Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion warned last night that it would be “disastrous” for Israel “if we forget that brutal danger lies in wait across the border.”
The Prime Minister’s warning was obviously a reply to the renewed threat by President Nasser of Egypt last Monday that Egypt would “insist on the liquidation of Israeli aggression on part of the Palestine land.” Nasser made the threat at the opening session of the Egyptian Congress of Popular Forces in Cairo.
Mr. Ben-Gurion spoke at the Haifa Technion where he accepted an honorary doctorate of architecture. Israel, he said, would not ever be a world factor in politics or economics for “we are few.” It is only in the spirit that Israel can compete with other nations, he told the graduation ceremony audience. “In the kingdom of the spirit, we are capable of being an important factor and not a negligible, one,” he stated.
The Prime Minister said he was not sure whether the term “architect” was appropriate to the process of molding a state since unlike a building “where you have material like clay in the potter’s hand,” it is “the people that are the main thing, and not land or the power of sovereignty.”
CRITICIZES ISRAELIS FOR STRIKING FOR INCREASED SALARIES
The Prime Minister obliquely criticized the Israeli professionals in a wide variety of fields who struck during the past year for higher salaries. “Even among those who achieved no small measure of prosperity, not all are inbued with responsibility and devotion to general needs,” he said. “Many of them demand for themselves, rather than demanding of themselves.”
He added that the achievement of Israel’s goals “can materialize through the cooperation and devotion of every Jew living here or in other countries, but first of all and above all, it depends on two sections of the people of Israel: the workers and the men of science and art.”
“All of my life I have cherished this dual aspiration, that there should be unity between the sectors of Israel–between those who create by hand and those who create by brain–and that they should alike be dedicated to the great historic ideals of our people whose most concise and active expression is to be found in the message of our great prophets. I am confident that the day will come when it will be realized to the full,” he declared.
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.
