In the streets of Tel Aviv is a soldier on crutches. His uniform is too big for him - he has a poor relationship with the quartermaster and also no significant rank. He is watching and listening and doesn’t know what to think. For a whole year he knew nothing about parties. He imagined them as something far away behind the lines, arguing about traffic on the roads, and whether people should be allowed to raise pigs.
So which one was right? Which party was it that founded the state? The soldier wrinkled his forehead and thought hard. Thinking in these categories did not come naturally.
There is that photo of Ben-Gurion on 14 May 1948. Where was he on that day? The soldier racked his brains. That must have been... this filthy village they had captured in the morning. Not many losses. Only three dead. Joske, Yaakov, and Mishka. The soldier smiled at the thought of Mishka. He was a joker. A pity he is dead. For certain he would have cracked a wonderful joke about this election.
The soldier drifts off in thought. That village now belongs to the state of Israel. So Mishka also played his part in the founding of the state of Israel. But Mishka is lying somewhere in the place where they buried him, and red flowers are growing on his grave.
Which party would Mishka have voted for, if he were still alive today? No. It is unimaginable that Mishka would have got enthusias-tic about any party. He was interested in quite different things. He would have said, in his typical way: "Soldiers are only interested in two things. The second of these is leave ..." And still he played his part in the founding of the state.
But maybe the state was not founded on that day at all? After all, the armies of the neighboring states only marched in on the next day, and that was when the real war for the state began.
The soldier could remember that evening very clearly. The chief storming into the room and announcing that the enemy had marched all the way to Yavne. "Less than twenty kilometers from Tel Aviv!" They spent the whole night talking about Molotov cocktails: the only anti-tank weapon that they had at the time. Did anyone really believe that these bottles could stop tanks?
In the morning they set off for the defense of Gedera. They dug trenches and waited for the tanks. One company, less than one hun-dred young men, stood between Tel Aviv and the Egyptians. In the