I am honoured to speak to you today at the 75th anniversary of my country’s independence. It is an honour that neither I nor my country deserves.Throughout our history, your steadfast and generous support has made Israel what it is today. President Woodrow Wilson supported the 1917 Balfour Declaration at the behest of the British Empire, committing to our future Jewish state – a commitment made by those who did not own the land to those who did not live on the land, against the will of those who did live on it.And it was President Harry Truman who first supported the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan to carve that land into a Jewish and Palestinian state, and the first to recognise Israel only 11 minutes after its establishment in 1948. Since then, we have been telling each other how our nations were founded by persecuted migrant communities on the basis of European Enlightenment; how they created strong, vibrant modern states, civilising the savage, and how we have dominated global and Middle East affairs.
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