Quotation from Moshe Dayan “Let us take stock today with ourselves. We are a generation of settlement” — Apr. 29 1956

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Let us not today cast blame on the murderers. What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how,
before their very eyes we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.
It is not among the Arabs of Gaza, but in our own midst that we must seek Roy’s blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at our fate and see, in all its brutality, the fate of our generation? Can we forget that this group of youngsters sitting in Nahal-Oz, carries the heavy gates of Gaza on their shoulders?
Beyond the furrow of the border surges a sea of hatred and revenge; revenge that looks towards the day when the calm will blunt our alertness, the day when we shall listen to the ambassadors of malign hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our arms. To us and us alone cries out Roy’s blood, from his mangled body. Because we swore a thousand times that our blood will not be spilled lightly – and yet again yesterday we were tempted, we listened, and we believed.
Let us take stock today with ourselves. We are a generation of settlement and without the steel helmet and the gun’s muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree and build a house. Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds of Arabs who live around us. Let us not drop our gaze, lest our arms be weaken. That is the fate of our generation. This is our choice – to be ready and armed, tough and hard – or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.

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