The Six Day War returned to us the Old City and the Western Wall. We have been fortunate, and a united Jerusalem is now in our hands. But now Jerusalem is in even greater danger than it was before.

We do not live in a world of multi-national states. We wanted to find a place under the sun for ourselves, and not just any place but the land of Israel; to be a people that dwells in its land, that is not a minority, but at the same time does not rule over others and oppress them. We wanted a piece of land beneath our feet on which to establish our independence, to develop our cultural, spiritual, and economic gifts, and we wanted to continue the ancient historical thread of the Jewish people.

We are in a united Jerusalem, in which there live about two hundred thousand Jews and seventy thousand non-Jews; as long as a third of the residents are non-Jews, we cannot be at ease. We need more Jews here and in other places. I do not know if any of you have already been to the Syrian heights.** Anyone who has visited there recognizes the threat under which the Jordan and Hula Valley settlements had been living. We must build settlements on the heights. To this end we need Jews. We need to develop modern industry, and for that we need Jews as well.

 

Someone here said that you wish to know what we ask of this generation—of the Jewish people as a whole, and not just of its youth. I will answer in brief: Come to Israel. Let the Jews who are forty or fifty years old come too and build factories, and let engineers and technicians come with them and after them. And factory workers and farmers must come, along with simple Jews, and do everything that needs to be done. And let us not forget that you came here for a war, and I am not prepared to say that it was the last war. After three wars and three defeats that we have inflicted on our neighbors, they still have not come to terms with our existence, and they continue trying, and they will try again, to wield their sword against us to turn us back.

I ask you: How do you see our future, in another five or ten years? Perhaps there will not be another war, but common sense bids us consider that there is no guarantee that this last war was the final one. And if something like that were to happen, you would then, in all likelihood, rush to our aid, once again too late to help. For who knows how long such a war would last? It could well be done, not in six days, but in four, or even three. And if, God forbid, we were to remain few in number, as we are today, who knows how it would end—and yet you have come here to defend the future of the Jewish state.

We would like you to come and to bring your friends with you. You may well be more successful than the emissaries that we have sent, because you are able to speak in a different language, one that is better suited to the young men and women of your generation. Perhaps you will tell them, quite simply, “Come and let us build a Jewish state.” The United States and other countries are unable to offer them such a mission.

When the late President Kennedy announced the founding of the Peace Corps, many thousands of young Jews went and signed up. Our young Israelis saw them in the African jungle. I have often thought to myself: Young people are seeking some sort of ideal; they are tired of living in comfort, in cities where they do not see the sun by day or the stars by night, and they are searching for something new. Why do they not come here by the tens of thousands, to be builders, the builders of their land, their country, their people? Not many of us Jews are left in the world. Hitler made sure of that. For our people, there are only two places where we are free: In the State of Israel, and in the Western world—America and Europe. After the Balfour Declaration, Chaim Weizmann issued the call:” O people of Israel, where are you?” But the Jews did not stir themselves up to come. I hope that this will not happen again. In the wake of the Six Days, there is tremendous potential for heeding such a call, and it is crucial that there be those who will make it and who will mobilize our nation.

You can be six thousand first-rate ambassadors to the lands of the diaspora. We have nothing to compare with such a force. We do not have the ability to send the countries of the world thousands of young people to say to the Jews: Do not be content with the aliya of only a few thousand, a few thousand out of six million. Now, after the great war, the awakening and the exhilaration, after the electric jolt that has coursed through the Jewish world, thousands and tens of thousands of olim should come to Israel. We cannot possibly resign ourselves to the immigration of only a few thousand, who could offer little help if a new war were to arise, one that might be more trying and bitter than the Six Day War. If, heaven forbid, our strength failed us, your children would have cause to ask: ׂYou had a land, you had a country, you had wars, you defeated the enemy, but what has become of Israel?׃ It was given to you in trust, but you did not know how to keep it. For you left everything as it was—just two and a half million Jews.

The Jewish people must see you as emissaries of the Jewish historical imperative, so that we may double our numbers, at least, by the end of the century. Accept this task upon yourselves, and in so doing you will fulfill your historic mission. Go forth to the hundreds of thousands of Jewish students and bring them back by the tens of thousands. You have the ability to establish the Jewish people firmly in its land, in its homeland, and to develop its culture and its spirit.

Forgive me if I have spoken too long. But I thought I could not pass up such an opportunity to explain our situation as it appears to me. This is what we want from the Jewish people and from its youth. We need them, we are relying upon them. It is up to you to bring them.

 

 

 * Three different types of collective settlements undertaken by the Zionist movement.

** This was the common term for the Golan Heights in the period before and immediately after the Six Day War.