(157A) October 1938: At the beginning of a new Hebrew year the first 'legal' immigrants arrive at the newly constructed port of Tel Aviv from SS Polonia.

(182A) June 1939: After the publication of the British Government's White Paper on Jewish Immigration to Palestine in May 1939 (which in effect reversed the principles outlined in the Balfour Declaration of encouraging the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine) the Jews rapidly responded by establishing a whole set of new settlements in North Galilee. The purpose of these was to stake a claim to the limits of the national home in the north of Eretz Israel in defiance of British Policy and to ensure that if it came to a fight then Jewish communities would be established in all the extremities of the national homeland. This complete newsreel story shows the establishment of a new settlement called Metzudat Ussishkin in north Galilee. It shows the settlers setting off at dawn in lorries with pre-fabricated buildings, digging foundations and constructing houses. Present are the British District Commissioner for North Palestine (it is not at all clear why he should be there) R Weiss from the Jewish Agency, Ussishkin himself who plants a tree (the elderly President of the Jewish National Fund after whom this settlement was named) and several members of the Palestine Police. Several Palestinians look on, one man signs away his land with a thumbprint, the statutory meal is cooked by Arab women and eaten by new settlers and old residents before the cameras (this show of camaraderie was staged almost every time a new settlement went up).

Extracts from a series of newsreels produced for the Jewish audience in Palestine, 1929-1947.

Notes

Documentation/associated material: Axelrod catalogue (held in photocopy form by Film and Video Archive).

Remarks: a classic piece of film of the establishment of a 'tower and stockade' settlement for political motives.

Summary: see interviews with Yosef Avidar (PAL 152) and Dr Ranaan Weitz (PAL 281) for an explanation of the thinking behind the establishment of new settlements in the national homeland.