President Ephraim Katzir today issued a message to the world Jewish communities on the eve of Independence Day in which he noted that “the prospects, however slight of peaceful settlement, hearten us as we approach Independence Day, and so, almost paradoxically do the questioning and ferment among groups of Israelis. These are clearly signs of increased involvement and concern on the part of the generation that will assume responsibility for the nation.”
Independence Day this year, Katzir said, is commemorated “in the light of tragic human losses and great military and civilian achievement. The attack launched on Yom Kippur is not yet concluded, and though it brought with it glimmerings of peace these too are clouded in uncertainty. Yet the unprecedented fact of their existence may be the breakthrough to a better future for the Middle East and may perhaps, despite sorrow and sacrifice, make of the years 1973 and 1974 a threshold to a new era.” Looking back 26 years, since the establishment of the Jewish State, Katzir said “we see the State of Israel, the Third Commonwealth of the Jewish people, coming into being against incredible odds.”
Almost instantly and despite crushing tensions and problems. Israel became home for hundreds of thousands whom the Nazi savagery had robbed of home and stripped of family, and for masses exposed to humiliation and poverty in Oriental lands, Katzir stated. “The 600,000-strong Jewish community of 1948 has become a nation of over three million with vigorous and creative economy culture, educational system and defense forces that have brilliantly and repeatedly passed the test of modern warfare waged in complex and massive form.”
URGES DEEPER MEANING AND NOBLER VISION
Continuing, the President observed: “It is good to consider the enormous changes that would have seemed visionary in 1948. It is good to remember the enormous difficulties so effectively surmounted and the life-giving accomplishments and talents our resurrected national center has produced. For all this the stern accounting of history has exacted the sad price which emerging nations know only too well.”
Referring to what he termed the uniquely heartening new relationship evolving between Israel and world Jewry since the Yom Kippur War, Katzir declared; “We here have been moved to the roots of our being by meeting groups from abroad, by hearing and reading not only of immense practical aid to Israel but of significant developments in thought and feeling. We have learned how closely linked millions of Jews are to Israel, how they have come to see the flourishing of the State as the condition for the survival of the Jewish people and the key to the preservation and activation of the moral and cultural legacy which our long and extraordinary history has given us and which is so sadly threatened by ignorance and assimilation.”
The President concluded: “With a strengthened sense of our common destiny and strengthened dedication and determination, let us all in Israel and throughout the world, find deeper meaning and nobler vision in this 26th anniversary of Israel’s independence. Together, let us build and strive in strength and faith, in hope of peace, of growing aliya from all our dispersion and of a new, human spirit in the affairs of men everywhere.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
