Now hear this, you desert, hear this, you mountains and you wadis, hear it once and for all, hats off to Yolek Lifshitz and to Stutchnik and to Srulik. Hurrah for Ben-Gurion and Eshkol. Three cheers for the state of Israel. Berl Katznelson’s little pinky is worth more than me and that asshole Udi and Etan and Chupka and Moshe Dayan all put together, because they’re the Saviors of Israel and we’re the Scum of the Earth. There’s no one like them in the whole world. Not even in America. Take a kid like Zaro, for example, a miserable little fink, from the day he was born the whole world ran after him with a hatchet to kill him and almost did—the Germans, the Russians, the Arabs, the Poles, the Rumanians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Pharaohs—falling on him like a pack of wolves. Imagine slaughtering a sensitive kid like that who plays the guitar and has all those beautiful, poetic thoughts. If it hadn’t been for my father, and Berl, and Srulik, and Gordon, and all the rest of them, where could he have run to? Where in this whole fucking world would he have been taken in with no questions asked and given work and warmth and a room and self-respect and a lovely woman and a brand-new life? Hurray for Ben-Gurion and Eshkol. Hurray for the kibbutz. Hip, hip, hurray for the state of Israel.