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and the lobby was full of war correspondents. The Army had an informa- tion booth in the lobby for them with news bulletins and AP press releases pinned up for all to see. We had another couple of air raid alerts in Tel Aviv too, but I figured that from my 10th or 11th floor room I'd rather take my chances on falling on top of the heap if we were bombed than to be in the basement with 10 stories of rubble over my head, so I just put my ear plugs in and stayed in bed.

Wednesday we had a free day while our tour leader tried to figure out what could be done with us and to make arrangements. Lod airport had been opened in a limited way and we were supposed to have gone to Cypress next, but the British pilots refused to fly in so that was out. The war also deprived us of an opportunity to visit Galilee and Nazareth in the north near the Golan Heights and Mt. Sinai and other parts in the south, so we just milled around town. I took the occasion to get my hair done again in a more reasonable color than the "Sadat Orange" that I'd acquired in Cairo. One of the other women on the tour with whom I had become quite good friends-the one I'd shared a stateroom with on the Nile- and who felt as I did about Israelis, felt that the only thing we could do to help the war effort, other than to stay out of the way, was to give some blood. So we managed to find a taxi to take us to the main hospital. Here high school students had mobilized to do their part. The boys were gate guards and couriers. The girls were guides to take us to the blood bank and also to take down medical information, keep an eye on us as we rested afterward, drank orange juice and ate cookies. Of course trained technicians actually took the blood. We were impressed with the way everybody pitched in and contributed useful effort without a lot of pan- icky milling around as might occur here. There is a great sense of com- munity in Israel and it certainly showed during this emergency. I'm all for them. Anyone interested in the whole Middle East problem would do well to read "O Jerusalem”, which I did on the trip. It puts the whole past his- tory of the country in perspective and makes it easier to understand today's attitudes on both sides.

To use up time we were taken on a trip around Tel Aviv. I asked our guide, who was of military age, how come he wasn't called up. He said that he was assigned to the Lebanese front and it was not yet active. Apparently they assign men to the Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian or Egyp- tial front depending on where they live. They do their training along those frontiers and thus are familiar with the area in which they may have to serve rather than being assigned to an unfamiliar area. Just another ex- ample of the efficiency and planning with which this country lives. War being an expected contingency rather than an unexpected event, they plan for that too. 75