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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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5 Ways to Carve Out Gym Time in Your Life
From rewriting your brain and sticking to a disciplined workout regime, find the top 5 ways to carve out adequate gym time in your daily routine.
A Brief Introduction
It can be a hassle to find the time to work out if you are busy with everyday responsibilities. By incorporating a few practical strategies into your daily life, you can start being consistent with your gym routine.
- Remember Your Motivation to Prioritize
If you’re trying to be consistent, you need to know why you started out. People may have different reasons to commit their time to the gym. Be it to build muscles, lose weight, deal with stress, or improve overall health, having a clear vision of your goal will help you stick to it. With your reason to start always on your mind, you will now have a reason to keep showing up, day in and day out. This helps cut out excuses and prioritize your wellbeing.
- Reduce Your Barrier to Start
The more hurdles you keep on your way to start, the harder it will be to continue with your habit. The easy solution is to cut down on the effort it takes to get started. Pick an accessible gym over a fancier one that you would need to go out of your way to visit. By picking a gym along the route of your daily routine, you can seamlessly incorporate working out as part of your day. Be it near your workplace or your home, the location makes hitting the gym convenient.
It also helps if you plan ahead. Be it your preworkout, your protein shake, or other health supplements from flexpharma.is, make sure you are restocking before you run out. Anabolic steroids are possibly one of the most popular items that have methandrostenolone. Injectables, fat burners, and fusion steroids are some of the trending fitness products that have been creating a buzz across the world.
Keep your gym bag ready to go and lay out your workout gear ahead of time so that you are left with no excuses.
- Get a Gym Buddy for Accountability
Nothing helps drive athletes more than having a sense of community and camaraderie. People interested in weight training already know about the importance of a spotter. Having a friend, a partner, or a peer in the gym will help keep you on track to consistency. This also provides a sense of community, making it more rewarding to attend workout sessions regularly and push each other towards breaking new personal records.
- Incorporate Workouts in Your Daily Activities
It is impossible to make it to the gym every day without fail, be it due to work, family, or other responsibilities. For those days, make it a habit to not skip your workouts. There are many home workout videos and apps available that offer a range of exercise options with little to no equipment. You can start with mini-workouts like planks or squats during short breaks. It can even be as simple as going for a quick stroll for five minutes while stuck at work if you are pressed for time. The easiest way to increase your fitness and stamina is through Sermorelin, Semaglutide, and other cutting-edge peptides to start with.
- Rewire Your Brain
Science talks about neuroplasticity and the power of the positive feedback loop. Without having to learn more about cognitive sciences, you can still make use of these hacks to trick your brain into enjoying training. For every achievement, celebrate yourself. Be it a happy shout of victory on breaking a personal record or getting a new flavor of protein bar, with every celebratory action, you reinforce the positive effect of being consistent at the gym. By creating a positive experience, you make it easier for your brain to stay engaged and consistent at the gym.
Conclusion
It takes careful planning to commit to gym life. While hard work is always rewarded in the gym, in order to get to the gym day in and day out, you also need to work smart. By removing the common hurdles and being dedicated, you can make sure you reach your personal wellness goal.
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When will we most likely see an NFL expansion team from Canada?
It’s currently the middle of August, meaning that the biggest sporting show in North America doesn’t start for another three weeks. On September 5, the curtain will come down on the new NFL season as the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs hosts Baltimore Ravens at Arrowfield Stadium.
It’s not just Americans that love football though, the game and in particular the NFL is hugely popular north of the border here in Canada. Every week millions of Canadians tune in to cheer on their favourite teams and keep refresh their phones to find out the latest NFL standings.
What though, are the chances of Canadian NFL fans checking their phones to see how a Canadian team is doing in the standings? Read on to find out.
The History of NFL Expansion into Canada
Broadly there are two camps in Canada when it comes to NFL expansion. Those on one side of the debate claim that they don’t need an NFL team and that having one would cause harm to their own domestic competition.
On the other side of the battlefield are those who claim that the NFL is more popular in Canada than its own domestic league and that it is baffling that millions of Canadians are forced to support American teams when they could be supporting one of their own in the NFL.
Traditionally the second camp has been winning the argument, but only just. Which explains why many attempts for an NFL expansion into the country have failed, as the physical barriers to overcome have been, at times, overshadowed by the ideological ones.
From around 1975 to 2015, there have been numerous attempts to set up a franchise in Canada – particularly in Toronto – but none have taken hold. The closest that we have gotten to NFL action north of the border was when the Buffalo Bills played six regular season games at the Rogers Centre between 2008 to 2013.
(The fans might have loved the Toronto series, but it’s safe to say the Bill’s players didn’t particularly enjoy it.)
What’s Stopping Expansion?
Currently the argument for expansion is gaining momentum, but despite that there are still substantial obstacles to overcome. The key one is that there is no current suitable venue that the NFL see as being able to sustain a franchise.
In terms of supporter numbers, Toronto is the only feasible location for an NFL franchise. With a metropolitan population in excess of 6 million and an estimated football viewing audience of just under a million, it is by far and away the standout contender to host an NFL team.
Unfortunately, The Rogers Centre has since been turned into an exclusively baseball venue since being used as a temporary home for the Bills back in 2013. The next alternative in Toronto is BMO Field, the home of MLS side Toronto FC.
Whilst the 31,000 seater stadium is perfectly serviceable for MLS, its capacity puts it at below half of the average capacity of an NFL stadium (70,000).
What the Future Holds for Canadian NFL Expansion
There are three possibilities for a Canadian NFL expansion. The first is that the 18,000 seat expansion to BMO field for the 2026 FIFA World Cup satisfies the NFL. That would bring the total capacity at the stadium to just under 50,000, which would still make it the smallest stadium in the NFL but only by around 10,000 seats.
Or, that the stadium can be further expanded to bring it into line with other NFL venues and thus remove one huge obstacle to expansion. The other alternative is that work begins on a purpose built venue with the backing of local businessman and American entrepreneurs who are keen to see NFL played regularly in Canada.
Potential Timeframes
If the first two stadium possibilities are possible then we could see a Toronto based NFL team at the end of the decade. That’s a best case scenario. The most likely however is that BMO Field is deemed unsuitable for the NFL, leaving another venue to be found.
Unfortunately, 70,000 seater stadiums aren’t cheap and finding someone to finance a project of that size without the guarantee of an NFL franchise is highly unlikely. Until then, it looks like we’ll have to continue backing our own domestic league and enjoying the NFL from afar…
Features
Common Online Casino Mistakes To Avoid
Online casino games can be a brilliant way to bring excitement to life in your spare time. These games have become hugely popular in recent years, but you will find that people often make the same mistakes. These mistakes can lead to financial losses, cybercrime, and an inferior experience, so it is important to be aware of what these mistakes are so that they can be avoided. This post will outline a few of the most common mistakes people make when playing online casino games and explain how to avoid falling into the same trap. Interested? Keep reading to find out more.
Ignoring Terms & Conditions
One of the biggest mistakes players make with online casino games is ignoring the terms and conditions. You should always take the time to read through these, paying close attention to things like the conditions of bonuses and restrictions in withdrawals. This will help you avoid any nasty surprises when playing games.
Not Researching Casinos
Another common mistake people make is not researching casinos. There are endless options for online casinos, but not all are equal, and there are even many that are unlicensed. Therefore, you need to research casinos and find one that is fully licensed and has positive reviews. The best casinos will have a massive selection of games to choose from, including blackjack online. A wide selection of games means it is hard to get bored, and you can always find something to play.
Chasing Losses
One of the most dangerous mistakes people make is chasing losses. This is where players will attempt to win back the money they have lost, which often means betting larger sums. This is a dangerous tactic and a slippery slope, so it is important to be aware of it and take measures to protect against it. The best way to avoid chasing losses is to set a budget before each session – if you spend that amount, you need to be able to walk away.
Not Understanding Games
It is always important to have a strong understanding of the game that you are playing. This will boost your chances of winning and your gaming experience. Therefore, you should always read the instructions when playing a game for the first time. For strategic games like poker, there is a lot of information online that will help you get to grips with the basics and learn strategies to use.
Weak Passwords
Cybersecurity needs to be a top priority when it comes to online casino games. The top casinos will have strong cybersecurity measures in place, but you also have a role to play. It is important to use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication to prevent hackers. It is also smart to avoid having large sums held in your online account in case someone hacks your account.
These are the most common mistakes that you will want to avoid when it comes to online casino games. By avoiding these mistakes, you can improve your experience and enjoy the excitement that these games can bring.