Page 116 - big friday
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itself and to be inhabited peacefully – a state with a wedge driven through it, making it a
sort of a circus freak; a body divided into two parts, connected only by a thin tendon? No;
this political basis can, at most, serve as a footstool, or a springboard, but the leap upward
is something that we must do for ourselves, with the power of "shortening distances" that
is reserved for descendants of prophets: from the two-dimensional state on the map, we
have to create a three-dimensional state within time and space. Height and volume are not
offered to us in the UN plan, nor was it ever the intention that they be granted us. On the
contrary, the point of the plan is to withhold them from us, since the intention was to give
us only a state on paper, with no real intent of realization.
But the state that Ben-Gurion declared today – and it would seem that this declaration
emerged, via his words, from the hearts of all of Israel, even those who had originally
opposed it – our state gives us a portion and inheritance of life, and for the sake of life,
and in accordance with the teaching of life, which emphasizes the sanctity of life. In other
words, a state on the foundation of the past, for the sake of the future; a state that will have
sprouted from the soil of life which we have plowed with our own hands and watered with
our blood; a state that is the natural development of our existence in the world; a state for
all those Jews who view Zionism as the natural form in which Judaism is developing in its
transition from the past to the future.
Kol Yisrael (the Voice of Israel radio) transmitted to us a fragmented, broken broadcast
A “white night” in the besieged city of Jerusalem, bombarded by the cannons of
the Transjordanian Arab Legion
114 The Friday That Changed Destiny
sort of a circus freak; a body divided into two parts, connected only by a thin tendon? No;
this political basis can, at most, serve as a footstool, or a springboard, but the leap upward
is something that we must do for ourselves, with the power of "shortening distances" that
is reserved for descendants of prophets: from the two-dimensional state on the map, we
have to create a three-dimensional state within time and space. Height and volume are not
offered to us in the UN plan, nor was it ever the intention that they be granted us. On the
contrary, the point of the plan is to withhold them from us, since the intention was to give
us only a state on paper, with no real intent of realization.
But the state that Ben-Gurion declared today – and it would seem that this declaration
emerged, via his words, from the hearts of all of Israel, even those who had originally
opposed it – our state gives us a portion and inheritance of life, and for the sake of life,
and in accordance with the teaching of life, which emphasizes the sanctity of life. In other
words, a state on the foundation of the past, for the sake of the future; a state that will have
sprouted from the soil of life which we have plowed with our own hands and watered with
our blood; a state that is the natural development of our existence in the world; a state for
all those Jews who view Zionism as the natural form in which Judaism is developing in its
transition from the past to the future.
Kol Yisrael (the Voice of Israel radio) transmitted to us a fragmented, broken broadcast
A “white night” in the besieged city of Jerusalem, bombarded by the cannons of
the Transjordanian Arab Legion
114 The Friday That Changed Destiny
