President and Mrs. Zalman Shazar, the entire Cabinet and General Staff and an array of dignitaries representing the Supreme Court, the Chief Rabbinate, the Jewish Agency and Israel’s Arab and Druze communities, assembled in the Knesset (Parliament) today for a special festive session marking the 20th anniversary of Israel’s independence. There was only one speaker, former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who had been invited to address the chamber on the occasion. He held his audience for a full hour which was punctuated by bursts of applause, something usually proscribed by the House. Following a recess after the Ben-Gurion speech, the Knesset formally opened its summer session with consideration of the IL, 500 million ($143 million) addition to the defense budget. Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir said that two-fifths of the sum will be diverted from development projects but the rest must be raised through what he called a semi-voluntary internal defense loan.
Mr. Ben-Gurion, who at 82 still speaks with a clear, energetic voice, recalled the history of Zionist efforts to establish a Jewish national home. He told the assemblage that the over-riding problem today is massive aliyah (immigration). He advised the Government to make that the first priority of the State. The Nazi holocaust, he said, deprived Israel of just those Jews who had most of the will and desire to identify themselves with Jewish settlement in Israel, Israel, he declared, should remain a “chosen people.”
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.
