Chapter 4: The start of a new life
"During the war, Tel-Aviv's entire population had been expelled by the Turks".
"The population of Tel Aviv in 1921 was made up in part of Jews who had come to Palestine (mostly from Lithuania, Poland and Russia) in what was known as the third A4yah (or wave) of Zionist immigration, and in part of ‘oldtimers’,who had been there from the beginning. Although some of the new immigrants were self-defined ‘capitalists’—merchants and tradesmen who set up small factories and shops —the vast majority were labourers. Just a year earlier, a General Federation of Jewish Labour (the Hictadrut) had been established, and within twelve months it already had a membership of over 4000.
Although it was only twelve years old, Tel Aviv was rapidly becoming self-governing. It had just been permitted by the British mandatory government to levy its own taxes on buildings and workshops and to run its own water system. Also, though it had no prison —and was not to have one for many years —it had its own twenty-five-man, all-Jewish police force, of which everyone was very proud. The main street (named for Theodor Herl) was adorned at one end by the Herzlia High School, which was the town’s first and most imposing building. There were a few other streets, a small ‘businessdistrict’ and a water tower that served as a gathering place for the young people. Public transportation was either by small buses or horse-drawn carriages, while Tel Aviv’s mayor, Meir Dizengoff, periodically rode through town on a splendid white horse."
"Although we had come to Palestine from different countries and from different cultures and often spoke different languages, we were alike in our belief that only here could Jews live as of right, rather than on sufferance, and only here could Jews be masters, not victims, of their fate."
"Perhaps at this point I should say something briefly about the Emek, because the story of the struggle to develop it is so integral a part of the story of the whole Zionist effort. When the First World War ended and the Mandate over Palestine was awarded by the League of Nations to Great Britain, the new hopes raised by the Balfour Declaration for the establishment of a full-fledged Jewish national home seemed to be on the way towards fulfilment. Years earlier, however, in 1901, the Jewish National Fund had already been formed by the Zionist movement for the exclusive purpose of buying and developing land in Palestine in the name of the entire Jewish people. And a great deal of the Jewish-owned land in Palestine was bought by ‘the people’ —the bakers, tailors and carpenters of Pinsk, Berlin and Milwaukee. As a matter of fact, ever since I was a little girl I can remember the small blue tin collection box that stood next to the Sabbath candles in our living-room and into which not only we, but our guests, dropped coins every week —and this ‘bluebox’ was likewise a feature in every Jewish home we visited. The truth is, from 1904 on it was with these coins that the Jewish people began to buy extensive tracts of land in Palestine.
Come to think of it, I am more than a little tired of hearing about how the Jews 'stole' land from Arabs in Palestine. The facts are quite different. A lot of good money changed hands, and a lot of Arabs became very rich indeed. Of course, there were other organisations and countless individuals who also bought tracts. But by 1947 the JNF alone...owned over half of all the Jewish holdings in the country. So let that libel, at least, be done with.
Around the time that we came to Palestine, a number of such purchases were carried out in the Ernek —despite the fact that much of the area consisted of the kind of deadly black swamps that inevitably brought malaria and blackwater fever in their wake. Still, what mattered most was that this pestilential land could be bought, though not cheaply; much of it, incidentally, was sold to the Jewish National Fund by a single well-to-do Arab family that lived in Beirut."
...A number of such purchases were carried out in the Emek - despite the fact much of the area consisted of the kind of deadly black swamps that inevitably brought malaria and blackwater fever in their wake...The next step was to make this land arable. In the nature of things, private farmers did not and could not interest themselves in a back-breaking and dangerous project which would obviously take years before it showed any profit. The only people who could possibly undertake the job of draining the Emek swamps were the highly motivated pioneers of the Labour-Zionist movement, who were prepared to reclaim the land, however difficult the circumstances and regardless of the human cost. What's more, they were prepared to do it themselves, rather than have the work done by hired Arab labourers under the supervision of Jewish farm managers."
Feminism
"Let me explain that in those days kibbutz women hated kitchen duty not because it was hard (compared to other work on the settlement, it was rather easy) but because they felt it to be demeaning. Their struggle wasn’t for equal ‘civic rights,' which they had in abundance, but for equal burdens. They wanted to be given whatever work their male comrades were given —paving roads, hoeing fields, building houses, or standing guard duty —not to be treated as though they were different and automatically relegated to the kitchen. All this was at least haifa century before anyone invented the unfortunate term ‘Women’s Lib’, but the fact is that kibbutz women were among the world’s first and most successful fighters for true equality. But I didn’t feel that way about working in the kitchen. I couldn’t for the life of mc understand what all the fuss was about and said so. ‘Why is it so much better,’ I asked the girls who were moping (or storming) about kitchen duty, ‘to work in the barn and feed the cows, rather than in the kitchen and feed your comrades?’ No one ever answered this question convincingly, and I remained more concerned with the quality of our diet than with ‘feminine emancipation’."