the desert. At that time it was extremely perilous to cross the desert alone, on account of predatory beasts and Arab rioters. But a sense of “national mission,” as it was called in those days, presented itself before his eyes as he made the treacherous ascent to Masada. He stood on the mountain facing the Dead Sea and felt close to the rebels and proud of the spiritual strength he found in himself to make it here on his own, evading snakes, Bedouins, and the heat and knowing that despite the dangers he was unafraid.

Yossi returned from his trek ecstatic and exhausted. Traversing the desert, he attained the desideratum of revenge, annihilation, adventure, and zealotry. Through this trip, and others that he took, mostly alone, he taught himselfto be a man of the field, thus laying the foundation for the rules of self-reliance that would serve him all his life. He taught himself not to depend on backup; to know that if something went wrong and you cried out, nobody would hear you; to know how to stand up straight but to recognize that if there was a sudden shift in the desert wind, it was an act of bravery to bend. Yossi and his friends cultivated the image of the fighting Israeli. But the secular Palestinian Yossi from the Boy Scout Legion was also the son of Jerusalem, which was religious, non-Zionist, even partially anti-Zionist for the segment that lived in Palestine as though it were still in the Diaspora. He came from a