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Dec 9, 2020

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This post tells a fascinating piece of Israeli history that I never heard before.. I will translate below the post




Translation:
Because I was leading a group in the Ayalon Valley - Canada Park - which was crowded with many tourists focusing on the battles of the Chashmonaim in the area, I decided to focus on a lesser known battle - the battle of the tractors.
In Cheshvan 5725 (1965), a shmitta year, the main fighting over the Ayalon Valley took place. On Shabbos Parshas Noach Jordanian tractors faced off against Israeli tractors for a number of days, each trying to establish its control and ownership over the territory.

 The Jordanians had planned to operate their tractors on Shabbos to set facts on the ground and take advantage of the time that the Jews could not plow the land.

The Rav of Shaalavim, Rav meir Shlezinger, consulted with Rav Goren who paskened that the kibbutz members should go out and plow the land on Shabbos during the shmitta year, as Chazal paskened that the city adjacent to a field, even if they come out against for issues of hay and straw and not to kill people - one goes out against them fighting with weapons and desecrating Shabbos.

After a short gun battle in the area, quiet returned to the no man's land, and historically the incident became known as the battle of the tractors.

A little while later Jordanian documents were discovered that showed plans to conquer the kibbutz and kill everyone within.

The rav of the yishuv claimed that the Rebbe of Chabad, the farmers of Shaalavim did the right thing, though it is a chiddush. I have been told by people from the yishuv that Rav Shlomo Zalan Auerbach also heard about the incident at the time and said the farmers did the right thing.


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3 comments:

  1. Just WOW!
    There's nothing more to say.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Truly a beautiful piece of history! They acted like real Yehudim, B'H!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Famous story for those of us who live in Emek Ayalon :)

    ReplyDelete

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