Israeli President Zalman Shazar declared today that Israel will continue to strive to “establish communication with our neighbors in this region” in order that both Israel and the Arab States will take steps to successfully “bring into being that just and enduring peace essential to us all.” Shazar made this statement in his Independence Day declaration released here by the Israeli Consulate General.
The Israeli President asserted that “times of celebration must also be times of spiritual stock taking, of intensified national unity, of strengthened bonds between citizen and state, between diaspora and Israel. Let there be forged among us a covenant of Jewish brotherhood no less binding in day-by-day life of creative action and mutual aid than in times of war and danger. And may the blessing of far greater tolerance accompany us in our lives–tolerance of established citizen for new immigrant, of waves of immigration and varied ethnic groups for each other, of old for young, of human being for human being. In a word let our lives be imbued always by a humanism that embraces the whole people.”
It is not enough to “love the nation,” Shazar continued. “One must love the individuals within the nation. It is not enough to welcome aliya: one must welcome the oleh with cordiality and love. The sense of Jewish unity must grow deeper everywhere–between us and the dispersion, between Jews in Israel and their brothers everywhere. We have struck root in the land and now we must strike root in the people: educating Jews outside Israel to love the State and Israelis in the State to love the Jewish people.”
Shazar also declared: “With particular emphasis, let the impoverished and the weak among us be assured that our State aspires to put an end to lowliness of status and stature, whether material or spiritual. Over and above all past accomplishment, Israel dare not grow weary of the dedicated effort to raise the spirit of her people, so that all –even the new and the weak –may trust the State as their staff of life.”
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