The U.N. inquiry commission today began a three-day tour of the Galilee district with a visit to Mishmar Haemek (Guardian of the Valley), prosperous Hashomer Hatzair collective, the second oldest of the 47 established by the left-wing Socialist group.
The committee will visit Tiberias, Safad, Dan, Kfar Giladi, Eilon, Acre, Naharia, Nazareth and other towns. They will spend tonight and tomorrow night in Safad, the first time they have slept outside of Kadima House, in Jerusalem, since they reached Palestine.
Mishmar Haemek is the first large well-established kibbutz UNSCOP has seen. It was founded in 1926, and has 650 adult members, and 250 children attending modern grade and high schools. The committee was told that the schools have one teacher for every 15 students and was shown around the schools and the adjoining playing fields. Assistant Secretary-General Victor Hoo signed his name under a picture of him in a history scrapbook.
The delegates spoke to the older children, whose day’s program consists of classes, work and recreation on the lines of the plan made famous in the U.S. by Antioch College. After they had been given lunch, the members visited a nearby J.N.F. forest of 350,000 trees covering 200 acres and paused for a moment before a monument to the 6,000,000 nurdered Jews of Europe.
In a welcoming speech before they toured the settlement, Mordechai Ben Tov, head of the Hashomer Hatzair in Palestine, and a foremost advocate of Jewish-Arab cooperation, told the committee that he hoped that “you will see how much room we have here, how much absorptive and productive capacity is being created and how Arabs and Jews can live together, if left alone. Your decision must take cognizance of the real, essential needs of both peoples of Palestine — a solution must come not by denying, but by giving to each what it needs, “Ben Tov added.
The committee also visited Zichron Yacov, one of the oldest Jewish settlements in Palestine, founded in 1882, and toured the cool cavern-like wine cellars where they tasted the various wines stored in the 20-foot-high vats. They also visited the local synagogue and were given refreshments at long tables set up in the municipal park.
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