Premier Menachem Begin took time out from affairs of state this week to honor one of Israel’s pioneer settlers, Eitan Belkind, on the occasion of his 80th birthday celebrated here. Belkind is the son of one of the first members of BILU, the settlement movement of Russian Jews who came to Palestine in the early 1880s and was, himself, a member of Nili, the first Jewish underground when the country was under Ottoman rule. Begin paid tribute to both movements. “The BILU pioneers started agricultural settlement in Eretz Israel and it is from Nili, mother of our undergrounds, that we inherited the readiness to sacrifice for this land,” he said.
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