US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), in his 1941 State of the Union address (in January), had put forth "Four Freedoms" that he said everyone in the world should enjoy: Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. America entered World War II in December of 1941, after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Those four freedoms remained central priorities America and the Allies in fighting against German and Japanese acts of aggression and genocide.
After the atrocities of World War II, such as the Nanking massacre (by Japan in China) and the Holocaust (by the Nazis against Jews in Europe), giving further articulation to basic human rights became an important agenda item for the United Nations. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights Drafting Committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR's wife. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a direct response to the denial of rights that had happened to peoples at the hands of the Nazis and other oppressive regimes.
The establishment of the state of Israel was also a response to what had been done to Jews during World War II. The Zionist movement had been building toward a Jewish national home in the Palestine region since the late 19th century. As the magnitude of the Holocaust became more apparent in the wake of World War II, there was greater support in the international community to granting Israel state status. The new Israeli state had to fight a war against Arab opponents in the region to establish itself, but even before that war, the United Nations (in Resolution 181) had gone on record favoring the establishment of a Jewish state next to an Arab state in the Palestine region.
