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In 1948, 20 young Jewish men from Winnipeg went to Palestine to fight for the fledgling Jewish state
Ed. introduction: In 1989 my late brother Matt wrote a story about a gathering of 10 “Machalniks” in Winnipeg. Machal, as the story explains, was short for “Mitnadvei Hutz La’aretz,” volunteers from outside the country.
Machalniks were men who volunteered to make their way to Palestine and join the Haganah in Israel’s War of Independence.
By MATT BELLAN
August 2, 1989
When Al Chapnick visits Israel, he avoids Jerusalem.
The Winnipeg insurance salesman has visited the Jewish state three times in the past 40 years.
On one trip he spent a half hour in Israel’s capital and left… and that was it.
Chapnick has vivid, painful memories of fighting from house to house in Jerusalem during Israel’s War of Independence.
“It overhangs you for the rest of your life,” he explains, his voice trembling slightly. “The thing I remember is having to cover dead victims with lime because the smell was atrocious.”
Chapnick and seven other Winnipeg Jews are known as Mahalniks, an acronym for the Hebrew title the Israeli government assigned foreign volunteers who fought for Israel during the War of Independence.
The letters in Machal stand for “Mitnadvei Hutz La’aretz,” volunteers from outside the country.
The Jewish War Veterans of Canada, Winnipeg Post, in cooperation with the General Monash branch of the Royal Canadian Legion last month, held a dinner at the Legion’s Main Street, headquarters, partly to honour Winnipeg’s eight living Machalniks, and Eddie Kaplansky, a Machalnik from Winnipeg now living in Haifa.
It was the first time, the Machalniks claimed, that an organization in Winnipeg’s Jewish community had come forward to commemorate their sacrifices for Israel.
TOLD THEIR STORIES
The honorees took turns speaking briefly at the microphone set up at one end of the long banquet table, and in interviews later, several told their stories.
In early 1948, only a few months after the United Nations voted to establish a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine, recruiters were fanning out around the world.
Their mission: to enlist volunteers to serve in the Haganah, Palestine’s Jewish Defence forces, when Israel came into being on May 15.
In Canada, Jewish businessmen, lawyers and war heroes spearheaded the recruitment effort.
Enlisting Canadian Jews to fight in Palestine wasn’t illegal, but the recruiters usually held their meetings quietly, to avoid attracting the Canadian government’s attention.
The British were still in charge in Palestine. Recruiters for various fighting groups in Palestine, including the Irgun, were passing through Winnipeg.
The Irgun was already famous for its attacks on British military targets. Tying to recruit Canadian Jewish boys for such efforts might force the Canadian government to clamp down, organizers of the recruitment drive feared.
Sid Winston, commander of the Jewish War Veterans’ Winnipeg Post, was the secretary for the General Monash branch in the late 1940s and witnessed the Haganah recruitment sessions in Winnipeg’s Hebrew Sick Benefit Association on Selkirk Avenue.
“These fellows came through, and we didn’t even know their names.” he recalls. “We never took minutes.”
The recruiters preferred single men with combat experience.
“A fellow named John Secter did the recruiting out west,” recalls Jack Hurtig, Winnipeg businessman, who grew up in Edmonton.
First, Secter made contact with heads of all Jewish communities across Western Canada.
“They called a meeting, but didn’t say what it was about,” Hurtig says. In Edmonton, Secter told us “what was happening in Palestine under the British. He asked us who was going to go and who wasn’t …”
Hurtig was only 17, but had studied to be an astronautical engineer, and served as a student navigator during the war.
Like many other Canadian Jews who signed up to fight for Israel, Hurtig hadn’t been an active Zionist, but “they felt they had a job to do and they went.”
Al Chapnick was 18 in 1948 and a member of Young Judaea in Winnipeg.
The British had placed a strict ban on Jewish immigration to Palestine. The British had also advised Canada, the U.S. and other countries to interrogate people at border crossings and turn them back if they were heading for Palestine,.
Chapnick, like other recruits, embarked on a long, harrowing, and complicated journey to get around the ban on immigration.
To reduce suspicion that they were heading for Palestine, Haganah agents sent recruits from eastern Canada to cross the border south of Vancouver, and western Canadians to Niagara Falls.
When Chapnick got off the train in Niagara Falls, he used his “cover story.” He informed customs officials he was going to visit relatives in New York City.
Someone contacted him at Grand Central Station and directed him to a hotel where he found 31 other young Canadian Haganah recruits sitting in a room.
The recruits headed two at a time to a boat that has served as a cargo carrier during the war.
Arriving in Le Havre, France they looked for the Haganah contact who would meet them.
“She did,” Chapnick remembers. “It was a 14-year-old girl. She had tickets for all 31 of us, took pictures of all of us, and had train tickets for Paris. Then, another contact picked us up, took us to a restaurant in the Jewish quarter and, from there, somebody took us by train to Marseilles.
“Then trucks took us to DP camps, and there, we were given false identities of people killed during the war.”
At a port outside Marseilles,, a fishing boat designed for a crew of four picked up Chapnick and 155 other recruits for the final leg of the journey.
“It took 16 days to cross the Mediterranean. We couldn’t go too far offshore. There were no lifejackets, no lifeboats.”
Two months after starting his trip in Winnipeg, Chapnick arrived in Palestine.
But as the illegal immigrants got off the boat the British authorities interned them in a camp, intending to ship them to Cyprus.
Chapnick and three others escaped the next day and one of the three, an American, escorted them to a kibbutz where he had contacts
“We stayed there till the British didn’t have any authority in the country,” Chapnick continues.
In June 1948 he joined the Haganah, signing up for the English-speaking Seventh Brigade under a commander from Toronto.
As Calgary historian David Bercuson recounts in “The Secret Army,” a book about the Machalniks, Israel’s War of Independence was a long, exhausting struggle for Jewish survival. It started in May 1948 and didn’t formally end until June 1949.
More than 5000 foreign volunteers signed up to fight for Israel alongside about 43,000 men and women in the Haganah’s commando unit, the Palmach.
Opposing Israel were about 100,000 Arab soldiers from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Palestinian Arabs.
The British equipped the Jordanians and Egyptians well, shipping them millions of dollars worth of weapons in early 1948 and the Iraqis were also well armed.
“The Egyptians came up from the south, as far as Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv,” Chapnick recalls. The Jordanians got as far west as Tulkarm, (about 10 miles from the Mediterranean Sea, north of Tel Aviv), and the Lebanese as far south as the Jezreel Valley in southern Galilee.
“We were infantry, we tried to liberate as much of the country as we could, defend kibbutzim, and so on…”
A month later Chapnick was transferred to an “antitank platoon.”
“I was on a half track,” he says.That group liberated the whole Gail, north of Haifa. “We were all over. We captured Beer Sheva on my birthday – I’ll never forget that day.”
(To be continued.)
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Volatility, Hit Frequency, and RTP: Why the Number Casinos Advertise Is the Least Useful One
The return to player percentage looks clean as a casino data point. It gives players a neat number, usually around 94% to 97% for many online slots, and that number feels easy to compare. A 96.5% game appears better than a 95.2% game. The problem starts when players treat RTP as a forecast for their next 50 spins or one evening.
You may find the RTP listed on slot pages on a leading online casino in Ontario, but the number only tells part of the story. Two games can share the same RTP and create different sessions: one may return small wins often, while the other may drain a balance before one bonus round changes everything.
The RTP Trap
Return to player (RTP) measures the theoretical share of total wagers a game returns across a very large number of rounds. In plain terms, a 96% RTP slot returns about $96 for every $100 wagered in the long run. That does not mean one player who deposits $100 should expect $96 back.
The trap sits in the word “theoretical.” RTP comes from the game’s math model. It works across huge samples, not personal sessions. A player can finish far above that percentage, far below it, or with nothing left after a short run of poor results.
Is it useless then? No, RTP can still help. It gives a baseline cost of play. Lower-RTP games cost more on average than higher-RTP games. Still, once a game passes a reasonable threshold, the next question matters more: how does it distribute that return?
Hit Frequency: The Number That Shapes Session Feel
Hit frequency tells you how often a game produces a winning outcome. This often misleads players because any win can count. A spin that returns $0.10 on a $1 bet may still count as a hit, even though the player lost $0.90 in real terms.
A game can feel active because symbols connect often, sounds play, and the screen keeps celebrating small returns. The balance may still fall. In many modern slots, “win” does not always mean profit on the spin.
Hit frequency answers one practical question: how much silence can you tolerate? Some players dislike long dry spells. Others accept quieter sessions because they chase bonus rounds or larger payouts.
The educational site Get Gambling Facts gives a useful distinction: RTP concerns the percentage of money returned over time, while hit frequency concerns how often a machine stops on a winning combination.
Volatility: The Risk Label Players Need More Often
Volatility, also called variance, describes how unevenly a game pays. Low-volatility games tend to return smaller amounts more often. High-volatility games hold more value in rare events: bonus rounds, premium symbols, multipliers, or jackpots.
Here is where RTP becomes less useful on its own:
- A 96% low-volatility slot may give modest returns and longer play from the same balance.
- A 96% high-volatility slot may burn through funds quickly unless the player hits a strong feature.
- A progressive jackpot game may look exciting, but it often places more value on rare top prizes.
The same RTP can hide very different risk profiles. Players who ignore volatility often blame the casino or the game when the session follows its math design.
Why the Same RTP Can Feel So Different
Picture two slots with 96% RTP. Slot A pays small wins on many spins, has a modest top prize, and rarely creates dramatic balance swings. Slot B pays less often but offers a large max win and volatile bonus rounds. The advertised return matches, but the experience does not.
Slot A may suit a player who wants a slower bankroll drop and more regular feedback. Slot B suits someone who accepts sharper losses in exchange for a shot at a heavier payout.
A Better Way to Read a Slot Page
Most slot pages give players more clues than they notice. The trick is to read the details together rather than chase the highest percentage.
Start with RTP. If two games look similar, the higher number has better long-term value. Then check volatility. If the game uses terms such as high, very high, or extreme variance, lower your bet size or expect shorter sessions. Next, look at the paytable. A huge max win usually means the game saves a lot of its value for rare outcomes.
A sensible pre-play check looks like this:
- RTP: What is the average long-term return?
- Volatility: How rough can the session become?
- Hit frequency: How often will the game show any wins?
- Paytable: Where does most value sit?
To Conclude
Casinos advertise RTP because it looks objective, tidy, and easy to rank. Players should read it, but they should not give it more authority than it deserves. For long sessions, volatility may matter more than a small RTP difference. For comfort, hit frequency may explain the feel better than the payback rate.
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The Popularity of Simpler Slot Games in 2026: Review From Casino Online CrazyTower Experts
Online casinos now fill their libraries with numerous video slots that have dozens of functions, long bonus rounds, complex mechanics, and so on. Interestingly, despite this huge range of modern options, many Canadian visitors at sites like Casino Online CrazyTower here https://crazytower.com/ca/ no longer want complicated gameplay that requires constant attention and long explanations.
Simpler slots now attract a wider audience because they save time and create faster sessions. So, let’s figure out why this change happened and reasons for the popularity of simpler machines.
Why Many Players Are Returning to Basic Gameplay
Modern websites like Casino Online CrazyTower pushed complex video slots for years, but many people now prefer classic formats again. Simple gameplay has fewer interruptions and is simpler in terms of budgeting, which is important when you gamble for fun.
These are a few potential reasons explain why simpler slots became popular again in 2026:
- Faster rounds. Symbols appear quickly, and rounds continue without long animations or extended bonus sequences.
- Easier controls. Most classic slots have simple menus and familiar layouts that don’t confuse new visitors.
- Smaller feature lists. Simple slots usually have standard wilds, scatters, and multipliers instead of dozens of random mechanics.
- Better session flow. People spend more time on gameplay instead of reading explanations about symbols and special functions.
- Lower visual pressure. Simpler slots use calmer designs and shorter effects that don’t overload attention.
Classic gameplay also suits mobile devices better because shorter rounds work well on smaller screens. Plus, many visitors now prefer games that start instantly and explain their mechanics within seconds.
Features That Make Simpler Slots Appealing
Simple machines at Casino Online CrazyTower and similar websites continue to attract attention because they have a high gameplay speed. Many classic titles also replicate older casino machines that people already know from physical casinos.
However, these aren’t the only factors that attract gamblers. So, check out this list:
- Short bonus rounds. Free spins and multipliers finish quickly instead of interrupting gameplay for several minutes.
- Common and standard paylines. Traditional layouts help people understand payouts without long explanations.
- Faster loading times. Simpler graphics reduce waiting time on phones, tablets, and older computers.
- Stable gameplay pace. Long cutscenes and constant pop-up notifications don’t interrupt the session.
- Traditional themes. Fruit symbols, bars, sevens, and classic casino designs still attract large audiences.
- Smaller menus. Important information appears immediately without complicated tabs or hidden sections.
Modern video slots often contain too many mechanics in a single game. Developers now combine expanding reels, random modifiers, mission systems, tournaments, and multiple bonus levels in one title. Many visitors lose interest because gameplay turns repetitive and overloaded with constant interruptions.
Compare this to a session when you get results immediately and aren’t interrupted. These still have free spins and even mini risk games, but not as loaded as innovative titles.
Conclusion
Simple slots usually create better replay value because people understand the mechanics immediately. Common and standard gameplay doesn’t cause frustration and allows faster decisions during casino sessions.
Many classic slots also function better during short breaks because rounds finish quickly without long bonus interruptions. That’s why simpler slots became popular again at many casinos, including Casino Online CrazyTower and such.
