Martin Gilbert

Ben-Gurion will always be remembered in Israel as the man who transformed a factional, disparate people into a nation, through his insistence on mamlachtiyut—the primacy of sovereign institutions. These included (and still include) the independence of the courts of law, the unity of the Israel Defence Forces, and the primacy of the Knesset and other institutions of Israeli democracy. For having done this, he was rightly called the Father of the Nation. Those who, in most recent years, have belittled the courts of law and mocked at the institutions of statehood when they fail to serve a sectional or political purpose, endanger the structure Ben-Gurion so tenaciously created and sustained.

Many things in Jewish history are too terrible to be believed, but nothing in that history is too terrible to have happened.

the emphasis should be placed on the road we take, and not on the final destination

The Soviet government refuses to allow a general exit, because it would annoy their Arab friends and because voluntary departure would reflect poorly on the Soviet paradise.)

Reflecting on the name Operation Peace for Galilee, the Israeli writer Amos Oz commented, ‘Wherever war is called peace, where oppression and persecution are referred to as security, and assassination is called liberation, the defilement of the language precedes and prepares for the defilement of life and dignity. In the end, the state, the regime, the class or the idea remain intact where human life is shattered. Integrity prevails over the fields of scattered bodies.’