KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
were mainly directed to the military situation.... And as a result, some of the chaverim (members) stopped attending classes, and the desire to join the defense forces arose. A big argument started among us regarding enlisting immediately.” Aliyat HaNo’ar, the administration responsible for youth immi- grants in Israel, told the Yagur group to continue studying for an- other six months. Some in the group agreed and felt that they were not ready to do otherwise, but “the pressure of those who wanted to enlist became stronger and stronger until in the end we found a compromise — we continued to study, but at the same time, we prepared ourselves seriously and vigorously for the day when we would depart,” Aharon wrote. After the disastrous first ten days of the War of Independence, when the poorly equipped new nation lost control of numerous set- tlements and entire regions, new recruits were desperately needed. Beni Marshak visited Yagur to enlist the Dror group in the IDF and found its members open to persuasion. Most of them were sent to a training camp in Kfar Yonah and became part of the Fourth Battalion of the Harel Brigade in Jerusalem; Aharon and several others stayed behind, forming a link between the group and the kibbutz, which sent packages of food and supplies. The first time that company commander Motti Efrati saw the Dror fighters, he tried to send them back because they were so young. As the group waited in a military bus, he and the brigade commander argued for hours until he was finally convinced to accept them because of Israel’s desperate need for soldiers. Efrati’s nickname henceforth was “Kindergarten Teacher.” Leon Rubinstein recalled, “As soon as they declared the State of Israel in 1948, the Egyptians, Saudis, and Jordanians attacked. The Jews started an army, and there was a hoopla and a need to defend the land. I was eighteen years old and joined the Palmach, with which we had already trained. Most of us were in the Seventh Division.” Ezra Sherman remembered, “After two years at the kibbutz, the War of Independence started. On May 15, 1948, after Israel was
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