The Declaration of Independence promises us life and liberty.
Israel's Declaration of Independence promises the state 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".
Our most high-profile critics sound like the man at my University of Maryland talk, unwilling to confront any contradiction between a nation whose declaration of independence promises "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of race, religion and sex" and an occupation that has held millions of Palestinians as non-citizens for more than forty years.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often reminded, even the Declaration of Independence promises, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
The Declaration of Independence promised citizens equal access to economic opportunity.
Israel, in its Declaration of Independence, promised to provide equal rights and justice to all residents of Palestine-Israel, but apparently never had any intention of doing so.
And then agitate and organise on behalf of what the Declaration of Independence promised: that it is the responsibility of government to ensure the equal right of all to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
And we amended the Constitution to finally protect what the Declaration of Independence promised: that all men (and women) are created equal.
It repudiated his Declaration of Verona, promised to abolish conscription, retain Napoleon I's administrative and judicial system, reduce taxes, eliminate political prisons, and guarantee amnesty to everyone who did not oppose a Bourbon Restoration.
Most importantly, he needs to talk about the Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, which rebuilt the Constitution around the Declaration of Independence's promises of liberty and equal citizenship and secured the "new birth of freedom" Lincoln had promised the nation at Gettysburg.
Mr. Kaadan, on the other hand, said that sponsors of the bill sought to "create a new apartheid," and that ministers supporting the legislation had forgotten Israel's declaration of independence, which promises equal rights to all citizens.
