In 1932, the Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote: “It is very, very sad that Jews are compelled to learn to shoot. But we are compelled and it is useless to argue against the compulsion of historic reality. That compulsion says you may be well educated, you may learn to plow the land and to build houses, you may speak Hebrew… but if you do not at the same time know how to shoot there is no hope. That is the lesson of the reality of our time and that is the prospect for the lifetime of our children.”
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