THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
30 Years
By ARIE HASKEL ;
JERUSALEM — Thirty
years. Less than half an av-
erage lifespan and in the
lives of many nations, no
more than a fleeting
episode. But for Israel it is
all there is and enough to
have produced a generation
that was born in war, has
had to fight for survival
time and again, but has
been sustained by the hope
of a brighter tomorrow. Now
finally that hope is begin-
ning to near realization.
Thirty years. Time enough
for a remarkable exercise in
nation building.
May 14, 1948, the Tel
Aviv Museum: a small man
inbued with a large vision
stands before his peers and
reads from the scroll they
have endorsed. David
Ben-Gurion proclaims the
birth of the independent
state of Israel..
Five months earlier, on
Nov. 29, 1947 the UN Gen-
eral Assembly, by 33 to 13
with 10 abstentions, had
paved the way for this mo-
ment by voting for the parti-
tion of the area known as
Palestine into two small
states — one Jewish and the
other Arab.
For the Jews it had
been a bittersweet deci-
sion, because the land
area allocated them was
so small and in particular
because it did not include
the focal point of Jewish
prayer and longing over
2,000 years — Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, the Jews
had danced in the streets
and wept tears of joy. But
the Arabs neither danced
nor wept. They declared war
and in pressing for this his-
toric moment, Ben-Gurion
and the Jewish leadership
were under no illusions. Be-
tween Nov. 29, 1947 and
May 14, 1948, 318 Jews had
been murdered in Arab at-
tacks and ambushes — and
that at a time when the
British Mandatory
authorities were still nomi-
nally responsible for the
maintenance of law and or-
der.
Now the armies of Egypt,
Trans-jordan, Syria and
Lebanon, strengthened by
expeditionary forces from
Iraq and Saudi Arabia, were
poised for all-out war, the
aim of which was spelled out
by Azzam Pasha,
Secretary-General of the
Arab League: "This will be a
war of extermination and a
momentous massacre which
will be spoken of like the
Mongolian massacres and
the Crusades."
The war was indeed
bloody and by the time it
ended early in 1949, 6,000
Israelis were dead — one
third of them civilians —
out of a total population of
only 650,000. However, the
new armistice lines did give
Israel a sovereign foothold
in Jerusalem and the possi-
bility of rolling up its
sleeves to build a state and a
homeland for those Jews
wishing to come.
And come they did. In
three years of
the
statehood, Israel more
first
a Hard Struggle
than doubled its popula-
tion by taking in almost
700,000 refugees. About
half of them were fleeing
from persecution in Arab
lands and the other half
were Holocaust sur-
vivors from Europe. Al-
together, since 1948, Is-
rael has succeeded in ab-
sorbing 1.5 million new-
comers — the majority of
them refugees, who ar-
rived with little but the
clothes on their backs.
one of the best standards of
living of Arabs anywhere in
the Middle East. These
achievements were brought
about under the shadow of
constant war threats,
punctuated by the need to
fight four additional wars
for survival.
The trouble with at-
tempting to pick out some
of the highlights of what
has been achieved in
these three decades is
that it all sounds too
Welding this legion of much like propaganda
immigrants, with their dis- slogans: the swamps that
parate cultural back- have been drained, the
grounds, into one nation has deserts that now bloom,
not been easy, particularly the primitive immigrant
as there was little infras- whose son builds super-
tructure to build on. At first sonic jets, the little coun-
many were accomodated in try caught up in the cen-
primitive tent camps, then ter of the bitter Middle
in equally primitive shack- East conflict, which still
towns. They had to be succeeds in becoming an
taught Hebrew and many international center of
scientific research.
had no skills to start with.
The effect on the economy Nevertheless, all of this is
of those early years was the unembellished truth.
chaotic. But by the mid-
1950's Israel had begun to
turn the corner, although
immigration was still pour-
ing in, protected by the Law
of Return, which gives
every Jew the right to live
in Israel as a full and equal
citizen.
Throughout the 30
years, economic growth has
been slowed by the fact that
close to one-third of gov-
ernment expenditure has
gone to meet defense costs.
Nevertheless, progress
has been remarkable. In
the 20 years between 1952
and 1972 the Gross Na-
tional Product grew at an
annual rate of nine per-
cent. This was compar-
able to the growth rate
for Japan (9.6) and con-
siderablf higher than
that for West Germany
(5.3) and the United
States (3.3).
The country's exports
have grown 40-fold since
1948, the number of univer-
sity students has risen 25-
fold and the annual com-
gumption of electricity is
more than 35 times what it
was in 1948.
The Arab population in
Israel has also enjoyed the
country's growth, and has
May 14, 1948 was the
launching of Israel's ship of
state into a rough, un-
charted ocean. Now, 30
years later we know that
the ship is basically sound
and there is hope that a safe
haven may finally be com-
ing into sight.
Move Slowly
By SHIN SHALOM
Moue slowly, move slowly
Oh moon, on your way
By your light we are sowing
The fields of Galilee
We are sowing.at night.
Friday, May 12, 1978 43
`Illegal' Ships With Human Cargo-
By BETTY SIGLER
World Zionist Organization
JERUSALEM—A World
War II tank carrier is now a
museum of the "illegal"
immigration that brought
107,000 people to Israel be-
fore the land became a state,
and of the Israel Navy that
developed from those "il-
legal" ships.
Every week hundreds of
tourists and school children
are among the visitors to
the Af-Al-Pi-Chen — "De-
spite Everything" — now
installed in a small park on
the southern approaches to
Haifa under the direction of
Yosef Almog, himself a vet-
eran of the immigration
called "Aliya Bet."
After the carrier had
finished taking Canadian
tanks and their crews to the
French coast in the final
phase of the war, she was
bought by the Mosad ("The
Institution"). The Mosad
transported the "illegal"
immigrants, some 75,000 of
whom sailed from Mediter-
ranean ports between May,
1945, when Nazi Germany
collapsed, and May, 1948,
when Israel was declared a
state and immigration be-
came legal.
Under cover of darkness,
she was rebuilt to look like a
freighter. Inside, however,
she was fitted with three
tiers of bunks, floor to ceil-
ing, that would enable her
to carry 434 immigrants.
They boarded one sum-
mer night in 1947. Then
"Despite Everything" set
sail on her first and only
voyage.
In the eastern Mediterra-
nean a British destroyer or-
dered her to identify herself.
She did so in Arabic.
"Didn't understand a
word," came the British
wireless officer's reply. "Re-
peat. Not a word."
"Despite Everything"
tried again, this time only
half in Arabic and half in
Arabic English, p's re-
placed by b's and plenty
of extra vowels. She de-
clared herself an Egyp-
tian freighter from
Alexandria, bound for
Jaffa.
Off Port Said, however,
after a fierce but futile
struggle, the destroyers
closed in. The ship had been
betrayed, it turned out, by a
woman who flashed signals
at night when the
passengers, in small groups,
were allowed on deck for a
breath of air. "Despite Ev-
erything" was boarded and
towed, listing heavily, to
Haifa.
There she lay rusting
offshore after the refugees
had been deported to Cyp-
rus, and even after they fi-
nally landed in Israel as
citizens in the latter half of
1948.
Nearly 20 years later
"Despite Everything" was
raised out of the water and,
in 1969, she began her new
life as a museum.
Exhibits in the entrance
hall built around the hull
tell the story of the 140 il-
legal ships making for the
coast of Israel between
1934, when the first restric-
tions on Jewish immigra-
tion were enacted by the
British, and 1948. t,
Right after she was
purchased in 1946, the
tanker tied up at a remote
pier in the port of Naples.
The superstructure was
dismantled and the word
"SCRAP" was painted
over the hull, to ward off
unwelcome attention.
BE THE
Enemeies from all sides
Rise against us
Their striving desires
Encompassed us
But we went forth
To sow at night.
FIRST IN LINE
TO BLOW OUT THE 30 CANDLES
^- sons shall eat
And be satisfied
They will remember us for
good
For their sakes we sowed at
night.
For them we trod with steps
so wary
For Hebrew men are we
Who sowed their fields at
night
Move slowly, move slowly
Oh moon, on your way.
Can It Be
(Editor's Note: Rachel Blumstein was born in Rus-
sia and began writing Russian poetry when she was
15 years old. She settled in pre-state Israel at age 19
and learned Hebrew there. She lived in Rehovot and
Kinneret and then in Kibutz Degania Aleph, the first
kibutz, but tuberculosis forced her to leave the set-
tlement. Her conversational and nostalgic style made
her popular and this poem, like others, was set to
music.)
By RACHEL BLUMSTEIN
Can it be
but a dream that I dreamt after all?
Can it be
I never really went forth with the dawn
To toil with the sweat of my brow?
Can it be,
on those flaming and endless days
when we reaped,
that I never gave voice to a song as I rode
on a cartful of sheves high-heaped?
That I never did bathe in the placid and perfect
pure blue
of Kinneret, my sea —
ah, Kinneret, my own,
were you only a waking dream too?
474
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