“AND SO WE SAW THE WAY OF THE ENTIRE NATION, NOT AS IT IS BUT HOW IT SHOULD BE”: SUPERB AUTOGRAPH SPEECH DRAFT BY ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER DAVID BEN-GURION
BEN-GURION, David. Autograph speech draft. No place, no date (circa 1965). Three octavo sheets of onion-skin paper, 6-1/2 by 8 inches, written on four pages.
Original three-page autograph speech draft, entirely hand-written by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in Hebrew, in which he reflects upon the history and meaning of the state of Israel and his political beliefs.
This speech, translated, reads in part: “What distinguished Mapai and what made it into the guide of the Yishuv and the State for 30 years, from 1933 to 1948, and from 1948 to 1963? The ambition to be transformed from a class into a people. Mapai knew that the workers of the Land of Israel were not yet the class that they expected to be, and their achievements were not yet in line with what the people were expected to want, and it knew that the class [of workers] had a historical mission-to be transformed from a class into a people. Not a people like all other peoples, but a people within which no adult person lives off the work of others; a people that makes its living entirely from work, from physical and spiritual work, professional and scientific work, on the basis of partnership and fraternity, freedom and equality; a people that will become an example for all other peoples; a people that has concentrated around it all of the world’s Jewry, those who will immigrate to Israel and those who will not immigrate to Israel. We have aimed to be what Isaiah the Prophet predicted 2700 years ago: ‘[I the LORD have] set thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations.’ And therefore we have seen the needs of the entire people, not as it is but as it should be-as our own needs. Therefore we have adopted a national approach to every problem: not a belligerent, separatist approach, [but] a national approach to education, to security, to raising the standard of living, not just by raising salaries, but also by raising the productivity of labor-because only this will bring us economic independence, without which the independence of the State is but a utopia. A national approach to education-providing the younger generation, in its entirety, with a State education at all levels: primary, secondary and higher [education]; and, in this way, destroying the rifts and the cultural and economic gaps between one ethnic community and another… Our stance, our status in [the eyes of] the world, the continuing strength of the State of Israel vis-à-vis the Jews of the Diaspora, depends on one thing: the constant nurturing of our moral and cultural character. It is not Nasser, it is not the Egyptian aircraft that are the greatest danger to the State, but our moral depravity, our alienation from the values of truth and justice, without which there is no culture, no solidarity, no integration, no peace, no honor, no immigration, no mingling of the exiles. It is incumbent upon us to be, as stated by Isaiah the Prophet, a covenant of the people and a light of the nations. This prophecy will come true if we conduct ourselves as the Chosen People-that is, a people which again arises in its truth, its justice, and its Jewish-pioneering ability.”
David Ben-Gurion led the Israeli political party Mapai for 20 years, and served as Prime Minister under them for over 13 of those years. In 1965, in the wake of the Lavon affair, Ben-Gurion made the extraordinary decision to leave the party he had been intimately tied to for all of his political life, and he and his allies formed a new party, Rafi. In this pivotal speech, Ben-Gurion also describes his political career, his hopes for the direction of the state of Israel, and his reasons for forming Rafi. (Encyclopedia Judaica).
Several small creases to paper. A lengthy, important speech entirely in Ben-Gurion’s hand, in near-fine condition. An exceptional item from Israeli history.