Israel, and Going Home
453
Children were treated with such tenderness and devotion,
particularly in the kibbutzim, that I remarked about it. "They
are our most precious possession," I was told at the Children's
Village maintained by the Mizrachi. "They are the future
Israel."
I took hundreds of photographs. Not once was I stopped
or questioned. In Egypt, I remembered ruefully, I had been
arrested twice the first day I attempted to take the most harmless of photographs.
Food was scarce in Israel and expensive. Meat was precious,
a good steak rare. The food at the kibbutzim was nutritious,
though monotonous,