In the synagogue in the Bronx where I grew up, as in most synagogues in the US, there were two flags in the sanctuary, one on each side of the bimah, or central platform.  To the speaker’s right was the flag of the USA and to the left was the flag of the Jewish people, as it was then called.  However, everyone knew in those heady days between the end of World War II and 1948 that it would ultimately become the flag of the nascent State of Israel.

What no one knew or thought much about as we paraded regularly up the Grand Concourse in support of Israeli independence, was the steep cost in human lives that would need to be paid from the first day of the state’s existence.   Even those who did realize that it would be the blood of our young people that would be shed in the long, long fight for the survival of the new state, it was always something that would occur “over there,” or “not to our boys here.”

Sadly, we were all somewhat naïve as it did not take long for an American World War II army veteran to be the very first US casualty in the war for independence.

It was, of course, US Army colonel David Daniel “Mickey” Marcus, a Brooklyn-born attorney who volunteered to assist the newly organized Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He became Israel’s first modern general (Aluf) in nearly 2,000 years, helping to organize the military and break the siege of........

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