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Barack Obama
John F. Kennedy, "Salute To Israel"
The slaughter of innocent Israelis is not resistance -- it's injustice.
Let's be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel's citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel's children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. These facts cannot be denied.
Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The White House
John F. Kennedy, "Salute To Israel"
Both Israel and the United States acknowledge the supremacy of the moral law – both believe in personal as well as national liberty – and, perhaps most important, both will fight to the end to maintain that liberty
I join in this salute of Israel today because of my own deep admiration for Israel and her people – an admiration based not on hearsay, not on assumption, but on my own personal experience. For I went to Palestine in 1939; and I saw there an unhappy land...For century after century, Romans, Turks, Christians, Moslems, Pagans, British – all had conquered the Holy Land – but none could make it prosper. In the words of Israel Zangwill: “The land without a people waited for the people without a land.” The realm where once milk and honey flowed, and civilization flourished, was in 1939 a barren realm – barren of hope and cheer and progress as well as crops and industries – a gloomy picture for a young man paying his first visit from the United States.
But 12 years later, in 1951, I traveled again to the land by the River Jordan – this time as a Member of the Congress of the United States – and this time to see first-hand the new State of Israel. The transformation which had taken place could not have been more complete. For between the time of my visit in 1939 and my visit in 1951, a nation had been reborn – a desert had been reclaimed – and a national integrity had been redeemed, after 2,000 years of seemingly endless waiting. Zion had at least been restored – and she had promptly opened her arms to the homeless and the weary and the persecuted. It was the “Ingathering of the Exiles” – they had heard the call of their homeland; and they had come, brands plucked from the burning – they had come from concentration camps and ghettoes, from distant exile and dangerous sanctuary, from broken homes in Poland and lonely huts in Yemen, like the ancient strangers in a strange land they had come. And Israel received them all, fed them, housed them, cared for them, bound up their wounds, and enlisted them in the struggle to build a new nation.
Yes; Israel, we salute you. We honor your progress and your determination and your spirit. But in the midst of our rejoicing we do not forget your peril. We know that no other nation in this world lives out its days in an atmosphere of such constant tension and fear. We know that no other nation in this world is surrounded on every side by such violent hate and prejudice
Today we celebrate her 8th birthday – but I say without hesitation that she will live to see an 80th birthday – and an eight hundredth. For peace is all Israel asks, no more – a peace that will “beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks”; a peace that will enable the desert to “rejoice and blossom as the rose,” “when the wicked cease from troubling and the weary be at rest.” Then, and only then, will the world have witnessed the complete fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy “Tzee-Yon B’Meeshpat Teepadeh” – “Zion shall be redeemed through justice.” And all of us here, and there, and everywhere will then be able to say to each other with faith and with confidence, in our coming and in our going: “Shalom” – peace! Peace be with you, now and forever.
Remarks by Senator John F. Kennedy at Yankee Stadium on April 29, 1956 | Finding Camelot