As the Dresners came to understand, this mentality was representative of life at Kedumim, which was “filled with fascinating, heartbreaking, and heroic tales of early settlement life on the West Bank”, where they were “living among Israelis that had the truest chalutz ( pioneering) spirit. Sharing, giving, and supporting each other was the key to their existence, as they held strong to their beliefs for making the West Bank a part of
Israel.”82 As this passage suggests, she embedded the narrative of Kedumim within a larger continuity of Zionist settlement and pioneering. At this point, the narrative took a more political, pro-settler turn as Dresner discussed a public speech given by Weiss, suggesting, “I wanted to rejoice at the success of the settlers, at the same time, scream[ing] with anger at the
difficulties they were facing.”83 Including this vignette in the open letter was an interesting choice on the part of the Israel Aliya Center as it was an implicit critique of the lack of government support for settlers, although it was seemingly designed mostly to elicit strong support for the occupied territories. She also made sure to paint a rosy picture not only of general conditions, but of the relationship with surrounding “Arab” villages, stating
that, “At no time during our stay in the community did I feel frightened (as some people, particularly the American press, would have the public believe)”, and cited the various commercial and personal interactions she observed between Palestinians and Jewish settlers.84 She thanked both JAFI and Kedumim for her meaningful summer experience.