Top Highlights

• Above all, however, there was the mandate system, the brainchild of the South African prime minister, Ian Smuts. In this system the League of Nations “mandated” Turkey’s former Middle Eastern provinces to Britain and France, thereby enabling those two powers to rule the area. For their part, the Arabs regarded the system as a violation of the promi...
• Then and for decades thereafter, Histadrut was much more than a trade union. Headed by a secretary general and the Acting Council, both of which were democratically elected by the membership (women, too, had the vote from the beginning), it was the closest thing to a government that the Jewish community in Erets Yisrael possessed. It played the rol...
• the more so because, although Histadrut did not constitute a government and did not possess coercive power, its leadership talked of “the duty of volunteering.” In the collective settlements membership started virtually at birth; but even in the towns the social and economic pressure it could bring to bear was usually sufficient to bring recalcitra...
• During 1930-1935, though, such a situation was still very far in the future. Under its new leader, Hagana’s overriding purpose was to obtain additional arms. Agents were sent to Belgium, France, and Italy, the former two because controls were lax and the last because the fascist government was often prepared to overlook Jewish activities that it ju...
• Young, ingenious, and independent-minded, they were a disorderly lot and proud of it. Informality reached the point where subordinates addressed commanders by their nicknames; thus Rechabam Zeevi (who was to command the central front in 1970-1973) became “Ghandi,” David (Elazar) “Dado,” Mordechai (Gur) “Motta,” Refael (Eytan) “Raful,” and one parti...