During a celebratory event held this week marking 50 years of Israeli power in Samaria, the Samaria Regional Council revealed the story of the first identity card issued to a Jewish resident of Samaria - Baruch Ben Yosef, who was the first whose registered address appeared as Elon Moreh.
Ben Yosef, who immigrated from the United States Elone at age 16. He joined a group hoping to build a new town, entering initially entered as a tourist to bypass bureaucracy. He later enlisted in the IDF.
On June 24, 1976, he was issued an Israeli identity card in which Elon Moreh was recorded as his place of residence, even though the town did not appear in the official lists at the time.
According to him, when he arrived at the Interior Ministry in Jerusalem, the clerks could not find the town in the records, "I told them there may not be such a place in the book, but I live there. In the end the managers decided that if I live there, they would simply write it by hand."
"Those were the days before computers entered our lives," Ben Yosef recalled, "I had the privilege of being the first Jew with an ID of Samaria."
