Hill 24 Doesn't Answer

Hill 24 Doesn't Answer, the first feature film produced in Israel, is a 1955 Israeli war film directed by Thorold Dickinson. It was entered into the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. The plot revolves around the personal stories of a number of soldiers who are on their way to defend a strategic hill overlooking the road to Jerusalem. Plot In 1948, just four hours and 45 minutes before a ceasefire takes effect, Captain Yehuda Berger instructs four volunteers - James Finnegan, an Irish former British policeman (who fell in love with a Jewish woman named Miriam Miszrahi); Allan Goodman, a tourist from the USA who fell in love with the struggle to found Israel; David Airan; and (at her insistence) Esther Hadassi (a Yemeni Jewish woman) - to take and hold the strategic "Hill 24", one of a number of hills dominating the highway into Jerusalem. Afterward, Finnegan relates how he first met Berger in 1946, two years before the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, while serving as a British policeman in Haifa. In a flashback, Finnegan is part of the police force rounding up Jews who came ashore in British-controlled Mandatory Palestine illegally at night. Finnegan finds an ailing Berger and Miriam Miszrahi, and goes to find medical help for Berger. He is relieved to learn that the pair escaped. Berger is a concentration camp survivor who arrived in Palestine illegally during the British Mandate period and joined the Jewish Brigade group to help other Jews make Aliyah Bet. Later Finnegan and Berger encounter one another at a checkpoint, where Berger is identified. Finnegan's superior lets Berger go, ordering Sergeant Finnegan to follow him and apprehend his associates. Berger spots the police tailing him and flees. The two policemen follow him all the way to an apartment, which turns out to be Miriam's, but Berger manages to get away. When Miriam gets home, she finds the police in her apartment. Miriam, a fourth generation local resident studying to be a teacher, is taken in for questioning and detained under the Emergency Defence Regulations. She is questioned about her relationship with Berger and the Jewish Underground. As she is being questioned Berger, who has been apprehended, is brought into the station.