My Truth: Gush Etzion celebrations

The Etzion Block was the birthplace of the Jewish Settlement movement. Here our spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here we created cultural values of national and universal significance and exemplified to the world the values of the eternal Book of Books.

Three times in modern history, Jewish residents of the Etzion block have been forcefully exiled: After the Arab pogroms of 1929; after the Arab pogroms of 1936; and on the fourth day of the Jewish month of Iyar, 5708, a day before the establishment of the State of Israel. Each time, the people kept faith throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, second and third generations strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned en masse.

Pioneers, defiant returnees, and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards national renaissance.

In the year 5708, David Ben Gurion declared the establishment of the Jewish Homeland in the land of Israel, the State of Israel. In its War of Independence, the Jewish community of the Etzion Block contributed its full share to the struggle of the nation against the forces of Arab wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the founders of the Jewish State.

It is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State. Accordingly we, settlers, inhabitants and citizens of the Etzion Block, by virtue of our natural and historic right, hereby declare the celebrations of forty years since the liberation of the Etzion Block open. The Etzion Block is open for the absorption of Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; we foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; we extend our hands - even in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for years - to all Arab inhabitants of the Etzion Block in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land.

The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East. We appeal to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of the Etzion Block in the tasks of immigration and up-building and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the redemption of Israel. Placing our trust in the Almighty, I now declare the celebrations open! Transcript of a speech given on Sunday, September 30th, in Nokdim