KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
According to Zeev Dor in the Yagur Book , bandits from the Arab village of Balad El Sheikh (today Tel Hanan) commonly shot at Jews traveling between Yagur and Haifa. Between December 1947 and May 1948, attacks on Jews throughout Palestine continued unabated and were rarely investigated or prosecuted by the Brit- ish. Jewish reprisals increased, although the Haganah continued to confine its activities to defending Jewish settlements and repulsing Arab attacks. 3 “The Arabs in the area,” said Rubinstein, “harassed us and we harassed them. We were looking for a peaceful coexis- tence, but they would pick on the weakest people — they’d find someone on watch who was asleep and kill him. And we would retaliate. Nothing has changed. They initiate something, the Israe- lis retaliate, then they counterattack. Relations between the British and Palestinian Jews were rapidly deteriorating.” The Jewish Resistance was averaging seventeen anti-British operations a month. Although British losses in Palestine were in- significant compared to those in Europe, the fact that the enemies the Empire was facing down in Palestine were young Holocaust survivors was problematic for troop morale and its public image. In July 1947, not long after the arrival of the Dror children and the invasive searches of Black Sabbath, when the British hanged a group of Etzel leaders, Etzel struck back. They kidnapped and hanged two British officers and booby-trapped the area below the gallows, severely injuring the police who arrived to cut the officers down. Some Jewish Palestinians serving in England’s Jewish Brigade during the war fought anti-Jewish restrictions on immigration into Mandate Palestine in a manner that is just now becoming known. They gave their identities to Displaced Persons and traded places with them so that they could enter Palestine. Brigade members then used false papers to travel and work with the DPs and redirected food, blankets, clothes, medicine, and entire trucks to their aid. In one such incident, they used thirty-four “borrowed” British Army trucks to carry a large number of Jewish refugees to safety. 4
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