Beschreibung:

This lot was withdrawn from the auction. Unique recording, never published, of Menachem Begin's speech on 6 Iyar 1948, one day after the establishment of the State of Israel. On Saturday night, 6 Iyar (15 May) 1948, the evening of the first day of Israel's independence, Menachem Begin delivered a speech on the Irgun's underground radio station, "Kol Tzion HaLochemet" ("Voice of Fighting Zion"). In this speech, which constitutes a kind of alternative "Declaration of Independence" instead of the one delivered by Ben-Gurion, Begin addresses the dismantling of the paramilitary groups, the need for a strong and well-trained army, the essential foreign policy with the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., repatriation of Jews, and more. In fact, in this speech he lay down the ideological foundations of the party he was about to form – the Herut Movement. This was Menachem Begin's first public speech since he had gone underground, and the last broadcast of the "Kol Tzion HaLochemet" station (after Begin's speech it was immediately changed to "Kol HaHerut" – "The Voice of Freedom"). Due to reasons that have yet to be clarified, Begin's associates decided to archive the speech recording immediately after its broadcast. The text of the speech familiar today (the "Reddening Sunrise" speech) is based on an early draft that is different from the broadcast speech. The current recording was preserved, though it was believed to have been lost, and it allows us to hear the words of one of the most prominent leaders in Israel's history, as broadcast in an emotional speech to the citizens of Israel at the establishment of the State. In his time Begin was considered a masterful speaker. Throughout his political career he delivered speeches that became etched in the Israeli national consciousness, such as his speech against the agreement to receive reparations from Germany, the speech during an election rally in 1981 (in response to the "Riffraff Speech"), the speech following Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel and other speeches. The present recording constitutes an example of Begin's captivating style and great talent. Though he was not speaking before a crowd but rather into a microphone in a closed room, the pathos and excitement in his voice are palpable, unlike the recording made years later in which he reads the speech in a merely informative manner. At the beginning of the speech Begin makes a kind of "second proclamation" of the state's establishment: "The State of Israel has been founded, and it has been founded 'only thus' ["Only Thus" was the slogan of the Irgun]: with blood and fire, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with suffering and sacrifice"; further on Begin speaks of the Hebrew army and the Jewish fighters: "The Hebrew army can and must be one of the best-trained and excellent armies in the world… what is the spirit of our fighters? This was shown by all of the Hebrew youth, the youth of the Hagana, of Lehi and of the Irgun… the likes of which no generation in the generations of Israel, from Bar-Kokhba to the Bilu'im, had ever seen"; and of the dismantling of the Irgun: "The National Military Organization [Irgun] now leaves behind its underground existence in the boundaries of the independent Jewish state… in the State of Israel we shall be soldiers and builders. We shall observe its laws, since they are our laws. We shall respect its government, since it is our government. Only beware of the Hebrew government… lest it itself create… a new underground movement". Begin often deviates from the written text for emphasis, repetition and expansion, and in certain places he even adds entire paragraphs that were not printed in the known published version – such as the role of the Hebrew mother in founding the state: "Heroic daughter of Israel, who shall tell of your heroism. For we have known your tears in the night… Hannah and her seven sons is no longer a legend, you are Hannah, thousands of Hannahs…"; the historical suffering of the Jewish