also believed a passive attitude would make the Arabs lose respect for them, thus widening the breach between them. Therefore, the youngsters, armed with naboots, similar to the Arab shepherd's staff, used to fight it out. The technique of fighting with sticks, a kind of swordfighting called in Hebrew kapap, was a part of the essential equipment of every young Hebrew at the time.
When I lived in Nahalal in 1933 (when Dayan was eighteen), the village had a unique layout. The small, white square houses of the seventy-five member-families were situated in a perfect circle along a dirt road which disappeared during the winter in mud that reached halfway up to your knees. In the center were the co-operative institutions, including a civic hall where the theater would perform once a year. The transportation system consisted of one antiquated bus, which would go once a day through the hostile Arab villages to Haifa, operated by an old moshav member who sang arias and Russian songs all along the route. Both his sons were later killed during the 1948 war.
We school children would study a few hours a day, but most of the time we worked in the fields and vegetable gardens, helping the farmers who were all prematurely aged, their faces lined by years of ceaseless hard labor. In the evenings, around the petroleum table lamps, sometimes sipping homemade wine, they would recall the hard days when Nahalal was surrounded by malaria-infested swamps, which had to be reclaimed with eucalyptus trees.
At the age of fourteen Moshe was a watchman, trained by the Haganah. (Actually, every member of a kibbutz and a moshav was automatically a member of the Haganah.) At eighteen he was sent to a neighboring village to instruct the youngsters there and lead them during an Arab attack. During the Arab rebellion of 1936, at age twenty-one, he commanded an instruction course of the Hebrew Auxiliary Police, a unit of Haganah members