Grandma's army

The entire world has changed dramatically since the 1970’s – a decade which is, for Israel, one of the most traumatic. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 left the country devastated by the loss of 2,600 soldiers. In spite of the astonishing victory against all odds, the country lost faith in its leadership and, with it, a sense of security. [That is perhaps one of the reasons that, in 1977, a right-winged government defeated the impregnable Labour Party for the first time]. Although terrorism has been an ongoing factor since before Israel existed, the 70’s was a nightmare. Palestinian terrorists were sowing terror against Israelis, both on Israeli soil and around the world. The most glaring example was the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, in which eleven members of the team were murdered. In the same year, Ben Gurion Airport became a slaughterhouse, when three Japanese men - who had been recruited by the “Popular Front for the Liberation ...

  The unreasoning hatred in this world to the Jewish people is one of the great mysteries of the human story. It is the oldest social disease and, unfortunately,   it has again reared its ugly head in today’s society. Assimilation has not proven the answer. In Russia, during the last quarter of the 19 th century, a great number of Jews assimilated, many becoming Christians. Anti-Semitisim didn’t disappear but worsened. The use of the term "pogrom" became common in the English language after a large-scale wave of murderous anti-Jewish riots swept through more than 200 towns and villages in south-western Imperial Russia. As a result of the growing anti-Semitism, between three to five million Jews escaped to the west. The doctor and writer, Leon Pinsker,   believed like many others,   that the spreading of Emancipation and humanism would bring an end to anti-Semitism. When the progroms which erupted, were eventually abetted by the government and defended by the ...

  The Foundation “Aliyah Bet” became the code name given to illegal immigration Jews to Mandatory Palestine between 1934 and 1948, most of whom were Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi Germany. It became one of the principle ways of rescuing Jews during World War II. All told, a fleet of 60 ramshackle ships transported more than 60,000 “illegal   immigrants” from European ports between 1946 and 1948 in severely unsafe and dangerous conditions. Immediately after the War of Independence, Aliya Bet was resumed on an ambitious and urgent scale. Its intensification, beyond the objective of rescuing Holocaust survivors from all over Europe, was adopted as a tactic in the organized Jewish resistance in Palestine - designed to end British   rule. Over 32,000 “illegal” immigrants who sailed from post-Nazi Europe for Palestine travelled on vessels bought in the US and manned by American volunteer sailors. The ten American "big ships brought to Palestinian waters...

There is no question that the epitome of WWII was the brutal slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews in the Nazi Holocaust. The leader of the free world President Roosevelt callously chose to close his nation’s eyes to this inhuman tragedy during the war, and refused shelter to survivors following the actual fighting. The infamous White Paper of the British Government denied entry of these victims to their promised homeland. A strong force was needed to rescue the European remnant of the Jewish nation. The “Mossad for Aliyah Bet” was formed in Palestine, in which the American and Canadian members took an active part. In the summer of 1946, a musical opened at New York’s Alvin Theatre. Like other Broadway entertainments, “A Flag is Born” had stars, scenery, script, professional management and an advertising budget. But this production was different in one major respect; the show was frankly intended to promote a cause. It was not written mostly to entertain. It was written to make money - t...

  In the central building in Marnevski square in Warsaw, where tens of Jews were barricaded, the Zionist flag was raised. [It eventually became the national flag of Israel]. A heroic battle took part against the Nazi troops who had burst into the ghetto, and in which over 60 Jewish fighters were completely wiped out. The 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest and most heroic act of armed resistance taken up by the Jews during WWII. It was also the first civic uprising in the whole of occupied Europe - apart from being one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people. Ask any Israeli who was the leader and hero of the Warsaw Uprising and he/she will invariably reply, “ Mordechai Anilewicz ”. One of the biggest kibbutzim in Israel, Yad Mordechai, complete with a gigantic bronze statue of Mordechai Anilewicz , was founded in his name.                             ...

  Born in 1916, Alex Zioni was a member of the Haganah in his youth. When WWII broke out, Alex volunteered for the British Royal Airforce, where he eventually attained the rank of Major. In November 1947, he was appointed, in secret, as the Chief of Staff of the “air service” of the Haganah. Not for nothing was Alex considered the founding father of the Israeli Airforce. He invested all his time and energy in his new job and worked towards a detailed programme of how the future Airforce would function - from the minute the new state would arise. From the beginning of 1948, the military situation in Israel was desperate. The “air service” was in its early stages and consisted of only a few light planes. The British were busy withdrawing their army and armaments from the Yishuv (Jewish Palestine). Amongst the surplus military equipment they were auctioning off, were 20 wrecked, one-engine light planes, called Austers. Early in January 1948, a light plane from the Israeli airfor...

A WAR OR NOT A WAR? It was neither the intention of Israel or Lebanon to start a war between the two countries. However, a military conflict began in July 2006 when Hizbollah terrorists ambushed an Israeli army border patrol, kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and killing three others. Stuart Palmer, one of my fellow residents in “Protea” (senior residence home), coined the above title in a booklet of his personal reflections. Stuart and his wife were living in Haifa, which was in the line of fire (together with Tiberias, Nazareth, Safed ), when the “war” broke out. [Since retiring, Stuart has become the Northern Area Director of ICAN (Israeli Citizens Action Network) and a member of BIG (British Israel Group), whose organisations are actively involved in advocating Israel’s position in the conflict with the Palestinians and now Hizbollah.] According to Stuart’s well-researched booklet: In the space of a few days, two million Israelis became under the threat of the thousands of ro...