Calling Israel “a vision as big as the Jewish people,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, pointed to Israel’s 29 years of achievement as “one phenomenon in the chain of our people’s history.” He appealed for a strengthening of the unity of the Jewish people, stating Israel’s search for peace depends upon it.
Addressing more than 1300 people at Baltimore’s Israel Independence Day celebration, held at Chizuk Amuno Congregation, co-sponsored by the Baltimore Jewish Council and the Baltimore Zionist Federation, the Ambassador was introduced by Jerold C. Hoffberger, civic leader and president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. The event was co-chaired by Marcia Rothstein and Jack Levin.
Noting that Israel has grown from 640,000 to more than 3 1/2 million, Dinitz declared that in one generation Israel has risen “from the depths of the agony of the Holocaust to our reconstitution in our own land; from the greatest depth of tragedy to the greatest triumph, the creation of the State of Israel.”
Dinitz reminded the audience that Israel and the United States are bound morally as two societies “who base our everyday existence upon the precepts of a moral democracy. We do not use our morality or ideology as a form of international blackmail. We are the only nation in the Middle East that does not trade in ideology, because it is part and parcel of our very being.”
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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.