In his book The Will to Live On, Herman Wouk tells of a meeting he had with modern Israel's first president, David Ben-Gurion, and how Ben-Gurion urged him to move to the newly planted nation of Israel.

"What took you so long?" Ben-Gurion asked me. "I'm not here yet," I replied, adopting his allusive style. He grinned and invited Sarah and me to his home in the Negev desert. Next day we came to the Sde Boker (Fields of Morning) kibbutz in a command car escorted by a jeep with a mounted machine gun, for back in 1955 the raw little country was being bloodily harassed in broad daylight by fedayeen, terrorists from Egypt and Gaza.

When we were leaving, he came out with his straight Zionist line, no more hints. "You must return here to live," he said. "This is the only place for Jews like you. Here you will be free."

"Free?" I ventured to reply. "Free? With enemy armies ringing you, with their leaders publicly threatening to wipe out 'the Zionist entity,' with your roads impassable after sundown—free?"

"I did not say safe," the old man retorted, "I said free."