Ms. Monroe, 1 November 1972 is well imprinted in my memory as well as in the diary I kept, and which I still have, while on a 4 month ulpan at Mossad head, Ben Gurion’s kibbutz Sde Boker, Negev Desert and where I did well above average in the academics and a perfect score in Gadna training which to Ben Gurion was more important.
I assume you are a generation one below me.
Did either of your parents or grandparents or great grandparents know Ben Gurion intimately?
Yes, my relationship with Ben Gurion goes back 3 generations. My great maternal grandmother, Nechie Becker Bardash [1874-1943] was an intimate of Ben Gurion beginning long before Nechie moved to Tel-Aviv from England in 1925; and you would know that Mossad remain headquartered in Tel-Aviv which I understand is now the most expensive city in the world to live.
If you are talking Jewish history, then you would know how important is Ben Gurion who also perfectly understood who was behind Hitler.
Now if you didn’t know the first thing about the mineral resources business and you lacked common sense to figure it out, then surely you questioned in your “National Security & Military History at Harvard University” how the Germans went from starving on 29 January 1933 to the shelves of the supermarkets in Germany being fully stocked by the end of the following day, 30 January 1933 when Hitler who was neither a magician, cook, or farmer or financier, came to power?
True, at 15 years of age I knew mo[re] about how the real world worked than most, and that would include my 3 elder siblings.
Our curious nature is most certainly not in each of our DNA.
As time marches on, one has less time.
People with less time not only know that but the smart ones, who have something to teach, look to the next generation of thinkers.
You must have heard the quote of Ben Gurion, “Let the children of Israel be a light unto the nations.”
I didn’t yet mention that in 1929 Ben Gurion arranged for my paternal grandfather, Israel Issy Gevisser [c.1890-24 February 1970] to purchase the most strategic asset in all of Israel, the harbor properties of Haifa and that purchase extended all the way up the hill.
In essence my immediate family on both sides are well represented in the founding mothers and fathers of modern State of Israel.
Moreover, I was also made aware on my first two trips to Israel, both in 1966,
that Ben Gurion had a keen interest in the visit.
We, of course, visited mostly with Syd Cohen
and his family.
BTW, are you familiar with Operation Diamond?
Following the 1967 6 Day War whose success the Israel Air Force [IAF] guaranteed in the first 4 hours, all thanks to Operation Diamond, my mother Zena
