of Rosenblueth and Sheetrit.
“If we decide not to say ‘borders,’ then we won’t say it,” he countered. To begin with, there was no
legal requirement to specify them:

"This is a declaration of independence. For example, there is the American
Declaration of Independence. It includes no mention of territorial definitions. There
is no need and no law such as that. I, too, learned from law books that a state is made
up of territory and population. Every state has borders. [But] we are talking about a
declaration [of independence], and whether borders must or mustn’t be mentioned. I
say, there’s no law such as that. In a declaration establishing a state, there is no need
to specify the territory of the state."

And Ben-Gurion went further. The UN, by doing nothing to implement its plan, and the Arabs,
by declaring war on Israel, had torn up the UN map. In these circumstances, expansion beyond
the partition borders would be entirely legitimate:

"Why not mention [borders]? Because we don’t know [what will happen]. If the UN
stands its ground, we won’t fight the UN. But if the UN doesn’t act, and [the Arabs]
wage war against us and we thwart them, and we then take the western Galilee and
both sides of the corridor to Jerusalem, all this will become part of the state, if we
have sufficient force. Why commit ourselves?"

Ben-Gurion then did something he hadn’t done during the entire session: he called for a vote.
“Who favors including the issue of the borders in the declaration?” Four raised their hands. “And
who is opposed?” Five. “Resolved,” read the minutes, “not to include the issue of the borders in
the declaration.” (The minutes didn’t specify how the individual members voted, and one of
them must have abstained. Twenty years later, Ben-Gurion couldn’t remember the precise
breakdown.)

Why did Ben-Gurion call for a vote? It’s a matter of conjecture. Clearly he thought the issue was
of cardinal importance. He probably also thought he had to break the momentum built by
Rosenblueth, a formidable legal authority.

And it wasn’t just Rosenblueth: the Jewish Agency had consistently reassured foreign
governments that the new state wouldn’t deviate from the partition map. As the U.S. consul in
Jerusalem reported the following day, May 13, “Jewish Agency officials have steadfastly
maintained their intention to remain within the UN boundaries.” If this “intention” were to
make its way into Israel’s foundational document, it would be impossible to amend it later.

Where exactly might the Jewish state seek to amend the borders stipulated by the partition plan?
Ben-Gurion mentioned inclusion of the Jerusalem corridor and the western Galilee, but these
were only two examples. In later years, in recalling his rationale, he would emphasize its more
general character: “I said: let’s assume that during a war we capture Jaffa, Ramleh, Lydda, the
Jerusalem corridor, and the western Galilee, and that we want to hold onto them. Well, it just so
happens that we did take these places!” Ben-Gurion wanted the vote as a license to incorporate
any strategically vital territory seized in war with an Arab aggressor.

The May 12 decision thus set Israel on course to replace the partition map with another map. And
the vote was an achievement in which Ben-Gurion took pride. He never claimed credit for
turning the tide in favor of independence, but he would consistently claim credit for the vote on
the borders. And in the telling, he would always make sure to mention that while his own law
studies had been aborted by war in 1914, he had prevailed over the jurist Rosenblueth and the
judge Sheetrit. It was as though he wanted to show that by his superior foresight and legal
reasoning he’d saved Israel from being forever trapped in the partition map—by its own top
lawyer

VII. The Declaration’s Final Draft
In the early afternoon of May 14, Ben-Gurion presented the final draft of the declaration of
statehood for approval by the People’s Council, the precursor of the Knesset, meeting in the same
Tel Aviv headquarters of the Jewish National Fund. Mention of the partition borders had
disappeared from the draft. But the decision to omit them had been carried by a narrow vote, and
there was some chance that the issue might become a bone of contention in the larger body.
To forestall that, Ben-Gurion placed an unexpected spin on the May 12 decision:

"There was a proposal [in the People’s Adminstration] to determine borders. And there
was opposition to this proposal. We decided to sidestep this question (I use this word
deliberately), for a simple reason: if the UN upholds its resolutions and commitments
and keeps the peace and prevents bombing and implements its resolution forcefully
—we, for our part (and I speak on behalf of the entire people), will respect all of its
resolutions. Until now, the UN hasn’t done so, and the matter has fallen to us.
Therefore, not everything obligates us, and we left this issue open. We didn’t say “No
to the UN borders,” but we also didn’t say the opposite. We left the question open to
developments."

This was a masterstroke of wording. The question of whether to commit to the partition borders
in the declaration hadn’t been sidestepped at all. It had been decided by a vote. But the vote itself
substituted ambiguity for certainty. Until May 12, the state-in-waiting had been committed to the
partition map. After May 12, that commitment depended on the UN doing something it should
have done, but hadn’t done, and likely wouldn’t do. Ben-Gurion had created a new consensus
—“of the entire people”—that the partition map might be revised.

The members of the People’s Council passed the draft declaration of statehood on the first ballot
by a large majority, and on the second ballot unanimously. They then rushed to the Tel Aviv
Museum (today, Independence Hall), where Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state of Israel.

VIII. An American Footnote
There is an American footnote to this story. The world had been led to expect that Israel would
fill only the space on the map allotted to it by the partition plan. Washington was no exception;
as Jewish statehood drew near, the U.S. government sought reassurances.

On May 13, the Jewish Agency’s “ambassador” to Washington, Eliahu Epstein (later Eilat),
received a phone call from Clark Clifford, special counsel to President Truman and a keen
supporter of Zionism. Clifford was working to persuade Truman to recognize the Jewish state
immediately upon its birth. He instructed Epstein to write formally to Truman and ask for U.S.
recognition as soon as the state was declared.

Clifford would later recall telling Epstein that “it was particularly important that the new state
claim nothing beyond the boundaries outlined in the UN resolution of November 29, 1947,
because those boundaries were the only ones which had been agreed to by everyone, including
the Arabs, in any international forum.” Epstein also received a phone call from Loy Henderson,
director of Near Eastern affairs at the State Department, and no friend of Zionism, wishing “to
ascertain [the] boundaries of [the] new state.”

In replying to Henderson, Epstein, who probably hadn’t heard Ben-Gurion’s new formula,
adhered to the previous policy line of the Jewish Agency: unconditional acceptance of the UN
map. Similarly, in his letter to Truman seeking recognition, he informed the president that Israel
had been declared “within frontiers approved by the [UN] General Assembly.” Washington’s defacto recognition of Israel followed almost immediately.

In reality, the state of Israel hadn’t been declared in any borders, giving its critics a basis for later
claims that the United States had been misled into recognizing the state based on a false
representation. But who could blame Epstein for not knowing that Ben-Gurion had shifted
Israel’s position at the last moment? Amid the political and practical preparations for the
declaration, Tel Aviv was in turmoil and Epstein had no contact with Shertok, his superior—to
whom he would apologize that same day for writing to Truman on his own accord.

But on May 14 the United States hadn’t recognized Israel’s borders, either. It simply “recognize[d]
the provisional government as the de-facto authority of the new state of Israel.” That formula
actually consoled some, like Henderson, who opposed American recognition altogether. They
could now hope that the Jewish state, following invasion by Arab armies, might be reduced to
narrower borders than those of the partition plan, especially in the Negev. If the Arabs took
Jewish territory—well, so be it: the United States hadn’t recognized Israel’s borders and certainly
wouldn’t guarantee them. So while Ben-Gurion hoped that the partition map would be revised by
Israeli victories, Henderson and his kind hoped it would be redrawn by Israeli defeats.

In the end, Ben-Gurion would be vindicated, just as he would be vindicated in an ensuing contest
with his own diplomats. The latter struggle was occasioned by the fact that the declaration’s lack
of a reference to borders did not pass without notice at the UN—and Abba Eban, then
representing the new state at Lake Success, thought the lack should be rectified. On May 24, he
messaged Shertok from New York:

"Ambiguity in [independence] proclamation regarding frontiers much commented
[by] delegations and exploited [by] opponents, possibly delaying recognition and
restricting those received. We urge official statement defining frontiers [of] Israel in
accordance with November [1947 UN] resolution."

Needless to say, this plea fell on deaf ears—fortunately so, as most Israelis today would agree. By
the end of the war, Israel’s territory had grown from 55 percent of mandatory Palestine (its share
under the partition plan) to 78 percent.

IX. The Ben-Gurion of ’68, the Ben-Gurion of ’48
We began with the Ben-Gurion of 1968 who, in his old age, suggested that Israel could withdraw
from territory it had conquered in June 1967 in return for “peace,” and who has posthumously
become celebrated as a champion of territorial compromise. By now it should be clear that this
image ill suits him.

Recall: it was Ben-Gurion who, in 1948, first set Israel on the course of annexing strategically vital
territory occupied in a defensive war. The places that Israel occupied beyond its partition
allotment, and which Ben-Gurion (as we saw) would list with such pride, constituted almost a
quarter of the country. Only under immense external pressure did he withdraw from a single
conquest: the northeastern corner of the Sinai, in 1949. West of the Jordan, he never backed
down, or out.

True, he may have refrained (or, more accurately, been restrained) from taking even more
territory that, at least in the estimate of his generals, Israeli forces could have occupied in late
1948 and early 1949. But territory, once occupied, never slipped from his grip.

In short, his recent transformation strains against history. Sharef summarized the significance of
the May 12 session in this way: “If the state were to be brought into existence by force of arms,
then its putative frontiers would have to be determined by the same means.” And this: the state
of Israel “would rule over that part of Palestine which was to be conquered by the prowess of the
sons and daughters of Israel.” That position became inscribed in Israel’s declaration of statehood,
not in words but in their absence—an omission effected by Ben-Gurion himself and validated by
a crucial if narrow vote.

This is Ben-Gurion’s record. Whether it should be considered all or part of his legacy is a matter
of political preference. But, one way or another, this year’s 70th anniversary of Israel’s
independence invites a reappraisal of May 12, 1948. Once we dispense with the story of the vote
that didn’t happen, and focus on the vote that did, May 12 emerges as a microcosm of the modern
history of Israel.

Israeli Jews have been virtually unanimous in their zeal for sovereignty and independence. It’s
never been a question, and it’s needed no affirmation by vote. By contrast, the territorial extent
of the state has always been a question, and one that divides Israel almost down the middle. It
can be resolved only by a democratic process. That process was inaugurated by the vote on May
12 seven decades ago, and continues to this day.