TWO WORKS
by
Drora Dominey (b. 1950, Kibbutz Merhavia, Israel)
Pavel Wolberg (b. 1966, Leningrad, USSR)
Be’erot Yitzhak is a kibbutz founded in 1943 on the site of today’s Nahal Oz by members of the HaPoel HaMizrachi Movement. Originally an isolated settlement, it served as a staging point for the founding of three new villages as part of the 11 points in the Negev plan — Kfar Darom, Be'eri and Tkuma.
During the War of Independence, the Battle of Be'erot Yitzhak, a military engagement between the Israel Defense Forces and Egyptian army, was fought on July 15, 1948 in the ten-day period between the first and second truces of the war. The kibbutz was heavily shelled, destroyed and nearly occupied. Following the war, the kibbutz was re-established in central Israel.
The damaged water tower, seen here in Drora Dominey’s 2022 work “Braid & Tower”, is the sole remnant of the original kibbutz. The tower, although not the main subject, is visible too in Pavel Wolberg's 2008 panoramic photograph "Fields of Nahal Oz".
