Judaism
“If the Bible is one main pillar holding up the Jewish ethos, the other (and equally important one) is nationhood. The uniqueness of the Jewish people and of Judaism consists in this: no other religion is connected with physical existence of a nation. Remove Jewish history and there is no Judaism.”
“This explains our attachment to Israel. And to my mind it accounts for the fact that if the Bible stresses creativity, the Jews not as individuals but as Jews were, and only are, truly creative when living in their own land.”
“Our Book of books is distinguished for its dramatic conciseness, even when it deals with great events. It mentions in one verse, ten Hebrew words, two actions on the part of Abraham, the collocation of which arouses profound astonishment at the unique insight of our forebears. In one breath the Bible combines an apparently prosaic and everyday act – the planting of a tree – with the brilliant expression of the supreme concept which underlies the original world outlook of Judaism: the concept of a Supreme God. These are the words: “And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-Sheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.” (Genesis 21:33). Only the ancient Jewish genius had the capacity and the boldness to combine in one verse, with such concise simplicity, two such different and profoundly significant acts.”
“To hold forth about the solidarity of the world Jewry with Israel is to sermonize about an empty concept unless this solidarity is based on Jewish culture, a culture which will impart to American knowledge (in addition to the English language), a knowledge of the Hebrew Bible the source of Judaism and its most important cultural heritage, a knowledge of Jewish history and an attachment to the vision of messianic redemption, the redemption of Jewry and mankind, a vision wherein lies the essence of Judaism.”
“In this respect, the Book of Genesis is most revealing. Christian Gospel begins with the birth of Jesus; the Koran with Mohammed. Torah, however, doesn't start either with Moses or even with Abraham, the original Jew, the man who travelled from Chaldea into unknown territory beyond the Euphrates river thereby becoming a pioneer and the first 'Hebrew' or 'man who crossed over' the river. Torah begins with Creation and we are told that six days after conceiving the light, the grass and all the animals, on the final day of genesis a man and a woman were made and they were in the image of God. Of course, speaking personally as one who is non-religious, I believe that theology reverses the true sequence of events. To me it is clear that God was 'created' in.’’
Israel and the Diaspora
“Even with the best of intentions, the Jew in the Diaspora can never be exclusively a Jew, and in fact he's a Jew very little. Whether they recognize it or not, Diaspora Jews live in a permanent 'condition of exile'. I mean that they are always a minority and thus dependent on a majority beyond their capacity to control. They are torn in never-ending conflict between a desire to preserve their Jewish status, which keeps them separate, and the assimilationist pressures of the social structure.”
“In the olden days, the great days when the kingdom was established in Israel, our forefathers saw the ideal type of man marked out for greatness, appointed to lead his people, in that one who possessed all the qualities of David, son of Jesse: minstrel, hero, warrior, sage and stalwart. So far, Jewish education in the Diaspora has failed to fashion a character of such content and color. Diaspora circumstances emptied the content of Jewish education, hacked off its vital roots and faced it with the psychological schism, between Jew and man, between matter and spirit, between man and Nature, and between the Jewish community and the State and Government…”
“When it lost its sovereign freedom, the Jewish people found itself under two conflicting authorities: one, its own Jewish legacy; the other, the rule of an alien people, with all the administration, economy, culture and laws peculiar to it, and its special power to repel and attract.”
“This dual subjection, and the mental, spiritual and material agitation it caused – there you have, in a sentence, the whole Jewish history in exile.”
“Change and continuity at the lot of all nations, just as they are the lot of every human being from childhood to old age. Some nations have known unbroken continuity and few changes, and others have had the opposite experience. The Jewish People’s share of both change and continuity is perhaps greater than that of any other people.”
“The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations – Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others – were natives of Europe and America.”
“There are eleven million Jews in the world. I don’t say that all of them will come here, but I expect several million, and with natural increase I can quite imagine a Jewish state of ten million.”
“So many remarkable thinkers have been Jews. Their work and ideas form vast frames of reference that influence the lives of men everywhere, even when they are not specifically aware of this being so or disagree with the concepts involved. One can loathe or passionately adhere to Marxist doctrine but one cannot deny the impact of Karl Marx's thought on the world. Equally so with Freudianism and Freud.”
“The structure of the Jewish people in Israel is different fundamentally from the social, whether in the United States of America or in Soviet Russia.”
“In the Diaspora, Jews, if they want to be Jews, and so far they want to be Jews, are living in two worlds. They display their Jewishness in synagogues once a week, or even once a year only, in a Jewish center, in B’nai B’rith, in Hadassah. But their daily life is outside the Jewish structure. Their entire life, with the exception of few short moments of Jewishness, is the same as of non-Jews.”
“In Israel, everything is Jewish just as everything is human. Here one can forget he is a Jew for everything is Jewish. The roads are made by Jews, the trees are planted by Jews, the harbors are built by Jews, the mines are worked by Jews, even the crimes are committed by Jews.”
“The State sees itself as the creation of the Jewish people and as designed for its redemption. It sees Jews throughout the world as one nation, not only in the past but in the present and future as well. The roots of the unity and continuity of the Jewish people, despite its dispersion among the nations, are set not only in the all-embracing inheritance of its past, but in an historic partnership of destiny. This unity and continuity make no discord with the civic allegiance of Israel’s people overseas to the countries of their residence while that residence lasts.”
“The establishment of the State did not mean the vision fulfilled. For by far the greater part of the Jewish people is still divided among the nations, and so the State is not yet the consummation of redemption, but only its instrument and principal means. But by its establishment the State gave the vision its corporeal and realistic basis of materialization and so became, more than any single factor ever was, a force to weld and unify the Diaspora.”
“The gigantic undertaking of cultural development of Israel in its Land, no less than the Ingathering of the Exiles and the rebuilding of the Homeland, again and again I must say it, cannot be carried out with the internal resources of this young and straitened State alone. Like the absorption of immigration, like expansion of agriculture, industry and communications, so the cultivation of the new wisdom of Israel, in its general as in its limited meaning, is impossible without the devoted and constant cooperation of the whole Jewish people. Again I say, the State was made not for its inhabitants, but for all the nation of Israel, for those too, who do not purpose [intend] to dwell in it. Independent Israel has enhanced the prestige of Jews in those lands as well where there is neither will nor inclination to Aliya in numbers.”
“Hebrew education is not only an indispensable prerequisite for the maintenance of the mutual bond and cultural link between the Exile and Israel; it is essential in order to preserve the link between all Jews, wherever they may be, and the source of Judaism, and endow them with the greatest and richest cultural heritage of the Jewish people – the Book of Books in the original.”
“Hebrew education does not comprehend all the doctrines of Zionism; yet without Hebrew education as a personal and public duty all Zionist doctrines become meaningless. If there is no Hebrew education in the Diaspora there is no security for the existence of the Jewish people in the Exile, and no means of preserving its unity and attachment to Israel.”
“The fate of the State is involved in the fate of World Jewry and vice versa. The State of Israel is only the beginning of the redemption; its survival and the fulfillment of its mission cannot be assured without the continuation of the ingathering of the exiles. Jewry in the Diaspora, and above all in the two great centers, is already far gone in the process of assimilation, although its Jewish consciousness has not yet disappeared. Without mutual bonds between Israel and the Diaspora communities it is doubtful whether Israel will survive, and whether Jewry in the Diaspora will not perish by euthanasia or suffocation. Apart from the prophetic heritage, there are also geopolitical reasons for the fact that Israel is not, and cannot be, only like other states. “The House of Israel is not like all the nations” – that is not only a religious and ethical dogma, but a historical imperative, the decree of fate.”
“A land can be won by a people only through their own efforts and creativity, their building and settlement.”
“This country has passed through many hands. It has been conquered incessantly and incessantly abandoned… Only the Jews have loved the land for itself, have worked it, improved it, made it theirs through their care for it. This was true two thousand years ago, it is equally true today. Israel is ours in the twentieth century not because we fought wars over it, but because we settled it…”
“I have complete and unbridled faith in both the Jewish People in the world over and in the State of Israel there can be no faith in either without the other, because each needs and depends on the other. Both stem from the same source in antiquity, and inherent in both is a common vision of redemption.”
“Israel has become an inseparable part of the being and experience of the Diaspora. It has enriched the life of the nation and of every Jew as such. A Diaspora without the State, and moreover a State that has sloughed typical poverty and contentiousness, is inconceivable no longer. Equally we cannot conceive the growth or missionary fulfillment of the State without the whole of Israel’s people in partnership. Between the tow is an interaction, obligatory, organic, historical, and vital, that is without like or precedent in the relations between nations and States.”
“The needs of both the State and nation in the Diaspora demand that there shall be a strengthening of the bonds between Diaspora Jewry and the State of Israel. The most urgent call is for the youth of overseas Jewry and for the young professional class, graduates in the humanities and the natural sciences, to join the builders and defenders of Israel and thus play a personal part in the creative work of redemption. For those who wish to remain in the lands in which they live, the ties can be strengthened by visiting Israel, sending their children to undertake a period of study here, participating in Israel’s economic development. This will give a deeper meaning to their Jewish consciousness, and at the same time it will heighten the effectiveness of Israel as the major instrument for the preservation of Jewish integrity. We, for our part, must do all we can in this country to mould a society of righteousness so that overseas Jewry will be willing to make the efforts I have outlined, and so that, above all, we can attract Jewish youth as immigrants.”
“Ours is a country built more on people than on territory. The Jews will come from everywhere: from France, from Russia, from America, from Yemen... Their faith is their passport.”
“The fate of the State of Israel is involved in the fate of world Jewry and vice-versa.”
“Only the moral, cultural and political inspiration and magnetism radiating from Israel to all parts of the Diaspora can attract the best of the Jewish youth from all countries to join in the work of redemption and revival that is being done in Israel.”
Holocaust and Survival
“I was in Dachau and Belsen. I saw chambers where hundreds of Jews were put to death every day…It is beyond mortal power to bring back to life six million who were burned, asphyxiated and buried alive by the Nazis. But our six million brothers and sisters who went to their deaths have bequeathed us a sacred injunction: to prevent such a disaster overtaking the Jewish peoples in the future and to do so by the Jewish people being an independent people in its own land, capable of resisting any foe by its own strength.”
“And it should not be forgotten even for a moment that Israel’s security problem is quite unlike that of any other country. This is no problem of borders or sovereignty, but a problem of physical survival, in the literal meaning of the term. And it is a question of the survival not only of the people of Israel but of the Jewish people the world over.”
“Suffering makes a people greater, and we have suffered much. We had a message to give the world, but we were overwhelmed, and the message was cut off in the middle. In time there will be millions of us – becoming stronger and stronger – and we will complete the message.”
“Following the June 1967 war, I wrote a letter to General Charles de Gaulle answering his castigation of the Jews as an 'aggressive' people. I pointed out the obvious fact that no other people has been so exiled, dispersed, hated, persecuted, harried from country to country and finally (in our own time and in supposedly civilized Europe) slaughtered en masse. During all this we neither vanished nor despaired nor assimilated but held fast to the conviction that we would some day regain our land.”
Zionism
“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”
“We approve the proposal [of the Peel Report of 1937] from a Zionist point of view. We evaluate every happening in our lives and in the world from the point of view of whether it aids or obstructs the realization of Zionism, and I can see nothing which is move likely to bring the realization of Zionism nearer than the establishment of a Jewish State. A Jewish State gives us control over immigration, which is the key to our redemption. It gives us the right to legislate, to defend ourselves, and to control our foreign affairs…”
“Zionism derives from two sources. One deep, irrational, lasting, independent of time And place and as old as the Jewish people. It is the Messianic Hope… The second source was a source of renewal and action, the fruit of realistic political thought, born of the circumstances of time and place, emerging with the changes which came about in European nations during the nineteenth century, and under the influence of those changes on Jewish life.”
“Without Hebrew labor there is no way to absorb the Jewish masses. Without Hebrew labor, there will be no Jewish economy; without Hebrew labor, there will be no [Jewish] homeland. And anyone who does anything counter to the principle of Hebrew labor harms the most precious asset we have for fulfilling Zionism.”
“I am unwilling to forego even one percent of Zionism for 'peace'---yet I do not want Zionism to infringe upon even one percent of legitimate [Palestinian] Arab rights.”
“If Zionism returns to be what it was ten or fifteen years ago--with Jews entering the country one by one-- then the issue of Palestine is liable to be dropped from the Jewish people's agenda. The Jews of Germany must be gotten out of there, and if it's impossible to bring them to Palestine, then they will go somewhere less, and Palestine will become the hobby of enthusiasts.”
“If Zionism over the coming years does not provide an answer to the calamity which has befallen the Jewish people, then it will disappear from the Jewish stage.”
“No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning… Our possession is important not only for itself ... through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state .... will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country.”
Pioneering
“Pioneering is Israel's life blood, as it is the life blood of all mankind. Going to the moon and coming to the desert to plant saplings are similar acts in my opinion. Man must reach for the stars, it is in his nature. We have seen that the Bible first defined this aspect of human existence. But the stars are only a symbol. There is much to do on earth. The Jews today have the opportunity missed by so many generations in exile. They can follow the prophets who demanded that Israel be two things: That it represent a covenant between all Jews so as to strengthen their cohesion as a people and that its mission also be to act as an example, "a light unto the nations" for all mankind. For me, pioneering is setting the example and there can be no higher Jewish Ideal than creating from this bare, besieged little land a rich and enduring way of life that in its plentitude will never stop searching for new areas of endeavor but that will serve as a model to inspire humanity everywhere.”
“Pioneering is not the exclusive property of the elite and eminent; it is inherent in the soul of every man, where are hidden spiritual powers, traits and treasures, only a few of which find expressions.”
“The law of action is the Law of Halutziuth [Pioneering].”
“Surely the most wonderful and most powerful instrument through which man gains the mastery over nature is man himself. The potentialities latent in this wonderful being have no parallel among all the complex and marvelous instruments and machines that man has created. Only through an intuitive understanding of man’s potentialities – which we call halutziut or pioneering – have we succeeded in our enterprise in this country, which seemed to be completely incompatible with all accepted laws and conventional concepts.”
“By virtue of this miracle of haluziut our people resisted the habits acquired in the Diaspora and uprooted them, resisted political difficulties and overcame them, resisted the incitement and hostility of our neighbors and gained the victory, fought against poverty and ruination of our country – and rebuilt its ruined places.”
“This life as a simple citizen and laborer has its benefits not only for the person himself but perhaps also for his country. After all, there is room for only one Prime Minister, but for those who make the desert bloom there is room for hundreds, thousands and even millions. And the destiny of the state is in the hands of the many rather than of a single individual. There are times when an individual feels he should do those things which only can and should be done by the many."
“The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate.”
“I believed then, as I do today, that we held a clear title to this country. Not the right to take it away from others (there were no others), but the right and the duty to fill its emptiness, restore life to its barrenness, to re-create a modern version of our ancient nation. And I felt we owed this effort not only to ourselves but to the land as well.”
“The pioneers I joined during my first years in Israel were poor. We wore what clothing we could find and our hair was long because we had neither time nor the facilities to cut it. But we weren't necessarily nonconformist for its own sake. We wanted to create a new life, go beyond the life that already existed.”
“As to the future, if the spirit of Israel is to endure, pioneering must go on. That is another reason why Jews should come here. Not only so that they can live wholly integrated lives but to render service. We don't need newcomers in the cities where there are enough people - more than enough! We need them here, in the desert, making a fertile land from sand.”
Aliya and the In-Gathering of the Exiles
“Immigration was not only an urgent question of security (as it is today), but a redemption of Jews from spiritual and possibly physical extinction in the Diaspora.”
“On July 3, 1950, I introduced in the Knesset the Law of the Return, which as I told the House at the time, embodies a central mission of our State: the Ingathering of the exiles. This law declares that the state does not confer on any Jew outside the right to settle in Israel; this right is inherent in his very Jewishness and is his to exercise at his own free will. Israeli Jews are not privileged above non-Jews. The State is based on the absolute equality of all its citizens in rights and duties.”
“But it is not the state that confers on Diaspora Jews the right to return. This right is older than the State of Israel; in fact, it is this right that built the State. It derives from the uninterrupted historical link between the Jewish people and their ancestral Homeland…”
“The Jewish State was the creation, not only of those who came over and built it for the last eight years, not only of those in the Zionist organization who helped politically, morally, and financially to lay the foundations. The Jewish State is the creation of many generations of all Jews who lived thousands of years before, lived believing that the redemption of our people will come, that we will return to our country. It was that faith which brought us back to our country. It is only on relying on Jewry throughout the world while knowing the importance of having friends in America, in Europe, in Asia and Africa but the real support on which we can lean is Jewry, the Jewish Community throughout the world. Therefore the unity, the preservation of Jewry throughout the State, just as the preservation of the Jewish State is the concern of Jewry throughout the world it is the moral support of Jews in the Diaspora.”
“Immigration is not only our commandment and purpose as a means of rendering the State secure; nothing here can excel it in efficacy, importance and immediacy. No economic or such-like consideration can be allowed to slow down the rate of immigration, any more than they did our resistance to the Arab armies.”
“Only Aliya, ‘the Jewish nation on the way’ as Herzl described it, is the constructive and embodying force of the Zionist dream. This is the truth, and the highest truth of Zionism that without Aliya the Yishuv would not have been, without it the State would not have been, and without it the State will not endure.”
“Tribes of various tongues separated by time and space, distant by hundreds of years and thousands of miles, are mixed in Israel into one nation that once again speaks the Hebrew tongue, that is becoming rooted anew in the struggle of its homeland and is creating by physical labor and through its spiritual, moral, and intellectual ability an economy and a culture and a society and a science which will be a glory to Jewry wherever it will be.”
culture and a society and a science which will be a glory to Jewry wherever it will be.” “The Ingathering of the Exiles and all it entails – land development, attraction of capital, raising of productivity, promotion of cultural enterprises and security – all are unattainable without a self-denying by the whole people, without pioneer initiative in the whole gamut of our endeavors, from security to settlements. This voluntary effort and stimulus are demanded not only of those in the Land but of those still in exile.”
“Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them. Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement, should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.”
Israel
“A land can be won by a people only through their own efforts and creativity, their building and settlement.”
“The essence and the significance of Jewish history lies in the preference of quality over quantity. For our security, survival, and status in the world and the preservation of the legacy of our Prophets to the end of time, Israel must strive incessantly for moral, cultural, technological son social improvement and to be a unique people.”
“Our Chaim to Israel is base don sweat, on digging the soil with our own hands, fertilizing, planting, harvesting, building, developing this beloved land of ours. We are known to fight with passion to defend it. Well, we have put everything we possess into it. That is the secret of our strength.”
“This country (Israel) isn’t just a Jewish hotel. It’s a very special place with special demands on everyone who dwells on its soil…”
“Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism.”
“Israel, I know, will survive on the basis of quality. It is a small state and already it exists because of the quality and fortitude its inhabitants have shown under hardship. Now we require quality in every space of activity to carry out the mission of enlightenment worthy of our ancient people. But to get quality, we must have quantity. The more Jews who come, the more scope we shall have to improve our aptitudes and proficiency in diverse domains.”
“Why does the Jew have affinity for Israel? Because here again everything remains to be accomplished. It is his privilege and his place to share in this creative act. The trees at Sde Boker speak to me in a special way, in another language than any other trees anywhere. Not only because I helped to grow them but because they constitute a gift of man to Nature, and a gift of the Jews to the cradle of their culture.”
“This country has passed through many hands. It has been conquered incessantly and incessantly abandoned… Only the Jews have loved the land for itself, have worked it, improved it, made it theirs through their care for it. This was true two thousand years ago, it is equally true today. Israel is ours in the twentieth century not because we fought wars over it (these were protective actions after the fact of our presence) but because we settled it…”
“From the time the Jews ceased to rule here, no other people were able to make anything of Israel. This is not a ‘patriotic’ or metaphysical statement on my part but cold fact. Only in Jewish hands has this country been a true and viable independent State, a ‘going concern’ as it were.”
“The War of Independence was a crossroad in Israel’s history, as significant as the wars of Joshua, son of Nun, or the campaigns of the Hasmoneans. It was not a sudden leap from nothingness, any more than the State of Israel, whose proclamation ushered in a new era in the life of the Land and the people, sprang up out of the void. The State had its origin not in that proclamation but in the hazardous labours of settlement undertaken by three generations of pioneers. The State was a new link in the chain of history for which we had waited 1,835 years, since the defeat of Bar-Kochba, the leader of the last Jewish revolt against the Romans.”
“Although its roots are deep and immemorial, the young State is foredoomed to many grave trials, and its tasks – to maintain peace, to gather in the exiles and to reclaim the wilderness – call for an incredible effort.”
“The State of Israel will be judged not by its wealth or military strength nor by its technology, but by its moral worth and human values.”
“The vision of redemption deeply rooted in the Jewish heritage has brought forth the State, but the State is still far from the realization of the vision. To this end we need the cooperation of world Jewry and hope that together we shall meet the challenge common to all Jews, Israelis and Diaspora Jews, and by a concerted effort re-formulate our Jewish way of life.”
“The Jewish nation in its own country must become a free and independent state with a membership in the United Nations. It is eager to cooperate with free Arab neighbors to promote economic development, social progress and real independence of all Semitic countries in the Middle East.”
“Without moral and intellectual independence there is no anchor for national independence.”
“The rebirth of Israel was no overnight affair. Nor was it a question of an international legal arrangement. It started in earnest one hundred years ago, in the 1870s when the first pioneers left the relative security of their lives in Eastern Europe and Russia and came here determined to create a Jewish national home on the foundations of the ancient one. Of course, there had always been a Jewish population here and Jewish communities in the area called Palestine. But Israel as a nation was the work of three generations. It continues today, far from complete, especially and in its purest form down in the desert where I live and where we have had to do everything ourselves, from scratch.”
Jerusalem
“Israel is a member of the U.N…. Our membership obliges us to proclaim here, on the platform of Israel’s first Knesset, for the benefit of all the nations gathered together in the United Nations General Assembly and all who cherish peace and justice, what the feelings of the Jewish People have been about its holy city Jerusalem, since it first became a nation united under the scepter of King David three thousand years ago, and what our attitude is to the holy places of all religions.”
“In proclaiming the re-establishment of Jewish national sovereignty in the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, we declared and undertook before history and the world that “the State of Israel will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture, will protect the holy places of all religions, and will be faithful to the principles of the United Nations Charter.”
“Jewish Jerusalem is an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel, just as it is an inseparable part of Jewish history, Jewish religion, and the Jewish soul. Jerusalem is the very heart of the State of Israel.”
“We shall not party to the forced severance of Jerusalem, which would be an unwarranted and unjustifiable violation of the historic and natural right of the Jewish people in their ancestral Homeland.”
“We declare that Israel will never abandon Jerusalem of its own volition, in the same way as we have not for thousands of years given up our faith, our national character and our hope to return to Jerusalem and Zion.”
“Jerusalem itself, now one of the most striking cities in the world architecturally, was a miserable place in those days, physically more uncomfortable than Jaffa. It was a sprawling slum inhabited by the poor of every nationality, a true Tower of Babel. Winters were hard with driving rains and icy winds sweeping viciously across the hills, whistling down tortuous cobbled streets that never stayed on one level but meandered endlessly across the slopes on which the city perched precariously.”
Zahal (Israel Defense Forces)
“At four o’clock in the afternoon Jewish independence was declared and the State of Israel was established. Its destiny is now in the hands of our defense forces.”
“It is because the military emanates from the State and because it embodies the best in us an instrument not of aggression but of defense that I say it can be no threat to but only an upholder of democracy.”
“Our army has a mission not only in times of war, but also, and maybe especially, in times of peace: it has to shape the character of youth, and through this, the character of the people.”
“The Defense Service Law is designed to give the Army the two basic characteristics our security requires: military capacity and the capacity to pioneer.”
“First of all we must rid ourselves of the vain error that with the Army alone we can maintain the security of the State.”
“It is most important that the I.D.F. possess the love of man, the love of the nation, the love of one’s comrade, the value of man and a personal vision… and then every Jewish mother will know that she has delivered the fate of her son into the hands of commanders who will be worthy of it.”
“The most dangerous enemy to Israel’s security is the intellectual inertia of those who are responsible for security.”
The Negev
“Jewish society needs the Negev and it must bring its people here. This is where a specifically Jewish effort to open the frontiers of the mind and develop the natural capacities of the Promised Land can make its contribution. The supreme test of Israel at this time in its history lies not in the struggle with hostile forces outside its frontiers but in its success in wrestling fertility from the wasteland that constitutes sixty percent of its territory.”
“The Negev offers the Jews their greatest opportunity to accomplish everything for themselves from the very beginning. This is a vital part of our redemption in Israel. For in the end, as man gains mastery over Nature he gains it also over himself. That is the sense, and not a mystical but a practical one, in which I define our redemption here.”
“In the Negev will be tested: The creative ability and the pioneering valor of Israel… The Jewish scientific and research ability… The Jewish youth. In the Negev will be tested the people in Israel and its state.”
“If the state does not liquidate the desert – the desert may liquidate the state.”
“Only through a united effort by the State in planning and execution, by a people ready for a great voluntary effort, by a youth bold in spirit and inspired by a creative heroism, by scientists liberated from the bonds of conventional thought and capable of probing deep into the special problems of this country, shall we succeed in carrying out the great and momentous task of developing the south and the Negev.”
“Why does the Jew have affinity for Israel? Because here again everything remains to be accomplished. It is his privilege and his place to share in this creative act. The trees at Sde Boker speak to me in a special way, in another language than any other trees anywhere. Not only because I helped to grow them but because they constitute a gift of man to Nature, and a gift of the Jews to the cradle of their culture.”
“Our future in the Land of Israel is our closeness to the sea – the Mediterranean Sea, which connects the Land of Israel to Europe and Africa, and the Red Sea, which connects us to the large continent of Asia…For… the Negev is an enormous Zionist asset, and has no substitute anywhere else in the Land of Israel. Firstly, it is half of Israel. The Negev is a desolate, unpopulated area, and this is its importance. What it is lacking is water and Jews. It is possible to settle even millions of Jews there.”
“The tasks that lie ahead will require pioneering efforts the likes of which we have never known, for we must conquer and fructify the waste places (in the mountains of Galilee, the plains of the Negev, the valley of the Jordan, the sand dunes of the seashore, and the mountains of Judea)… First of all, we must conquer the sea and the desert, for these will provide us with room for new settlers and will serve as a laboratory for the development of new forms of economic and agricultural endeavor. Unless we conquer both the sea and the desert — by creating Jewish sailors and even Jewish Bedouin tribes — we cannot succeed in the tasks of immigration and resettlement that we must shoulder after the war… This combination will enable them to find a way of making the wilderness bloom and turning the desert into a place of settled habitation.”
“We wish to establish a Center for science, research, and learning which will also be a source of inspiration, a source of moral courage, a source of man’s faith in the noble mission, a creative mission, fertile, conquering, renewing…”
“We wish to establish a Center for science, research, and learning which will also be a source of inspiration, a source of moral courage, a source of man’s faith in the noble mission, a creative mission, fertile, conquering, renewing…”
Resilience
"There is no nation like Israel where the contrast between the desire for peace and the lack of security is so acute"
"Jewish unity, the essential condition for the dual survival of Israel and of the Jewish people, can only be guaranteed through the fostering of a Jewish consciousness common to all sectors of the people and its transmission to the young generation."
"An essential condition to our success in the struggle, whether political or military, is to know ourselves and our position, to know the circumstances and conditions of our existence, the factors that are basic and enduring and the factors of time and place which, by their constant change, condition our existence and our historic work."
"Our physical fact is constant in our history, and from it many happenings have resulted and are still resulting: we were always a numerically small nation and such we have remained. Apparently it is our fate to remain a small nation, a small in comparison with our neighbors and in comparison with the nations we encounter in the world. This physical, mathematical fact has profoundly influenced our destiny, to both our disadvantage and our gain."
"There is a miraculous vitamin stored in this nation which safeguards its existence and independence and gives indomitable strength to withstand all foreign influences which are hostile to its national and moral being."
"When the State of Israel came into being, it seemed as if the prolonged struggle of the Jewish people had at length been crowned with final victory. But this is a false and dangerous illusion, not only because the work of building is not finished and the ingathering of the exiles only at its beginning, not only because the struggle of the Jewish people for their political and economic independence is not yet over, but because the ideological struggle, the struggle for our moral independence, has become more acute."
"The independence of Israel means recognition of the essence, the root, the origin. It means that we chart the course we are to follow now and in the future in internal and foreign relations, on present and future issues, in complete and utter freedom and inharmony with our will, our needs, our circumstances, our desires and our vision, subservient to no external, foreign, large or lesser domination."
"The Jews who fought in the Israel Defence Army (during the war of Independence ES) came from fifty-five countries and five continents. Knowingly or unknowingly, we take sustenance thought these channels from all the peoples in whose midst Jews have settled….. Into our language, we shall pour the treasures of the spirit, the intellect, science and poetry of all nations, so that the spiritual heritage of all men will become our national possession."
"The criterion of spiritual and moral independence is freedom of judgment and conscience. Only if we use our own judgment to determine for ourselves what is good or bad in itself, and what is good or bad for us, are we free men acting of our own accord."
"The victory of Jewish arms over Arab played a decisive part in the establishment of the Jewish State. The root and source of this victory are in the moral and spiritual superiority of the Jewish nation; and it was the Jewish spirit that endowed our arms with victory. Faith and belief in the supremacy of the spirit have accompanied the Jewish people throughout its long journey down the years, from the revelation on Sinai to our own War of Liberation."
"We have experienced two revolutionary and wonderful events – the rebirth of the State of Israel and the victories of the Israel Defence Army. But they do not complete the revolutionary content of the new era. They are only a beginning and a preparation for the most vital event – the homecoming of the people."
"It is incumbent on our Army also to be a pioneering, educative force, builder of the nation and redeemer of the wastelands. If we do not become a unified people, if we do not cultivate our deserts, we shall have no security."
"It is imperative that the Army should add an important element of its own, the element of pioneering. Only by the maximum development of our ethical and intellectual qualities will the Army be enabled to carry out its mission of preserving the safety of the State."
"This conglomeration of humanity, pouring in from foreign lands of exile, will be purified, tempered and cleansed of its dross in the crucible of fraternity and military discipline. Sectarian differences will be wiped out and a loyal unity forged in a nation renewing its youth and drawing strength from an ancient past of great events and many struggles, a nation which is being made anew and lifted up by the work of free men and pioneers, which is supported by a valorous, daring and powerful spirit and holds fast to its vision of the ultimate day, whose time of fulfilment is come."
"The State of Israel will be judged not by its wealth or military strength nor by its technology, but by its moral worth and human values."
"Yet security is only one condition of our existence and independence. Israel has a unique mission. Every country must safeguard the peace, prosperity and progress of its inhabitants; Israel is under equal obligation but that is not the main thing. The cardinal aim of our State is the redemption of the people of Israel, the Ingathering of the Exiles."
"History has robbed us of many things. We did not inherit a spacious land; we were not a numerous people…..But one thing history has granted us from the very start – in comparable moral strength…. Moral strength has made us what we are today. There were nations not inferior in intellectual strength…. Now, in spiritual resource we are not less than any other nation. The Jewish contribution to the triumphs of spirit and science in recent times is as fine as that of the finest nations."
Peace
“I foresee for our future and the future of Palestine a return to its unity and integrity as a result of a free agreement between Jews and Arabs based on their common needs. The Jewish State will be a factor, perhaps the determining factor, in an Arab-Jewish agreement whose complete scope cannot yet be foreseen.”
“A cardinal factor in security is a foreign policy of peace: an honest aspiration to be at peace with our neighbors, and with all nations; a vigorous effort to establish relations of friendship with countries great and small, in East and West; avoidance of all and any warlike provocation from whatever quarter it may come, and in whatever form it be revealed; undeviating support of every step aimed at defeating aggression and achieving peace in the Middle East and all over the world.”
“Israel must discern the needs of the hour in all their cruel clarity, but not, on that account, overlook the needs of generations yet to come. The present situation, with all its grievous dangers from which we draw inescapable conclusions, ought not to limit our visual horizons. History makes necessary a Jewish-Arab league, and when conditions are ripe for it, it will come. But not of itself. We must be ready for it with will and resolution. For all seeming contradiction, Israel must prepare itself by both military efficiency and spiritual readiness for real peace and cooperation with the Arab people.”
“Two basic aspirations underlie all our work in this country; to be like all the nations, and to be different from all the nations. These two aspirations are apparently contradictory, but in fact they are complementary and interdependent. We want to be a free people, independent and equal in rights in the family of nations, and we aspire to be different from all other nations in our spiritual elevation and in the character of our model society, founded on freedom, cooperation and fraternity with all Jews and the whole of the human race.”
“Peace is indeed a vital matter for us. It is impossible to build a country in a permanent state of war, but peace for us is a means. The end is the complete and full realization of Zionism.”
Jews and Arabs
“Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can bridge it… We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.”
“We do not wish, we do not need to expel the Arabs and take their place. All our aspirations are built upon the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land — that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.”
“It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.”
“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”
“Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants.”
“Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there's no solution to it. There is no solution!.. The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the [Palestinian] Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don't know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours - even if we learn Arabic… and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don't see why 'Mustafa' should learn Hebrew… There's a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs.”
“I am unwilling to forego even one percent of Zionism for 'peace'---yet I do not want Zionism to infringe upon even one percent of legitimate [Palestinian] Arab rights.”
“The world will not permit the Jewish people to seize the state as a spoil, by force." Second the Jewish people did not have the means to do so. And third and most important, it would be immoral, and the Jews of the world would never by this immoral cause. "We would then be unable to awaken the necessary forces for building the country among thousands of young people. We would not be able to secure necessary means from the Jewish people, and the moral and the political sustenance of the enlightened world… Our conscience must be clean… and so we must endorse the premise in relation to the [Palestinian] Arabs: The [Palestinian] Arabs have full rights as citizens of the country, but they do not have the right of ownership over it.”
Foreign Policy
“We must support the army as though there were no White Paper, and fight the White Paper as though there were no war.”
“We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”
“Our code must be framed to speed the absorption of immigrants into our economy, culture and society; to fuse the returning tribes into a homogeneous national and cultural unit; to forward our physical and moral healing and the cleansing of our lives from the trivia and dross which gathered upon us in dependence and exile. To maintain the status quo will not do. We have set up a dynamic State, bent upon creation and reform, building and expansion. Laws which lag behind development, merely a digest of experience and the lessons of the past, are useless to us. We need to anticipate the character of the times, discern embryonic forms emergent or renewed, and clear the path for circumstantial change.”
“Our policy must be the unity of the human race. The world is divided into two blocks. We consider that the United Nations is a Jewish ideal.”
“A look at the map indicates why there has always been conflict here. This relatively small country constitutes a permanent crossroads of three continents. Thus it is subject to the strains and pulls of world politics. In our time, oil, Soviet ambitions in the Middle East, the interests of the United States, Britain and France are far more responsible for maintaining the tension than the largely bogus pretext of Arab nationalism. If the Great Powers genuinely wanted peace, there would be no Arab-Israel conflict.”
The Future
“In educating youth we must not ignore the great human ideals promulgated by our prophets, justice and loving kindness, human brotherhood and the love of humankind. From their early childhood we must implant in the hearts of our children the aspiration towards a better society, where there is no privation, wrong-doing or exploitation, but equality and justice, creative fraternity, liberty and mutual tolerance.”
“The hand of time has dealt with us as with other nations. No people today can or should be what it was a thousand or two or even three thousand years ago. Israel’s restoration to independence is not purposed [intended] to bring back our glorious past. No, the State turns its face resolutely towards the future, a future that must however, be sustained still out of the nation’s fountainhead of being, and suffused with all the light of the past’s legacy.”
“…Our plans for the future are very simple and very pragmatic. We must live on and build the country, receive immigrants and put them to work, extend our education to even higher levels for an increasing mass of citizens, settle the desert so as to make Israel economically self-sufficient, and utilize every effort, short of undermining our national integrity, to bring about peace.”
“The ultimate aim is to build up this land of Israel and restore to the Jews the political independence that has been taken from them for the past two thousand years. Don't laugh. This is no dream. The means of achieving it can be the setting up of villages for agriculture and crafts, the building of factories and their gradual expansion, in other words a total effort to transfer all employment and agriculture into Jewish hands. In addition, it will be necessary to train young people and the young generations of the future in the use of firearms (in the wild and free Turkish Empire anything is possible) and then ... then even I give myself up to reveries. Then will come that glorious day of which Isaiah prophesied in his glowing message of comfort. The Jews, with weapons in their hands if necessary, will announce with a loud voice that they are masters in their ancient land. It doesn't matter that this wonderful day will come only in fifty years or later. What is fifty years for such an undertaking?”
General quotes
“Anyone who believes you can’t change history has never tried to write his memoirs.”
“Anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles is not a realistic.”
“Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.”
“If an expert says it can’t be done, get another expert.”
“Thought is a strenuous art – few practice it, and then only at rare times.”
“Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.”
“The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.”
