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"Good Sabbath to you all, brothers and sisters. Fellow Jews. People of Jerusalem, our eternal holy city."

And he stopped. Suddenly he said quietly, sadly, almost mournfully:

"Brothers and sisters. These are difficult days for our beloved young state. Exceptionally difficult days. Awesome days for all of us."

Gradually he overcame his sadness, gathered his strength, and continued, still quietly but with a controlled power, as though behind that veil of quietness there lurked a subdued but very serious warning:

"Once again our enemies are grinding their teeth in the dark and plotting vengeance for the shameful defeat we inflicted on them on the battlefield. The Great Powers are devising evil once again. There is nothing new. In every generation men rise up against us to annihilate us. But we, my brothers and sisters, we shall stand up to them again. As we have stood up to them not once or twice but many times in the past. We shall stand up to them with courage and devotion. Holding our heads up high. Never, never shall they see this nation on its knees. Never! To the last generation!"

At the words "Never, never" he raised his voice to a resounding cry from the heart, full of pained vibrations. This time the audience did not shout, it roared with rage and anguish.

"The Eternal One of Israel," he said in a quiet, authoritative voice, as though he had just come from an operational meeting at the Eternal One of Israel's headquarters, "the Rock of Israel shall rise up again and frustrate and dash to pi-eces all the schemes of our enemies!"

Now the crowd was flushed with gratitude and affection, which they expressed by a rhythmic chant of "Begin! Begin!" I too leaped to my feet and roared his name with all the power I could muster in my voice, which was breaking at the time.

"On one condition," the speaker said solemnly, sternly, raising his hand, and then he paused as though pondering the nature of this condition and wondering whether it was proper for him to share it with the audience. A deathly hush spread through the hall. "One sole, crucial, vital, fateful condition." He paused again. His head drooped. As though bent under the terrible weight of the condition. The audience listened so intently that I could hear the hum of the fans on the high ceiling of the hall.

"On condition that our leadership, brothers and sisters, is a national leadership and not a bunch of panic-stricken ghetto Jews who are scared of their own shadows! On condition that the feeble, enfeebling, defeated, defeatist, despicable Ben-Gurion government makes way at once for a proud, daring Hebrew government, an emergency government that knows how to make our foes quake with terror, just as the very name of our glorious army, the army of Israel, puts fear and trembling into the hearts of all the enemies of Israel wherever they may be!"

At this the whole audience boiled over and seemed to burst its banks. The mention of the "despicable Ben-Gurion government" roused snorts of hatred and contempt on every side. From one of the galleries someone shouted hoarsely "Death to the traitors!," and from another corner of the hall came a wild chant of "Begin for PM, Ben-Gurion go home!"

But the speaker silenced them and declared slowly, calmly, like a strict teacher rebuking his pupils:

"No, brothers and sisters. That is not the way. Shouting and violence are not the right way, but peaceful, respectful, democratic elections. Not with the methods of those Reds, not with deception and hooliganism, but with the upright and dignified way that we have learned from our great mentor Vladimir Jabotinsky. We shall soon send them packing, not with hatred among brothers, not with violent upheaval, but with cold contempt. Yes, we shall send them all packing. Those who sell the soil of our Fatherland and those who have sold their souls to Stalin. Those bloated kibbutz hacks, and the arrogant, condescending tyrants of the Bolshevik Histadrut, all the petty Zhdanovs together with all