“For a Zionist and a Jew, Yom Ha’atzmaut is the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar,” Ofir Akunis, the consul general in New York, told JNS.
After a seven-year hiatus, Israel’s Consulate General in New York revived its official Israeli Independence Day celebration with an event in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday night that blended solemn speeches with Israeli folk dancing, themed cocktails and reflections on the country’s resilience in the wake of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
As many as 800 guests attended, including the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams; Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.); and Ofir Akunis, the Israeli consul general in New York, who addressed the crowd alongside video messages from Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Israeli-Arab pop singer Nasreen Qadri entertained the crowd, and an Israeli troupe performed beneath a large screen projecting archival footage of Israelis dancing in the streets on the night that the modern-day State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948. Guests sipped themed cocktails named for key figures in the founding of the nation—Theodor Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir—under blue-and-white decorations, the colors of the Israeli flag.