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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.