INDEPENDENCE DAY -  4 (1952)

The stamps in this series commemorate sites of decisive battles in Israel’s War of Independence in combination with flower motifs.

YAD MORDECHAI

Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, which is situated in the south of Israel, on the road between Gaza and Ashkelon, was founded in 1943 and named after Mordecai Anilewicz, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Germans in 1943. In Israel’s War of Independence, when the Egyptians invaded the country, they immediately attacked Yad Mordechai. After bitter fighting the settlement fell to them on May 23, 1949. A few months later the kibbutz was liberated by Israel forces.

Depicted on the stamp are a thistle and the shell-ridden water tower of the kibbutz.

DEGANYAH

At the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, Deganyah, the "Mother of the Kvutzot, " guards the outflow of the Jordan. Established in 1909, Deganyah is beautiful village sheltering amid tropical gardens. Near its perimeter lies a burnt-out Arab tank to remind us that the hopes of the Syrians of repeating the Battle of the Yarmuk were shattered on the fences of Deganyah. The inscription of the Independence Day issue, "Nafal Bakrav . . . " (Fallen in Action), honors those who gave their lives on that day.

On the stamp appears the burn-out tank and a cornflower.

SAFED

When the British evacuated Safed, the capital of Upper Galilee, on April 16, 1948, a month before the end of the Mandate, the Jewish quarter was cut off, and only small detachments managed to get through. Arabs kept shelling the Jewish quarter, which had no weapons to speak of. The capture of the town by Haganah forces just three days before the proclamation of Israel’s independence, was one of its most astounding victories.

The stamp shows a tombstone in Safed’s military cemetery with the inscription (in Hebrew) "Fell in action." The flower seen on the stamp is a red anemone, a flower which overruns the fields of Galilee in Spring.