'A duty of national honor': Ben-Gurion’s historic 1949 radio address resurfaces ahead of elections

A historic 1949 speech by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, resurfaced about a week prior to Election Day, in which the country's first leader discussed the importance of citizens' participation in the act of voting.

"It is not merely a right, but a duty, a duty of national honor," Ben-Gurion said in the speech, delivered as a radio broadcast on January 24, 1949, the evening before Israel's first Knesset elections.

The address, titled "To the People and the Army," was released on Tuesday by the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute and the Ben-Gurion Archives at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The speech was also broadcast to displaced persons camps in Cyprus, where many Jewish refugees had been deported by the British.

"Every man and woman to whom the law has granted the right to vote must not be absent from the polling station," Ben-Gurion emphasized. "This is a great right, a historic right for which generations have yearned with messianic longing... In it, our responsibility and political maturity will be embodied."

Israeli newspaper stresses importance of voting in 1949 editorial

An editorial from the Israeli newspaper Davar echoed Ben-Gurion's sentiment on the morning of the 1949 elections.

"Never before has the right (of voting) been as much a duty as it is today," the editorial read. "The man and woman in whose hands the decision has been placed to shape the character of the Jewish state for generations to come have a duty to participate in that decision. This duty was placed upon them by all the generations that longed to achieve what this generation has achieved."

The first prime minister further stressed that every Israeli citizen should feel "as though his vote would tip the scales in determining the course ahead," but still retain national unity despite political disagreements.

"If, amid the storm of debate, there was a departure from the bounds of an educational and civilized discussion, let us put the words of quarrel and provocation out of our minds, and once again see one another as fellow citizens, partners in the state that is dear to us all, and accept the verdict of the entire electorate with love and loyalty," he said.

"We came to this land not to be Ashkenazim, Russians, Poles, or Romanians," he added. "On the contrary. Because we did not want to be these things, we did two things: We created equality in labor, and we revived the Hebrew language."

"When we came to this land, we established Jewish defense," he continued. "And in that, too, there was no distinction between one community and another. There was no distinction between Shimon the Kurd, Yitzhak Nadaf the Yemenite, and Yehezkel Nissanov the Caucasian, and Israel Giladi the Ashkenazi. Language, labor, and defense united them all, and when one of them fell, he did not fall as a Yemenite, Sephardi, or Ashkenazi, but as a Jew."

Ben-Gurion addresses IDF soldiers fighting in Israel's War of Independence

The former leader also addressed IDF soldiers serving at the time in Israel's War of Independence, saying that they should vote as free citizens.

"Without any restriction of military discipline, you will determine the course together with all the other citizens," he told the soldiers. "Each of you... will vote solely according to the dictates of your conscience... And even if you differ in your choices, your collective loyalty to military discipline, and the fighting brotherhood... will not be impaired."

Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute CEO Eitan Donitz noted the importance of Ben-Gurion's words, saying that, for the first prime minister, "elections were an expression of every citizen's responsibility for the future of the state and the deep partnership between us, transcending parties and ideologies."

"The right to vote and influence rests on the understanding that democracy exists when its citizens choose to be involved in it," said Donitz. "His legacy reminds us that even today, the demand for responsibility and partnership rests on the shoulders of each and every one of us."