The Knesset met in special session today in memory of David Ben Gurion on the completion of the shiva. The session opened with the playback of the recorded speech in which Ben Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. It ended with Premier Golda Meir reading excerpts from a letter Ben Gurion wrote from Paris at the height of the Yishuv’s battle against the British which is appropriate to the situation today:
“Do not fear, do not despair, but also do not delude yourselves. Without failures and difficulties and effort we shall not reach our goal. We have to prepare ourselves for any possibility. We shall be neither Massada nor Vichy. We are not preparing ourselves for the last battle, and we are not about to die with the Philistines, because political circumstances change and disappear; and one must know that as soon as we give in and bend our head and get used to expressions such as, who are we and what is our strength,’ we begin rolling down the decline that leads to the deep chasm.”
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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.
