KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
kibbutz. Just beyond it was Nesher, a small Jewish settlement with a large cement factory and shops we liked to visit for soda and oth- er things not available on the kibbutz. Occasionally, we would go to the other Jewish settlements in the vicinity. There was a Hasidic village, Kfar Hasidim, with many well-tended gardens and agri- cultural products for sale. But we never went to the Arab village, even though the people there were not hostile during those years. The residents of Nesher probably did business with them, and there were no problems. The Arabs were much better off because of the Jewish immi - gration to Palestine. Jews developed the land and created many jobs for them, jobs that paid well and provided benefits, especially if workers joined the Labor Union, the Histadrut. But the bene- fits did not offset the terrible fear created by the Islamic clergy, in particular the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Muhammad al Husseini. The Mufti constantly agitated the villagers against the Jewish entity, saying, “The Jews are coming to take your land away!” He organized the massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929, most of them ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist and even anti- Zionist. He made a personal agreement with Franco, Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler to support the Nazis, in return for which he would be the official spokesman of the Arab world. In contrast, we were always friendly with the Druze villages and had good relations with them. Every so often, a Druze leader would come to Yagur from one of their villages on Mount Carmel, and we would all talk politics. One of the villages, Usifia, is very large now, with about eleven thousand people. Today, when we go to Israel, we usually visit Usifia and another of the Druze towns, Daliyat el Karmel. The Druze were, and are, loyal and friendly, un- like the other Arabs. They are the only Arabs who routinely serve in the Israeli army today. Sadly, before the War of Independence, the Arab villagers near Yagur started throwing rocks at our vehicles. Protective metal shields had to be installed on the windows of buses that passed through the area. Relations became strained. Then, during the
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