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us ourselves. On our youth and our elderly, our masses and our leaders – that we all
open our hearts and bend our ears to hear the voice of God, calling to us from within the
storm of war: Return to Me, My children; remove the foreign gods from your midst, purity
the land and sanctify it for God and for His Torah, and I, for My part, will make for you
an opening for redemption that is as wide as an expansive hall. And then the verse will be
fulfilled, 'The Lord builds up Jerusalem, He gathers together the dispersed of Israel' [Ps.
147:2].
K ol HaAm, May 16, 1948
O ur answer to the invaders
F ollowing the proclamation of independence, the military campaign was intensified.
Egyptian forces invaded from the south, Lebanese forces invaded from the north; from the
east came the armies of Abdullah. The enemy's planes dropped bombs near Tel Aviv.
T he Jewish People have accepted the battles quietly and with equanimity. The Jewish
defense forces are poised to fight back. The losses at Kfar Etzion, Naharayim and Atarot
were received amongst the Yishuv with heavy mourning, but also with a determined
decision to intensify its war effort, to expand the ranks and to protect with all its power
the reborn State of Israel.
HaYom, May 16, 1948
The Jewish state has been declared
L et us not be like dreamers this time. Enemies have set themselves against us all around,
to destroy all that we have built, to destroy the state that is being founded with the blood
of our finest youth, with the efforts of the Yishuv and of the entire nation. We dreamed
that 'Zion would be redeemed with justice' and be built on the foundation of a resolution
of the nations, but behold – they have imposed war upon us and forced us to establish it
out of blood and fire.
O ur War of Independence is becoming increasingly serious. The Yishuv, the pioneering
[arm] of the nation, needs to concentrate all its strength on defending the state that it has
reestablished. The nation in the Diaspora will hurry to our aid. The camps of the forsaken
ones, the surviving remnants of European Jewry, have already made a move. Thousands
and tens of thousands who are thirsty for freedom, whose souls crave the homeland, who
longed and yearned for it in the ghettos, in the death camps, in the forests of the partisans
and in the forsaken [DP] camps, are beginning to arrive at the liberated shores of the
homeland. Its gates have been opened wide to receive its children who are returning to it,
to rebuild and to protect it.
Other Perspectives 213
open our hearts and bend our ears to hear the voice of God, calling to us from within the
storm of war: Return to Me, My children; remove the foreign gods from your midst, purity
the land and sanctify it for God and for His Torah, and I, for My part, will make for you
an opening for redemption that is as wide as an expansive hall. And then the verse will be
fulfilled, 'The Lord builds up Jerusalem, He gathers together the dispersed of Israel' [Ps.
147:2].
K ol HaAm, May 16, 1948
O ur answer to the invaders
F ollowing the proclamation of independence, the military campaign was intensified.
Egyptian forces invaded from the south, Lebanese forces invaded from the north; from the
east came the armies of Abdullah. The enemy's planes dropped bombs near Tel Aviv.
T he Jewish People have accepted the battles quietly and with equanimity. The Jewish
defense forces are poised to fight back. The losses at Kfar Etzion, Naharayim and Atarot
were received amongst the Yishuv with heavy mourning, but also with a determined
decision to intensify its war effort, to expand the ranks and to protect with all its power
the reborn State of Israel.
HaYom, May 16, 1948
The Jewish state has been declared
L et us not be like dreamers this time. Enemies have set themselves against us all around,
to destroy all that we have built, to destroy the state that is being founded with the blood
of our finest youth, with the efforts of the Yishuv and of the entire nation. We dreamed
that 'Zion would be redeemed with justice' and be built on the foundation of a resolution
of the nations, but behold – they have imposed war upon us and forced us to establish it
out of blood and fire.
O ur War of Independence is becoming increasingly serious. The Yishuv, the pioneering
[arm] of the nation, needs to concentrate all its strength on defending the state that it has
reestablished. The nation in the Diaspora will hurry to our aid. The camps of the forsaken
ones, the surviving remnants of European Jewry, have already made a move. Thousands
and tens of thousands who are thirsty for freedom, whose souls crave the homeland, who
longed and yearned for it in the ghettos, in the death camps, in the forests of the partisans
and in the forsaken [DP] camps, are beginning to arrive at the liberated shores of the
homeland. Its gates have been opened wide to receive its children who are returning to it,
to rebuild and to protect it.
Other Perspectives 213