My smartphone says it\u2019s October 2023, but in Israel it feels like 1948. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was the year this country was established as 600,000 Jews<\/a> fought the combined might of the Arab world three years after the genocide in Europe. You can still feel that war in the air and underbrush of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha\u2019emek in northern Israel, where I traveled this week, passing trucks carrying tanks and armored bulldozers south toward the battle zone around Gaza. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For Israelis, the name Mishmar Ha\u2019emek evokes<\/a> 1948\u2014an equivalent of Valley Forge, perhaps, or Gettysburg. The kibbutz is famous for holding out against the superior forces of the Arab Liberation Army in April 1948, helping create the fighting ethos of Israel\u2019s military and the Zionist principle that Jews will never again abandon their homes. On one edge of the kibbutz is a historic site commemorating the Palmach<\/a>, the militia that helped decide the battle. Amid the trees and bushes of the peaceful cemetery here are graves of people like Moshe Formansky, 41, and Rafael Altberg, 21, killed 75 years ago in the war that created a Jewish state, and then never really ended. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d come here not to revisit history, but to speak to members of another kibbutz, Nahal Oz, on the Gaza border a few hours\u2019 drive to the south\u2014those members, that is, who weren\u2019t killed or kidnapped by Hamas in the massacre<\/a> of October 7. The evacuees have relocated here, and the locals are doing their best to house and entertain them. When I arrived, the children of Nahal Oz were indoors, squealing at a snake show arranged by volunteers. Outside, their hollow-eyed parents walked the paths. Across a lawn, a few dozen people sat shiva<\/a> <\/em>for a friend, Ilan Fiorentino, killed in the assault. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At first I thought the historical reference for the current horror in Israel would be the\u00a0Yom Kippur War<\/a>, which began 50 years earlier almost to the day, on October 6, 1973. In that war Israel was surprised by Egypt and Syria on a Jewish holiday, as was the case last week. But the year that keeps cropping up is 1948. …<\/p>\n\n\n\n