As war between the Arabs and the Jews approached in Palestine in 1948, the Poet Nathan Alterman put into words the tragic understanding of the sacrifices that everyone understood would have to be made for independence. These sacrifices were made by relatively few - mostly the young people who would defend Israel. The poem, The Silver Platter, appeared in Natan Alterman's column, "The seventh column" in Davar newspaper on December 19, 1947.