VN August 2020

Vetnews | August 2020 35 Story would do all the reservations and reserve a car from the car pool for your use and you could leave to enjoy yourself with your holiday pocket money. Most kibbutzim would pay for an overseas holiday at intervals, depending on their wealth. At Hamadya members could go once every 7 years. To encourage young men to live on kibbutzim on the front-line, so to speak, they were exempt from taxes and so could become pretty wealthy. As they expanded, they would start to invest money elsewhere. I believe Hamadya owned 12 factories in a nearby town. As one of the perks, to encourage young men to settle on Kibbutzim, girls in the army had to spend 6 months of their initial 18 months service on a kibbutz, thus providing companionship and possible marriage material. Finally, once a member of a kibbutz they could never expel you and you would be cared for until you die. To become a member, you would have to work for 6 months or a year on the kibbutz and then your membership was discussed and agreed upon at the next AGM. Sounds idyllic. Dan felt that they had serious problems in all the kibbutzim that are not on the front-line where there was a national honour to defend. Because everyone had everything they needed, there was no incentive to work. There was no extra reward if the kibbutz did well, so according to him, 95% of the members did the minimum of work. Leaving the responsibility and the major part of the work to the remaining 5% members. For him this was a major problem. Of course, you could leave at any time but everything you had used remained behind and you would leave with just your clothes and personal effects. There was no free money to save for such an event. Saturday morning found us inTiberias, a few kilometres north of the kibbutz Hamadya, situated on the shores of lake Kinneret (which features often in the bible as the “Sea of Tiberias”), a beautiful pale blue lake surrounded on one side by a range of mountains, the Golan Heights. As placid and still as the water of the lake appeared that day, we were told that violent storms could arise with little warning and churn up mountainous waves, as the wind swept down out of the Golan Heights. We lunched on “St Peter’s fish and stayed that night in the posh “Kinneret Hotel”. The Golan Heights featured rather strongly in the 6 day war, 3 years before. For those who may not know, the 6 day war features as one of the most successful and clinical military operations. After Israel was established as a Jewish state in 1948 by the UN, she faced the hostility of all the Arab states around her. To this day they still do not recognise her as a sovereign state. In 1968 shewas being threatened on all sides with growing military intent and she undertook a massive pre-emptive strike on four surrounding countries, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The Israeli forces managed to achieve a resounding victory in only 6 days when the UN intervened. In the descriptions given us, Syria was regarded as being the most lethal and hostile of those countries. At that time, they occupied the Golan Heights and used their position to lob rockets at the farms in the most fertile area of Israel, Galilee. So, one of the prime objectives of the Israeli army was to capture them and so protect their farm-lands. The Syrians, we were told had 14 lines of defence on the slopes of the mountain, we were taken and shown the remains of the barbed wire barricades and trenches to support that. The Israeli forces attacked the slopes of themountain in the evening and the battle raged through the night. Twenty-three tanks were used in the attack and finally as the dawn broke only two tanks survived finally breaking through and reaching the crown of the mountain. According to what we were told, the Syrians had been so sure that their defences would not be breached that they had no plan in place if it should happen and when they saw the tanks coming over the rise they turned and ran. The Israeli’s annexed the Golan Heights after that and established 18 Kibbutzim along the crest, as a first line of defence. What was surprising, and why I include this story is that those Kibbutzim had no problem being populated, apparently because of their strategic importance in the defence of their country. This should be seen against the background of what was happening to the Kibbutzim in various places, elsewhere in the country that had been on the original border and in the first line of defence and were now situated away from those positions. Although many were quite wealthy there was less and less interest and enthusiasm by the local Israeli’s (or Sabras as they liked to call themselves), to live on them. As you can see the concept of setting up a Kibbutz in Swellendam in a similar fashion to the ones in Israel was not even vaguely practical or of any value. Next time I will share a few last incidents before travelling back to SA and my beloved Emily who I was missing awfully. v