It was fate that delivered me and my contemporaries into this great era, when the Jews returned to and re-established their homeland. I am no longer … - Ezer Weizman

Ladies and gentlemen, we are a people of memory and prayer. We are a people of words and hope. We have neither established empires nor built castles and palaces. We have only placed words on top of each other. We have fashioned ideas; we have built memorials. We have dreamed towers of yearnings -- of Jerusalem rebuilt, of Jerusalem united, of a peace that will be swiftly and speedily established in our days. Amen.

We and our language are alive. We who have arisen from the ashes, and the language that waited in the shrouds of Torah scrolls and between the pages of the prayerbooks, are alive. The language that was whispered in prayer only, that was read only in synagogues, that was sung only in liturgy, that was shrieked in the gas chambers -- in the prayer "Shma Yisrael" -- has been revived.

If you don't keep giving the Arabs a bloody nose from time to time, the Arab balloon will blow up. We are going to live like this, hacking at each other, for some time to come.