34 The Kibbutz Hill
Friends of mine persuaded me to go with them to The Kibbutz Hill, a place I had never heard of and whose history sounded as fantastic as the story of the secret cave of 'Chasamba' – to anyone who still remembers it – but it is absolutely real. Next to the Rechovot railway station, not far from the Weizman Institute, at the edge of the Scientific Industrial Park named after Yitzchak Rabin, there is a little hill where time, as it were, stopped, ever since the establishment of the state of Israel. The road out of the industrial park suddenly narrows suspiciously, an iron gate confronts you and when you pass the guard's hut and are surrounded by eucalyptus trees, a few tents and modest houses – you have been thrown back sixty years by a time machine, to the mythological times characterized by words such as 'Palmach', 'Haganah', 'Hachsharah' and 'Maavak'.
On the hill between old huts, clothes wave on laundry lines, remnants of a kibbutz in the 1940's (this image all of us retain as if we had experienced it ourselves). But the laundry and the adjacent bakery exist only to distract attention from what is underground.
Look at this puzzling photo. Note the wonderful gear, the little electric motor behind it and the belt which extends from it. Take a look at the boxes on the floor and the green machine on the left under which a brass perforated belt is hidden. You are looking at the 'Ayalon Institute', the secret project of the military industry before the establishment of the state of Israel. Here, under this ground, more than two million bullets were manufactured in the years between 1946 and 1948 for the Palmach's fabulous "Sten" gun. The Kibbutz above, which served as a training ground for kibbutz members, hid this heroic endeavor from British eyes. As if what they had done near the Kineret was not sufficient, (see my column 'On the Banks of Lake Kineret'), Kibbutz members were also outstanding in the 1940's – to their credit many deeds and projects including the 'Ayalon Institute', on the Kibbutz Hill.
