Seventy Years On!

About Seventy years ago, when I was eighteen years old, I went on Machon 11. , a project from Israel.  I joined young people from North and South America on a leadership training course in Israel. We were twelve in number from Canadian Young Judaea. Most of the group was American but there was a strong contingent from Spanish-speaking countries.

People there were of all shades of political opinion, reflecting the different streams of thought vigorously debating Israel’s political future at that time. The government was firmly in the hands of the political left, the people who had built the kibbutzim (collectives) movement, planting a Jewish footprint throughout the Mandate territory. Government had sponsored a program to bring Jewish youth from the diaspora to strengthen Israel’s ties with Jewish communities around the world.

Israel was living within the restricted Armistice boundaries that were the outcome of the bitter struggle for survival that was initiated with Israel’s declaration of statehood. The settlement strategy had succeeded in the retention of more territory than had been awarded by the U.N., in spite of attacks by surrounding Arab countries. Old Jerusalem and the West Bank were in the hands of Jordan. The Gaza Strip was in the hands of Egypt. All were on guard against terrorist incursions that were occurring all the time.

This was not about Judea and Samaria (which were in the hands of Jordan ) but opposition to the very existence of Israel. We were still to live through two further attacks by Israel’s neighbors seeking to uproot the Jewish state.

We spent an initial time in Jerusalem, attending lectures and learning Hebrew. This was followed by two work sessions at different kibbutzim. One was Tel Yitzchak, a well-developed settlement not too far from Tel Aviv. My second assignment was at Hasolellim, up north in the Galilee near Nazareth. The work there was more physically taxing here and I lost weight due to a less generous diet.

This period in Israel was marked by what was called the TSENA, or economic hardship. There was rationing and people in the cities were on short rations. Israel was absorbing hundreds of thousands from European death camps and Jews expelled from Arab countries.

When we weren’t studying or on kibbutz, we went on tours throughout the country, from the northern tip bordering on Lebanon, to Masada, where ancient Israel resisted the Romans to the death, in the southern desert, and Eilat, a tiny village on the Red Sea.

One of the places I visited was a settlement called Kfar Glickson. It was associated with Movement in America that Young Judea was associated with.

What made that place more interesting for me was that it also held a Children’s Village where rescued children from the German death camps were being nursed back to health. I spent as much spare time as I could there and I was particularly close one young girl whose name I can no longer recall. As a mother with three children, she managed contact me in Canada thirty years later. My presence must have had some impact. I count that as a positive.

I spent several years as a community leader on my return to Canada on the strength of what I learned during my year in Israel.

In these days when there is so much turmoil in Israel, if I were to contrast the country today with what was existence in Israel in those days, I hug myself with pleasure owing to my joy at its situation today.  Athough there are still those who persist in trying to uproot Israel, some former enemies have signed peace agreement, and others seek association to access some of the benefits that accrue from peaceful co-existence. European countries and the U.S. are buying their defensive weaponry. Its leadership in technology and medicine is unquestioned.

Israel will overcome its current period of redefinition and go forward to resolve its differences to no-one’s complete satisfaction. But its presence and stature in the world will remain undiminished. It remains a force in the evolution of world events that all must take into account. There can be no comparison with the fragile entity that it was when I spent a year there more than seventy years ago.