Blue Box

I belong to a generation of Israelis, raised on the myth: 'A land without a people for a people without a land'. For as long as I remember, we were told how our founding fathers arrived in a barren country to make the desert bloom. We were spoon-fed images of Hebrew pioneers, clearing the land, draining the swamps and building the new towns and villages, which we now call home. They could do this thanks to the JNF- the Jewish National Fund. Every Jewish home and school had this little blue box, where people put their spare change to help raise money for what they thought was the noble mission of acquiring the historic land of Israel for the Jewish people. This is the official story, but not the whole story. Those little boxes changed the face of the Middle East.
The story behind how Israel obtained the land it sits on today and how its borders were drawn is one of the most sensitive topics that nobody really wants to talk about, even today, more than 70 years later. Joseph Weits was the man who conducted this land take-over as head of the JNF from 1932 to 1970.