To the uninitiated the Hebrew place names may sound complex, Kiryat Shmone, Ein HaShlosha, Ma’ale HaChamisha, Netiv HaLamed He. Maybe they are ancient biblical names. But, to Hebrew speakers the names tell a different story, the story of the history of this Land, the story of murder and of numbers.

Kiryat Shmone is in the far north of Israel near the Lebanese border and means the “City of Eight,” it is named for the eight defenders who were murdered by Arab irregulars in 1920, long before the State was established.  Ein HaShlosha is in southern Israel near the Gaza border and means “Well of the Three” and is named for three young men who were killed by Arabs in 1948 during the War of Independence.  Ma’ale HaChamisha is near Jerusalem and means the “Ascent of the Five” and is named in honor of five young Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, who were ambushed by Arabs in 1936.   Netiv HaLamed He is a kibbutz south west of Jerusalem in the Elah Valley near the Etzion bloc of settlements and means the “Path of the Thirty five.”  It commemorates the 35 young men (lamed he is 35 in Hebrew characters), mostly students at Hebrew University,  who went out on a rescue mission to take supplies to the besieged Jews of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion in 1947 and never made it.  They were discovered en route, surrounded by armed Arabs and massacred.  The Etzion bloc, consisting of three settlements, was one of the few Jewish settlements that were actually captured by the Arabs during the War of Independence. It’s inhabitants were massacred and the survivors were taken into custody by the Jordanian Legion and it was razed to the ground by the Arabs, even the trees were uprooted.  But, it was recaptured in the Six Day War of 1967 and was resettled by the surviving children of the kibbutz.  To the Jews the numbers tell a story of death, destruction and of renewal.