Despite a collapsing Lebanese economy and considerable political turmoil, Hezbollah continues to threaten Israel. These threats must be taken seriously,...
The formal identification of Israeli society with its ancestral legacy was embodied in the ceremony in which the state’s establishment was declared. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that Israel would be a Jewish state with values founded on “freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.” Those values were eventually incorporated in the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.
The fruits of this educational endeavor were apparent, among other things, in the high level of cohesion of the Israel Defense Forces during the first decades of its existence, which compensated for its quantitative inferiority. For example, during the War of Independence, military commanders Shimon Avidan and Abba Kovner (who was also a poet) inspired soldiers of the Givati Brigade with biblical quotations, and one of the brigade’s “battle pages” was made up entirely of interwoven verses from the Psalms.