Premier David Ben Gurion declared that the “Jewish nation would never have arisen without immigration in the past and will not survive without immigration in the future.”
Addressing the opening session of the ninth national convention of the Histadrut, which was attended by delegates from all over Israel and trade union observers from European, African and Asian countries, the Premier stressed that “the right to exist and the power to exist” are immigration, “or in other words–the redemption of Jewry.”
In an address devoted completely to the problem of immigration and an exhortation to the Histadrut to accept leadership in support of immigration as a duty, the Premier said that “just as immigration saves Jews from extinction in the Diaspora, so it builds a homeland and insures that it will become a beacon to the nations,” He said that acceptance of immigrants from one European country–noting that the exodus might spread to other states in the area–was a “fateful mission” of the State of Israel.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
