On Fiery Birth of Israel, Memories of 2 Sides Speak

[cali]

Published: May 17, 2009

TEL AVIV, Israel — In a high-rise apartment with a Mediterranean Sea view, the cameraman checks his frame and the interviewer makes sure the slight, silver-haired man is relaxed enough to tell his story.

Then Peleg Tamir, 81, starts recounting his days as a teenage recruit for an underground militia fighting for the Jewish state.

Arrested by the ruling British authorities in 1947, he smuggled himself out of a detention center in a suitcase. “Everyone was shocked when I climbed out,” he said.

Tufaha Natur, 74, lived a very different part of this story. The women from her small Arab village in the Galilee fled when Jewish militias arrived. “A woman who carried her two or three children also carried clothing and food; how could she organize herself?” she said. “There was a woman who forgot her son in the bed, leaving him and taking a pillow instead.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/world/middleeast/18israel.html?em