JEWS AS FARMERS - II

When the Jews began returning to the Holy land - years before nationhood - they were imbued with a pioneering spirit. David ben-Gurion defined pioneering as the refusal to submit to reality. There is no other People in the world where, throughout their history,  the refusal to submit to reality is a fundamental, ongoing phenomenon. 

Things did not begin with the Zionist movement, and the Zionist enterprise did not begin with the first Zionist Congress. These  early pioneers wanted to change their destiny with their own hands and to build a new life for themselves and their people. 

In those days, with no financial or other resources, one of the most efficient way for economic sustainability meant living in farming communities. Kibbutz (communal agricultural settlement) ideology was established and developed during the pre-state and early years of Israel’s statehood.  During the initial years and for many years after, the Kibbutzim assumed prominent roles in almost every sphere of the developing country.

My farmer son’s neighbouring settlement in the northern Negev, kibbutz Ruhama, was the first southerly Jewish outpost. The Negev is the southern desert region covering over half of Israel’s land area. On this unlikely site the barren soil was dug, for the first time, in 1911.

In 1917, a day before the British invaded Palestine, the Turks invaded Ruhama, evicting the settlers. Beduin marauders waylaid the site.

The Jews rebuilt in 1920. The Arabs levelled it during the 1929 riots.

The Jews, stubborn as ever, returned in 1932, just in time for another wave of Arab riots in 1936, which forced the settlers to abandon their home for the fourth time!

In the 1940’s, the Jews came back yet again – this time with chickens, cows and children. In 1946 they came under siege by 2,000 British troops, who were looking for the big, illegal cache of weapons hidden there for the Hagana (Jewish Defense Forces) – which, by the way, they never found. However the British, too, ransacked the plucky little settlement.

When the 1948 War of Independence broke out, the young men went to fight and some of the women together with the children were evacuated. The remaining kibbutz members were reinforced by Holocaust survivors. They expected that the Egyptian army, which had broken through the Negev, would capture the isolated settlement. Miraculously, after bombing and shelling the kibbutz, the Egyptians did not invade but moved up along the coast instead.

Today, the kibbutz is growing and flourishing. Where once there were no birds, today you can’t see the desert for the trees, grass and crops covering the grey-brown soil.

Since the 1950s, Israelis have not only been finding miraculous ways to green their own desert but have shared their discoveries far and wide…..