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The crack of dawn in England instantly changed to early morning in Israel. Michael had moved east toward the rising sun. Judith saw the light had shifted,  and the  terrain as well. The cool beach was gone,  replaced  by warm  desert. Astonished, Judith looked into Michael's eyes and asked, "Who are you, really?"

He said, "I will never lie to you, Judith, but  at this point I think were I to  tell you the entire truth you  would hold me to be absolutely barmy. For now, at the very least, I hope that you consider me a teacher and a friend."

Listening to Michael's words  had an  effect that  Judith could never put into words. She was silent  for many minutes  as her body shook with dry weeping.

Soon they were met in the desert by a  number of Jewish farmers who lived  a  few  miles  inland  from  the  Mediterranean,  at a  kibbutz  founded  by  Polish immigrants  in  1943  named  Yad Mordechai. Lilith could see  the  kibbutz  near at  hand. The settlement lay on the coast  highway only eight miles  north of the city of Gaza  and in later years it was only  two and a half miles outside of the border of the Gaza Strip. Judith spoke no Polish, nor at that point had she even learned Hebrew, which had been revived from extinction. But all she had to do was brandish the tattoo on her forearm, and it was enough  for the pioneers. They were already acquainted with Michael and on good terms.

In the weeks and months that followed, Judith  began to suspect she had been taken to her new  home by an actual  angel of God, perhaps it was even the real Michael, the holy  guardian of the children of Israel. The settlers refused to speak  of Michael, and that first morning  began to  seem like  a dream. But much fighting lay ahead, and it was much more like a nightmare.

For the balance  of 1945,  only  eight small  ships carrying  a thousand  Jewish war  refugees reached  Palestine from  ports in Italy and  Greece. For the first half  of 1946,  another 10,500 immigrants arrived on eleven ships. From August 1946 to December 1947, 51,700  Displaced Persons  tried  to  make their  way  to Palestine on thirty-five ships, but were captured by the British and taken to  new camps  on the  island of  Cyprus, where  they languished behind barbed wire. Many of the armed guards of these camps in Cyprus had liberated  some of the very  same prisoners from the  extermination  camp at  Belsen-Belson  only  eighteen months prior, and they were fully aware of this.

In 1947 the UN proposed the creation of  two independent states in Palestine, one controlled by the Arabs and one Jewish.