My mother's war story
Bruce Schneier posts about female suicide bomber warnings. This reminded me of a story my mother told me about the first time she was living in Israel.
She and my father were Zionists and they intended to emigrate to Israel to live on a Kibbutz. The year was 1946, and it wasn't exactly easy to get there at the time. My mother took a ship to Athens and got off when it reached Haifa. She gave up her passport to help someone else get in.
My father worked as crew on a ship that went via France to pickup refugees, but then got stopped by the British and was in a camp on Cyprus for several months (as in the movie Exodus.)
They released him and he finally got to Palestine. Skip ahead a year or so, it was early 1948, my mother was pregnant, but my father was having blackouts, so they decided to come back the the US. My mother needed to get a replacement passport. She took a bus to Jerusalem, which was expected to be uneventful. However, the bus was stopped by British military to be searched. She had noticed a woman at the back of the bus with a lapful of knitting; the woman went up to my mother and revealed that under her knitting were gun/bomb parts. She asked my mother to place them above her pregnant belly. The British soldiers were gentlemen, and as the woman predicted, did not search my mother.
Neither my mother, nor the woman were suicide bombers or terrorists, but they cared deeply for what they believed in: The State of Israel.
60 years later a lot has changed. I really hate what the world has become, but I also wonder whether there would be an Israel at all if the security measures in the world today were in effect 60 years ago,
Please no rants in the comments. My mother died five years ago, and this posting is a partial memorial for her. She would have been 87 on February 24.
She and my father were Zionists and they intended to emigrate to Israel to live on a Kibbutz. The year was 1946, and it wasn't exactly easy to get there at the time. My mother took a ship to Athens and got off when it reached Haifa. She gave up her passport to help someone else get in.
My father worked as crew on a ship that went via France to pickup refugees, but then got stopped by the British and was in a camp on Cyprus for several months (as in the movie Exodus.)
They released him and he finally got to Palestine. Skip ahead a year or so, it was early 1948, my mother was pregnant, but my father was having blackouts, so they decided to come back the the US. My mother needed to get a replacement passport. She took a bus to Jerusalem, which was expected to be uneventful. However, the bus was stopped by British military to be searched. She had noticed a woman at the back of the bus with a lapful of knitting; the woman went up to my mother and revealed that under her knitting were gun/bomb parts. She asked my mother to place them above her pregnant belly. The British soldiers were gentlemen, and as the woman predicted, did not search my mother.
Neither my mother, nor the woman were suicide bombers or terrorists, but they cared deeply for what they believed in: The State of Israel.
60 years later a lot has changed. I really hate what the world has become, but I also wonder whether there would be an Israel at all if the security measures in the world today were in effect 60 years ago,
Please no rants in the comments. My mother died five years ago, and this posting is a partial memorial for her. She would have been 87 on February 24.