One from the GHL (original) (raw)

One from the GHL (Hebrew: אחד מן הגח"ל) is a Hebrew poem, later composed as a song, written by Nathan Alterman during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It refers to the tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors and other Jewish refugees that had immigrated to the newly created state of Israel and were immediately drafted into the IDF and sent to the front lines with no military training. Many of the new recruits died in battle shortly after their immigration to Israel. The name of the draft is G.H.L.- Hebrew acronym for overseas draft. Overall some 20,000 newly arrived immigrants were drafted to the IDF during the war composing a third of the Israeli army manpower, some three hundred of whom died in battle.