Speech #870038995

It had to flex its muscles in order to impress other states with its prowess. But Israel has grown in more positive ways in the past 13 years. The declaration of independence stated that the State of Israel will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion. In 1950. the law of the return was passed. giving statutory sanction to the right of every Jew to settle in Israel if he so wishes. For centuries the Jewish people could be called the eternal refugees of the Western World. Persecution and antiSemitism made them at all times potential refugees. In the Middle Ages they were expelled at frequent intervals from countries in which they had settled. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were subjected to massacres and pogroms in Eastern Europe. During the First World War hundreds of thousands were expelled from the pale of settlement in Russia and many thousands more fled from the effects of the Bolshevik revolution and the increasing discrimination of the regimes in Poland and some of the Baltic and Balkan States. The climax of persecution. however. was reached under the Nazi tyranny. It was this holocaust which produced after World War II the greatest refugee tragedy of modern times. In the moment of their triumph the Jews of Israel did not forget their brethren. scattered throughout the world and unwanted by many countries. The gates of the new State were thrown wide open and those who wished to enter were welcomed with open arms. In the months between May and December 1948 more than 100.000 refugees uprooted by war or fleeing from persecution camemainly from central and eastern Europe. In 1949. the number rose to nearly 240.000. The average touched 18.000 a month and reached a peak of more than a thousand a day. To the immigrants from Europe was now added an increasing flow of refugees from the Arab countries of the Middle East and north Africa. Early in 1949 several thousand Jewish families from Libya. Morocco.