Mordecai Naor: The Good Old Days of Eretz Yisrael

"The Good Old Days of Eretz Yisrael" is a pictorial journey through a country that, had it not really existed, would have been considered a mere Pigment of the imagination. For, which other country saw the coming together in just a few decades of over a million people from many different lands, acted out social experiments unlike any other in the world, laid the foundations for a future State, and later on, built the State itself? Which other country founded one university, and then another, at a time when there were only a hundred thousand Jews living there? And which other country raised an army that succeeded in defeating five Arab armies despite the forecasts of experts and generals from all over the world?
"The Good Old Days of Eretz Yisrael" tells the story in pictures and words of Jews, Arabs and the British in the days of the Mandate and the first days of the State of Israel, with particular attention to the Jewish Settlement, its people and the way of life they created in the town and in the country and in the institutions — not necessarily official — which they established.
There is in it an element of nostalgia for what existed once and is no more — which poses the question: is it not too rosy a picture of ordinary, and perhaps even difficult conditions and phenomena that with the passage of time have been exalted and glorified? I think not, since Eretz Yisrael of then and the Jewish Settlement, along its stony path from a small religious community to a modern society and state, was unquestionably an outstanding phenomenon, that may rightly be marvelled at.
The uniqueness of the settlement was the almost total mobilisation of the people to the national tasks facing them and the spirit of togetherness that united them. Its uniqueness also lay in the existence of a farm leadership which knew how to exploit the historic opportunities and, no less, how to withstand the military test. It was not always a success story. On the way up the mountain, hardships and disappointments were encountered which demanded retreat and reappraisal, but what counts is the total — the objective that was attained. Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Jewish State, when he wound up the first Zionist congress in 1897, wrote in his diary: "In Basel I founded the Jewish State. Had I said that out loud today, I would have been generally laughed at. Perhaps in another five years, or at any rate in another fifty years, this will be recognised by all." Fifty years later, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution approving the partition plan, meaning a Jewish State in Eretz Yisrael — and six months later, in the storm of the War of Independence, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State.