David Ben-Gurion

Jews and Their Land

"Israel was not alone in feeling and fighting the impact of ancient Egypt and Babylon. Its neighbors - Edom, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Aram - were in a similar position. The names are common enough to any student of the Bible, but what vestige of their owners is in existence today, beyond archaeological findings? It is difficult to conceive how all these people were physically obliterated. Of their tongues, their cultures, their creeds, nothing lives.

The Jewish people in the Land of Israel, are the only people in the whole of the Middle East who still speak the language of their ancestors spoke 4000 years ago, who still hold to a religion that sprang from the Patriarch Abraham and the great teacher Moses. Twice the people of Israel were wrenched from their homeland. For the last 2000 years they have been scattered to the four corners of the globe, drifting from country to country, pronouncing the 70 tongues of the 70 lands in which they stayed. Yet never once did they sever their links with the land."