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70 years after | Israel today

2021-11-19T20:16:20.018Z


Israel reduces its dependence on energy companies from abroad, dance clubs in Tel Aviv are empty, and UNESCO cares for children in schools • This is what happened in Israel this week seven decades ago


The first fuel company in the country

On November 19, 1951, agreements were signed to establish the first Israeli company to import, refine and distribute oil and gasoline in the country.

The company was established by the government (which held 10 percent) in partnership with Bank Leumi, Discount Bank, Hamashbir Central and Zim.

On December 1, 1951, the company's certificate of incorporation was signed and its official name was determined - "The Israeli Fuel Company Ltd." It owns a capital of one million and 300,000 pounds.

In those days, oil imports to Israel were the state's largest foreign currency expenditure, which greatly burdened the foreign exchange coffers. The oil and gasoline market has been controlled since its inception by two subsidiaries of global oil corporations. The crude oil that arrived in Haifa from Iraq Two foreign-owned marketing companies distributed the oil products in the country.

At the end of 1949, after a period of severe hardship in the energy market in Israel (partly due to the fact that with the establishment of the state the import of oil from Iraq was stopped), the large oil corporations began selling crude oil to Israel, which arrived in Haifa by tankers and refineries.

The establishment of the Israeli fuel company effectively deprived the foreign companies of their enormous profits, and immediately upon its establishment it ordered 120,000 tons of crude oil from Venezuela, which underwent a refining process in Haifa.

The company quickly established a tank farm for its needs, and established a network for the distribution of fuel and its products throughout the country.

At the end of the decade, in 1959, Delek owned 44 stations, and today, as one of the four largest fuel companies in Israel, it has hundreds of stations throughout the country.

Asked for tea: Pianist Arthur Rubinstein in Israel

Rubinstein (in a dark suit) IDF wounded visitor to Tel Hashomer, November 1951, Photo: Arthur Rossman

On November 16, 1951, at early dawn, the renowned Polish-American Jewish pianist Arthur Rubinstein, one of the world's greatest virtuosos in the field of classical music, landed in Israel.

With Rubinstein, who was 67 at the time, his daughter Hava, an 18-year-old ballet dancer, also arrived, and hundreds of fans waited for him at Lod Airport, including his close friends, such as the painter Reuven Rubin and his wife, many Philharmonic orchestra members and relatives he had not met In 1934, during the British Mandate.

Rubinstein arrived in Israel with a cold and fluid, and asked his hosts for "a cup of hot tea and a comfortable bed to sleep in."

He was astonished to hear that the first rehearsal for the recital with his participation would take place that day at 11:00 in the morning, and that in the evening the first performance in front of an audience would take place.

He was to play works by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Stravinsky.

Despite his condition, the great pianist did not complain, not even when his Israeli hosts told him that "a continuous series of 18 concerts is planned across the country within three weeks."

However, he demanded to have his cup of tea "here and now, without delay."

Later, around his desk in the restaurant hall at the airport, many journalists gathered, and one of them turned to Rubinstein and asked for his response to the fact that "all the tickets for all your concerts in Israel were sold out within two days of their distribution."

The pianist pondered for a moment and then replied in a low voice: "Just to think that at the age of 21 I was trying to end my life, because I was then very rebellious and thought I was a mediocre pianist who would not succeed in his career."

"Tel Avivians stop spending time"

Nightclub in Tel Aviv, 1951, Photo: Moshe Frieden, GPO

"In a search for the well-known nightlife of the city of Tel Aviv, we find that during this period most Tel Avivians lock themselves in their homes."

This was reported by Maariv newspaper author Haim Levita, who went out for a nightly investigation on the streets of Tel Aviv, equipped on behalf of the newspaper with a "decent budget," as he defined it, but with a ban on "not drinking champagne (champagne; DS) and not paying for the drinking of others." .

"The only place in Tel Aviv where we found signs of life of any kind of entertainment was in the cinemas in the city," Levita wrote.

"In them, for only 750 pennies, the citizen can escape in his thoughts from the hardships of the day, livelihood and subsistence - and take comfort in the arms of an attractive brunette who fills the screen with a technicolor (color; DS), in front of the gray life waiting for him outside the hall."

The economic situation in those days in Israel, and in Tel Aviv in particular, was bad: the government coffers were depleted of foreign currency, imports of many raw materials were frozen, work in some factories slowed down and many workers were sent home.

Minister Dov Yosef, who returned to work at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, recruited thousands of inspectors and volunteers who inspected every citizen's tools, lest they find candy or a chocolate cube in them, whose origin the inspector would conduct an investigation and report to his superiors with details of the wayward citizen.

"The clubs, of those that remained open and which I visited during the night, had only a few pastimes," Levita reported.

"It was obvious that they were dancing wearily and the expression on their faces meant sadness and fatigue."

The school year at the Hebrew University began

On November 14, 1951, the new year of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened in an impressive ceremony - the fourth since the university was forced to abandon its residence on Mount Scopus.

According to the data presented at the ceremony, more than 2,000 students were enrolled in the various faculties leading up to the 1951/2 school year, in 25 buildings throughout the city, and the teaching staff included 254 lecturers and teachers.

The university's annual budget was £ 1.5 million.

The rector, Prof. Moshe Schwava, said at the ceremony that "the government must increase its support, without which Israel will not have the number of teachers, doctors and academics it will need in the coming years."

"Israeli marble is of better quality than that which comes from Italy"

As early as 1949, 14 quarries in Israel merged into one umbrella organization, the purpose of which was to promote the export of Israeli stone products abroad - mainly marble. The organization's chairman, Moshe Abramson, who visited a professional conference in the United States in 1951, Abramson turned to the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Finance, demanding that they help allocate these lines of credit, but encountered a bureaucratic bureaucracy. In mid-November 1951 he Where he announced: "My strength, with this government we will not go abroad from one marble floor."

A stone quarry in the Galilee, 1951, Photo: Avraham Malavsky, JNF Photo Archive

Gift from the UN to Israel: Vouchers for laboratory equipment

At a meeting of the Israel Council of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) on November 18, 1951, it was announced that UNESCO had decided to give Israel a gift - "$ 40,000 purchase vouchers for the purchase of laboratory equipment to be distributed among schools in Israel. The head of the council, Prof. Shmuel Samborsky, stated that "this extraordinary grant is proof of the strength and achievements of the Israeli education system."

The missing / hotels from the past

Roasting the Dead Sea

Roasting Dead Sea Hotel, 1946, Photo: From the "Beitmona" website

A hotel opened in 1938 by a couple of "Yakim" immigrants, Rosa and Harry Levy, and considered the most luxurious and fine of the Middle Eastern hotels, is on a par with the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

Many kings, counts and celebrities came here, enjoyed daily chef meals, bathed in the fine baths, relished cultural and musical events on the terrace facing the Dead Sea, and played on the golf course, which was established in 1942.

Following the armistice agreements with Jordan in 1949, the hotel remained in Jordanian territory and was destroyed by Legion soldiers.

The grocery store / items since

Garden sprinkler

Photo: Nostalgia Online Archive,

A metal fixture that was placed at the time every afternoon and evening in the center of the home garden, with a water pipe connected to its lower part. I was wasted at a time when there was no public awareness of water conservation in the country, until at some point its use was banned in favor of more economical purposes.

DDT no longer affects

Photo: "PikiWiki", Israeli Internet Association,

In mid-November 1951, the Ministries of Agriculture and Health announced that "the pesticide sold by DDT has ceased to have an effect, and its use no longer leads to the hoped-for results."

Ephraim Lebel, director of the Pest War Farm in Rosh Pina, explained: "Unfortunately, the insects have gotten stronger over the years, and I hope we will soon offer a new deadly poison that will overcome them."

The DDT was invented in 1945 and was used worldwide after World War II - until its health damage was discovered.

In Israel, the DDT is remembered in a negative context, after the new immigrants were spray-painted with material when they arrived in Israel (as in photography, from 1950), and some saw it as a traumatic and humiliating experience.

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Do you have pictures or souvenirs from the first days of the country?

Write to us: Yor@ShimurIsrael.Org

Source: israelhayom

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