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Travel Piece by Ida Nasatir
Letter from Israel, by Ida Nasatir, May
11 1951
May 11, 1951—Ida Nasatir, "A
Letter from Israel," Southwestern Jewish Press, pages 6: Continued
from April 27 issue:
Israel means its southland—Negev, where the "desert shall bloom as
the rose" is no longer a lovely fancy of the poet, no delusion of the
over-fervid patriot, but the startling, almost unbelievable sober, literal
truth. Containing two thirds of the land of Israel and its smallest
percentage of people, this once barren wasteland becomes terribly important in
the Israeli scheme of things; it is as important as the undeveloped West was to
the original colonists along the Eastern seacoast of the U.S. Instead of
saying "Go West, young man!" as we did a century ago, in Israel they
say to those with a pioneering spirit: "Go Negev, young man!"
Israel means "kibbutzim," it means camps with poverty and squalor, but
it also means hope and salvation. It means constant incoming waves of immigrants
with nothing but the rags on their backs, it means a place where every
able-bodied man and woman is rationed for every bite he eats, but he tightens
his belt and does the work for two; it means Mount Scopus where the now
strangely quiet Hadassah Hospital rests, and the Hebrew University is silent and
grave looking, for the roads leading to this Mount are Arab controlled.
But it also means the continued in-pouring of millions of Hadassah dollars which
bring healing and medicine, bandages and penicillin; it means the Children's
Village in Rannana, one of the more than 48 projects supported by the Mizrachi
Women of America. When you have visited the Children's Village, when you have
seen these bright-eyed youngsters, working, tending their gardens, saying their
prayers, thanking God for their deliverance from bondage—then, when night
comes you sob into your pillow for the beauty and warmth of it all. It is
a land where you watch people and listen to their tales told so simply and
uncomplainingly, you cannot but feel that they have reached the limit of
suffering and heroism and that changes, good changes are absolutely bound to
come. It is a land where our people have died again and again up to this very
generation and have re-arisen from those deaths to achieve sublime
heights. If it is possible to dissect the anatomy of courage—you can do
it in Israel. And when you do, you will find a simple and magnificent faith, so
great that you become positive that this land and her people are worthy of
supreme sacrifice. Do I exaggerate? Ask anyone who has been to Israel,
having ears to hear and eyes to see. They will agree with me: Israel,
Israel—it's a wonderful country. Fondly, Ida Nasatir. P.S. I
visited Lillian Novak's aunt and uncle in Tel Aviv.