Grandma's army

It was only in my teens that I became aware of a country called Israel. Someone introduced me to a Zionist movement - and that was the major turning point  in my life. I eventually joined a training farm in England run by the movement . My goal was to eventually become part of an agricultural community in Israel. My farming experience in England was centered around the cowshed where I had become very proficient in milking cows. I emigrated at the end of 1954 but, by the time I was able to join a moshav in 1960, I was already married with two small children aged three and one-and-a-half years old. Neither my husband nor myself knew anything about farming but we were both determined to become pioneers. The moshav, which had just been founded, was located in the northen Negev. We had no financial means but were helped by the government who wanted to develop the country, especially the Negev. It was like a barren wilderness with nothing but bare land. Today, it is a...

At the age of 16, my granddaughter, Ophir, who is an excellent student, was accepted to an innovative programme called “MEET” (Middle East Education Through Technology). The selective programme (out of 800 applicants only 10% are chosen)   brings together Israeli and Palestinian young leaders through the common language of technology and entrepreneurship. Working in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2004, MEET’s goal is to educate and empower the next generation of Israeli and Palestinian young leaders (age 15-17) to take action towards creating positive social and political change in the Middle East. The programme comprises 3 consecutive summers with volunteer instructors from MIT, and a weekly programme at the MEET centres in Jerusalem and Nazareth, taught by MEET alumni. Run entirely in English, the programme provides MEET’s 200 high school students with the skills, values and network to become “agents of change” in the region....

I am now back in Israel, waiting for my granddaughter to give us her impressions of her life as a “lone soldier”. Actually, she is serving in the airforce so we are still “up in the air”. Which reminds me of something I heard some time ago which is probably  not well-known. Perhaps the most emotional song to emerge out of the mass exodus from Europe was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” which was introduced in the popular film The Wizard of Oz.  The song was voted the 20 th century’s No. 1 song by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. The lyrics were written by Yip Harburg, the youngest of four children born, in New York to Russian-Jewish immigrants. The music was written by Harold Arlen son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. In writing it, the two men reached deep into their immigrant Jewish consciousness, from the progroms of the past and the Holocaust about to happen. Read the lyrics in their Jewish context and suddenly th...

I was unable to continue with my blog for some time since I am visiting my daughter and family who are living in London and had no access to a computer. I will be coming back to Israel in a few day’s  time and, meanwhile, will confine my writing to my impressions of what is being said about Israel from an outsider’s viewpoint. The people with whom I have come into contact are mostly ignorant of what is going on in Israel and probably couldn’t care less. The exceptions are those who have been to Israel. Those who do come often have a built-in prejudice, mainly as the result of the anti-Israeli media to which they have been exposed. The following poetic-like piece  was written by Oliver Marjot, a sophomore medieval history concentrator from Guilford, England. He was one of a group of Harvard students, of all backgrounds and faiths. He expected the ten-day Israeli Trek to be a confirmation of his “European certainty of your arrogant oppression”. “I came to you, Israel,...