Word: israel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From the Syrian heights, the Israeli achievement seems superhuman. The farmers in the Huleh Valley, and the soldiers who manned Israel's defenses are not the pale timed Jews Hitler marched uncomplaining to a ghastly death. And the inescapable question is clearly: if they are not the people of the European ghettos, then who are they and how have they changed...
Ayeleth Hashachar (in Hebrew, the Morning Star) is one of Israel's oldest kibbutzim. In 1916 it pioneered the settlement of the Huleh Valley, then largely marshland. The kibbutz proper-living quarters, communal dining hall, stables, cowpens, storage facilities--lies two miles from the muddy Jordan River as it flows south toward the Sea of Galilee. The Jordan River forms the border between Israel and what used to be Syria...
...Israelis, the view from the Syrian heights is nothing short of a fifth dimension. Above Israel's northern Huleh Valley, kibbutzniks still shudder with relief and joy as they gape from Syrian bunkers at their pitifully exposed homes. This is how the Syrians saw it for 19 years as they casually lobbed shells onto valley settlements...
...story, of course, is the same all over Israel. Until last June, Tel Aviv itself lay within range of Jordanian guns. But the Israelis did not grumble. And when war came, involvement was total, not just because it had to be, but because the Israelis went to battle with a spirit which is conquering the desert...
...chesty gutterals and lilting inflection. The problem is common among immigrants, and Nehemiah accepts the jests with a smile of characteristic good-nature. Both he and his hecklers know that his Hebrew is as correct as any native's. They also know that Nehemiah and men like him molded Israel with European skills and breathed life into it with European culture...