Tiyul: Nachal Poleg Beach

In the next part of the day MBI went to an amazing museum called Machon Ayalon, which used to be an underground ammunition factory before the independence war. The Hagganah (defense force) asked a group of people who wanted to build a kibbutz to build and operate an ammunition factory underneath. The group dug out an enormous underground hole in just weeks, while the British thought they were building a kibbutz. 40 people would go underground daily just to make bullets. The kibbutz took in laundry as its source of income, and the access to the ammunition factory was under a washing machine that slides to the side to reveal a ladder. All 40 of the original workers were trained to climb down the ladder in record time. They made 250,000 bullets without a single mishap, and bullets were the one thing the Israelis did not run out of during the war of Independence. Visitors today can still walk down the ladder and view the machinery while listening to the story.

After touring the kibbutz/museum they came back and had dinner before their first sikkum peula. Sikkum means summary or wrap-up, and is the term used for the part of the program which will aim to help the MBIers process all that they have done this summer. The first sikkum peula was about looking at MBI and the Habonim Dror movement as a whole and understanding how structures and specific goals sometimes change over time in order to better implement the values that you hold. The feedback from most of the kvutzot afterwards said that the discussions each kvutza had about this went very well.