A New Beginning
New life in Our Ancient Land New Life in Our Ancient Land
War of Independence, the village was attacked by the Jewish underground, and the villagers abandoned it completely and never came back. Today, it is a heavily populated Jewish settlement and has grown all the way up the mountain. The British were also our enemy, constantly placating the Arabs, whose oil they needed. They kept tight control over Jewish im- migration to Israel and only allowed 1,500 refugees a month into Israel, while hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors were waiting in Displaced Persons camps for British permission to en- ter. The United States proposed that 100,000 Jews be immediately allowed into Israel, but the British were sitting on the Suez Canal, and not antagonizing the Arabs was very important for their em- pire. They continued to do what was politically expedient for them, regardless of the human consequences. The British had two police forces: the British police, who wore round hats, and the Notrim, a secondary force that was half-Jewish and half-Arab and wore a different type of hat. The Jews patrolled Jewish areas and the Arabs patrolled the Arab areas. In front of our kibbutz was a British police station manned by Jewish policemen, mostly from Yagur. The station had a machine gun in a glass case and a supply of rifles. The kibbutz would fre - quently take the weapons out and trained our underground with them. But one day, with half of the British weapons out for training, a high-ranking British officer arrived with a group of policemen to visit the station. We rounded up some of the best-looking girls in the kibbutz to welcome and chat with them and invited them to the dining room for a meal that was served with long pauses between courses. Meanwhile, messengers went out to the field and gathered up all the weapons. We cleaned the dirt off them with lightning speed and spirited them to their spots in the station. When the girls got the signal that all was back in place, the atmosphere in the din- ing room became more relaxed. The officer said, “I think it’s time I go to make my inspection.” Perhaps he suspected a deliberate delay, and saw a little dust when he finally inspected the weapons — we will never know. Notrim,
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