3 January 2006 - Palmach Museum

My aunty, uncle and 13-year-old cousin came to Israel from Australia the other day. I took the opportunity to meet them in Tel Aviv (I am staying about a twenty minute drive out of Tel Aviv – 1 hour on the bus – so I don’t get to spend as much time there as I would like). Apart from simply enjoying spending time with some very familiar faces, it gave me the unique opportunity of being able to do a few things I probably would not have gotten around to doing on this trip.

The most important of all was a visit to the Palmach Museum.

I can honestly say without a doubt, it was the most fascinating museum I have ever been to and one of the most moving experiences of my life.

I think the most interesting element of the museum is that it does not chronicle the stories of the great heroes of the Palmach Movement, like Yitzhak Rabin or Moshe Dayan. Instead, it tells the story of a lesser-known hero - the everyday person.

These are the people who wanted to change their lives and did all that they could to secure their homeland and to achieve a Jewish State. They worked on the Kibbutz in the day to make money, and at night they convened, trained, and armed themselves to fight and to defend themselves.

The museum, through archived footage and re-enactments follows the lives of about eight young people, who banded together to fight for statehood. It moves through different rooms, chronicling each year that the Palmach was in existence. I will not go into the full story of the Palmach or the narrative of these eight people, but I will point out the most significant part of the museum for me.

In one of the rooms, the story is told of a young Palmach member, who had made his way to Palestine before the outbreak of World War II. When the war was over, the Palmach had the opportunity to take Holocaust survivors by boat to Palestine. The young man telling the story, by chance, was reunited with his sister, who had survived the horrors of the Holocaust but had seen her entire family be taken away to the camps never to return.

As the boat approached the harbour, a British Naval patrol spotted them and asked for their authorisation.

The Palmach, raising the Israeli flag high above the ship declared, ‘we do not need authorisation to entire our own country.’

The boat was captured, and the survivors were taken off at the port in Haifa where they were put onto another boat to take them to jail in Cyprus. This was a crushing blow to these people who had just endured years trapped inside walls. The young man said that his sister had taking only twenty steps on Israeli soil but this was enough for her to know she was at home. The sentiment was so touchingly expressed that I’m sure I will never forget what was said.

As I left the museum, I passed a group of soldiers coming to the museum on some sort of army excursion. The tour for them had just begun and most of them seemed restless and disinterested. Mobile phones were ringing, and people were calling out to their friends across the room. I only hope that the museum had even half of the effect on them as it had on me. Perhaps by the end of the tour they would truly understand how different life was back in the time of the Palmach, and that nothing they have should be taken for granted.

Finally, I hope they understand that the members of the Palmach fought for the very State that they are defending today.