ISRAEL - A LAND OF PARADOXES
It is a pleasure to be with you this evening -- particularly at this time of year when your thoughts begin to turn to the coming holidays. Although I am a little early I would like to say to each of you: "May you be inscribed for a good year."
I wish I could promise at the same time that the coming year will be a year of peace throughout the world -- that Berlin will become a city and not a crisis -- the questions about the Chinese offshore islands will be resolved -- the Laos and other Asian nations will be free to develop peacefully -- and that Israel will be able to live in harmony with its neighbors. But I fear these objectives must remain mere hopes.
Only in Israel has the threat of war failed to halt progress and human achievement. The years of crisis, through which we have been passing for thirty years, have left no more bitter heritage than the homelessness and landlessness of millions. Yet the people of Israel, who have combined idealistic vision with the great practical vigor, have proven that the human spirit -- even under the harshest suffering -- has the power of endurance which no tyranny can extinguish.
Israel is a land of many paradoxes. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion observed some years ago: "If you don't believe in miracles here, you aren't a realist." There are many such contrasts in the life of Israel. In Israel the present and the past are closely linked. They are part of a seamless web. As a state it is a newcomer to the family of nations, yet the people of Israel have an identity and a history which reaches back through the recorded history of man. The Israelis in a sense are the eldest of people and the youngest of nations. In Israel there is a constant process of rediscovery. One recent visitor writes:
"To redeem the people and reclaim the land by restoring them to each other is Israel's
deepest aim. Linking the present to the pre-Exile past, they relive the Bible in its own
etting; they wander and they dig; and things become near and real which had been a
yth. They search for water where Moses struck the rock; they go for copper to King
Solomon's mines. They rediscover themselves across a chasm of 2,000 years."
This sense of a historic past in a nation so young has been an enormous source of strength. It gives a sense of purpose not merely stale tradition. It is important as a legacy from the past -- but also as an incentive for the future. Out of this very sense of history Israel derives strength and courage to attack the overwhelming problems that crowd upon it -- poverty, land exhaustion and the enemy at the gate.
Israel is at one and the same time a strongly nationalistic and a strongly universalistic state. The State of Israel has of necessity remained well armed and alert against its neighbors. Yet during the same period Israel has been able to project future plans for all the Middle East, and to form close associations with other nations throughout the world. American friendship, support and trade constitute but one example. Israel has also formed links with France and other countries of Western Europe; she has developed trade and technical arrangements with the new nations of the world such as Ghana; and she has even closed the dark chasm between her own nation and Germany. The act of penance represented in the German-Israel reparations agreements is one of the most illustrious examples of statesmanship in recent years -- an important example to those who feel that only the sword can settle their quarrels.
The State of Israel is armed -- yet it is not militaristic. Even the need for troops has not been socially wasteful in the new nation. The training is often combined with work on the land -- with taming the desert, irrigating the rocky soil, building roads, aiding in village development and construction. The army is actually a great force for unifying and educating the people. It introduces a sense of equality and stature. It offers for many an important period of education and higher training.
Nor has her military and foreign policy yielded to the dangers of an empty militancy. On the day that the State of Israel came into existence, May 14, 1948, the Secretary-General of the Arab League declared: "This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." But, though the Israelis' beachhead on the great land mass of the Middle East is subject constantly to alarms and invasions, the basic temper of their national life has been one of self-restraint and peace.
In eleven years their population has more than doubled; the production per man has been raised 50%; cultivated land has doubled, irrigated land quadrupled, and school attendance quadrupled. In most countries the economic pressure such strides create would require a period of consolidation. But Israel does not pause, even to take breath. There is no ceiling on their national aims. When it seemed likely that Israel would be required to absorb still an additional 200,000 immigrants in 1959 it simply accepted this as a fact and made plans to do it. The word "impossible" does not exist in the national vocabulary.
The Government of Israel hopes to double its industrial production again within five years. It hopes to reclaim another 500,000 acres which are now wholly desert or wasteland. It hopes to raise the export of goods and services by 20 per cent a year. And, phenomenal as they seem, judging from past experiences these hopes will be realized.
How can this miraculous rebirth and growth be explained? There are many reasons. But none is more decisive than the constant receptivity Israel has shown to new ideas -- it the power of knowledge. Israel in its establishment and in its development has confirmed the truth of Victor Hugo's observation: "Mightier than the tread of mighty armies is the power of an idea whose hour has come." There has been no lapse, no drift, in Israel's forward thrust; and at all times, in every way, it has kept in the foreground the highest standards of creativity and performance.
The United States can itself profitably study what has been done in Israel -- particularly in the field of education and science. There is no anti-intellectualism in Israel. It would be considered a denial of democratic progress. Israel's first President, the late, great Dr. Weizmann, was himself an outstanding scientist and humanist. As the director of the Weizmann Institute, with its staff of 600, declared: "Basic research is not a luxury but a necessity for any modern country." Already this Institute, together with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion in Haifa, constitute one of the finest gatherings of intellectual resources in the world. From pure philosophy to applied aeronautical engineering, important work moves forward in these centers of learning. Their benefits are diffused throughout the land in higher standards of achievement, better methods of production, new articles for export, and a vigorous, healthy intellectual ferment.
What Israel has lacked in physical resources is compensated by her wealth of skills and by her growing horizons of learning and research. Architecturally Israel is one of the world's showpieces, especially in housing and schools. The home and the school, of course, have always been at the heart of Jewish life -- and now the state of Israel has given special attention and devotion to the creation of a climate in which they can flourish in dignity and beauty. But she also looks ahead to new frontiers of science -- to the peaceful benefits of nuclear and solar energy -- to the conversion of salt water into fresh -- to current and impressive developments in plant breeding and soil enrichment, from which an expanding population can find higher levels of income and human satisfaction.
Yet there are those who say that this national achievement is only an artifice -- that in fact Israel is the unsettling and fevered infection which has brought turmoil to the Middle East. Let us dispel for once and for all the myth that without Israel there would somehow be a natural harmony throughout the Middle East and the Arab world. We in the United States, under either Democratic or Republican administrations, have not, as many charge, mortgaged our policy in the Middle East to Israel. We have rather taken the prudent course of building on these people a position of strength for the Free World. This is a two-way street -- the United States has helped Israel -- but we also have been the beneficiary. And the strongest army in the Middle East is not a pawn to be lightly cast aside.
Quite apart from the values and hopes which the State of Israel enshrines -- and the past injuries which it redeems -- it twists reality to suggest that it is the democratic tendency of Israel which has injected discord and dissension into the Middle East. Even by the coldest calculations, the removal of Israel would not alter the basic crisis in the area. For, if there is any lesson which the melancholy events of the past few years have taught us, it is that, though Arab states are generally united in opposition to Israel, their political unities have not, as yet, risen above this essentially negative position. The basic rivalries and pressures within the Middle East, the quarrels over boundaries, the tensions involved in lifting their economies from stagnation, the cross-pressures of nationalism -- all of these factors would still be there, even if there were no Israel.
Israel, on the other hand, embodying all the characteristics of a Western democracy and having long passed the threshold of economic development, shares with the West a tradition of civil liberties, of cultural freedom, of parliamentary democracy, of social mobility. It has been almost untouched by Soviet penetration. Other leadership groups in the Arab states also draw inspiration and training from Western sources. But too often in these nations the leadership class is small, its popular roots tenuous, its problems staggering. In too many of the countries of the Middle East the Soviet model holds special attraction -- the more so since the United States and its Western allies have not been able to develop consistent, long-range policies to attack the real causes of political disintegration and economic backwardness which are the real allies of Arab Communism.
Yet the contours of the outstanding economic and political issues in the Middle East lend themselves basically to a regional approach. The project-by-project, country-by-country pattern of assistance is particularly ill-adapted in this area. The great river basins of the Middle East are international -- the Jordan, the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates. And there are other nations in the West besides the United States which can make important contributions in economic and technical assistance, under a regional approach.
It is time now that such an approach was more fully developed on the highest levels of our own Department of State. There has been no lack of pointers toward what a regional policy might include -- a multilateral regional development fund for refugee resettlement, the Jordan River multi-purpose scheme, a food pool making imaginative use of our agricultural surpluses, and, as a coordination agency, a Middle East Development Authority to pool capital and technical aid in that area. Such an authority -- and such an overall approach -- would encourage and provide incentive for realistic and constructive plans and projects, encourage a higher and more diversified level of private investment and enable talented and responsible Arab leaders to participate in economic planning and administration.
But unfortunately, all these and other plans have so far lacked the active political leadership which can break the paralysis of purpose. Only external Soviet aggression, which is only one danger, and not the most pressing to the Middle East, has been the subject of high level policy-planning. Only Communist penetration arouses us to action, too often poorly considered, poorly timed and poorly executed. But even apart from the Soviets' traditionally greedy desires on this vital region, the fact is that no greater opportunity exists for the United States than to take the lead in a new, comprehensive effort -- an effort which could diminish the fever in that tense and troubled area, and bend new energies to new, more promising and more constructive ventures.
Israel is one of the youngest republics but one of the oldest of peoples. The United States is one of the oldest republics but the youngest of peoples. It is our fervent hope that the warm and commonly beneficial relationship that has existed between these two countries may be expanded and strengthened. The reward can well be the most precious gift that can be bestowed -- peace in a troubled part of the world.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 904, "Temple B'rith Kodesh, Rochester, New York, 1 October 1959." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.