This small, plain-covered book with the title A Pocket Guide Against Air-Raid Attacks was published in the Hebrew year of 5701, between 1940 and 1941. On the surface, it’s unremarkable. This was the middle of World War Two, and recent events had made such a guide necessary.

The skies over the Land of Israel were no longer safe. In the summer of 1940, residents of Haifa heard air raid sirens for the first time. A sound that would become familiar to generations of Israelis in the decades that followed. As it sadly does to this day.

Italy, under Mussolini and allied with Nazi Germany, had entered the war in June 1940. Within weeks, Italian bombers began targeting British-controlled Mandatory Palestine.

On 15 July 1940, five Italian bombers struck installations in Haifa, setting fire to three oil storage tanks and damaging one of the city’s power stations. One Arab civilian was killed.

Ten Italian bombers returned on 24 July, dropping fifty bombs on eastern Haifa and its oil infrastructure, starting huge fires and blocking the refinery’s........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)