Dvorah Drechler, the Pioneering Jewish Soldier Who Died in Battle a Century Ago

March 9 2020

On the Hebrew calendar, Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the battle of Tel Ḥai, a Jewish farming village in the Galilee that was attacked and overrun by Arabs. The date is usually associated with the heroic stand made there by Joseph Trumpeldor, whose remarkable life was the subject of a recent essay in Mosaic. But among the other Jewish fighters who fell in battle was Dvorah Drechler, who in prior years had campaigned for the Zionist self-defense organization Hashomer (“The Watchman”) to allow women to participate in its patrols. Amit Naor writes:

Drechler was born in the Ukraine in 1896. Though hers was the only Jewish family in her village, they nevertheless maintained Jewish traditions and were sympathetic to the “Love of Zion” pre-Herzlian Zionist movement in Russia. In 1913, Drechler arrived in the Land of Israel to join her sister, Ḥayah, who had immigrated several years before and married Eliezer Kroll, a member of Hashomer (“The Watchman”), the Jewish defense organization. Because of her sister and brother-in-law, Dvorah also joined a group of Hashomer members who settled that year in the northern community of Tel Adash, known today as Tel Adashim.

During World War I, despite the fear imposed [on Palestinian Jewry] by the Ottoman regime, [Drechler] made daily visits to Hashomer’s prisoners in Nazareth, bringing them food and information. She also did not hesitate when the group sent her as reinforcement to [the Galilean village of] Kfar Giladi, from which she and Trumpeldor were sent to defend Tel Ḥai.

This was how Drechler came to be at Tel Ḥai and how she found herself assigned to a defensive position on the top floor of the courtyard’s main building. . . . In that top-floor room with Drechler was another woman—Sarah Chizik. According to legend, their bodies were found in an embrace, alongside the three other members of the group who were killed in the room.

Read more at The Librarians

More about: History of Zionism, Jews in the military, Joseph Trumpeldor, World War I

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023