More pictures, same story

Photos from astride a camel: Mandate-era Israel
Nadav Man, Bitmuna
Tel Aviv beach is full of swimmers, there is no parking in Allenby Street ... ; and yet, something has changed since then. Traveling back in time through the photographs of a British army officer.
Last peek to an old photo album that was found 20 years ago at a collectors’ market in England. The pictures were taken by a British intelligence officer on his way to Israel and during his service here in a camel-riding unit of the British army. The ... collection is presented here, including the captions which adorned the original photos.

Ben-Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv

Dizengoff Square, Tel Aviv

Herbert Samuel Square, Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv Central Bus Station

Tel Aviv Main SynagogueTel Aviv Opera HouseTel Aviv beachesTel Aviv, Habima
The Kibbutz

Part II
An Arab coffee house on Tiberias shore, an open-air cinema in Hadera, King’s Road in Haifa – things looked fun here before we were born. Traveling back in time through the photographs of a British army officer .

Ynet’s “Time Machine” series reminded collector Shraga Katz of an old photo album in his possession, given to him 20 years ago at a collectors’ market in England, which binds together dozens of photos of Israeli and regional landscapes.

The pictures were taken by a British intelligence officer on his way to Israel and during his service here in a camel-riding unit of the British army.

Arab cafe on Tiberias shore

Tiberias, 1946

Tiberias

Hadera Street

By Hadera water tower

Hadera bus stationHadera cinema

Hadera, Galilee StreetZohar, Hadera open-air cinema

Haifa, Kings Road

Palestine Police, Haifa

View from the Carmel the Technion, 1945 (Haifa)This is Haifa today (and here, with more on the war)

And this was Mount Carmel in 1894:

These are brown Syrian bears housed at the Haifa Zoo. All the animals at the zoo had a terrible time during the 34-day conflict: they were confined indoors, with nothing to do. The heat was unbearable, the quarters packed. The keepers went to great lengths to entertain the bored and frightened animals - they turned all the fans on, offered the animals frozen treats, talked to them, brought them toys. But what can one really do for a tearful-looking roaring lion? Or for the monkeys who shivered with fear, huddling together for comfort close to the walls of their small dwelling? Where did the elephants go? And the giraffes, the rhino and the hippos? But these bears would have none of it. They kept pounding the doors with their paws and banging their heads against the locked door. Their keeper had no choice but to let them out - they wanted to paddle about in their pond. And they were smart, those bears. As soon as the sirens started wailing, they would rush back to the safety of their cell and wait patiently for the "all clear". Then they would go out again. Luckily, no rockets hit the Haifa zoo. No inmate sustained injuries. Nor did their keepers.

more stories those pictures tell

1912 - There is a Land, they say...
Let's travel in time, let's glide back almost a century back, and take a look at these rare images of the Land of Israel, captured towards the end of the second immigration wave.
Leo Kahn, a Jewish journalist photographer with the Yiddische Zeitung in Vienna, was sent to the Land of Israel in order to immortalize the Holy Land through his camera lens at the beginning of last century. The newspaper editor board and the Jewish National Fund printed these precious photographs as postcards and albums.
Batya Suzin of Kibbutz Mizra has collected some of the pictures and is now making them public. Batya would like to dedicate these photographs to the memory of her dearly departed father, Samuel Weissberg, who was a very special person. In 1914, his parents made him leave Odessa in order to study at the Herzeliyah Gymnasium High School in Tel-Aviv. When WWI broke out, Samuel fell out of touch with his parents. At the same time, the Ottoman Turks drove the Jews out of Tel-Aviv towards Northern Israel. Samuel got a job in Zamarin (Zichron Yaakov). After the war, he completed his studies at Mikveh Israel and found odd construction jobs in various parts of Israel.
In 1926, Samuel joined the British Police and quickly rose through the ranks. When the 1929 riots broke out, he was the commander of the Ramle police and helped save many Jewish soldiers, some of them wounded, from besieged Hulda. During the 1936-1939 Arab revolt, he was in command of the Abu-Kabir police station and was instrumental in thwarting Arab attacks against the Jews. Later he would be decorated for bravery by the British High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope.
In 1948, while he was senior commander of the Rehovot police, Samuel became aware that the British intented to hand over the Gedera Police to the Arabs, upon their departure from Israel. He immediately informed the Hagana commanders, who managed to take control of the police station. Due to this action, however, the British eventually stripped Samuel of his medal of valor.

Yivne'el

Yemenite guard in Ben-Shemen

The Wailing Wall

The Hot Springs of Tiberias

The Seven Mills of the Yarkon

The Jerusalem-Nablus Road

The Hebrew Gymansium High-School in Tel-Aviv

Rehovot

Tiberias (Sea of Galilee)

Rishon Le Zion

Tora Study in Meron

Metula

Petach-Tikva

Migdal (Tower) Farm

Maidens' Farm (Sea of Galilee)

Bnot Yaakov (Jacob's Daughters) Bridge

Haifa Bay Stagecoach

En Zeitim (Olive Grove), Sefad

Ekron (Mazkeret Batya)

Kfar Tavor

Now, what I would like to know is - what exactly was it that the Arabs had and the Jews took from them? Was it not a wasteland, a desert made to bloom and blossom by the incoming Jews?

In 1799, Palestine was still so much in need of people that Napoleon Bonaparte championed a full-scale return of Jews.

"The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population." [British consul in 1857]

"There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. ... For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee ... Nazareth is forlorn ... Jericho lies a moldering ruin ... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds ... a silent, mournful expanse ... a desolation ... We never saw a human being on the whole route ... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country ... Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince. The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes ... desolate and unlovely ... "[Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867]

"Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell - a handful of philosophic people- in wasted sun-drenched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea." [Winston Churchill, British Colonial Secretary, during his visit to the Middle East in the winter of 1920-1921]

"Fuel-power stations for the generation of electrical light and energy have been established at Haifa and Tiberias by the [Jewish] Palestine Electric Corporation, Limited. This increase in commercial activity, in building enterprise and new industrial developments is due almost entirely to Jewish capital and the entry during the year of an immigrant class with money to invest." [British High Commissioner report to the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan for the year 1925].

"I regard the Jewish Colonies in Palestine as the most important and valuable influence now being exerted in this country for the improvement of agriculture and the creation of a stable and enlightened rural life. The creation of new and larger settlements will stabilize social and political conditions in the country, as well as give a needed support to the present rapid development of cities and towns in Palestine. Apart from any question of religious faith or aspiration the movement to create rural Jewish settlements is deserving of world wide encouragement and support." [Elwood Mead, Memorandum to Zionist leaders].