Exodus

Then the first flaw was spotted.

A civilian automobile was logged as leaving the Schneller compound area between midnight and one o’clock in the morning about three times each week, returning to the compound just before daylight. There was only a driver in the car and he was dressed as a civilian. The regularity of the movement of this automobile during such unusual hours made it automatically suspect.

The Maccabee team went to work to find the registry of the owner, who turned out to be a wealthy Arab family. Thereupon the Maccabees decided that the car must belong to someone working with the British on the Arab side and gave it up as a possible device for getting to Haven-Hurst.

Meanwhile reports on Arnold Haven-Hurst’s personal background, conduct, and habits were compiled and studied. The Maccabees knew he was an ambitious man who had made an important marriage. The marriage gave him station as well as money and he had never endangered it. Haven-Hurst was considered the epitome of a proper gentleman in his social life; he was considered, in fact, a rather dull bore.

Probing beneath this apparent circumspect surface, the Maccabees discovered that Haven-Hurst had had not one, but several, extramarital affairs. In the Maccabees were people who had served in the British Army under Haven-Hurst years before. Camp rumors always had him with a mistress.

A theory developed that Haven-Hurst could well have been very lonely locked in the compound. Because of his marriage and position he would not dare to bring a woman into the camp. He could possibly be going out to a mistress. The idea was put forward that Haven-Hurst was an unseen passenger in the mystery car and was regularly traveling between the compound and a woman.

It seemed preposterous even to the Maccabees, yet until the mystery car was properly identified it could not be cast away. Who could the mistress of Arnold Haven-Hurst be? There were no rumors to be checked upon. If he had a love nest he had concealed it with great skill. No Jewess would risk living with him, and there were no Englishwomen available. This left only an Arab woman.

To attempt to follow the car would have risked detection and alerting of the quarry. It would have been possible for the Maccabees to waylay the single car traveling late at night, but the command decided that if there were the least chance that Haven-Hurst was a passenger it would be better to discover his destination and catch him at an indiscretion.

They worked from the other direction, the owner of the car. In this family of Arab effendis was a young woman who in beauty, education, and background could qualify as an attraction for a man like Haven-Hurst. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together.

The Maccabees watched the Arab family house and constantly trailed the girl. On the second night, their persistence paid off. The girl left her home at midnight and made for a house in the rich Arab El Baq’a section of Jerusalem near the Hebron-Bethlehem Road. A half hour after she arrived the mystery automobile pulled up and the Maccabees were able to catch a fleeting glimpse of General Arnold Haven-Hurst rushing from the back of the car to keep his rendezvous.

At three o’clock that same morning Haven-Hurst was awakened by a voice in the darkness which shouted out a bloodcurdling quotation, “Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel!”

He leaped from the bed. The Arab woman shrieked as Maccabee bullets raked the room.

Later that morning British headquarters received a phone call from the Maccabees. The British were advised where they could find their late commander. They were further advised that the demise of Arnold Haven-Hurst had been well photographed. If the British brought undue retribution against the Yishuv, the Maccabees would publish the pictures.

Headquarters speculated on the effect of the scandal of one of their generals being murdered in the bed of his Arab mistress. They decided to cover up the entire affair with public announcements that he had died in an automobile accident.

The Maccabees agreed that Haven-Hurst indeed was the victim of an automobile accident.

With the general gone from the scene the terrorist activity

dwindled. The pending arrival of the United Nations committee lay an uneasy calm over the land.

In late June of 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, known as UNSCOP, arrived in Haifa. The neutrals represented Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Peru, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Iran, and India.

The odds were long against the Jews. Iran was a Moslem country. India was partly Moslem and its delegate was a Moslem as well as representing a British Commonwealth nation. Canada and Australia were also of the British Commonwealth. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, in the Soviet bloc, had a traditional history of anti-Zionism. The South American representatives, Uruguay, Peru, and Guatemala, were Catholic in predomination and could possibly be influenced by the Vatican’s lukewarm feeling toward Zionism. Only Sweden and the Netherlands could be considered fully nonpartisan.

None the less, the Yishuv welcomed UNSCOP.

The Arabs opposed the presence of the United Nations. Inside Palestine a general strike of the Arabs was called, demonstrations were held, and the air was filled with oaths and threats. Outside of Palestine the Arab countries began riots and blood pogroms against their Jews.

Barak Ben Canaan, the old warrior and negotiator, was once again pressed into service by the Yishuv. He joined Ben Gurion and Dr. Weizmann on the advisory committee to UNSCOP.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Kitty and Karen returned to Gan Dafna. Kitty waited for the right moment to have it out with Karen. When the letter from Dov Landau arrived, she decided to delay it no longer.

Kitty poured a lemon rinse over Karen’s head and wrung out her long, thick brown hair and rubbed the girl’s head briskly with a big towel.

“Phew,” Karen said, taking a corner of the towel to wipe the soap from her eyes.

The water boiled in the teakettle. Karen got up and tied the towel around her head and brewed a pot of tea. Kitty sat at the kitchen table filing her fingernails. She began to paint them carefully with polish.

“What’s bothering you?” Karen said disarmingly.

“Good Lord, I’m not even allowed the privacy of my own thoughts.”

“Something is wrong. Something’s been wrong since you came back from your trip to the Sea of Galilee. Did something happen between you and Ari?”

“Plenty happened between me and Ari but that’s not what is disturbing me. Karen, we have to have a talk about us, and our futures. I guess we’d better do it right now.”

“I don’t understand.”

Kitty waved her hands to dry her fingernails. She stood up and lit a cigarette awkwardly. “You know how much you mean to me and how much I love you?”

“I think so,” the girl whispered.

“Since that first day at Caraolos I’ve wanted you to be my girl.”

“I’ve wanted it that way too, Kitty.”

“Then you’ll believe that I have thought this all out carefully and what I want to do is for your own good. You must have faith in me.”

“I do … you know that.”

“What I am about to say will be hard for you to appreciate fully. It is hard for me to come to this, too, for I am very fond of many children here and I have grown quite attached to Gan Dafna. Karen, I want to take you home to America with me.”

The girl stared at Kitty as though she had been slapped. For a moment she did not even understand or believe she had heard it right.

“Home? But … but this is my home. I have no other home.”

“I want your home to be with me-always.”

“I want that too, Kitty. I want it more than anything. It is so strange.”

“What is, dear?”

“When you said home, in America.”

“But I am an American, Karen, and I miss my home.”

Karen bit her lip to keep from crying. “That’s funny, isn’t it? I thought we would go on like we were. You would be at Gan Dafna and …”

“And you would go off into the Palmach … and then to some kibbutz out on a border?”

“I guess that’s what I thought.”

“There are many things I have learned to love here, but this is not my country and these are not my people.”

“I guess I have been selfish,” Karen said. “I never thought of you as getting homesick or wanting anything for yourself.”

“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Karen poured two cups of tea and tried to think. Kitty was everything to her … but leave?

“I don’t know how to say it, Kitty, but ever since I was old enough to read in Denmark I’ve asked myself the question about being Jewish. I still don’t know the answer. I only know that I have something here that is mine … no one is going

to take it from me. Whatever it is, it’s the most important thing in the world. Someday I might know the words for it-but I can’t leave Palestine.”

“Whatever you have, you will still have it. Jews in America and I suppose Jews everywhere have this same belonging that you have. Going away won’t change that.”

“But they are exiles.”

“No, baby … don’t you understand that Jews in America love their country?”

“The Jews of Germany loved their country too.”

“Stop it!” Kitty cried suddenly. “We are not that kind of people and I will not listen to those lies they fill you with!” She caught herself quickly. “There are Jews in America who love their country so much they would prefer death to ever living to see what happened to Germany come to America.” She walked up behind the girl’s chair and touched her shoulder. “Don’t you think I know how difficult this is for you? Do you believe I would do anything to hurt you?”

“No,” Karen whispered.

Kitty faced Karen and knelt before her chair. “Oh, Karen. You don’t even know the meaning of peace. In all your life you have never been able to walk in the light of the sun without fear. Do you think it will be any better here? Do you think it will ever be better? Karen, I want you to go on being a Jew and I want you to go on loving your land, but there are other things I want for you too.”

Karen turned her eyes away from Kitty.

“If you stay here you’ll spend your whole life with a gun in your hands. You’ll turn hard and cynical like Ari and Jordana.”

“I guess it isn’t fair of me to have expected you would stay.”

“Come with me, Karen. Give us both a chance. We need each other. We’ve both had enough suffering.”

“I don’t know if I can leave … I don’t know … I just don’t,” she said with a shaky voice.

“Oh, Karen … I want so much to see you in saddle shoes and pleated skirts, going out to a football game in a cut-down Ford. I want to hear the phone ringing and you giggling and talking to your boy friend. I want you full of delicious nonsense as a teenage girl should be-not carrying a gun in your hands or smuggling ammunition. There are so many things that you are missing. You must at least find out they are in the world before you make your final decision. Please, Karen … please.”

Karen was pale. She walked away from Kitty. “What about Dov?”

Kitty took Dov’s letter from her pocket and handed it to

Karen. “I found this on my desk. I don’t know how it got there.”

Mrs. Fremont:

This letter is being written by someone who knows more better how to say in English than I do but copy it to show it is my writing. This letter must be sent to you in a special way for reasons you know of. I am very busy these days. I am with friends. My friends are the first 1 have in a long time and they are real good friends. Now that I am permanent situated, I want to write to you and to say how glad 1 am not to be at Gan Dafna no more where everybody makes me sick, including you and Karen Clement. 1 write to say 1 won’t see Karen Clement no more as I am too busy and with real friends. I don’t want Karen Clement to think I am going to come back and take care of her. She is nothing but a kid. I have a real woman of my own age and we live together and everything. Why don’t you go with Karen Clement to America because she doesnt belong here.

Dov Landau

Kitty took the letter from Karen’s hand and ripped it to shreds. “I will tell Dr. Lieberman that I am resigning. As soon as we can straighten up matters here we will book passage to America.”

“All right, Kitty. I’ll go with you,” Karen said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Every few weeks the Maccabee high command changed its headquarters. After “Hell’s Fortnight” and the assassination of Arnold Haven-Hurst, Ben Moshe and Akiva thought it would be best to get out of Jerusalem for a while. The Maccabees were a small organization, a few hundred full-time members and a few thousand part-time with a few thousand more sympathizers. Because they had to remain constantly on the move the headquarters command group carried no more than a half dozen of the top men. Now the pressure was so great that the command split up and only four persons went to Tel Aviv. There was Akiva and Ben Moshe and Nahum Ben Ami, the brother of David, and there was Little Giora-Dov Landau. Dov had become a personal favorite of Akiva. He had gained the inner circle of the Maccabee command by his fame in the raids and by the usefulness of his talents in forgery.

The four moved into a basement apartment owned by a fellow Maccabee, located on Bene Berak Road near the Central Bus Station and the old market, where there was great

activity. Maccabee lookouts were posted around the apartment house and an escape route was worked out. It looked ideal-and could have been worse.

For nearly fifteen years Akiva had frustrated CID and British Intelligence. There was a period of amnesty during World War II when Akiva was free, but for the rest of that time he was wanted. He had always evaded them and had escaped many traps that had been set for him. Akiva was the biggest prize in Palestine with the price on his head running to several thousand pounds sterling.

It was coincidence that the CID was observing the activities of another apartment house on Bene Berak Road just three houses away from the new Maccabee headquarters. The suspects were a ring of smugglers who had been storing goods got past customs in the Jaffa port. The alert CID men watching from an observation point in a building across the street spotted the suspicious picket of watchmen regularly near the basement headquarters. With a telescopic lens camera they photographed all the lookouts and identified two as known Maccabees. While stalking smugglers, they had stumbled onto a Maccabee hangout. Their long experience with the Maccabees induced them to raid at once. They organized quickly and moved to effect complete surprise. They still had no idea they were going into Maccabee headquarters itself.

Dov was in one of the three rooms of the basement apartment forging an El Salvador passport. Only Akiva was with him. Nahum and Ben Moshe had gone out to meet Zev Gilboa, the liaison for the Haganah and Palmach. Akiva came into the room.

“Well, well, Little Giora,” Akiva said, “how did you manage to talk Ben Moshe out of taking you along on today’s business?”

“I must finish this passport,” Dov grumbled.

Akiva looked at his watch and then stretched out on a cot behind Dov. “They should be returning shortly.”

“I don’t trust the Haganah,” Dov said.

“We have no choice but to trust them for the time being,” the old man said.

Dov held the passport paper up to the light to study his erasures and see if they could be detected through the water marks and seal. It was a good job. Not even an expert could spot where he had worked over the name and description of the former owner. Dov bent close to the paper and etched in the signature of an El Salvador official, then put the pen down. He got up and paced the tiny room restlessly checking frequently to see if the ink was dry, then resuming his walking back and forth, snapping his fingers.

“Don’t be so impatient, Little Giora. You will find that waiting is the worst part of underground life. Waiting for what, I often wonder?”

“I’ve lived underground before,” Dov said quickly.

“So you have.” Akiva sat up and stretched. “Waiting, waiting, waiting,” Akiva said. “You are very young, Dov. You should learn not to be quite so serious and quite so intense. That was always one of my faults. I was always too intense. Worked day and night for the cause.”

“That sounds strange coming from Akiva,” Dov said.

“An old man begins to see many things. We wait for a chance to wait. If they get us, the best we can expect is exile or life in prison. The hanging and the torture is getting to be standard procedure these days. That’s why I say … don’t be so serious. There are many nice Maccabee girls who would love to meet our Little Giora. Have fun while there is time.”

“I am not interested,” Dov said firmly.

“Ah, hah,” the old man teased, “perhaps you already have a girl you have been holding out on us.”

“I had a girl once,” Dov said, “but no more.”

“I must tell Ben Moshe to find you a new one and you will go out and enjoy yourself.”

“I don’t want one and I’ll stay in headquarters. It is the most important place to be.”

The old man lay back again and he meditated. At length he spoke. “How wrong you are, Little Giora. How very wrong you are. The most important place to be is awakening in the morning and looking out at your fields, working in them -and coming home at night to someone you love and who loves you.”

The old man is getting sentimental again, Dov thought. He tried the paper and found it dry. He fitted the passport photo into place. As Akiva dozed on the cot, Dov began his pacing again. It was worse now that he had sent the letter to Mrs. Fremont. He wanted to go on raids. Another raid and another and another. Sooner or later the British would get him and hang him and it would be all over with. They didn’t know that his bravery came from the fact that he didn’t care. He almost begged to be hit by enemy gunfire. The dream was bad these days and Karen was not there to stand between him and the gas-chamber door. Mrs. Fremont would take her to America now. That would be good. And he would keep on going on raids until they got him, because it was no good to live without Karen.

Outside of the apartment fifty plain-clothed British police intermingled with the crowds near the bus station. They moved quickly, picking up the Maccabee lookouts and whisking them out of the area before they could give a warning. Then they cordoned off the entire block.

Fifteen police armed with shotguns, tear gas, axes, and sledge hammers slipped down to the basement apartment and stationed themselves around the door.

There was a knock.

Akiva’s eyes fluttered open.

“That must be Ben Moshe and Nahum. Let them in, Dov.”

Dov slipped the chain latch into place and opened the door a crack. A sledge hammer crashed into the door, ripping it open.

“British!” Dov screamed.

Akiva and Little Giora captured!

The word was on every lip in Palestine! The legendary Akiva who had eluded the British for more than a decade was now theirs!

“Betrayal!” cried the Maccabees. They placed the blame on the Haganah. Ben Moshe and Nahum Ben Ami had been meeting with Zev Gilboa. Either Gilboa or some other Haganah person had followed them to learn the Maccabee headquarters. How else could it have been found? The two factions were again at odds. The Maccabees voiced accusations. A hundred rumors circulated purporting to reveal how the Haganah had managed its alleged sellout.

The British High Commissioner for Palestine moved for an immediate trial to produce a quick sentence which would further demoralize the Maccabees. He felt that swift justice for Akiva would restore British authority and curtail the Maccabee activities, since the old man had long been the spiritual force behind the terrorists.

The high commissioner arranged a secret trial. The name of the judge was withheld for his own safety. Akiva and Little Giora were sentenced to be hanged within a fortnight of their capture.

They were both incarcerated in the impenetrable Acre jail.

In his eagerness the high commissioner had made a disastrous mistake. Newsmen had been barred from the trial, and in the United States in particular the Maccabees had powerful friends and financial aid. The guilt or innocence of Akiva and Little Giora were lost sight of in the passionate outbursts that followed. Like the Exodus incident, the sentencing of the pair was being turned into a focus for violent protest of the British mandate. Dov’s background of the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz was dug up and published, producing a wave of public sympathy all over Europe. There was indignation over the secrecy of the trial. Pictures of the eighty-year-old Akiva and eighteen-year-old Little Giora, the prophet and the

disciple, captured the imagination of readers. Newsmen demanded to see the pair.

Cecil Bradshaw was in Palestine with UNSCOP. Having seen what could happen in the case of the Exodus he quickly went into a conference with the high commissioner and applied to the Home Office for instructions.’ The incident was creating ill will for the British at a delicate time, when the United Nations Committee was in Palestine. Instead of halting Maccabee activity the affair might trigger a new rash of terror. Bradshaw and the high commissioner decided to move quickly to show the world that British justice was merciful. Using the extreme ages of Dov and Akiva as an excuse they announced that they would allow the sentenced pair to make petitions for mercy and spare their lives. Their action put a halt to the storm of protest.

The high commissioner and Bradshaw themselves went to the Acre prison to see Akiva and Dov and tell them the good news. The latter were brought into the warden’s office where the two officials bluntly-explained the proposal.

“We are reasonable people,” the commissioner said. “We have arranged these petitions for you to sign. Officially they are petitions for mercy. However, off the record it is merely a formality … a loophole, if you will.”

“Now you sign these petitions,” Bradshaw said, “and we will give you a fair compromise. We’ll take you two out of the country. You’ll serve a short term in one of the colonies in Africa and in a few years it will have all blown over.”

“I don’t quite understand you,” Akiva said. “What are we serving a sentence in Africa for? We have committed no crime. We are merely fighting for our natural and historical rights. Since when has it been a crime for a soldier to fight for his country? We are prisoners of war. You have no right to pass any sentence on us. We are an occupied country.”

The high commissioner broke into a sweat. The old man was going to be stubborn. He had heard Maccabee fanatics recite that theme before. “See here, Akiva. This is beyond arguing politics. It is your life. Either you sign these petitions for mercy or we will carry through the sentences.”

Akiva looked at the two men, whose anxiety was fully apparent. He was quite aware that the British were trying to gain an advantage or undo a mistake.

“You there, boy,” Bradshaw said to Dov. “You don’t want to hang on the gallows, do you? You sign and Akiva will sign afterwards.”

Bradshaw shoved the petition across the desk and took out his pen. Dov looked at the document a moment.

He spit on it.

Akiva looked at the two frustrated, half-frightened Englishmen. “Thine own mouth condemneth thee,” he snapped.

The rebuff by Akiva and Little Giora of the mercy petitions was carried in headlines as a dramatic protest against the British. Tens of thousands in the Yishuv who had formerly had little regard for the Maccabees were inspired by the action. Overnight the old man and the boy became the symbol of Jewish resistance.

Instead of damaging the Maccabees, the British were well on their way toward creating a pair of martyrs. They had no choice now but to set the hanging date, ten days away.

Every day the tension grew in Palestine. The raids of the Maccabees and the Haganah had stopped, but the country knew it was sitting on a short-fused powder keg.

The all-Arab city of Acre stood at the northern end of an arced bay with Haifa on the southern end. Acre jail was a monstrosity built on Crusader ruins. It ran along a sea wall that stretched from the prison at the northern outskirt of the town to the opposite end of the city. Ahmad el Jazzar-the Butcher-had turned it into an Ottoman fortress and it had stood against Napoleon. It was a conglomeration of parapets, dungeons, tunnels, towers, dried-up moats, courtyards, and thick walls. The British converted it into one of the most dreaded prisons in the Empire’s penal system.

Dov and Akiva were placed in tiny cells in the north wing. The walls, ceiling, and floors were made of stone. The cells’ dimensions were six feet by eight feet. The outside wall was sixteen feet thick. There was no light and no toilet. A stink of mustiness was present continuously. Each door was a solid sheet of iron with a tiny peephole for viewing, covered from the outside. The only other opening in the cells was a slit two inches wide and twelve inches high cut through from the outside wall, that allowed in a thin ray of light. Through it Dov could see the tops of some trees and the rim of Napoleon’s Hill, which marked the farthest advance point in the drive to conquer India.

Akiva fared badly. The ceilings and walls dripped, and the clammy damp penetrated his ancient inflamed joints and put him in agonizing pain.

Two or three times each day British officials came to plead for some sort of compromise to prevent the hanging. Dov merely ignored them. Akiva sent them out with quotations from the Bible ringing in their ears.

Six days remained before the hanging. Akiva and Dov were moved to the death cells adjoining the hanging room. These were conventional barred cells in another wing of the prison: four concrete walls, a deep hole under the floor, and a trap door under a steel-beamed rigging to hold the rope. A sandbag of the weight of a man was used in testing; the guards pulled

the lever to release the trap door and let the sandbag fall with a crunching thud.

Dov and Akiva were dressed in scarlet pants and shirts, the traditional English hanging dress.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: It was one o’clock in the morning. Bruce Sutherland dozed in his library with his head bowed over a book. He sat up quickly, awakened by a sharp knocking. His servant ushered Karen Clement into the room.

Sutherland rubbed his eyes. “What the devil are you doing here this time of night?”

Karen stood before him, trembling.

“Does Kitty know you are here?”

Karen shook her head.

Sutherland led her to a chair. Karen was white and tense. “Have you eaten, Karen?”

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Bring her a sandwich and some milk,” Sutherland ordered his servant. “Now see here, young lady, what is all this about?”

“I want to see Dov Landau. You are the only one I know who can help me.”

Sutherland snorted and paced the room with his hands clasped behind him. “Even if I can help you this can only hurt you more. You and Kitty will be leaving Palestine in a few weeks. Why don’t you try to forget him, child?”

“Please,” she pleaded. “I know all the reasons why. I have thought of nothing else since he was captured. I must see him once more. Please help me, General Sutherland, please.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “First, let me call Kitty and tell her you are here. She is probably half out of her mind. You had no business traveling through Arab country as you did.”

The next morning Sutherland called Jerusalem. The high commissioner was quick in granting the request. The British were still trying to get Dov and Akiva to change their minds and were willing to grab at any straws. There was a possibility that Karen’s visit could break the armor of Dov’s defiance. It was arranged quickly. Kitty left Gan Dafna and was picked up in Safed by Sutherland, whence the three drove to Nahariya on the coast. There from the police station an escort took them directly into Acre jail, where they were taken to the warden’s office.

Karen had been in a daze all the way to Acre. Now, in the prison, it seemed even more unreal to her.

The warden came in.

“All right, young lady.”

“I’d better go with you,” Kitty said.

“I want to see him alone,” Karen said firmly.

A pair of armed guards waited for Karen outside the warden’s office. They led her through a series of iron doors and into a huge stone courtyard surrounded by barred windows. Karen could see the eyes of the prisoners leering at her. Some catcalls echoed in the hollow yard. She looked straight ahead. They walked up narrow steps into the death wing. They passed through a barbed-wire machine gun emplacement, then came to another door where two soldiers stood with fixed bayonets on their rifles.

She was ushered into a tiny cell. The door was closed behind her and a soldier stood near. He opened a slot in the wall measuring a few inches wide and a few inches high.

“You’ll talk to him through that slot there, girlie,” the guard said.

Karen nodded and looked into it. She could see the two cells on the other side of the wall. She saw Akiva in the first and Dov in the other, his scarlet dress. Dov lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Karen could see a guard enter and unlock his cell door.

“Up, Landau,” the guard barked. “Somebody to see you.”

Dov picked up a book from the floor and opened it and read.

“You’ve got a visitor.”

Dov turned a page in the book.

“I said you’ve got a visitor.”

“I’m not in for any of your good-will ambassadors. Tell them I said to go …”

“It ain’t one of ours. It’s one of yours. It’s a girl, Landau.”

Dov’s hands tightened on the book and his heart raced. “Tell her I’m busy.”

The guard shrugged and walked to the slot in the wall. “He says he don’t want to see nobody.”

“Dov!” Karen called. “Dov!”

Her voice echoed in the death cell. “Dov! It’s me, Karen!”

Akiva looked tensely to Dov’s cell. Dov gritted his teeth and turned another page.

“Dov! Dov! Dov!”

“Talk to her, boy,” Akiva shouted. “Don’t go to your grave in the silence my brother has condemned me to. Talk to her, boy.”

Dov set the book down and rolled off the cot. He motioned the guard to open his cell door. He walked to the slot and looked into it. He could see only her face.

Karen looked into his cold, blue, angry eyes.

“I don’t want no more tricks,” he said acidly. “If they sent you here to beg, just turn around and get out. I’m not asking for mercy from these bastards.”

“Don’t talk like that to me, Dov.”

“I know they sent you.”

“I swear no one asked me to come. I swear it.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to see you once again.”

Dov clenched his teeth and kept his control. Why did she have to come? He nearly died with wanting to touch her cheek.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine… just fine.”

There was a long silence.

“Dov … did you really mean what you wrote to Kitty or did you say it just because …”

“I meant it.”

“I wanted to know.”

“Well, you know now.” ’

“Yes, I know. Dov … I … I’ll be leaving Eretz Israel soon. I’m going to America.”

Dov shrugged.

“I guess I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“That’s all right. I know you was just trying to be nice. I would really like to see my girl but she’s a Maccabee and she can’t come. She’s my own age, you know.”

“I know.”

“Anyhow. You’re a nice kid, Karen … and … uh … you uh … get to America and forget about all this business here. And good luck.”

“I guess I had better go,” Karen whispered.

She stood up. Dov’s expression did not change.

“Karen!”

She turned quickly.

“Uh … just to show that we are friends … uh … we could shake hands if the guard says it’s all right.”

Karen put her hand through the opening and Dov pressed it between his own and pressed his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes.

Karen grasped his hand and pulled it back to her side of the wall.

“No,” he said, “no …” but he could not resist.

She kissed his hand and pressed it against her cheek and her lips and he felt the tears from her eyes. And then she was gone.

His cell door clanged behind him. Dov flopped on his bed. In all of his lifetime he could not remember shedding tears.

But now nothing could stop them. He turned his back to the door so the guards and Akiva could not see his face and he wept softly from his heart.

Barak Ben Canaan was one of the Yishuv advisors who traveled with the UNSCOP as it inspected Palestine and made its various inquiries. The Yishuv showed its proud record of land reclamations, rehabilitation for the homeless-the progress of the kibbutzim and factories and the cities they had built. The UNSCOP delegates were impressed by the contrast of the Jewish and Arab communities. After the inspection tours formal inquiries were opened in which each side was allowed to present its case.

Ben Gurion, Weizmann, Barak Ben Canaan, and the other Yishuv leaders argued with tremendous skill the morality and justice of the Jewish case.

On the Arab side, the Higher Arab Committee, steered by the Husseini family stirred up bitter demonstrations against the United Nations. They barred the committee from many of the Arab towns where the squalor and primitive factory conditions would turn the strongest stomach. When the inquiries opened, the Arabs officially boycotted it.

It became obvious to the UNSCOP that there could be no middle road in Palestine. On a basis of strict justice the United Nations would have to recommend a settlement in favor of the Jews, but there was the weight of Arab threats to consider.

The Jews had long accepted the theory of compromise and partition, yet they were fearful of the creation of a land ghetto like the Pale.

With the tour of Palestine and the inquiries concluded, the UNSCOP prepared to leave and retire to Geneva to analyze their findings while a subcommittee studied the displaced-persons camps in Europe, which still held a quarter of a million desperate Jews. They would then present recommendations to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Barak Ben Canaan once again accepted a commission to travel to Geneva and continue his advisory capacity.

He returned to Yad El a few days before departure for Geneva so that he might spend some time with Sarah, who, despite his many departures, had never quite got used to them. Neither did she ever get used to Jordana’s and Ari’s being away.

Ari and David Ben Ami were at the nearby Ein Or kibbutz, at Palmach headquarters for the Huleh. They came to Yad El and Jordana came down from Gan Dafna for a farewell dinner.

Barak was preoccupied through the entire evening. He

spoke little of the UNSCOP, the coming trip, or of the pressing politics. It was a grim reunion.

“I suppose you’ve heard that Mrs. Fremont is leaving Palestine,” Jordana said at the end of dinner.

“No, I didn’t hear,” Ari said, masking his surprise.

“She is. She has given her notice to Dr. Lieberman. She is taking the Clement girl with her. I knew she would run at the first sign of real trouble.”

“Why shouldn’t she go?” Ari said. “She is an American and the girl is what she came to Palestine for.”

“She never had any use for us,” Jordana snapped.

“That’s not true,” David said in defense.

“Don’t always take her side, David.”

“She is a nice woman,” Sarah Ben Canaan said, “and I like her. Many times she passed this way and visited with me. She was very good to those children and they love her.”

“She is better gone,” Jordana persisted. “It is a shame she is taking the girl with her, but she has the child so spoiled now one would not think she was a Jewish girl.”

Ari stood up and walked from the cottage.

“Why must you make it a point to hurt Ari?” Sarah said angrily. “You know what he feels for her and she is a fine person.”

“He is well rid of her,” Jordana said.

“And who are you to judge a man’s heart?” Barak said.

David took Jordana’s hand. “You promised we would take a horseback ride.”

“You are on her side too, David.”

“I like Kitty Fremont. Come, let’s go for that ride.”

Jordana strode from the room and David followed.

“Let them go, Sarah,” Barak said. “David will calm her down. I am afraid our daughter is jealous of Mrs. Fremont as well she might be. Someday our girls may have the time to concentrate on being women.”

Barak played with his tea, and his wife stood behind his chair and laid her cheek on his thick red hair. “Barak, you cannot go on like this. You must speak or you shall regret it to your grave.”

He patted his wife’s hand. “I will find Ari,” he said.

Ari was near the orchard looking up into the hills at Gan Dafna when Barak came upon him.

“Does she matter that much, son?”

Ari shrugged.

“I rather liked her myself,” Barak said.

“What is the difference? She comes from a world filled

with silk stockings and perfume and she is going back to it”

Barak held his son’s arm and they walked through their fields to the place where the Jordan River ran past their farm. They could see Jordana and David riding away and they could hear her laughter.

“You see, Jordana is over it already. How are things with the Palmach at Ein Or?”

“As they have always been, Father. Good boys and girls but too few of them and too little to fight with. We cannot expect to win a war against seven armies.”

The sprinklers began whirling in the fields as the sun started its plunge behind the Lebanese hills near Fort Esther. The father and the son watched their fields for a long time. Each of them wondered if there would ever come a day when the only thing to worry about was the mending of a fence or the plowing of their land.

“Let’s go back to the house,” Ari said. “Ema is alone.”

Ari turned to go. He felt his father’s giant hand on his shoulder. He turned. His father’s great head was bowed in sadness. “I leave for Geneva in two days. I leave with sorrow as I have never known. For fifteen years someone has been missing from our table. I have been a proud and stubborn man but I have paid the price of pride with torment. It is hell for me now. Ari, my son, do not let my brother Akiva hang at the end of a British rope.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Jerusalem seethed on the eve of the UNSCOP departure. In the Arab sector inflammatory oratory rang out to the wild chantings of Arab mobs. The city was split into fortified areas, cordoned off with barbed wire, and guarded by Tommies entrenched behind massed guns.

Ari Ben Canaan moved through Jerusalem, crossing from sector to sector to all of the known hangouts of Bar Israel, the Maccabee contact man. Bar Israel seemed to have disappeared. There had been no liaison between Maccabees and Haganah since the capture of Akiva and Little Giora. Ari was not without his sources of information, however, and he found out that Bar Israel was living in a room in the El Katamon district.

Ari went directly to the room and unceremoniously shoved the door open. Bar Israel was engaged in a chess game. He looked up, saw Ari, and returned to studying the chess board.

“Get out,” Ari ordered the other player. He shoved the man through Ś the door and closed it. “You knew damned well I was looking for you.”

Bar Israel shrugged and lit a cigar. “You left fifty love letters all over Jerusalem.”

“Then why didn’t you contact me? I’ve been in Jerusalem for twenty-four hours.”

“You’ve made your dramatic entrance. Now what do you want?”

“Take me to Ben Moshe.”

“We aren’t playing with you boys any more. We have an aversion to Haganah commanders learning our headquarters.”

“You’re not talking to a Haganah commander. You are talking to Ari Ben Canaan, the nephew of Akiva.”

“Ari, I trust you personally but orders are orders.”

Ari snatched Bar Israel out of his chair, spilling the chess board to the floor. He held the little Oriental by the lapels and shook him as though he were a weightless sack. “You are going to take me to Ben Moshe or I am going to snap your neck.”

Ben Moshe sat at his desk at Maccabee headquarters in the Greek colony. Beside him stood Nahum Ben Ami. The two men glared angrily at the bewildered Bar Israel and Ari Ben Canaan.

“We all know Ari,” Bar Israel whimpered. “I took a chance.”

“Get out,” Ben Moshe snarled at the sweating man. “We will settle with you later. Now that you are here, Ben Canaan, what do you want?”

“I want to know what you plan to do about Akiva and the boy?”

“Do? Why nothing, of course. What can we do?”

“You are a liar!” Ari said.

“Whatever we do it is none of your damned business,” Nahum said.

Ari smashed his fist on the desk so hard it splintered the top. “It is my business! Akiva is my uncle!”

Ben Moshe remained icy. “We have had enough cooperation with traitors.”

Ari leaned forward until his face was inches from Moshe’s. “I hate your guts, Ben Moshe, and I hate yours, Nahum Ben Ami. But I am not leaving until I know your plans.”

“You are asking for a bullet through your brain.”

“You shut up, Nahum, or I’ll dismantle you,” Ari said.

Ben Moshe took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. “Ari, you have such a pleasant way of persuasion,” he said. “We are going into the Acre jail and take Akiva and Little Giora out.”

“That is what I thought. When?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“I am going with you.”

Nahum started to protest but Ben Moshe held up his hand to be quiet.

“You give your word the Haganah does not know about you being here?”

“You have it.”

“What is his word?” Nahum said.

“I take the word of a Ben Canaan.”

“I still do not like it,” Nahum said.

“That is too bad then. You know what this means of course, Ari. We have mobilized our greatest strength. You have been in the Acre jail… you know what it is like. If we can do this thing it will break the British backs.”

“Acre is an all-Arab city. The jail is the toughest stronghold they have in Palestine. Let me see your plans.”

Ben Moshe opened the desk and took out a sheaf of blueprints. Everything in the Acre area had been covered: there was a layout of the town, the exterior approaches to the prison, the escape roads. The diagrams of the prison’s interior were perfect as far as Ari could judge. They must have been drawn up by people who had been prisoners. The guard stations, the arsenal, the main communications center were all pinpointed on the maps.

Ari studied the timetables of the attack. They were masterpieces. Heavy explosives, grenades, and land mines, all manufactured by the Maccabees, were ingeniously employed.

“What do you think, Ari?”

“Everything is perfect-up to a point. I see how you are going to get in and get them outside but the escape from Acre”-Ari shook his head-“this will never work”

“We cannot hide conveniently at the nearest kibbutz” Nahum Ben Ami snapped.

“We know the chance of complete escape is very slim,” Ben Moshe agreed.

“It is not very slim. It is nil. Of course I know you Maccabees pride yourselves on being dead heroes. Unless you set up better getaway plans, that is what you’re going to become.”

“I know what he is going to suggest,” Nahum said. “He will suggest we co-operate with the Haganah and the kibbutzim …”

“That is exactly what I am going to suggest. If you don’t you’ll have a lot of new martyrs. Ben Moshe, you are brave but you are not crazy. As the matter stands now you have possibly a two-per-cent chance. If you allow me to set up more complete escape plans your chances will become fifty-fifty.”

“Watch him,” Nahum said, “he talks too slickly.”

“Go on, Ari.”

Ari spread the master map out on the desk. “I suggest that you take an extra ten or fifteen minutes inside the prison and use that time to free every prisoner in the place. They will scatter in twenty directions and force the British to chase them all and thereby cut the British strength.”

Ben Moshe nodded.

“Now, our own groups should also break up into small units and each unit head out a different way from Acre. I will take Akiva with me and you will take the boy.”

“Go on,” Nahum Ben Ami said. As he listened he realized Ari was making sense.

“For my route I will break for Kfar Masaryk. There I will change transportation to throw them off and use back roads to go up to Mount Carmel south of Haifa. I have trusted friends in the Druse village of Daliyat el Karmil. The British won’t even begin to look up there.”

“It sounds good,” Nahum said. “The Druses can be trusted … better than some Jews I know.”

Ari ignored the insult. “The second unit carrying Dov Landau will go up the coast road to Nahariya and split. I can arrange sanctuary in a half dozen kibbutzim in the area. I suggest that Landau be taken to Mishmar kibbutz on the Lebanese border. I was there at the building of Mishmar; the area is filled with caves. Your brother David was with me at Mishmar in the second world war. We have used it for years as a hiding place for our leaders. Landau will be absolutely safe there.”

Ben Moshe sat like a statue, looking over his plans. Without these hiding places he knew he had no more than a dramatic suicide mission. With Ari’s help, there was a chance. Could he risk cooperation?

“Go on, Ari … set up your escape routes. I do this only because your name is Ben Canaan.”

D-Day minus four.

Four days separated Akiva and Little Giora from a rope. The UNSCOP flew out of Lydda to Geneva. Palestine felt the deathly tense, foreboding calm. The Arab demonstrations stopped. Maccabee raids stopped. The city was an armed camp with British plain-clothes men flooding the area.

D-Day minus three.

A last-ditch appeal from the Prime Minister of Great Britain was turned down by Akiva and Little Giora.

D-Day.

Market day in Acre. At daybreak Arab crowds conversed

on the city from twenty Galilee villages. The market areas were packed with donkeys and carts and produce. The roads were filled with travelers.

Oriental and African Jews, members of the Maccabees dressed as Arabs, drifted into Acre with the influx of the market-day throngs. Each man and woman carried a few sticks of dynamite, caps, wires, detonators, grenades, or small arms under their long dress. The Maccabees dispersed and mingled in the market stalls near the prison and throughout the jammed bazaar.

Eleven o’clock. H-Hour minus two.

Two hundred and fifty Maccabee men and fifty Maccabee women in Arab dress were now dispersed in Acre.

Eleven-fifteen. H-Hour minus one forty-five.

The guard changed inside the Acre jail. Four inside Maccabee collaborators stood by.

Eleven-thirty. H-Hour minus one-thirty.

Outside Acre at Napoleon’s Hill, a second unit of Maccabees assembled. Three truckloads of men dressed as British soldiers drove into Acre and parked along the sea wall near the prison. The “soldiers” quickly broke up into four-man units and walked through the streets as though on security patrol. There were so many other soldiers about that this hundred new people received no attention.

High noon. H-Hour minus one.

Ari Ben Canaan drove into Acre in a staff car dressed as a British major. His driver parked on the sea wall on the west side of the prison. Ari walked out on the big rampart at the north end of the sea wall and leaned against a rusted old Turkish cannon. He lit a cigarette and watched the waves lap against the sea wall below him. The foam swirled around the mossy green rocks worn flat by the waters.

Twelve-five. H-Hour minus fifty-five minutes.

The shops of Acre closed one by one for the two-hour midday break. The sun was getting hot and it blazed down on the Arabs in the coffeehouses, who began to doze as the mournful wails of Radio Cairo blared. The British troops were stifled and groggy in the heat.

Twelve ten. H-Hour minus fifty minutes.

A Moslem caller climbed the long spiral stairs of the minaret beside the Mosque of El Jazzar. The caller cried out in the stillness and the Mohammedans gathered in the courtyard and inside the huge white-domed house of prayer and knelt in the direction of the holy city of Mecca.

Twelve-twelve. H-Hour minus forty-eight minutes.

The Maccabees moved toward their assembly points as the heat beat both Arabs and British soldiers into lethargy.

In groups of twos and threes they moved without apparent

purpose through the narrow dung-filled alleys to the assembly points.

Group one gathered at the Abu Christos-Father of Christ -Cafe. The cafe sat on the bay and the coffee drinkers watched the Arab boys dive from the rocks for a grush. They could see the entire sweep of the bay and Haifa at the far end.

A second large group came together at the mosque. They knelt at the outer fringes of the huge courtyard and joined the Arabs in prayer.

The third unit went to the Khan, a large square that had been used for more than a hundred years as a caravan resting and trading place. They mingled with the camels and the donkeys and the hundreds of market-day Arabs who lay on the ground and rested.

Group four met on the docks by the fishing fleet.

The fifth group assembled at the Land Gate on the sea wall.

At the same time the hundred Maccabees disguised as British soldiers moved for their positions. They had a greater freedom of movement; they went to house tops and blocked alleyways and roads so that they commanded every possible entrance and exit to Acre jail.

Outside of Acre the final unit of Maccabees got into position. These were people with no disguise. They planted land mines and stationed themselves on the highways with machine guns to stop British reinforcements from getting into Acre.

Twelve forty-five. H-Hour minus fifteen minutes.

The soldiers blocking off the jail were in position. The units on the highway outside Acre were in position.

The striking force, the two hundred and fifty disguised as Arabs, moved out of their assembly points in small groups and converged on the attack point.

Ben Moshe and Ben Ami reached the spot first. They watched their people converging. They looked over the roof tops and saw their soldiers in place. They looked at the prison where one of the four “inside” helpers signaled that all was ready.

Ari Ben Canaan walked to the edge of the rampart and flicked his cigarette out and walked quickly toward the attack point. The driver drifted along behind him in the car.

The attack point was the Hamman El-Basha, a hundred-and-twenty-year-old Turkish public bathhouse. The bathhouse, built by El Jazzar, was attached to the south wall of the Acre jail. In the rear of the bathhouse there was a courtyard used for sunning. A single stairway led up to the roof of the bathhouse and right to the prison wall. The Maccabees had discovered that from their various guard posts inside the prison the British could see every possible approach

and detect every possible movement around the jail-except one place: the bathhouse and the south wall, and here was where they would strike.

One o’clock. H-Hour.

The city of Acre was burned into somnolence by the sun.

Ben Moshe, Ben Canaan, and Ben Ami drew deep breaths and gave the signal. The raid of the Acre jail was on.

Ari Ben Canaan led the spearhead of fifty men. They went into the bathhouse and through it quickly to the courtyard in the rear. His group carried sticks of dynamite.

The Arabs sitting in the steaming rooms looked on in utter amazement. Terror seized them and in a second the bathhouse was a confusion of wet scrambling Arabs. A second force moved in and jammed the bathers into one steam-flooded room so they could not escape and give an alarm.

Outside, Ben Moshe received the signal that Ari had reached the courtyard and all the Arabs were trapped. In the courtyard at the rear of the bathhouse Ari’s men raced up the steps, crossed the roof to set their dynamite charge against the south wall of the prison. The explosives and caps and wires came out from under their clothing and the charge was fixed with speed and efficiency. They retreated to the cover of the courtyard and lay flat.

One-fifteen.

An ear-shattering explosion shook Acre. The air was filled with flying rocks. It took a full two minutes for the dust to settle and reveal a huge breach in the jail wall.

With the explosion, the four inside men carried out their assignments. The first threw a grenade on the switchboard, stopping all phone operation. The second grenaded the main switch box, cutting the electricity and, with it, the alarm system. The third man seized the turnkey, and the fourth man rushed to the breach to direct the incoming Maccabees.

Ari’s men poured into the prison. The first objective of half his force was to get the arsenal. In a few moments they were all equipped with heavy arms.

The second section of Ari’s force cut off the main guard barracks so that these troops could not get out as reinforcements.

At intervals of one minute, Ben Moshe outside fed ten-and twenty-man units into the prison. Each group knew exactly where to hit. Guards were gunned from their positions and the Maccabees tore through the ancient passageways with Sten guns blazing and grenades blasting away obstacles. They fanned out, snatched their objectives, and with the precision of meticulous planning they held the interior of the Acre jail six minutes after the wall had been broken.

Outside the walls the covering force dug in and waited for

a counterattack from the British garrison. The troops and plain-clothes men already in the city were stopped by the Maccabees who controlled the entrances from roof tops and alleyways.

When all two hundred men were inside the jail they turned to smashing open the cell doors and freeing the prisoners. The escapees, Arabs and Jews alike, were ushered to the breach in the wall and soon they were running in every direction through Acre.

Ari led five men with the captured turnkey to the death cells and the hanging room. The turnkey began to open the door. Inside the four guards who kept constant watch on the condemned pair began to fire at the iron door. Ari waved the others back, slapped a magnetic mine on the door, and ducked back. The door was ripped from its hinges. Ari stepped into the doorway and hurled a grenade inside and the guards fled to the hanging room.

The party quickly entered, pinned down the guards, and opened the cell doors. Akiva and Dov Landau were rushed from the prison, across the bathhouse roof, and through the bathhouse to the outside.

Dov Landau was pulled aboard a truck filled with men. Ben Moshe waved to them to move out and the truck sped off toward Nahariya. Two minutes later the staff car pulled up and Ari led Akiva into it and they fled in a different direction.

Ben Moshe blew a whistle signal for the Maccabees to begin the withdrawal operations. It was a mere twenty-one minutes since the blast of the wall.

Confused units of the British garrisons attempted to converge on Acre jail. They were stopped by land mines, roadblocks and cross fires. Inside Acre disorganized British units were trying to chase the three hundred freed inmates.

The truck with Dov Landau raced up the coast road. It had been spotted by the British and was now trailed by a motor force that outnumbered its complement ten to one. The truck pulled into the Jewish town of Nahariya. Nahum Ben Ami fled with Dov toward the Lebanese border kibbutz of Ha Mishmar while the rest of the force deployed as a rear guard to stall the pursuers. These Maccabees managed to hold the British long enough to allow Nahum Ben Ami to lead Dov to safety, but it was a suicide action: all seventeen men and women of the rear guard were killed.

Akiva and Ari were in the back seat of the staff car. The driver and another Maccabee sat in front. They sped from the Acre area along an inland road toward the kibbutz Kfar Masaryk. At Napoleon’s Hill, a Maccabee roadblock waved them down and told them to get off the main road, which was

mined against British counterattack. This group was holding off two British companies trying to break through to Acre.

Ari made a quick decision.

“Driver. Can you drive through the fields here and get past that British unit?”

“We’ll find out.”

They careened off the road and banged and rattled through a field to encircle the area of action. They managed to get past the two British companies and turned again for the highway. A dozen soldiers chased after the car, firing as they ran. Just as the car touched the road again it swerved under the impact of a hail of bullets. Ari grabbed Akiva and held him down on the floor. The whine of bullets was all around them. The wheels of the car spun furiously, digging in the dirt for more traction. The driver threw the car into reverse as more bullets ripped into it. Two soldiers with submachine guns were almost on them. Ari fired through the back window. One of the soldiers dropped. The second opened up with a deadly burst of fire. Ari could see the red flames spit from the mouth of his gun.

Akiva shrieked.

Another burst spewed from the soldier’s gun.

Ari fell on top of Akiva just as the car regained the road and raced away.

“Are you all right back there?”

“We’ve both been hit.”

Ari pulled himself up and examined his right leg. He felt the inside of his leg. It was numb. The bullet had lodged deep. There was no bad bleeding or great pain, only a burning sensation.

He knelt and rolled Akiva over and ripped bis bloody shirt open. Akiva’s stomach was a gaping wound.

“How is he?”

“Bad … very bad.”

Akiva was conscious. He pulled Ari close to him.

“Ari,” he said, “am I going to make it?”

“No, Uncle.”

“Then get me to some hidden place … you understand.”

“I understand,” Ari said.

The escape car reached Kfar Masaryk where a dozen kibbutzniks stood by ready to hide the car and provide a truck to continue the escape. Akiva was gory and unconscious by the time they pulled him from the car. Ari took a moment to pour sulfa into his wounded leg and put a pressure bandage on it. The two Maccabees with him pulled him aside.

“The old man is not going to make it if we go any farther. He must stay here and receive medical treatment”

“No,” Ari said.

“Are you mad?”

“Now listen to me, you two. He has no chance to live. Even if he did the British would find him here. If we leave him and he dies here it will be known all over Palestine. No one but us must know that Akiva did not escape. The British must never know he is dead.”

The two Maccabees nodded their understanding. They jumped into the front of the truck and Ari got into the rear with his uncle. Ari’s leg was beginning to hurt.

The truck streaked south below Haifa. It ascended the narrow roads working up the side of Mount Carmel. Ari held his unconscious uncle in his lap as they bounced on the dirt roads and swayed around treacherous turns, sending up a trail of dust and jolting them unmercifully. Higher and higher into Mount Carmel they drove until they were in the territory where only the Druses lived in isolation.

Akiva opened his eyes. He tried to speak but he was unable to. He recognized Ari and he smiled and then sagged in Ari’s arms.

The truck pulled into a, clump of brush a mile before the Druse mountain village of Daliyat el Karmil. Mussa, a Druse Haganah soldier, waited with a donkey cart.

Ari crawled from the truck. He rubbed his leg. He was drenched with the blood of Akiva. Mussa rushed to him.

“I’m all right,” Ari said. “Get Akiva. He is dead.” The tired old body of Akiva was carried from the truck to the cart.

“You two men are Maccabees. You are not to reveal Akiva’s death to anyone but Ben Moshe or Nahum. Now get the truck down from here and get it cleaned. Mussa and I will bury my uncle.”

The truck sped away.

Ari got on the donkey cart. It bypassed the village and moved to the highest point on Mount Carmel, the south ridge. At twilight they entered a small forest that held the altar of the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets, Elijah. It was on this ground that Elijah had proved the power of God against Jezebel’s priests of Baal.

The altar of the prophet Elijah looked down on the Jezreel Valley. The valley below stood as an eternal reminder that the land had not been forgotten.

Mussa and Ari scratched out a shallow grave near Elijah’s altar.

“Let’s get that red suit off of him,” Ari said. The British hanging clothes were removed and Akiva was rolled into his grave and it was filled up and the spot covered with branches. Mussa returned to the cart to wait for Ari.

Ari knelt for a long time over Akiva’s grave. Yakov Rabinsky had been born in anger and he had died in sorrow. After so very many years of torment, he could at last find peace. He could find here a peace that had avoided him in life and he could sleep eternally looking down upon the land of the Jews. Someday, Ari thought, all the world will know where Akiva sleeps and it will be a shrine of all Jews.

“Goodbye, Uncle,” Ari said. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell you that your brother forgives you.”

Ari stood up and began to sway. Mussa rushed over to him as he cried out in pain and pitched to the ground in a faint.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Kitty and Dr. Lieberman were both glum as she went over some business in his office.

“I wish I knew the words that would make you stay,” Dr. Lieberman said.

“Thanks,” Kitty said. “Now that the time is here I feel very empty. I didn’t realize how attached I had become to Gan Dafna. I was up most of the night going through these files. Some of these youngsters have made remarkable progress in light of their histories.”

“They will miss you.”

“I know. And I will miss them. I’ll try to get everything up to date in the next few days. There are a few special cases I’d like to go over with you personally.”

“Yes, of course.”

Kitty stood up to leave.

“Be sure to get to the dining room a half hour early tonight.”

“I would prefer it if they didn’t. I don’t think the occasion calls for a going-away party.”

The little hunchback held up his hands. “Everyone insisted. What could I do?”

Kitty walked to the door and opened it.

“How is Karen?”

“Pretty badly upset. She has been since she saw Dov at the prison. I had a bad night with her last night when we heard about the Acre jail raid. Maybe she will learn soon whether or not he escaped. That poor child has been through enough suffering for a lifetime. It may take a while, Dr. Lieberman, but I am going to make her very happy in America.”

“I wish it were in my heart to tell you that I think you are wrong for leaving us. I cannot say that.”

Kitty left his office and walked down the corridor thinking about the news that had electrified the world. The Maccabees had lost twenty men and women killed and another fifteen were captured. No one knew how many wounded were in hiding. Ben Moshe had been killed. It seemed like a high price to pay for two lives-until one considered that they were not just any two lives. The raid had been a crushing blow to what was left of British morale and British desire to remain in Palestine.

Kitty stopped before Jordana’s door. She hated the idea of confronting Jordana. She knocked.

“Yes?”

Kitty entered. Jordana looked up from her desk coldly.

“I was wondering, Jordana … Do you happen to know if Dov Landau made his escape yesterday? I mean, with Karen’s attachment to the boy it would make her feel much better if …”

“I don’t know.”

Kitty started to leave, then turned at the last second. “Was Ari on the raid?”

“Ari doesn’t give me a list of his raids.”

“I thought you might know.”

“How should I know? It wag a Maccabee raid.”

“You people have ways of obtaining information about things you want to learn.”

“If I knew I wouldn’t tell you, Mrs. Fremont. You see, I want nothing to stand in the way of your catching your plane out of Palestine.”

“It would be much nicer if we could part friends but it doesn’t look as though you are even going to give me a chance for that.”

She turned quickly and left the office and walked out to the main door. Kitty could hear whooping and cheering coming from a football game on the athletic field. Out on the center green some of the younger children played tag and some of the older ones lay on the lawn studying.

The flowers never stopped blooming at Gan Dafna, Kitty reflected, and the air was forever filled with their scent.

Kitty walked down the steps of the administration building and crossed the green, past the trenches. She stopped by the statue of Dafna. This time she did not feel jealous of Ari’s dead sweetheart. She looked down on the Huleh as Dafna always looked down on it and she felt a sudden twinge of loneliness.

“Shalom, Giveret Kitty,” some youngsters called to her as they ran past. One of them ran up to her and threw his arms around her waist, and she mussed his hair and sent him along.

As she walked to the hospital she felt very depressed. Leaving Gan Dafna was going to be more difficult than she had thought.

In her office she began to go through her files, discarding some, sorting others.

It was strange, she thought; she had not felt this loss in leaving the orphanage in Salonika. Kitty never really tried to become a “friend” of the Jews at Gan Dafna. Why was it all catching up to her at this moment?

Perhaps it was because it was the end of an adventure. She would miss Ari Ben Canaan and she would think about him for a long time, maybe forever. But in time things would become sane and organized again and she would be able to give Karen all those things in life she wanted for the girl. There would be good times and wonderful vacations together and Karen would start her dancing lessons again. In time, the picture of Ari Ben Canaan would grow dim as would the memory of Palestine.

It was natural to feel badly, Kitty reasoned. There is a certain regret in leaving any job and moving from place to place.

She began reading through her personal notes on some of “her” children. Were they impersonal objects of prescribed therapies or were they little lost human beings who were dependent upon her? Did she have the right to take them up and just drop them, or did she have a further duty to them beyond her own personal desires?

Kitty quickly shut her mind to this line of thought. She opened her desk drawer and took out her passport. Karen’s British passport was beside her own. There were two tickets -Departure, Lydda-Destination, New York.

Mark Parker was coming in from the Orient to meet them in San Francisco. Dear Mark … was there ever a more devoted friend? Mark would help Kitty get situated around San Francisco. Kitty loved the Bay Area. They could live in Marin County over the Golden Gate Bridge or in Berkeley near the university. They would be near the theater and ballet and the wonderland of San Francisco.

Kitty shut her desk drawer.

She picked up the files again and started to replace them in the cabinet. Of course it was right for her to go … of course it was. Even Dr. Lieberman said so. What did she owe these children? It was a job; nothing more, nothing less.

Kitty closed the drawer to the file cabinet and sighed. Even as she justified it to herself, the shadow of doubt began to creep into her mind. Was she really doing this for Karen or was she going because of her own selfish love for the girl?

Kitty turned and gasped! An Arab was standing in the doorway. He was dressed oddly. He wore an ill-fitting western suit of pin-striped worsted. On his head was a red fez bound

in white cloth that gave his head a square look. His black mustache was enormous and waxed to fine points.

“I did not mean to frighten you,” the Arab said. “I may come in?”

“Certainly,” Kitty said, surprised to hear him speak in English.

She surmised that he was from a nearby village and that someone was sick.

The Arab entered and closed the door behind him.

“You are Mrs. Fremont?”

“Yes.”

“I am Mussa. I am a Druse. You know of the Druses?”

She knew vaguely that they were an Islamic sect that lived in villages on Mount Carmel, south of Haifa, and that they were loyal to the Jews.

“Aren’t you a long way from home?”

“I am Haganah.”

Kitty sprang to her feet instinctively. “Ari!” she said.

“He hides in my village of Daliyat el Karmil. He led the raid at Acre. He asks that you come to him.”

Kitty’s heart pounded wildly.

“He has been badly wounded,” Mussa said. “You will come?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do not take medicine. We must be cautious. There are many British roadblocks and if they find medicine they will be suspicious. Ari says to get the truck filled with children. Tomorrow there is a Druse wedding. We tell the British we are bringing the children to the ceremony. I have a truck. Get fifteen children right away and have them pack bedrolls.”

“We will be ready in ten minutes,” she said, and rushed out for Dr. Lieberman’s office.

It was eighty kilometers from Gan Dafna to Mussa’s village, mostly over narrow mountain roads of northern Galilee. The dilapidated truck made slow progress.

The children in the back, delighted with the unexpected holiday, sang at the top of their voices as the truck chugged through the hills. Only Karen, sitting in the front cabin with Kitty, knew the real nature of the journey.

Kitty pumped Mussa for information. All she was able to ascertain was that Ari had received a leg wound twenty-four hours ago, was unable to walk, and was in great pain. He knew nothing of Dov Landau and said nothing of the death of Akiva.

In spite of the instructions, Kitty had packed a small first-aid kit of sulfa, bandages, and iodine, which would appear innocent enough in the glove compartment.

She had known real deep fear only twice in her life. She knew fear in Chicago in the waiting room of the polio wing of the Children’s Hospital during the three days and three nights of Sandra’s crisis. She knew fear once again as she waited in the Dome Hotel for news of the hunger strike on the Exodus.

She knew fear now. She was oblivious to the children’s singing or to Karen’s efforts to keep her calm. She was dazed with anxiety.

She closed her eyes and her lips moved and she said the words to herself over and over … “Whoever this God is who watches Israel, keep Ari alive … please, let him be alive.”

An hour passed and two and three.

Kitty’s nerves had brought her to a state of near-exhaustion. She laid her head on Karen’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

The truck rattled into the turn at Kfar Masaryk, using the roads that Ari had taken in his escape from Acre. As they moved toward Mount Carmel the roads came alive with troops.

They were stopped at a roadblock.

“These children from Gan Dafna. We have wedding at Daliyat tomorrow.”

“Out, everyone,” the British ordered.

They combed the truck. All the bedrolls were untied and searched thoroughly; two of them were ripped open with knives. The underneath of the truck was searched and the spare tire torn off the rim. The motor was looked over and the children were searched. The shakedown took nearly an hour.

A second British search took place at the foot of Mount Carmel. Kitty was played out by the time Mussa began to drive up the winding turns along the sides of Mount Carmel.

“All Druse villages are built very high places. We are small minority and need high places to defend against Moslem attacks,” Mussa said; “we will be in Daliyat in few minutes.”

Kitty pulled herself together quickly as they approached the outskirts and slowed in the narrow streets.

Daliyat el Karmil seemed to sit on the roof of the world.

It was sparkling white and clean in comparison to the filth and decay of most Arab villages. Most of the men wore mustaches and many wore western clothing. Their headdresses were somewhat different from those of other Arabs, but the most dramatic difference was the carriage of dignity and outward pride and the look which suggested that they could be fierce fighters.

The women were exceedingly handsome and the children

were bright-eyed and sturdy. The women were dressed in wild colors with white cloths over their heads.

Daliyat teemed with hundreds of visitors. They had come for the wedding from all the Carmel Druse villages, and in addition there were Jews from the kibbutz and as far away as Haifa.

The truck inched past the village reception house where solid lines of male guests gathered to congratulate the groom and the village elders. Alongside the reception house a veranda was built over the hillside. It held a twenty-five-yard-long table filled with fruits and rice and curried lamb and wines and brandies and stuffed marrows. The women, balancing dishes of food on their heads, kept a steady stream moving to and from the table.

Mussa stopped the truck beyond the reception house. A half dozen villagers came up to greet the children. The children unloaded the back of the truck and marched off with their bedrolls to their camping area to set up their camp and then return to join the festivities.

Mussa, Kitty, and Karen drove on down the center street. Here, Druse dancers wearing silver silk shirts and multicolored embroidered skullcaps were in the middle of a wild performance. They were lined up, each with his hands on the next man’s shoulders. Keeping the line straight, they continuously bounced from the ground, holding their bodies rigid, using only their feet as springs. In front of the line the finest Druse dancer in Palestine, a man named Nissim, went through wild gyrations with one knife in his teeth and a pair of knives in his hands.

Nearby, at the sanctuary, a verse maker told a story by calling out extemporaneous chants. Each line of the chant was repeated by a hundred men around him. As his story unfolded, each new line was repeated louder and louder, and as he came toward the end of his legend half the men drew pistols and fired them into the air.

Mussa turned the truck off the main street and took a narrower street down a steep incline. He jammed the transmission into low gear and held his foot on the brake as the vehicle slid down.

At the bottom of the grade, Mussa stopped the truck. The next road was too steep to attempt. The three of them got out quickly. Kitty took the small first-aid kit and followed Mussa down past a block of houses until they were far from the frenzied town activity.

At the last house in the village they stopped. It was closely guarded by a small band of fierce-looking armed Druse men.

Mussa held the door open. Kitty took a deep breath and

entered. Inside another pair of guards stood before an inner door. She turned to Karen.

“Stay here. I’ll call you if I need you. Mussa, come in with me please.”

The bedroom was almost dark, and it was chilly because of the altitude and the concrete floors. Kitty heard a groan. She walked quickly to the window and threw the shutters open, admitting a stream of light.

Ari lay on a double bed with a brass headboard. His fists were clenched around two of the rungs, which he had bent out of shape as he writhed in agony. Kitty threw the cover from him. His clothes and the mattress were dark with blood.

“Help me take his pants off,” Kitty ordered.

Mussa straightened up with amazement.

“Never mind,” she said. “Just stand out of my way. I’ll tell you when I need you.”

She carefully ripped away his trousers and examined him. His color seemed good and his pulse was relatively strong. She compared the two legs. The bad one did not seem to be unduly swollen nor did it appear that he had lost an excessive amount of blood.

Kitty’s manner was brisk efficiency now that she knew Ari was alive and did not appear to be in critical danger.

“Mussa, bring me some soap and water and some clean towels. I want to take a closer look at the wound.”

She washed her hands and wiped around the wound carefully. His thigh was discolored and the blood oozed from the puffy spot where the bullet had entered.

Ari fluttered his eyes open. “Kitty?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Thank God.”

“What have you done for this thing?”

“I put some sulfa on it yesterday. I had a pressure bandage but it didn’t seem to be bleeding too much.”

“I’m going to poke around. It’s going to hurt.”

“Go ahead.” He grunted and broke out in a cold sweat as she felt the lump. He gripped the brass rungs and shook the bed. Kitty took her hand away quickly. Ari trembled for three minutes. She wiped his face with a wet towel.

“Can you talk to me, Ari?”

“It’s going away,” he said. “It comes and goes. This is a lot of fuss I’m making for a leg wound. Did your Cook County training include this sort of thing?”

Kitty smiled that he should remember. “Oh, every once in a while somebody’s husband caught the boy friend in the act and he was dumped at the emergency door.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t say for sure. Bullets do funny things. There’s no accounting for the way they twist. Your pulse and breathing are good, no shock. Your leg isn’t swollen except around the immediate area of the wound.”

“What does that mean?”

“I would say it means you haven’t had an internal hemorrhage. The bullet missed a main artery. I can’t see any infection, either. I’d say you were rather lucky … although I’m worried about this pain you’re having.”

“I’ve been passing out every few hours,” he said.

“Hold on. I want to feel around again.”

Ari braced himself but was only able to take the probing for a few seconds. He cried out and bolted up to a sitting position and then gasped and sank down.

“The sonofabitch is killing me!”

He clutched the sheets and rolled over on his face and shook.

He convulsed in pain for ten minutes, then fell limp. “Kitty … what is it? … for God’s sake, I can’t take much more …”

“Were you able to walk at all after you were hit?”

“Yes … what is it, Kitty? Why should it hurt like this?”

She shook her head. “I’m not a doctor. I can’t say for sure. I may be all wrong.”

“Tell me what you do know,” he gasped.

“All right, this is what I think. The bullet entered your outer thigh and hit the bone. It didn’t break your leg or you couldn’t walk and it didn’t pass to the inside of your thigh or it probably would have got an artery.”

“What is it?”

“I think it hit the bone and either chipped or splintered it. That’s one of the things that is hurting you. My guess is that the bullet ricocheted back toward the surface. It may be lodged against a nerve.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“It has to come out. That pain is either going to kill you or paralyze you. You can’t take a trip down the mountain. It may start all sorts of things going … a hemorrhage, God knows what. You’ll have to get a doctor up here in the next few hours-or you’re going to be in very bad trouble. That bullet has to come out.”

Ari looked over to Mussa. Kitty turned and looked at the Arab and then quickly to Ari.

“There are wounded men from yesterday’s raid hiding all over the Galilee,” Mussa said. “Every Jewish doctor in Palestine is being watched right now. If I try to bring one back up here for Ari, he is certain to be followed.” She stared from one to the other again and stood up and

lit a cigarette. “Then you’d better give yourself up and get this taken care of right away.”

Ari nodded to Mussa and the Arab walked from the room.

“Kitty,” he called.

She walked to the side of the bed. He reached out and took her hand. “They’ll hang me. It’s up to you.”

Her throat went dry. She pulled away and leaned against the wall and tried to think. Ari was calm now and his eyes were fixed on her.

“I can’t. I’m not a doctor.”

“You’ve got to.”

“There is nothing to work with …”

“You’ve got to.”

“I can’t … I can’t. Don’t you see it will be so painful … it might put you into shock. Ari … I’m frightened.”

She slumped into a chair. She thought of Ari’s leading the raid and knew he was right about his fate if the British were to find him. She thought of Dov-and how Karen had felt. She knew that she was his only hope; to do nothing was equally courting death. She bit her clenched fingers and stood up quickly. There was a bottle of brandy on the dresser. She took it to him.

“Start drinking this. When this bottle is empty, we’ll get you another one. Get drunk … get as drunk as you can, because I’m going to hurt you like hell.”

“Thanks, Kitty …”

She opened the door quickly.

“Mussa!”

“Yes.”

“Where can we get some medical supplies?”

“At the Yagur kibbutz.”

“How long will it take to get a man there and back?”

“Getting him there is no trouble. Coming back … he must not use the roads so he cannot take a car. By foot in these mountains will take many hours … maybe not even till late tonight.”

“Look, I’ll write you a list of things that I will want. You get a man to that kibbutz as fast as you can.”

Kitty considered. The messenger might get back tonight and he might not get back at all. A kibbutz dispensary might or might not have anesthetics but she could not take the chance of waiting. She wrote a note for two liters of plasma, vials of penicillin, morphine, dressings, a thermometer, and some other instruments. Mussa dispatched one of the guards to Yagur.

“Karen, I’m going to need your help but it is going to be very rough.”

“I can do anything.”

“Good girl. Mussa, do you have anything at all in the way of medicine?”

“A few things, not much.”

“Very well. We’ll make do with what we have in that first-aid kit. Do you have a flashlight and … perhaps some unused razor blades or a very sharp small knife?”

“Yes, we can get that.”

“All right, fine. I want the razor blades and the knife boiled for a half hour.”

Mussa turned and issued the order.

“Now put some blankets on the floor. The bed is too springy. He will have to be braced solidly. When we move him to the floor, Karen, you get those dirty linens off and change the bed. Mussa, get her some clean sheets.”

“Is there anything else?” Mussa asked.

“Yes, we will need six or eight men in here to move him and to hold him still.”

Everything was made ready. Blankets were laid out on the floor. Ari was drinking steadily. Four of the Druses moved him as gently as possible to the floor. Karen quickly took off the bloody sheets and remade the bed. The blades and knife were brought in. Kitty scrubbed her hands and washed the wound area and painted it with iodine. She waited until the brandy had Ari mumbling incoherently, then placed a pillow beneath his head and placed a handkerchief in his mouth for him to bite on.

“All right,” she said, “I’m ready. Hold him down and let’s get going.”

One man held Ari’s head, two men held each arm, two held the good leg and one held the bad one. The eight Druses had Ari pinned solidly to the floor. Karen stood at the edge of the group with the flashlight, brandy, and the meager supplies at hand. Kitty got on her knees and knelt close to the wound. Karen turned the flashlight on it.

Kitty took a razor blade in her fingers and motioned the men to get ready. She pressed the blade against his thigh and lined up her stroke. With one quick hard motion she slit deeply into his flesh and opened it in a two-inch cut over the bullet hole. Ari shook violently. Mucus poured from his nose, and his eyes ran with tears of agony. The men strained to hold him.

Karen saw the blood leave Kitty’s lips and her eyes started to roll. She grabbed Kitty’s hair and pulled her face up and poured brandy down her throat. Kitty gagged a second and caught herself and took another drink. Ari’s eyes rolled back into his head. He fell into blessed unconsciousness.

Karen turned the light on the incision once again. With one hand Kitty held the skin apart. With her other thumb and

third finger she dug into his flesh and felt around for the bullet. Her fingernail rubbed the hard object. With a final exertion of strength she gripped it and wiggled it loose from his leg.

She sat on the floor and held the bullet up and looked at it and began laughing. All the Druse men started laughing too. Kitty sobbed half hysterically.

“Mussa,” Karen said, “get him back on the bed quickly. Don’t let anything touch that wound.”

Karen helped Kitty to her feet and sat her down in a chair. She pried the bullet from her hands and wiped them clean. The girl moved over to Ari and poured sulfa powder into the wound and laid a bandage over the top of it lightly. Then she sponged Ari down. Kitty remained crumpled and sobbing.

Karen ordered everyone from the room and poured another drink for Kitty and left.

Kitty sipped the brandy and walked over to Ari and felt his pulse. She pried his eyes open and watched his color.

Yes … he was going to come through all right …

She laid her head on his chest. “Ari … Ari … Ari … Ari…” she whispered between sobs.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Ari remained in excruciating pain. The medicines failed to arrive. Kitty was unable to leave him for a second. Several times she had to call Mussa for men to keep Ari from thrashing around and endangering the open wound.

Up the hill in the center of the village the dancing and chanting and hilarity continued. The bride, who had been hidden all day, was taken from seclusion. The groom, dressed in a cutaway coat and top hat, mounted a horse and rode to her through a flower-strewn lane flanked with rifle-bearing Druse men.

After the ceremony many of the Jewish visitors, with the children from Gan Dafna, lit a campfire and there were more songs and a hora. There was Hebraic dancing to the tambour and flute and the Druse dancers, too, took their turn in the center ring.

Karen remained constantly in the outside room. She came in to spell Kitty for intervals during the long night. Morning found both of them exhausted from the lack of sleep and the prolonged tension. Kitty sat at the edge of the bed and sprang up each time Ari groaned or moved.

By morning the medicines still had not arrived.

“You had better take the children back to Gan Dafna,”

Kitty told Mussa. “Is there anyone else here who speaks English?”

“Yes, I will have him stay here.”

“Good. Can you get another bed set up or a couch or something for me to rest on? I’ll have to remain right here for some time.” ,

“It will be arranged.”

‘ Kitty went into the next room where Karen dozed on a bench. She brushed the girl’s cheek gently. Karen sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Is he all right?”

“No. He is in very bad pain. I want you to go back to Yad El with the children this morning.”

“But, Kitty …”

“Don’t argue. Tell Dr. Lieberman I have to stay here until I can get things under control.”

“We are supposed to leave Palestine the day after tomorrow.”

Kitty shook her head. “Cancel our flight. We can make new travel arrangements later. I have to stay here until they can get someone else up here to take care of him properly. I don’t know how long it’s going to be.”

Karen embraced Kitty and turned to leave.

“Karen. Get to Safed, will you, and tell Bruce Sutherland where I am. Ask him if he will come to Haifa to meet me. Tell him to stay at the largest hotel. I’ll find it, whatever it is. Have him bring some clothes for me.”

By noon the hundreds of celebrants began drifting away from Daliyat el Karmil. The Druses left for their mountaintop villages and the Jews went back to the kibbutz and to Haifa. Mussa took the truckload of children back toward Gan Dafna.

When they were all gone, the Druses relaxed the heavy guard around Ari. The English-speaking Druse stood by in the next room.

Kitty Fremont was alone with him in this strange place. In this first moment of quiet the full impact of these events hit her. She stood over his bed and looked at him.

“God Almighty,” she whispered. “What have I done?” All the months of fighting him, all the carefully built-up resistance, collapsed in that mad second that had sent her rushing to his side. At this moment she feared this power that Ari held over her.

Late in the evening the messenger arrived with medicines from Yagur kibbutz. He had been working his way through the mountains and hiding for long periods of time. British patrols were everywhere looking for the wounded from the Acre jail raid.

Kitty quickly administered a liter of plasma to Ari and filled him with penicillin as insurance against the infection

that she feared must be inevitable under the circumstances of the operation. She redressed the open wound and injected morphine to ease the murderous pain.

For the next two days and nights Kitty kept Ari under morphine sedation to block off the pain. She watched his progress from minute to minute. The incision was beginning to bind together. There appeared to be no great crisis. Ari was awake only for brief moments, during which he took some nourishment, but when he was awake he was too torpid to realize what was taking place around him. The Druse villagers marveled at Kitty’s nursing efficiency and stamina. The women were particularly pleased with the way she snapped out orders to the men.

By the time Kitty knew Ari was safe, that time was the only requirement, she had become uncertain and filled with anxiety: the question of leaving Gan Dafna was in her mind again.

She pondered again her right to leave the children of Gan Dafna who needed her. Where was the line between professionalism and humanity? And what of Karen? Was Karen coming to America only out of fear of losing Kitty?

Of the thoughts that weighed on Kitty the worst was a factor she could no longer rationalize. Once before she had been draw into this strange group of people against her will: on Cyprus she had resolved not to work for them-and then she saw Karen. Now, it appeared to be a repetition: on the eve of her departure she was pulled back to Ari. Was this a coincidence or was her fate being shaped by a higher power? As much as her basic common sense resisted the fantastic idea, it kept haunting Kitty. She feared the power of Palestine.

Ari made swift progress under Kitty’s ministrations. He was a remarkable man, Kitty reflected. The pain that he had borne could have killed an ordinary human being. By the end of the fourth day she had reduced the morphine sharply. She had also discontinued the use of penicillin, certain that the wound was healing and would not become infected.

Ari awoke on the fifth morning hungry, eager to shave and clean up, and in a cheerful frame of mind. As Ari emerged in renewed vitality, Kitty went into a shell. She adopted an icy, impersonal, clinical attitude. She snapped orders like a sergeant major, prescribing the next week’s plans as though he were a complete stranger.

“I hope by the end of this week to have you completely off drugs. I want you to start exercising the leg and give it as much motion as possible. However, you must be very careful about putting too much strain on the incision. It isn’t stitched.”

“How long before I’ll be able to walk?”

“I can’t say without an X ray. I am inclined to think the bone was just cracked and not chipped. If there was a chip you would still be in severe pain. However, I can safely say that you aren’t going anywhere for at least a month.”

Ari whistled under his breath as she pulled the sheet up around him.

“I’m going out for a walk,” she said. “I’ll be back in a half hour.”

“Kitty. Just a moment. I … uh … look, you’ve been very kind. You’ve watched over me like an angel. Since this morning you have seemed angry. Is there something wrong? Have I done something?”

“I’m tired, I’m worn out. I’ve been up for five nights. I’m sorry I can’t do a song and dance for you.”

“That’s not it. There’s something more. You’re sorry you came here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” she said softly.

“Do you hate me?”

“Hate you, Ari? Haven’t I made it quite obvious how I feel about you? Please, I’m tired…”

“What is it? Tell me?”

“I despise myself for caring for you. … Is there anything else you want to know?”

“You can be a terribly complicated woman, Kitty Fremont.”

“I suppose I am.”

“Why do you and I always have to confront each other with our guards up, ready to swing … ready to run?”

Kitty regarded him steadily for a moment. “Maybe because I don’t live by your simple, uncluttered standards of I-like-you-and-you-like-me-so-let’s-go-to-bed. Page four forty-four of the Palmach manual: boys and girls should not indulge in coyness. Women of Palestine, be forthright. If you love him, sleep with him.”

“We aren’t hypocrites.”

“I’m not so advanced in my thinking as Jordana or your immortal Dafna.”

“Stop it,” Ari snapped. “How do you dare to imply that my sister and Dafna were-tramps? Jordana has loved only one man in her life. Is it wrong to give her love when she does not know if either of them will be alive at the end of the week? Don’t you think I would have preferred to live in peace at Yad El with my Dafna than have her killed by Arab gangs?”

“I don’t live my life as a noble mission. It is very simple with me, Ari. I have to be needed by the man I love.”

“Let’s quit this,” Ari said. “Haven’t I made it plain to you that I needed you?”

Kitty laughed shortly with bitterness. “Yes, you needed me, Ari. You needed me on Cyprus to smuggle forged papers out of Caraolos and you needed me again … to pull a bullet out of you. It is remarkable, that mind of yours. Even half dead and rolling in pain you could figure out all the angles. You could plot out the course … fill the truck up with children to avoid suspicion. You didn’t need me, Ari. You needed a candidate to get through the British roadblocks.

“I’m not blaming you,” she continued. “I am the number-one damned fool. We all have our crosses to bear and I guess you are mine. I just can’t take it with the straight-faced unconcern of a sabra.”

“Does that make it necessary to treat me like an animal?”

“Yes … because that’s what you are. You’re a mechanical animal, too infested with the second coming of the Israelites to be a human being. You don’t know the meaning of giving love. You know only fighting. Well, I’m fighting you, Brother Ben Canaan, and I’m going to beat you, and I’m going to forget you, in spades.”

Ari remained silent as she walked to the bed and stood over him with tears of anger welling in her eyes. “Some bright day you’re really going to need someone and it’s going to be a terrible thing because you don’t have the capacity to truly ask for help.”

“Why don’t you take that walk?” he said.

“I’m taking it and I’m going to keep on walking. Good Nurse Fremont is through. Somebody from the Palmach will come up to take care of you in a few days. You’ll live till then.”

She spun around and opened the door.

“Kitty, this great vision of man you have … what do you want?”

“I want a man who knows what it is to cry. I feel sorry for you, Ari Ben Canaan.”

Kitty left Daliyat el Karmil the same morning.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Bruce Sutherland had been waiting for Kitty at the Zion Hotel in Haifa for two days. It seemed to her that she had never been happier to see anyone. After dinner Sutherland drove up to Har Hacarmel, the Jewish sector of the city which was spread on the slopes of Mount Carmel.

They went into a night club which was built with a view of Panorama Road, where the city below, the harbor, and the sweep of the bay could be seen to Acre and beyond it, to the hills of Lebanon.

“How’s the girl?”

“Much better, thank you, Bruce. I do appreciate your coming.” She looked at the view. “I came up here to Har Hacarmel the first night I was in Palestine. Ari brought me up. I think our conversation had something to do with living with tension.”

“The Jews here have learned to live under the gun the way you Americans live with baseball. It’s made them a hard lot.”

“This place has got me so I can’t think straight any more. The more 1 try to reason, the more I am trapped by sentiment and unexplainable forces. I’ve got to get out of here before it swallows me up.”

“Kitty, we know that Dov Landau is safe. He is hiding up at Mishmar. I haven’t told Karen yet.”

“I guess she’s got to know. Bruce, what’s going to happen here?”

“Who knows?”

“You think the UN will give in to the Arabs?”

“There will be a war.”

There was a fanfare at the bandstand. A master of ceremonies came out and told a few stories in Hebrew and then introduced a tall, handsome sabra youth. The young man wore the traditional white shirt opened at the throat and he had a black mustache and a small chain was around his neck with a Star of David pendant. He strummed a guitar and sang a song of passionate patriotism about the Jews coming back to their Promised Land.

“I must know what is going to happen at Gan Dafna.”

“The Arabs can raise an army of fifty thousand Palestinians and perhaps twenty thousand irregulars from over the border. There was a chap named Kawukji who led irregulars in the ‘36-‘39 riots. He’s already busy getting another gang of cutthroats together. It is easier to get arms to the Arabs than to the Jews … they have friendly territory all around them.”

“And the rest of it, Bruce?” Kitty demanded.

“The rest of it? Egypt and Iraq both have armies of around fifty thousand men. There will be some Saudi Arabian troops in the Egyptian Army. Syria and Lebanon will put another twenty thousand men on the field. Trans-Jordan has the Arab Legion … crack soldiers with the latest arms. According to present-day definitions the Arabs do not have first-class

armies; none the less they have many modern units with artillery, armament, and aircraft.”

“You advised the Haganah, Bruce. What did you tell them?”

“I told them to form a defense line between Tel Aviv and Haifa and try to hold that strip of territory. Kitty, the other side of the picture is not pretty. The Jews have four or five thousand Palmach troops and a paper army of fifty thousand in the Haganah, but they only have ten thousand rifles. The Maccabees can put a thousand men out, no more, with light arms. They have no artillery, their air force is three Piper Cubs, and their navy is those illegal-immigrant runners tied up at Haifa. The Jews are outnumbered in soldiers forty to one, in population a hundred to one, in equipment a thousand to one, and in area five thousand to one. The Haganah has turned down my advice and the advice of every military man who has told them to pull in to a tight defense line. They are going to fight it out at every moshav, every kibbutz, every village. That means Gan Dafna, too. Do you want to hear any more?”

Kitty’s voice was shaky. “No … I’ve heard enough. Isn’t it strange, Bruce? One night when I was up on Mount Tabor with those young Palmach people I had the feeling that they were invincible … the soldiers of God. Firelight and moonlight does things to me.”

“It does to me too, Kitty. Everything I’ve ever learned in my life in the service tells me that the Jews cannot win. Yet when you see what they have done with this land you are not a realist if you do not believe in miracles.”

“Oh, Bruce … if I only could believe that way.”

“What an army these Jews have! Boys and girls without guns, without rank and uniform, and without pay. The Palmach commander is all of thirty years of age and his three brigade commanders are all under twenty-five. But there are things no military man counts that the Arabs must reckon with. The Jews are willing to lose every man, woman, and child to hold what they have. How much blood are Arabs willing to pay?”

“Can they win? Do you really believe it?”

“Call it divine intervention, if you will, or maybe … let us say that the Jews have too many Ari Ben Canaans.”

Kitty returned to Gan Dafna the next day. She was surprised to find Jordana Ben Canaan awaiting her in her office. The redheaded sabra girl was ill at ease.

“What do you want, Jordana?” Kitty asked coolly. “I’m going to be very busy.”

“We learned what you did for Ari,” Jordana mumbled awkwardly, “and I want to tell you how grateful I am.”

“It seems that your intelligence system is getting information through again. I am sorry I had to delay my departure.”

Jordana blinked but did not answer.

“Don’t take this personally,” Kitty said; “I would have done the same for a wounded dog.”

Kitty made plans to leave. Then Dr. Lieberman induced her to remain an extra few weeks. Extra personnel had been brought in and needed training to handle a hundred more children who had been smuggled into the country by Aliyah Bet. Housing was being put up as quickly as possible. Many of the new children were in bad shape, having been in DP camps for more than two years.

Once more she made her travel plans. Soon there were but two days left before she and Karen were to depart from Gan Dafna and Palestine.

At the end of August in the year 1947 the UNSCOP announced its majority and minority plans from Geneva. Each of the plans called for partition into separate Arab and Jewish entities with Jerusalem to be an international territory. There was no doubt as to the moral issue, for the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine called for the immediate immigration of six thousand Jews a month from the DP camps in Europe and the resumption of land sales to Jews.

The Jews had begged that the Negev Desert be added to their state. The Arabs had millions of square miles of undeveloped wastelands. The Jews wanted this small piece of a few thousand square miles in the hope that they could redeem it. The United Nations committee agreed.

Weary from a half century of heartbreak and sellout, the Yishuv Central and World Zionists announced acceptance of the compromise. The partitioned area, even with the Negev Desert, was an abortion of a state. It was, in fact, three strips of territory linked together by narrow corridors, resembling a chain of sausages. The Arabs had three strips of territory, larger in area, also linked by corridors. The Jews lost their eternal city, Jerusalem. They kept the Sharon and the parts of the Galilee they had pulled out of swamplands. The Negev was wasteland. What was the use of fighting it further? It was a monstrosity but they accepted.

The Jews answered.

So did the Arabs. The partition would mean war, they said.

Despite the Arab threats, the UNSCOP resolved to present

the partition plan to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in mid-September.

Every last detail had been taken care of. Again it was the eve of departure for Kitty and for Karen. At dawn Bruce Sutherland would drive them to the Lydda airport, and in the evening they would fly out to Rome. The heavy trunks had already been shipped ahead by boat. The cottage was ready to be vacated.

Kitty sat at her desk in her office with the final folders to be put away into the files. All that she had to do was to put them in the cabinet, close the drawer, and walk out of the door-forever.

She opened the first folder and picked up the top paper and looked at her notes.

MINNA (SURNAME UNKNOWN), AGE 7. Minna was born in Auschwitz concentration camp. Neither of her parents is known. We presume she is Polish. She was smuggled into Palestine by Aliyah Bet around the first of the year. When she was brought to Gan Dafna she was physically very weak and sick and showed many disturbances …

ROBERT DUBUAY, AGE 16. French nationality. Robert was found at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British troops. Robert was thirteen years of age at the time and weighed fifty-eight pounds. The boy had previously been an eyewitness to the death of his mother, father, and a brother. A sister, who later was a suicide, had been forced into prostitution with German soldiers. Robert shows signs of hostility and …

SAMUEL KASNOWITZ, AGE 12. Estonian nationality. No known family survived. Samuel was hidden in the basement of a Christian family until he was forced to flee into a forest where he lived alone for two years …

ROBERTO PUCCELLI, AGE 12. Italian nationality. No known family survived. Liberated at Auschwitz. We found him permanently crippled in his right arm as a result of beatings …

MARCIA KLASK1N, AGE 13. Rumanian nationality. No known family. Found at Lachau …

HANS BELMAN, AGE 10. Dutch nationality. No known family. Found at Auschwitz. Hidden by Christians …

The files went on and on. “No survivors.”

“… this child has’ the dream so prevalent with those children at Auschwitz. She dreams she is packing a suitcase. This we know is a symbol of death, for suitcases were always

packed the night before inmates were transferred to the Birkenau gas chambers.”

“The dream of smelling smoke is symbolic of the smell of burning flesh from the crematoriums.”

Bedwetting.

Overt hostility.

Nightmares.

Belligerence.

Kitty looked at a copy of the letter she had once written to Harriet Saltzman.

My dear friend:

You have asked my opinion of the common denominator, and the reason we are able to get such quick recoveries and dynamic results from those children who are borderline psychopaths. Well, I think you know that answer far better than I. You gave it to me the first time I saw you in Jerusalem. The wonder drug is called “Eretz Israel.” The spirit is so strong here it seems unnatural. They desire only to live and fight for their country. I have never seen such energy or drive among adults, much less children …

Kitty Fremont closed the files.

She stood up and looked around the office for several moments, then quickly snapped off the light and closed the door behind her.

She stopped outside the building for a moment. Halfway up the hill toward Fort Esther she saw a campfire. The Gadna children, the ten-and twelve-and fourteen-year-old soldiers would be singing and dancing a hora.

She shined her flashlight on the ground and crossed the green. New trenches had been dug. Larger bomb shelters were being installed by the children’s houses.

The statue of Dafna stood its vigil.

“Shalom, Giveret Kitty,” a group of youngsters shrilled as they raced to the recreation hall.

She opened her cottage door. The suitcases were all lined up near the door and marked with tags. The room was denuded of the personal little touches that she and Karen had put into it.

“Karen. Are you here, dear?”

There was a note on the kitchen table.

Dear Kitty:

The gang wanted to have a farewell campfire. I won’t stay

out too late. Love.

Karen

Kitty lit a cigarette and paced the room restlessly. She closed the draperies to shut off the view of the lights on the valley floor. She found herself holding the curtains which her children had made for her. Ten of them had already left Gan Dafna to go to the Palmach, that sad little army of the Jews.

It was stifling inside. She walked to the porch. The air was scented with rose blooms. Kitty walked down the dirt path between the rows of cottages all set inside little lawns and hedges and trees. She came to the end of the path and started to go back but was attracted by the light in Dr. Lieberman’s cottage.

Poor old fellow, Kitty thought. Both his son and daughter had left the university and were in the Negev Brigade of the Palmach, so far away. She walked to the door and knocked. The housekeeper, as old and as quaint as Dr. Lieberman, led her to his study. The little hunchback was engrossed in translating some ancient Hebraic on a piece of pottery. A soft background of a Schumann symphony played on the radio. Dr. Lieberman looked up and saw Kitty and set his magnifying glass down.

“Shalom,” Kitty said.

He smiled. She had never greeted him before in Hebrew. “Shalom, Kitty,” he said. “It is such a nice word for good friends to use to say good-by.”

“Shalom is a beautiful word and it is also a nice way for good friends to say hello.”

“Kitty … my dear …”

“Yes, Dr. Lieberman … Shalom … I am staying at Gan Dafna. This is where I belong.”

BOOK 4

Awake in Glory

CHAPTER ONE

AUTUMN 1947

UNITED NATIONS

FLUSHING MEADOW, NEW YORK

The six-thousand-year-old case of the Jewish people was placed before the conscience of man.

Chaim Weizmann of the World Zionists and elder statesman Barak Ben Canaan led a twelve-man delegation to Flushing Meadow for the showdown. This delegation, seasoned by years of frustration and adversity, held no illusions.

An informal headquarters was established in Dr. Weizmann’s mid-Manhattan apartment. The delegates were assigned to the task of getting votes. Weizmann took as his personal job the alerting of Jews throughout the world to bring attention and pressure upon their governments.

Barak Ben Canaan worked quietly behind the scenes. It was his job to keep abreast of the hourly shifts in strength, analyze and plug up weak spots, maneuver and reassign his men to meet any sudden changes, and spearhead the committee-room debates.

After initial parliamentary jockeying, the Palestine partition went on the agenda.

The Arabs went into Lake Success sure of victory. They had obtained UN membership for the Moslem state of Afghanistan and the medieval feudal kingdom of Yemen, bringing the Arab-Moslem bloc to eleven votes in the General Assembly. These latter were nations who had sat out World War II in silence and declared war against Germany in the last moment to qualify for the United Nations membership. The Yishuv, which had contributed so richly to the Allied cause, had no vote.

The Arabs used the eleven votes to dangle as bait before delegates from smaller nations. In exchange for a vote against partition, they offered their votes as a bribe to those who aspired to some of the lush jobs in the UN.

The Arabs also took full advantage of the cold war that existed between the two giants, the United States and the Soviet Union, deftly playing off one against the other. From the start it was obvious that passage of partition would need the blessing of both of these nations. Russia and the United States had never before joined on an issue and it appeared little likely that they would do it now.

To win partition a two thirds majority was needed. The Yishuv had to get twenty-two votes merely to offset the eleven

of the Arab-Moslem bloc. From that point on they had to obtain two votes to each one the Arabs obtained. Mathematically the Arabs needed only a half dozen additional votes to eliminate partition. With their oil as an additional bargaining factor, it would be an easy matter.

The non-Arab world press generally favored partition. Moreover, Jan Smuts of South Africa and the great liberal, Jan Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, were out on the front of the battle lines. The Danes, the Norwegians, and a few others could be counted upon to the end. Sentiment for partition was strong, but sympathy would not be enough.

Then the Big Four powers, the mighty ones, abandoned the Yishuv.

France, who had been overtly friendly to illegal immigration, suddenly reverted to caution. Arabs in the French colonies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were rumbling with unrest. A French vote for partition could well trigger an explosion among them.

The Soviet Union had different reasons. For over two decades Zionism had been outlawed. The Russians set out upon a program to erase Judaism by a slow abrasive process. While on paper they granted religious freedom, it was nonexistent in reality. There was no Jewish press, theater, school or community life. Synagogues were limited; there was but one in all of Moscow. No member of a synagogue was allowed membership in the Communist party. By these means the Russians hoped to eliminate Judaism in the new generations. Zionism and the partition of Palestine could serve to remind the Russian Jews that they were Jews, and partition was therefore opposed. With the Soviet Union went the powerful Slav bloc.

The position of the United States was the most disheartening setback the Yishuv suffered. The President, the press and people were sympathetic, but international politics put the United States officially into an equivocal position.

To support partition meant splitting the cornerstone of the Western world by breaking the Anglo-American solidarity. Great Britain still dominated the Middle East; American foreign policy was linked to Britain’s. To vote for partition was publicly to rebuff Britain.

More than this, the United States faced a greater threat. If partition was voted, the Arabs threatened war. If war came, the United Nations would be bound to enforce peace, and the Soviet Union or her satellites would put troops into the Middle East as part of an international force. This was America’s greatest fear and the reason she chose to hedge on partition.

Of the four major powers, Great Britain struck the most

deadly blows against partition. When the British turned the mandate question over to the United Nations they thought that the United Nations could not reach a solution and that Britain would therefore be asked to remain in Palestine. Then UNSCOP went to Palestine, investigated, and reached a decision that censured British rule. Moreover, the world had learned that England’s hundred-thousand-man army had not been able to cope with the determined Jews of the Haganah, Palmach, Maccabees and Aliyah Bet, a terrible blow to British prestige.

Britain had to maintain her position of power in the Middle East and to do so she had to save face with the Arabs by scuttling partition. Britain played on America’s fear of Russian troops getting into the Middle East by announcing that she would withdraw her garrison by August of 1948. Further, she would not use her. force in Palestine to enforce a United Nations decision. Thus checkmating the United States, Britain caused the Commonwealth countries to abstain from voting and applied pressure to those small European countries who were tied to her economically.

The rest of the picture was equally black for the Yishuv. Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg bowed before British pressure. Other small countries whom the Yishuv had counted upon began to balk.

The position of the Asian countries was variable. They changed their minds and shifted their votes hourly. However, it appeared that theAsians would side with theArabs as a gesture to the Western powers of their eternal hatred of colonial imperialism, and as evidence of their purchase of the Arab theme that the Jews were representatives of the West in a part of the world where they did not belong.

Greece had an intense dislike for the Arabs but a hundred and fifty thousand Greek nationals lived in Egypt. Egypt made painfully clear the fate of this minority if the Greeks voted for partition.

Ethiopia had little love for Egypt but was tied to her geographically and economically.

Romulo of the Philippines stood against partition.

The Colombians were overtly anti-Jewish.

The Central and South American countries held one third of the United Nations’ fifty-seven votes. Most of these countries were completely removed from the issue and neutral. The Yishuv wanted Jerusalem as the capital of their state; they felt that without Jerusalem a Jewish state would be a body without a heart. The South and Central American countries were predominantly Catholic. The Vatican wanted Jerusalem internationalized. If the Yishuv pressed for Jerusalem there was a risk of losing this vital bloc of votes.

But the Yishuv continued to labor, hoping for the miracle which was obviously needed. Throughout September and October, Dr. Weizmann and Barak Ben Canaan were an inspiration to the delegation. They never despaired at the frequent reversals and were never stampeded into errors in strategy.

The greatest weapon the Yishuv had was truth. It was the truth that the neutral UNSCOP had found in1 Palestine: the truth that Palestine was a tyranny-ridden police state; the truth, seen through the thin veil of Arab deception, of the Arab failure to advance culturally, economically, and socially from the Dark Ages; the truth apparent in the Jewish cities that had sprung from sand and the Jewish fields that had been made to grow from desolation; the truth of industry and ingenuity; the truth-implicit in the DP camps-of the humanity of the Jewish case.

Granados of Guatemala, Lester Pearson of Canada, Evatt of Australia, Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, Smuts of South Africa, Fabregat of Uruguay, and a lot of little men from little nations would not let the truth die at Flushing Meadow.

Finally, in November of that autumn of 1947, “The Miracle of Lake Success” began to unfold.

First came a cautiously worded statement from the United States in favor of the “principle” of partition.

Then came a move that rocked the world. After outlawing Zionism for over two decades, the Soviet Union made one of its startling reversals and announced itself as favoring partition. The news was released after a secret caucus of the Slav bloc; Vishinsky orated in impassioned tones of the rivers of Jewish blood shed and the justice of a Jewish homeland.

Behind this humanitarian mask the Russians had made a shrewd political maneuver. First, they openly mistrusted the Arabs. They realized that the Arab anger was merely a verbal expedient; Russia could vote for partition today and buy the Arabs back tomorrow. Meanwhile the Soviet strategy was to brand Great Britain a tyrant, at the same time making a move that could possibly lead to a Russian foothold in the Middle East. Russia knew that if she voted for partition the United States had to follow suit or lose face around the world as a friend of justice. This in turn meant a break in Anglo-American solidarity. Finally, the Soviet Union stood to gain tremendous prestige value from its “humanitarian” proclamation. And so, inadvertently, the Yishuv suddenly found a strange bedfellow.

As the two great powers made their carefully worded statements for partition, the halls of the United Nations were filled with rumors that cropped up every hour.

The mammoth chess game went on. In the dramatic maneuverings Granados and Pearson became key figures. After

much labor these two succeeded in the momentous achievement of closeting the United States and the Soviet Union in a meeting. They emerged from their conference with an electrifying joint statement of definite support of partition.

The Arabs girded for a last-ditch fight to keep the partition resolution from reaching the floor of the General Assembly. Soon it became apparent that a test vote would take place: to get the resolution to the General Assembly only a majority vote was needed, but this vote would indicate the strength of both sides. The vote came and the move passed and the resolution went to the General Assembly-but the roof caved in on the Yishuv. The count was twenty-five in favor, thirteen against, and seventeen abstentions, with two absent. If the same line-up held on the final vote for partition, the Yishuv would not get its needed two thirds majority. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and New Zealand had abstained. Paraguay and the Philippines were absent.

The Arabs saw that many “sure” partition votes had abandoned the Yishuv, and the Jews did not have the required number. Confident that they could bag an extra vote or two, the Arabs now switched tactics and pressed for the showdown on the assembly floor.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1947

The final debates raged. The Yishuv delegation sat in its special section of the General Assembly looking like men prepared for the executioner. The jolt of the test vote had shaken them to the core. As the arguments continued, their prospects turned darker by the hour.

Greece, expected to abstain out of friendship to the United States, declared openly against partition, fearing what the Egyptians would do to their nationals.

The Philippines, expected to follow the United States, reversed again.

Haiti was suddenly without instructions. Liberia went back on the fence and Siam crossed back to the Arabs.

It was “Black Wednesday” for the Jews.

As the day wore on, the friends of the Yishuv employed a desperation move to talk the clock out and stall the vote. The next day would be American Thanksgiving Day and a holiday. It offered twenty-four precious hours to muster the needed votes. The filibuster went on until an adjournment was called.

The Yishuv delegation assembled quickly in a caucus room. Everyone spoke at once.

“Quiet!” Barak roared. “We have twenty-four hours. Let’s not panic.”

Dr. Weizmann came into the room excitedly. “I have received a message from Paris that Leon Blum is personally interceding to get the French vote. Feeling for partition is running very high in Paris.” It was cheering news, for the former Jewish premier of France was still a powerful voice.

“Can’t we appeal to the United States to get Greece and the Philippines into line?”

The delegate who worked with the Americans shook his head. “Truman has issued absolute orders that the United States is not to pressure any delegation. They won’t budge from that position.”

“What a time to become honorable.”

The phone rang. Weizmann lifted the receiver. “Good … good,” he said. He held his hand over the mouthpiece. “Shmuel from downtown. Good … good … Shalom.” He replaced the phone. “The Ethiopians have agreed to abstain,” he announced. Ethiopia, under pressure from her neighbor Egypt, had been expected to vote against partition. The abstention decision showed great courage on the part of Haile Selassie.

A newspaperman close to the Yishuv delegation knocked on the door and entered. “I thought you fellows would like to know that there has been a revolution in Siam and the Siamese delegate has been discredited.” A yell of happiness went up at this Arab loss of another vote.

Barak made a quick run down of the roll call of nations-he knew it by heart-and calculated the vote shifts.

“How does it look, Barak?”

“Well, if Haiti and Liberia go with us and France comes in and we don’t lose any more ground, we may just squeeze through.”

It was still too close for comfort. Grimly and tensely they talked over the final assignments. They could not afford to lose a single vote at this stage.

There was a knock on the door and their champion, Granados of Guatemala, entered. There were tears in his eyes.

“The President of Chile has just sent personal instructions for his delegation to abstain. The delegation has resigned in protest.”

“Impossible!” Dr. Weizmann cried. “The President is the honorary chairman of the Chilean Zionists.”

The stark reality, the naked hopelessness of the situation crashed down on all of them. Who knew what pressure had been brought to bear on the President of Chile? Who knew where the screws would be turned in the next twenty-four hours?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1947

The gavel rapped. The General Assembly of the United Nations was ordered into session.

•‘We shall have a roll call of nations on the partition resolution. A two thirds majority is needed for passage. Delegates will answer in one of three ways; for, against, or abstain.”

A solemn quiet fell over the great hall.

“Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan votes against.”

The Yishuv had lost the first vote. Barak marked it on a pad.

“Argentina.”

“The government of Argentina wishes to abstain.”

“We have to cut the abstentions down,” Barak whispered; “they could kill us.”

“Australia.”

Everyone leaned forward as Evatt got to his feet with the first vote of a British Commonwealth nation.

“Australia votes in favor of partition,” Evatt said.

A buzz of speculation went up. Weizmann leaned close to Barak’s ear. “Do you think it might be a trend in the Commonwealth?”

“We’ll just have to count them one at a time … we can’t tell.”

“Belgium.”

“Belgium votes for partition.”

Another buzz arose in the great hall. A few days earlier Belgium had abstained on the test vote. At the last minute Spaak had defied British pressure.

“Bolivia.”

“Bolivia votes for partition.”

“Brazil.”

“Brazil favors partition.”

The South American countries were sticking. A vital vote was coming up with the next call. If the Soviet Union had a double cross up its sleeve, the world would know it now, for a satellite, White Russia, was next.

“Byelorussia.”

“White Russia votes for partition.”

In unison the Jews breathed a sigh of relief. The Slav bloc was going to come in. The signs were bright.

“Canada.”

Lester Pearson arose and spoke firmly. “Canada votes for partition.” The second of the Commonwealth countries had gone against Great Britain.

“Chile.”

Another delegate arose in place of the chief who had resigned in protest to his orders to abstain. “Chile has been ordered to abstain,” he said slowly.

“China.”

China, jockeying to become the dominant power in Asia, feared to go against the Moslems of India and Pakistan.

“China abstains.”

It was a setback for the Yishuv.

“Costa Rica.”

The Costa Rican delegate had been approached by the Arabs who tried to bribe his vote by a promise to support him for an important United Nations post. He stood and looked at the Egyptian delegation.

“Costa Rica votes in favor of partition.”

The man who would not be bought sat down smiling.

“Cuba.”

“Cuba votes against partition.”

This came as a complete and unexpected shock to the Yishuv.

“Czechoslovakia.”

“Czechoslovakia votes for partition,” Jan Masaryk said.

“Denmark favors partition.”

“The Dominican Republic favors partition.”

“Egypt.”

“Egypt votes against and will not be bound by this outrage!”

The gavel rapped and order came about slowly, following the Egyptian’s angry outburst

“Ecuador.”

“Ecuador votes for.”

“Ethiopia.”

“Ethiopia … abstains.”

It was a bombshell! The faces of all the Arab delegates turned to the Ethiopian with stunned expressions. The Syrian delegate shook his fist angrily.

“France.”

The first of the big powers, reluctant France had its turn. Parodi came to his feet slowly. An abstention by France could prove disastrous for the Yishuv. Had Blum and the French people succeeded?

“The Republic of France votes for partition,” Parodi said in a voice filled with satisfaction.

An expectant murmur went up. It was the first excited awareness that the miracle might actually take place!

“Guatemala.”

Granados, the champion of partition, spoke. “For,” he said.

“Greece.”

“Greece votes against partition.”

In the last moment the Greeks had bowed to Egyptian blackmail.

“Haiti.”

Haiti was a key vote that had suddenly been left without instructions in the last two days. “The government of Haiti has just sent instructions for this delegation to vote in favor of partition.”

“Honduras.”

“Honduras wishes to abstain.”

“Iceland.”

“Iceland votes for partition.” The world’s oldest republic had worked to make the world’s newest republic.

“India.”

“India votes against partition.”

‘Iran”

“Iran votes against.”

“Iraq.”

“Iraq votes against and we will never recognize the Jews! There will be bloodshed over this day. We vote against!”

“Lebanon.”

“Lebanon votes against partition,” Malik said.

“How does the vote stand?” Weizmann asked Barak.

“Fifteen for, eight against, and seven abstentions.”

It was not too encouraging. So far the Jews were running one vote shy of their two thirds, and the deadly abstentions were piling up.

“What do you think, Barak?”

“We will know when they come to the next three South American countries.”

“I think we shall have to start pulling away. We are near the halfway mark and we show no decided strength,” Weizmann said.

“Liberia.”

“Liberia votes for partition.”

“Luxembourg.”

Another small country under duress in the British economic sphere.

“Luxembourg votes for partition.”

And again the British had been directly rebuked. The Yishuv now stood one vote over two thirds.

“Mexico.”

“Mexico abstains.”

The entire Yishuv delegation winced.

“Netherlands.”

“The Netherlands votes for partition.”

“New Zealand.”

“New Zealand votes for.”

“Nicaragua … for.”

“Norway … for.”

“Pakistan votes against partition.”

The pivot votes were coming up. “If we get over the next four I think we are in,” Barak said shakily.

“Panama.”

“The Republic of Panama favors partition.”

“Paraguay.” ,

“Paraguay has just received new instructions not to abstain … instead, Paraguay votes for partition.”

“Peru.”

“Peru favors partition.”

“Philippines.”

For a breathless second the world stood still. Romulo had been called away from Flushing Meadow. The alternate stood up.

“The Philippines votes for partition!”

A roar went up! The members of the Jewish delegation looked to each other with dazed expressions.

“Dear God,” Barak said, “I think we have made it.”

“Poland.”

“Poland votes in favor of partition.”

The Jews were beginning to pull away. Poland had paid its small indemnity for the years of persecution.

Siam was not represented.

“Saudi Arabia.”

The white-robed Arab screamed out against partition in a hate-filled voice.

“Sweden.”

“Sweden is for partition.”

And now the Arabs had their backs to the wall as they went into the last ditch.

“Syria, againstV

“Turkey votes against partition.”

Barak scanned the balance of the roster quickly. The Arabs still had a breath of life. They now had twelve votes with one more certain. If some last-minute change came through it could upset everything.

“Ukraine.”

“For.”

“Union of South Africa.”

“For.”

“Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

Vishinsky got to his feet. “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics votes for partition.”

“The United Kingdom of Great Britain.”

The hall became silent. The British delegate got to his feet and looked around the room ashen-faced. At this awesome moment he stood alone. The Commonwealth nations

had deserted. France had deserted. The United States of America had deserted.

“His Majesty’s Government wishes to abstain,” the Englishman said in a shaken voice.

“The United States of America.”

“The United States of America votes for partition.”

It was all over. The reporters scrambled for their phones to flash the news around the world as the last vote was cast. Yemen gave the Arabs their thirteenth vote. Yugoslavia abstained in deference to a large Moslem minority. Professor Fabregat of Uruguay and the delegate of Venezuela gave the partition plan its thirty-second and thirty-third votes.

In Tel Aviv pandemonium broke loose.

In the final analysis, the Jewish victory was crushing. The Arabs had thirteen votes, and eleven of these were Arab or Moslem nations. The twelfth was a vote coerced from the Greeks. The thirteenth vote, Cuba, represented the only nation on the face of the earth that the Arabs were able to convince by force of argument.

Those men who had won this battle at Flushing Meadow and had seen the miracle unfold were realists. The Jews in Tel Aviv celebrated only for the moment. Ben Gurion and the leaders of the Yishuv knew that even a greater miracle would have to take place to win independence for the Jewish state, as the cry “Perish Judea!” arose like thunder on Arab lips.

CHAPTER TWO

kuwatly, president of Syria: We live or die with Palestine!

al kulta newspaper, cairo: Five hundred thousand Iraqis prepare for this holy war. 150,000 Syrians will storm over the Palestine borders and the mighty Egyptian army will throw the Jews into the sea if they dare to declare their state.

jamil mardam, Syrian premier: Stop talking, my brother Moslems. Arise and wipe out the Zionist scourge.

ibn saud, king of saudi Arabia: There are fifty million Arabs. What does it matter if we lose ten million people to kill all the Jews? The price is worth it.

seleh harb pasha, Moslem youth: Unsheath your swords against the Jews! Death to them all! Victory is ours!

SHEIK HASSAN AL BANNAH, MOSLEM BROTHERHOOD: All

Arabs shall arise and annihilate the Jews! We shall fill the sea with their corpses.

akram yauytar, mufti spokesman: Fifty million Arabs shall fight to the last drop of blood.

haj amin el husseini, mufti of Jerusalem: I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all.

AZZAM PASHA, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE ARAB LEAGUE:

This will be a war of extermination, and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian Massacres.

Other Arab leaders and the Arab press and radio spoke out in equally appropriate words in answer to the United Nations’ partition of Palestine.

On December 1, 1947, one day after the UN vote, Dr. Khalidi of “the Arab Higher Committee in Palestine called a general strike in which inflamed mobs broke out in wild rioting. They crossed into the Jewish commercial center of Jerusalem and burned and looted while British troops stood by idly.

In Aleppo and Aden and throughout the Arab world, other mobs, goaded by their leaders, tore into Jewish ghetto quarters with murder, rape, and plunder in their hearts.

Instead of forming an international police force to fill the gap, the United Nations bogged down in the formation of committees and Li endless talk. The body seemed to want to believe-that partition was going to be enforced without dependence on a single gun.

The Jews were more realistic. A Jewish state had been given an unalterable basis of legality, but if the Jews intended to declare the statehood after the British left, they would have to face the Arab hordes alone.

Could a half million ill-armed people hold back a flood of fifty million hate-crazed Arabs? They would not only have to face the Arabs inside Palestine, all around them on a hundred fronts, but the regular national armies as well.

Chaim Weizmann set out to organize the world Zionist groups to launch fund-raising campaigns for the purchase of arms.

Barak Ben Canaan remained at Lake Success to head the Yishuv delegation and battle out the details of partition and look for arms support.

The great question became, “Would the Jews declare their independence?”

The Arabs had no intention of waiting until May to find out. Although they held their regular armies back, they went about raising various “Armies of Liberation” who were alleged volunteers, and they got mountains of arms in to the Palestine Arabs.

Haj Amin el Husseini, the Nazi agent, was back in business. He set up headquarters in Damascus. Money for the Palestine “volunteers” was extorted from Arabs all over the Middle East. Kawukji, the brigand who had served the Mufti in the 1936-39 riots, was again commissioned “generalissimo.” Kawukji had been forced to flee Iraq when his part in the coup to deliver Iraq to the Germans was discovered. He spent the period of the war in Germany, acquired a wife there, and along with the Mufti had been pardoned from trial as a war criminal by the British.

Kawukji’s agents scoured the stink holes of Damascus, Beirut, and Bagdad recruiting the dregs of humanity, thieves, murderers, highway robbers, dope runners, and white slavers, which he picturesquely dubbed the “Forces of the Yarmuk,” after a battle the Arabs had won centuries before. These Kawukji “volunteers” were trained by other “volunteers,” officers from the Syrian Army. Almost immediately Kawukji’s forces began slipping over the Lebanese, Syrian, and Jordan borders into Palestine Arab villages. The main base was set up in Nablus, in a predominantly Arab area in Samaria, north of Jerusalem.

In the meantime, the Jews remained arms-starved. The British continued to blockade the Palestine coast. They even refused to allow immigrants to come from the Cyprus detention camps, where Aliyah Bet agents, were speeding military training.

Yishuv agents searched the world desperately for arms.

Then came the devastating announcement that the United States had declared a “plague on both houses” by an arms boycott of the Middle East. This boycott, reminiscent of the boycott of the Spanish people fighting Mussolini and Hitler, actually worked for the Arabs, who could obtain all the arms they wished.

As the battle lines were drawn, the Yishuv Central confronted the blunt fact that it had only the Palmach of some four thousand fighters fully armed and trained. The Maccabees could raise only another thousand men and could be counted upon only for limited cooperation.

Avidan did have a few things working in his favor. He had several thousand reserves in the Haganah who had been combat trained by the British in World War II. He had settlement defense which had been organized for twenty years, and he had a good intelligence system. On the other side, the Arabs had a staggering superiority of manpower and arms, daily augmented by the continual infiltration of Kawukji’s bloodthirsty irregulars. The Arabs had at least one excellent commander in Abdul Kadar, a cousin of the Mufti.

As if the Jews did not have enough to contend with, there

was the additional factor of the British. Whitehall was hopeful that the Yishuv would send out a mercy call, dropping the partition idea and asking the British to remain. But the Jews would not ask for help on these terms.

In theory, as they withdrew the British were to give the Taggart forts to the side with the greatest population in each area. But as they pulled back from sector after sector the British commander often turned these key places over to the Arabs when they should have gone to the Jews.

Former Nazi soldiers began appearing in the ranks of the “Forces of the Yarmuk” and other “liberation volunteers.” For the first time in its existence, the Haganah took off its wraps as the Jews called for a general mobilization.

It was not long until the first shots were heard. In the Huleh Valley, Arab villagers, along with irregulars, fired on the communal settlements of Ein Zeitim, Biriya, and Ami Ad, but the attacks were little more than sniping actions and were repulsed.

Each day activity increased. There were constant ambushes on the roads so that soon Jewish transport, the lifeline of the Yishuv, was in danger any time it came near or passed through an Arab village.

In the cities the action was even more violent. In Jerusalem the air was filled with flying debris of bomb blasts. The Arabs fired from the sacred walls of the Old City, and the city was divided into battle zones with communications between sections made only on risk of death. In the streets between Tel Aviv and Jaffa sniper posts and barricades appeared.

In Haifa the worst so far of the fighting took place. In retaliation for Maccabee raids the Arabs rioted at the refinery where both Jews and Arabs worked and more than fifty Jews were killed.

Abdul Kadar was able to organize the Arabs in a manner that Kawukji and Safwat in the north could not do. Kadar, working around Jerusalem, formulated a master plan, based on the realization that neither the Palestine Arabs nor the irregulars were organized and skilled enough to carry out sustained attacks. Kadar also realized that the Jews would hang on desperately to every settlement and make the Arabs bleed. He needed easy victories to encourage his people. Kadar settled upon two tactics. First, he would isolate the Jewish settlements and starve them out. Second, he would step up his hit-and-run attacks on transport.

Kadar’s strategy proved effective. The Arabs had freedom of movement while the Jews were forced to maintain tight positions. Day by day more Jewish settlements fell under siege.

468

Abdul Kadar centered his efforts on Jerusalem. The road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem ran through the perilous Judean mountains and was dotted with Arab villages which commanded several key heights. Kadar wanted to cut off and starve out the hundred-thousand Jews in New Jerusalem. It would be a vital blow to the Yishuv.

To combat the effort, the Yishuv used makeshift armored cars to conduct large-scale convoys. These convoys were vulnerable, and the road to Jerusalem became littered with wrecked vehicles. Inside Jerusalem shortages developed, people had to move about in armored buses and children played inside sniper range.

With Arab strength growing daily in new arms and irregulars and no relief in sight for the Jews, Abdul Kadar was content to play a waiting game through the winter, then lop off the frozen and starved settlements one by one in the springtime.

The Yishuv leaders appealed to the British to patrol the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, on the grounds of the inhumanity of starving out a civilian population. The British refused.

This quick Arab action, under a good leader, set the Yishuv down in the initial gambit. The Haganah gave orders to turn every kibbutz and moshav into a miniature Tobruk. The Jews had paid in blood for their land and if the Arabs were going to take it, it would also have to be in blood.

The battle of the roads opened the first phase of the war. The decision of whether or not to declare independence still hung in the balance.

Ari Ben Canaan made a slow recovery from his wound. This posed a problem for Avidan, who wanted Ari to command one of the three Palmach Brigades. These included Hanita Brigade-the Spearhead-which covered the Galilee, the Hillmen in Judea, and the Desert Rats in the south.

The Palmach commanders from brigade level on down were young men in their twenties, often headstrong, who considered themselves an elite corps. The backbone of the Palmach consisted of boys and girls from the kibbutzim. They were communal in nature, even in military structure. Often they were politically opposed to the Yishuv Central and as often as not they resented Haganah authority.

Ari Ben Canaan was mature for his age. He could appreciate the necessity of grasping over-all strategy and carrying out orders instead of waging a private war. Submission to authority as part of a team made him desirable as a Palmach commander, but Ari was simply not yet strong enough to carry the burden. Each brigade covered a vast area in rugged

469

terrain. The Palmach lived under the crudest of conditions. Ari’s leg was still too weak.

Avidan instead assigned Ari as Haganah commander to one of the vital places of Palestine, Ari’s own Huleh Valley. His command extended from the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee, included Safed, and continued up the valley in a fingerlike jut of land that pressed between the Lebanese and Syrian borders. Slightly south, a third Arab country, Trans-Jordan, bordered it at the Yarmuk River.

Ari’s area was one of the chief crossing places for Kawukji’s irregulars. If all-out war came and the regular Arab armies invaded Palestine, the Huleh Valley was certain to be one of the first objectives. The Arabs would attempt a junction of converging forces there, and if they took the Huleh they would use it as a base from which to capture the entire Galilee and to cut the Jews in half by striking between Haifa and Tel Aviv.

There were a dozen or more long-established kibbutzim and a few moshavim and villages in Ari’s area, including his own Yad El, where the tough pioneer farmers could well handle the irregulars and Palestine Arabs. The settlements on the valley floor were close enough together to make it difficult for the Arabs to use their isolation and siege tactics.

The hills on the Lebanese border presented another problem. Here Fort Esther was the key. According to British agreement, Fort Esther was to be turned over to Ari because the Huleh was predominantly Jewish. With Fort Esther in Haganah hands, Ari could maintain excellent control of the border.

Ari’s headquarters were in the centrally-located kibbutz of Ein Or-the Fountain of Light-which his uncle Akiva had helped establish. He had a few hundred Palmach troops from the Spearhead Brigade; he had David, Zev Gilboa, and Joab Yarkoni as aides. The Haganah organization in each of his settlements was strong: one hundred per cent subscribed in personnel quota and well trained.

The lack of arms was what plagued him, as it plagued the Yishuv all over Palestine. Every day settlement commanders harassed him for guns. He had none, Avidan had none.

There were two glaring weak spots in Ari’s area: Gan Dafna and Safed. Ari felt that he would be able to protect the children’s villag* once Fort Esther was turned over to him. So long as the road to Gan Dafna through Abu Yesha stayed open, the village was not in danger.

Safed was a headache. In fact no commander in Palestine had a larger headache. When the Jews made the decision to hold every settlement at any cost there were a few exceptions considered “untenable.” Safed was one of the exceptions. 470

The city was an island in a sea of forty thousand Arabs in surrounding villages. Inside Safed the Jews were outnumbered twelve to one. Most of Safed’s Jews were the Cabalists who knew nothing about fighting. In all, the Haganah in Safed had but two hundred able-bodied fighters to face more than two thousand Arabs and irregulars.

The Mufti had made Safed one of his first goals. Several hundred heavily armed irregulars had infiltrated and waited only for British withdrawal.

From the standpoint of interior strategy, the Jews were in even worse position. All three key points in the city would be in the hands of the Arabs: a police station right over the Jewish sector, the acropolis atop the town, and the Taggart fort on Mount Canaan would all be turned over to the Arabs.

In arms the Arabs had enough to carry on a war for months. The Jews had forty rifles, forty-two homemade Stens, one machine gun, and one mortar, plus a few hundred homemade grenades. They could arm less than a hundred men.

Safed appeared so obviously indefensible that the British even pled with Ari to let them evacuate the Jews.

Remez, the hotel owner and Haganah commander, paced back and forth before Ari’s desk. Sutherland sat quietly in a corner and puffed a cigar.

“Well?” Ari asked at last.

Remez leaned on the desk. “We want to stay in Safed, Ari. We want to fight it out to the last man. We have decided.”

“Good. I am glad.”

“Give us more arms.”

Ari leaped to his feet angrily. Twenty times a day he heard “give us more arms.”

“Sutherland, you pray to Christ; you pray to Confucius, Remez; and I’ll pray to Allah. Maybe rifles will rain down on us like manna from heaven.”

“Do you trust Major Hawks?” Sutherland asked, speaking of the British commander in the area.

“Hawks has always been a friend,” Ari answered.

“All right, then,” Sutherland said, “perhaps you’d better listen to him. He guarantees British protection if you evacuate Safed. Otherwise, he guarantees there will be a massacre after he pulls his troops out.”

Ari blew a long breath. “Did Hawks say when he is leaving?”

“No, he doesn’t know yet.”

“So long as Hawks remains in Safed we are relatively safe. The Arabs won’t try too much with him around. Perhaps the situation will change for the better before he pulls out.”

“Hawks may nave his heart in the right place but his own

471

commanders are tying his hands,” Sutherland said.

“The Arabs have already started sniping at us and are attacking our convoys,” Remez said.

“So … ? Are you now going to run at the first shot?”

“Ari.” Remez looked at him levelly. “I was born in Safed. I have lived there all my life. Even to this day I can still hear the chanting from the Arab quarters that we heard in 1929. We didn’t know what it meant until we saw those crazed mobs pouring into our sector. They were our friends-but they were insane. I can see those pitiful Cabalists being dragged into the streets to have their heads cut off. I was only a boy then. We heard the Arabs chanting again in 1936 … we knew what it meant that time. For three years we ran and cowed in the old Turkish fort every time a loud noise came from the Arab section. We want to stay this time. We aren’t going to run again. Not even the old ones. This time they won’t have it easy, believe me… but, Ari, there is a limit to what can be asked of us.”

Ari regretted having spoken sharply to Remez. Yes, the decision to remain in Safed took tremendous courage. “Go on back, Remez. Try to keep things calm. You can count on Major Hawks to keep it from getting out of control. In the meantime I’ll give you a priority on everything I get.”

When they were gone Ari sat down and gritted his teeth. What could he do? Perhaps he would be able to send fifty Palmach troops when the British left. It was little better than nothing. What could anyone do? There were two hundred Safeds all over Palestine. Fifty men here, ten men there. If Kawukji, Safwat and Kadar knew how desperate the situation was they would be making frontal assaults all over Palestine. There just wasn’t enough ammunition to stop sustained and determined attacks. Ari feared that the first time the Arabs tried one and learned how meager the Jews’ arms were, it would become a stampede.

David Ben Ami came in from an inspection tour of the northernmost settlements.

“Shalom, Ari,” David said. “I met Remez and Sutherland on the road. Remez looks a little green around the gills.”

“He has plenty of reason. Well, did you find anything interesting?”

“The Arabs have started sniping at Kfar Giladi and Metulla. Kfar Szold fears the Syrian villagers may try something. Everyone is dug in, all defenses built around the children’s houses. They all want arms.”

“Arms … what else is new? Where is the sniping coming from?”

“Aata.”

“Good old Aata,” Ari said. “When the British leave it’s 472

going to be my first objective. When I was a boy they tried beating me up when I went to get the grain milled. They’ve been looking for a fight ever since. It is my guess that half of Kawukji’s men are crossing over through Aata.”

“Or Abu Yesha,” David said.

Ari looked up angrily. David knew it was a sore point.

“I have reliable friends in Abu Yesha,” Ari said.

“Then they must have told you the irregulars are infiltrating through there.”

Ari did not answer.

“Ari, many times you have told me that my weakness is allowing sentiment to cloud my judgment. I know how close you are to those people, but you’ve got to go up there and make the muktar understand.”

Ari got up and walked away. “I’ll have to talk to Taha.”

David picked up the dispatches from Ari’s desk, scanned them, and dropped them. He paced beside Ari, then stood looking out of the window in the direction of Jerusalem. A wave of moroseness washed over him.

Ari slapped him on the shoulder. “It will work out.”

David shook his head slowly. “Things are getting desperate in Jerusalem,” he said in a doleful monotone. “The convoys are having more and more trouble getting through. If this keeps up they will be starving in another few weeks.”

Ari knew how the siege of his beloved city was affecting David. “You want to go to Jerusalem, don’t you?”

“Yes,” David said, “but I don’t want to let you down.”

“If you must, of course I’ll relieve you.”

“Thanks, Ari. Will you be able to manage?”

“Sure … as soon as this damned leg stops acting up. See here, David … I don’t want you to leave.”

“I’ll stay until you are fit.”

“Thanks. By the way, how long since you’ve seen Jordana?”

“Weeks.”

“Why don’t you go up to Gan Dafna tomorrow and look over the situation? Stay up there a few days and take a real good look.”

David smiled. “You have such a nice way of persuasion.”

There was a knock on the door of Kitty’s office.

“Come in,” she said.

Jordana Ben Canaan entered. “I would like a word with you if you are not too busy, Mrs. Fremont.”

“Very well.”

“David Ben Ami is going to come up and inspect the defenses this morning. We would like to have a staff meeting afterwards.”

“I’ll be there,” Kitty said.

“Mrs. Fremont. I want to speak to you before the meeting. As you know, I am the commander here and in the future you and I will have to work in close cooperation. I wish to express the opinion that I have complete confidence in you. In fact, I consider it fortunate for Gan Dafna that .you are here.”

Kitty looked at Jordana curiously.

“I believe,” Jordana continued, “that it would be good for the morale of the entire village if we set our personal feelings aside.”

“I believe you are right.”

“Good. I am glad we have an understanding.”

“Jordana … just what is our situation here?”

“We are not in too much immediate danger. Of course, we will all feel better about things when Fort Esther is turned, over to the Haganah.”

“Suppose something goes wrong and the Arabs get Fort Esther? And … suppose the road through Abu Yesha is , closed.”

“Then the prospects become very unpleasant.”

Kitty arose and paced the room slowly. “Please understand that I don’t want to interfere in military matters, but looking at it realistically-we may fall under siege.”

“There is that possibility,” Jordana said.

“We have many babies here. Can’t we talk over plans to evacuate them and some of the younger children?”

“Where shall we evacuate them to?”

“I don’t know. A safer kibbutz or moshav.”

“I don’t know either, Mrs. Fremont. A ‘safer kibbutz’ is merely a term of relativity. Palestine is less than fifty miles wide. We have no safe kibbutz. New settlements are falling under siege every day.”

“Then perhaps we can get them to the cities.”

“Jerusalem is almost cut off. The fighting in Haifa and between Tel Aviv and Jaffa is the most severe in Palestine.”

“Then … there is no place?”

Jordana did not answer. She did not have to.

CHAPTER THREE

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1947

The ground was sticky with mud and the air was crisp and the first snow of the winter floated down on Gan Dafna. Kitty walked quickly over the green toward the lane of cottages. Her breath formed little clouds. 474

“Shalom, Giveret Kitty,” Dr. Lieberman called.

“Shalom, Doctor.”

She raced up the steps and into the cottage, where it was warm and Karen had a steaming cup of tea waiting.

“Brrr,” Kitty said, “it’s freezing outside.” The room was cheerful. Karen had decorated it with pine cones, ribbons, and imagination. She had even got permission to cut down one of the precious little trees, which she had filled with tufts of raw cotton and paper cutouts.

Kitty sat down on the bed, kicked off her shoes, and put on a pair of fur-lined slippers. The tea tasted wonderful.

Karen stood by. the picture window and watched the snow fall. “I think that the first snow falling is the most beautiful thing in the world,” Karen said.

“You won’t think it’s so beautiful if the fuel ration gets any worse.”

“I’ve been thinking about Copenhagen and the Hansens all day. Christmas in Denmark is a wonderful thing. Did you see the package they sent me?”

Kitty walked up to the girl, put her arm around her shoulders, and bussed her cheek. “Christmas makes people nostalgic.”

“Are you terribly lonesome, Kitty?”

“Since Tom and Sandra died Christmas has been something I wanted to forget-until now.”

“I hope you are happy, Kitty.”

“I am … in a different way. I have learned that it is impossible to be a Christian without being a Jew in spirit. Karen, I’ve done, things all my life to justify something missing in myself. I feel, for the first time, that I am able to give without reservation or hope of compensation.”

“Do you know something? I can’t ever tell the others because they wouldn’t understand, but I feel very close to Jesus here,” Karen said.

“So do I, dear.”

Karen looked at her watch and sighed. “I must eat early. I have guard duty tonight.”

“Bundle up. It’s very cold outside. I’ll work on some reports and wait up for you.”

Karen changed into bulky, warm clothing. Kitty knotted the girl’s hair and held it in place while she put on the brown stocking-like Palmach cap so that it covered her ears.

Suddenly there came a sound of voices singing from outside.

“What on earth is that?” Kitty asked.

“It is for you,” Karen smiled. “They have been practicing in secret for two weeks.”

475

Kitty walked to the window. Fifty of her children stood outside the cottage holding candles in their hands, singing a Christmas carol.

Kitty put on her coat and walked out on the porch with Karen. Behind the children she could see the lights of the valley settlements over two thousand feet below. One by one the cottage doors opened with curious onlookers. She did not understand the words but the melody was very old.

“Merry Christmas, Kitty,” Karen said.

Tears fell down Kitty’s cheek. “I never thought I would live to hear ‘Silent Night’ sung in Hebrew. This is the most beautiful Christmas present I have ever had.”

Karen was assigned to a post in the outer trenches beyond Gan Dafna’s gates. She walked out of the village and down the road to a point where the earthworks commanded a view of the valley floor.

“Halt!”

She stopped.

“Who is there?”

“Karen Clement.”

“What is the pass word?”

“Chag sameach.”

Karen relieved the guard, jumped down in the trench, put a clip of bullets into the chamber of the rifle, closed the bolt, and put on her mittens.

It was nice standing guard, Karen thought. She looked through the tangle of barbed wire toward Abu Yesha. It was nice being alone out here with nothing to do but think for four hours and look down on the Huleh Valley. Karen could hear the faint voices of the children floating over the quiet winter air from Kitty’s cottage. It was a most wonderful, wonderful Christmas.

Soon the voices were still and it was very silent all about. The snowfall’ thickened, building a white carpet over the mountainside.

Karen heard movement in the trees behind her. She turned quietly and squinted in the darkness. She sensed something alive moving about. She froze and watched. Yes! Something was there in the trees! A shadow … perhaps it is a hungry jackal, she thought.

Karen flicked the safety catch off her rifle, put it to her shoulder, and sighted it. The shadow moved closer.

“Halt!” her voice snapped out.

The figure stopped.

“What is the’password?”

“Karen!” a voice called out. 476

“Dov!”

She climbed from the trench and ran through the snow toward him and he ran toward her and they fell into each other’s arms.

“Dov! Dov! I can’t believe it is you!”

They jumped down into the trench together and she strained in the darkness to make out his face.

“Dov … I don’t know what to say …”

“I got here an hour ago,” he said. “I waited outside your cottage until you left for guard duty. Then I followed you here.”

Karen looked around, startled. “It isn’t safe! You’ll have to hide from the British!”

“It’s all right now, Karen, it’s all right The British can’t hurt me any more.”

Her fingers trembled as she felt him in the darkness. “Dov, •you’re cold. You haven’t even a sweater oa You must be freezing.”

“No … no … I’m fine.”

The snow fell into the trench and suddenly the moon appeared and they could see each other.

“I’ve been hiding at the caves outside Mishmar.”

“I know.”

“I… I thought you were in America.”

“We couldn’t go.”

“I guess you wonder what I’m doing here. Karen … I… want to come back to Gan Dafna but I took some watches and rings when I left and I guess they think I’m a thief.”

“Oh no, Dov. As long as you are safe and alive that is all that matters.”

“You see… I’ll pay everyone back.”

“It doesn’t matter. No one is angry with you.”

Dov sat in the trench and lowered his head. “All the time I was in the Acre prison and all the time I was in the caves I thought to myself. I thought: Dov, no one is mad at you. It’s just Dov that’s mad … mad at himself. When I saw you in Acre I said then … I said I didn’t want to die any more, I didn’t want to die and I didn’t want to kill anyone.”

“Oh, Dov …”

“Karen … I never really had another girl. I… I just said that to make you go away.”

“I know.”

“Did you really know it all along?”

“I made myself believe that, Dov, because I wanted to believe you cared for me.”

“That is what is so wonderful about you, Karen. You can make yourself believe things and make me believe them too. I

477

wanted to come back to Gan Dafna and make you proud of me. I wanted to make you proud even though I thought you would be gone.”

Karen lowered her eyes.

“I’ll do anything for you,” he whispered.

She reached up and touched his cheek. “Dqv, you are so cold. Please go to my cottage. You can tell Kitty everything. She understands about us. Just as soon as I get off guard duty we will go see Dr. Lieberman together. Be careful. The password is Happy Holiday.”

“Karen. I have thought so much about you all the time. I won’t ever do anything wrong or anything that would hurt you.”

“I know that.”

“Could I kiss your

“Yes.”

Their lips brushed with a frightened searching.

“I love you, Karen,” Dov said, and ran off toward the gates of Gan Dafna.

“International law,” Barak Ben Canaan said angrily to the United States delegate, “is that thing which the evil ignore and the righteous refuse to enforce.”

Conversation, no matter how well put, made little difference any longer. If the Jews declared their independence on May 15 they would have to face seven Arab armies alone.

Kawukji’s irregulars and the Palestine Arabs under the command of Safwat and Kadar increased their activities.

The year 1948, the year of decision, came into being.

Through the first few months the Arabs became bolder and the tempo of the fighting increased as the British dismantled their huge military establishment and pulled back from position after position.

THE GALILEE

Irregulars lay siege to kibbutz Manara high in the hills on the Lebanese border. A half dozen other isolated Jewish positions were cut off.

The Arabs launched five straight attacks on Ein Zeitim-the Fountain of the Olives-but each attack was beaten back.

Syrian villagers began to fight. They crossed the Palestine border and attacked the northern Jewish outpost settlements of kibbutz Dan and Kfar Szold. Major Hawks, the British commander, dispatched forces to help drive the Syrians back over the border.

Arabs from Aata, helped again by Syrian villagers and irregulars, attacked Lahavot Habashan-the Flames of the Beshan-Mountains. 478

Ramat Naftali, named for one of the tribes of ancient Israel, was hit.

Arab activity in Safed increased as the Arabs waited for Major Hawks to withdraw. The blockade against the Jews was beginning to tell as food and water shortages developed in the Cabalist city. Convoys were getting through to Jewish quarters only when the British helped.

HAIFA

The key port of Palestine was a major objective of both sides. For the time, the dock area stayed in British hands, as it was essential for British withdrawal.

In Haifa the Jews had one of their few superior positions in Palestine, in Har Hacarmel above the Arab sector. The British commander, openly pro-Arab, continued to force the Jews out of strategic positions they had won.

Maccabees rolled barrel bombs down the slopes of Carmel into the Arab area and the Jews managed to ambush a huge Arab arms convoy from Lebanon and kill the Arab commander.

All normal business between the two sectors ceased. Amin Azaddin, an officer of the Arab Legion, arrived to assume command of the ever increasing irregular force.

The British held the Jews in check to allow the Arabs to build enough strength to launch an attack up Har Hacarmel.

THE SHARON

This central plain, scene of the great Crusader battles, was the most thickly settled Jewish area. It faced the most heavily populated Arab area of Samaria known, from its shape, as the “Triangle.” Although both sides remained poised, this sector remained relatively quiet.

TEL AVIV-JAFFA

A battlefield appeared between the adjoining cities. Street fighting and patrols continued around the clock. The Maccabees took their place in the center of the Haganah lines. Raids on both sides were constant. The Arabs used a minaret as an observation and sniping post and the position of the intervening British troops prevented the Jews from attacking it

THE SOUTH

In the sprawling Negev Desert the Jewish settlements were few and widely separated. The Arabs had two large bases, Beersheba and Gaza, of the fame of Samson. The Arabs were able to put a deadly siege on the settlements and slowly starve them. Each Jewish settlement managed to hold but the Arabs

479

were bold in this area and the pressure steadily increased. The Jewish air force was born. It consisted of two Piper Cubs for liaison contact. Another Piper Cub flew into besieged Jerusalem. These Pipers carried out their first bombing missions by throwing grenades out of their windows.

JERUSALEM

Abdul Kadar tightened his grip on the throat of Jewish Jerusalem. The Bab el Wad, that tortuous and vulnerable road through the Judean hills, was shut tight. The Jews were able to get through only by organizing large convoys and then at heavy price. The British steadfastly refused to keep the roads open.

Outside of Jerusalem to the south, the Jews had four isolated settlements in the Hebron Hills on the road to Bethlehem. These four settlements, manned by Orthodox Jews, were known as the Etzion group. Their position was as bad and vulnerable as Safed’s. The Etzion group was completely shut off from Jewish Palestine. To make matters worse, the Trans-Jordan Arab Legion, under the thin disguise of being British troops, blocked the road from Jerusalem to these settlements.

Inside Jerusalem the food and water shortages had become critical. Bombings, sniping, armored-car travel, and open warfare were the order of the day.

The fury reached a peak when a Red Cross convoy from the Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus was ambushed by the Arabs and seventy-seven unarmed Jewish doctors were massacred and their bodies hacked to pieces. Again British troops took no action.

Zev Gilboa reported to Ari’s office for the task of receiving Fort Esther from the British.

“We are all ready to go,” Zev said.

“Good. You may as well drive on up to the fort. Major Hawks said he would turn the place over at fourteen hundred. Say, what’s this I hear about you and Liora having another baby?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll have to stop giving you weekends off if you can’t keep out of trouble.” Ari smiled.

Zev ran outside, jumped into the cab of the truck, kicked off the brakes, and drove out of Ein Or kibbutz. Twenty Palmach boys and girls rode along to man Fort Esther. Zev drove over the main artery and then took the mountain roads toward the Lebanese border and Fort Esther.

Zev thought about his last visit to his kibbutz, Sde Shimshon-the Field of Samson. Liora had told him that they 480

were expecting another child. What wonderful news! Zev was a shepherd when he wasn’t on duty … but that seemed long ago. How grand it would be to take his sons out with him and laze on the hillsides around watching the flock …

He switched off thoughts like these; there was much work to do. When Fort Esther was turned over he had to relieve the siege of kibbutz Manara and start dispatching patrols along the border to cut down the flow of irregulars.

The big concrete blockhouse dominated the entire Huleh Valley. It would certainly be a relief to raise the Star of David over the fort.

The gang in the back began to sing as the truck spun around the sharp turns on the mountain road. Zev checked his watch. It was fifteen minutes until the appointed time. He turned the truck around the last turn. The huge square building appeared on the horizon a few miles away. Below him, Zev could see the white cluster of Abu Yesha in the saddle of the hill and the green plateau of Gan Dafna above it.

As he drove within a few hundred yards of Fort Esther, he sensed something strange. He slowed down and looked out of the window. If the British were withdrawing it was odd that there was no activity about. Zev looked up to the concrete watch and gun tower. His eye caught the flag of Kawukji’s irregulars on the tower just as a burst of gunfire erupted from Fort Esther.

Zev slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road.

“Scatter!”

His troops dived for cover. The truck went up in flames. Zev quickly pulled his people back out of firing range, assembled, and began to double-time down the mountain toward Ein Of.

When Ari received the news that Fort Esther had been turned over to the Arabs he rushed to Safed immediately to the Taggart fort on Mount Canaan.

He went directly into the office of the British area commander, Major Hawks, a heavy-set man with dark features. Hawks was haggard from lack of sleep when the angry Ben Canaan entered.

“You Judas!” Ari snarled.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Hawks said in a half whine. “You’ve got to believe me.”

“No, I can’t believe it. Not from you.”

Hawks held his head in his hands. “Last flight at ten o’clock I got a call from headquarters in Jerusalem. They ordered me to pull my men out of Fort Esther immediately.”

“You could have warned me!”

481

“I couldn’t,” Hawks mumbled. “I couldn’t. I’m still a soldier, Ben Canaan. I … I didn’t sleep all night. This morning I called Jerusalem and begged them to let me go back to Fort Esther and take it back.”

Ari glared at the man in contempt.

“Whatever you think of me is probably right.”

Ari continued to stare. ’

“All right, have it your way … there was no excuse.”

“It’s your life, Hawks. I guess you’re not the first soldier who swallowed his conscience.”

“What’s the use of talking? What’s done is done.”

“This may make you a good soldier, Hawks, but I feel sorry for you. You’re the one who has to live with the siege of Gan Dafna on his conscience, provided you’ve still got one.”

Hawks turned pale.

“You’re not going to leave those children on the mountain … you’ve got to take them away!”

“You should have thought about that. Without Fort Esther we’ve got to hold Gan Dafna or lose the whole Huleh Valley.”

“Look, Ari … I’ll convoy the children to safety.”

“They have no place to go.”

Ari watched Hawks beat his fists on the table and mumble under his breath. He had turned Gan Dafna into a suicide position. There was no use of berating him further. The man was obviously sick over what he had been forced to do.

On his way over, Ari’s brain had been busy on a scheme, risky at best, but a long gamble that might save the key position of Gan Dafna.

He leaned over Hawks’s desk. “I’m going to give you a chance to undo part of the damage.”

“What can I do now, Ben Canaan?”

“As area commander it is completely within your rights to come up to Gan Dafna and advise us to evacuate.”

“Yes, but…”

“Then do it. Go up to Gan Dafna tomorrow and take fifty trucks up with you. Put armor in front and behind you. If anyone asks you what you are doing, tell them you intend to evacuate the children.”

“I don’t understand. Are you going to evacuate?”

“No. But you leave the rest to me. You just come up with the convoy.”

Hawks did not press to know what Ari had in mind. He followed the instructions and took a fifty-lorry convoy to Gan Dafna, escorted by half tracks and armored cars. The half-mile-long procession moved from the Taggart fort through six Arab villages on the way to the Huleh. It drove up the mountain road, through Abu Yesha, in plain sight of the irregulars in Fort Esther. The convoy arrived around noon 482

at Gan Dafna. Major Hawks went through the motions of advising Dr. Lieberman to quit the place; the latter, on Ari’s advice, officially refused. After lunch, the convoy left Gan Dafna and returned to its base in Safed.

In the meanwhile Ari “confided” to some of his Arab friends at Abu Yesha that Major Hawks had left tons of arms -from machine guns to mortars-at the village.

“After all,” Ari said in greatest confidence, “Hawks has been a known friend of the Jews and he was privately doing something to compensate for the Arab occupation of Fort Esther.”

The story was planted. Within hours the rumor had spread throughout the area that Gan Dafna was impregnable. The children were armed to the teeth. This story was lent weight by the fact that there was no evacuation of the children: the Arabs knew the Jews would get the children out if there were great danger.

Ari made a visit to Abu Yesha, once the “might” of Gan Dafna had been established and proved a checkmate.

He went to see his old friend Taha the muktar in the stone house by the stream. No matter how strained feelings were, a man must be made welcome in the house of an Arab. It was an age-old custom, but despite Taha’s going through the motions of hospitality Ari felt a coldness he had never known before from Taha.

The two men shared a meal and spoke small talk. When Ari felt that enough ceremony had been served he turned to the purpose of his visit.

“The time has come,” Ari said, “that I must know your feelings.”

“My feelings these days are of little concern.”

“I am afraid that I must talk now as the Haganah commander of the area, Taha.”

“I gave you my word that Abu Yesha would remain neutral.”

Ari stood up from the table and looked Taha directly in the eye and spoke words harsh to an Arab ear.

“You have given your word but you have broken it,” he said.

Taha looked at him with a flash of anger.

“We happen to know that Kawukji’s men have been passing through Abu Yesha in droves.”

“And what do you expect of me?” Taha snapped. “Shall I ask them to please stop coming? I didn’t invite them.”

“Neither did I. Look, my friend … there was once a time when you and I didn’t speak to each other this way.”

“Times change, Ari.”

Ari walked to the window and looked out at the mosque

483

by the opposite side of the stream. “I have always loved this spot. We knew many happy days in this room and by that stream. Do you remember the nights that you and I camped out there?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Maybe I’ve got a long memory. We used to talk about it during the riots, how ridiculous it was for everyone else to fight. We took blood vows to be eternal brothers. Taha … I was up all of last night thinking of what I was going to say today. I began remembering all the things that you and I have done together.”

“Sentimentality does not become you, Ari.”

“Neither does having to threaten you. Mohammed Kassi and the men in Fort Esther are the same kind of men who murdered your father while he was kneeling at prayer. The minute the British leave the area he is going to come down from Fort Esther and get you to block the road to Gan Dafna. If you let him, he’ll shove rifles in the hands of your people and order you to attack Yad El.”

“And just what do you expect of me?”

“And what do you expect of me?” Ari countered.

A stony silence ensued.

“You are the muktar of Abu Yesha. You can rally your people just as your father did. You’ve got to stop doing business with the irregulars.”

“Or what?”

“Or you will be treated as an enemy.”

“Or what? Ari?”

“You are going to bring on the destruction of Abu Yesha.”

Neither Ari nor Taha quite believed Ari’s words. Ari was tired; he walked up to the Arab and put bis hand on Taha’s shoulder.

“Please,” Ari said, “help me.”

“I am an Arab,” Taha said.

“You are a human being. You know right from wrong.”

“I am a dirty ArabV

“It is you who thinks that of himself.”

“Are you going to tell me I am your brother?”

“You always have been,” Ari said.

“If I am your brother, then give me Jordana. Yes, that is right … give her to me and let me take her to my bed. Let her bear my children.”

Ari’s fist shot out and crashed against Taha’s jaw. The Arab was sent sprawling to his hands and knees. He sprang up and instinctively unsheathed the dagger from his waist sash and came at Ari.

Ari stood rigidly, making no move to defend himself. Taha 484

raised the knife, then froze and turned and threw it from him. It clattered over the stone floor.

“What have I done?” Ari whispered. He walked toward Taha with an expression that begged forgiveness.

“You have told me everything that I need to know. Get out of my house, Jew.”

CHAPTER FOUR: A terrible turn had taken place at Flushing Meadow. Anticipating the necessity of armed intervention to back up partition, and fearing the Russian position as part of an international force, the United States announced its intention to abandon its stand for partition.

The Yishuv launched a desperate campaign to change the American defeatist attitude. In the middle of these important maneuvers, Barak Ben Canaan received an urgent cable to report at once to France. Because of the urgency of the work at Flushing Meadow, Barak was puzzled by the order, but he left immediately by plane.

He was met by two Yishuv agents. Barak had been called to take part in highly secret negotiations of a vital arms deal. The Yishuv calculated that with the turn of events at Flushing Meadow, arms were the most urgent immediate need, and Barak one of the most able men for such business. It was their friend, Jan Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, who provided the information on sources of weapons in a half dozen European countries.

After several weeks of confidential and ticklish parleying the deals were closed. The problem now became getting the arms into Palestine, still under British blockade.

The first step was to acquire an airplane large enough to haul the arms. In Vienna an Aliyah Bet agent found an obsolete, surplus American Liberator bomber, which was purchased under the name of Alpine Charter Flights, Inc.

Next they had to find a crew; six men, four South African Jews and two American Jews who had flown during the war, were picked and sworn to secrecy.

Finally, the most difficult task was to create a secret airfield in tiny Palestine undetected by the British. An abandoned British fighter-plane base in the Jezreel Valley was selected. It lay in an all-Jewish area and offered the maximum chance of the Liberator’s being able to get in and out again.

Meanwhile the assembly of the arms inside Europe was carried out with the same secrecy that hid the true identity of the Alpine Charter Flights, Inc.

485

It was a race against time. Two weeks would be needed before the first load of arms could leave Europe. The question was whether or not it would be too late.

So far, miraculously, not a single settlement had fallen, but the Jewish convoys were being ripped to pieces. Water lines to the Negev Desert settlements had be^n cut. In some places the settlers were subsisting on potato peelings and olives.

The focal point of the struggle was Jerusalem, where the isolation-and-starvation tactics were beginning to pay off. The Bab el Wad from Tel Aviv was littered with the wreckage of burned-out trucks. Only occasional huge convoys, mounted at crippling cost of men and materiel, staved off disaster in Jerusalem.

For the first time in the history of Jerusalem, the city was violated by artillery fire, from Kawukji’s irregulars.

Kawukji, Safwat, and Kadar urgently needed a victory. The Palestine Arabs were becoming uneasy over the failure of Arab predictions of “great victories.”

It was Kawukji, the self-styled generalissimo of the Mufti’s “Forces of the Yarmuk,” who decided to grab off the honor of capturing the first Jewish settlement. He picked his target carefully, having no wish to try a nut too tough to crack the first time out. \

Kawukji picked what he believed to be a soft spot: Tirat Tsvi-the Castle of the Rabbi Tsvi-was elected for the distinction of being the first Jewish settlement to fall. The kibbutz of Tirat Tsvi was made up of Orthodox Jews, many of whom were concentration camp “graduates.” The kibbutz stood in the southern section of the Beth Shean Valley, located there purposely to neutralize an otherwise completely Arab area. South of the kibbutz was the “triangle,” the all-Arab area of Palestine. Within shooting distance stood the borders of Jordan. Slightly north, the hostile Arab eity of Beth Shean completed the cutoff of the kibbutz.

Tirat Tsvi was one of the Jewish outposts that guarded the Jordan Valley farther to the north.

Kawukji was delighted with his choice of Tirat Tsvi. The religious Jews of the kibbutz would crumple before the first massed attack. The brigand assembled hundreds of Arabs at the Nablus base in the Triangle and marched up for the attack.

Kawukji announced his victory in advance; it was published even before he made an attack. When he did move his troops into position, the Arab women from Beth Shean came to the edge of the battlefield and waited with sacks and containers to rush up after the troops and plunder the kibbutz. 486

The attack came with a cloudy dawn. The Jews had one hundred and sixty-seven men and women of fighting age on the battle line, in trenches, and behind rough barricades facing the Arab position. The children were hidden in the center-most building of the kibbutz. The defenders had no armament heavier than a single two-inch mortar.

A bugle blew. Arab Legion officers with drawn swords led the charge. The irregulars behind them poured over the open fields in a massed frontal assault calculated to overrun the kibbutz by sheer weight of numbers.

The Jews waited until the Arab force was within twenty yards, then on signal they cut loose with a tremendous volley. Arabs went down like mown wheat.

The impetus of the Arab charge carried forward a second, third, and fourth headlong wave. The Jews continued their disciplined fire, blasting each rush as the leaders’ feet touched kibbutz ground.

The field was littered with Arab dead and the wounded screamed, “We are brothers! Mercy, in the name of Allah!”

The rest scrambled back out of range and began a confused retreat. Kawukji had promised them easy victory and plunder! He had told them this bunch of Orthodox Jews would flee at the sight of them! They had not reckoned on such a fight. The Arab women on the outskirts of the battle began to flee too.

The Arab Legion officers herded the running irregulars together and stopped the retreat only by firing at them. The leaders reorganized their men for another rush at the kibbutz, but the irregulars’ hearts were no longer in their effort.

Inside Tirat Tsvi the Jews were in bad trouble. They did not have enough ammunition left to hold off another charge if Arabs came in strong and hard. Moreover, if the Arabs changed strategy and tried a slow attack with flanking movement the Jews could not contain it. They hastily organized a desperation tactic. Most of the ammunition was given to twenty sharpshooters. The rest dropped back to the children’s house and prepared for a last-ditch fight with bayonets, clubs, and bare hands. Through field glasses they watched the Arabs mass and saw that there were enough troops left to overrun the kibbutz.

The Arabs came over the field more slowly this time, with some of the Legion officers behind the troops forcing them on at gun point.

Suddenly the heavens opened up in an unexpected downpour. Within minutes the open field was turned into a deep and bogging mud. The Arab charge, instead of gaining momentum, began to wallow, just as the Canaanite chariots had done against Deborah.

487

Is the first Legion officers reached the kibbutz, the sharpshooters picked them off. Kawukji’s noble “Forces of the Yar-muk” had had enough for the day.

Kawukji was in a rage over the Tirat Tsvi debacle. He had to have a victory quickly to save face. This time he decided to go after big game.

The road between Tel Aviv and Haifa was more important to the Yishuv from a purely strategic standpoint than the road to Jerusalem. If the Tel Aviv-Haifa line could be cut, the Arabs could sever the Jewish dispositions, splitting the Galilee away from the Sharon. There were Arab villages on the main highway which forced the Jews to use alternate interior roads ; to maintain transportation between the two cities. On one of ! the vital alternate roads was kibbutz Mishmar Haemek-the Guardpost of the Valley. Mishmar Haemek became Kawukji’s ; goal in the ambitious move to separate Tel Aviv from Haifa.

This time Kawukji determined not to repeat the mistakes | of Tirat Tsvi. He massed more than a-thousand men and moved them into the hills surrounding the kibbutz, together with ten 75mm. mountain guns.

With Mishmar Haemek ringed, Kawukji opened a brutal artillery barrage. The Jews had one machine gun with which to answer back.

After a day of the pounding, the British called a truce, entered the kibbutz, and advised the Jews to pull out. When they refused the British left, washing their hands of the affair. Kawukji learned from the British that the Jews were relatively weak inside the kibbutz. What he did not know, because of his lack of an intelligence system, was that the Emek Valley was alive with men in training for the Haganah. During the second night two entire battalions of Haganah, all armed with rifles, slipped into the kibbutz.

On the third day, Kawukji mounted the attack.

Instead of walking into a frightened and cowering kibbutz, he ran into two battalions of eagerly waiting and trained men. Kawukji’s offense was smashed.

He rallied his men and tried a slow sustained move. It was equally unsuccessful. He mounted more attacks, but with each the irregulars showed less inclination to fight. They straggled forward halfheartedly and pulled back whenever resistance stiffened.

Toward the end of the day, Kawukji lost control of his ! troops. They began to walk out of the battle area.

Inside the kibbutz, the Jews witnessed the development J and poured out after the Arabs. Here was a completely unexpected turn. The Arabs were so startled at the sight of I Jews charging that they all fled, with the Haganah literally at I 488

their heels. The running fight surged back miles, to Megiddo, site of a hundred battles through the ages. Here, on the historic fighting ground of Armageddon, the Jews completely broke Kawukji’s forces. The carnage stopped only when the British stepped in and forced a truce.

The Jews had won their first real victory of the War of Liberation. (

In the Jerusalem corridor the Hillmen Brigade of the Palmach performed titans’ work to keep the road open. This gang of teenagers, with commanders in their twenties, patrolled the deep gorges and wilds of Judea, making fierce hit-and-run raids on Arab villages in conjunction with convoy runs. They frequently worked around the clock until they were numb with exhaustion, yet they could always be goaded on to one more patrol, one more raid, one more hike through the fierce country.

“In this wadi King David also lived as a guerrilla fighter!” The bloodshot eyes of the Palmach youngsters recorded fatigue as they roused to still another effort.

“Remember, you are fighting at the place where Samson was born!”

“In this valley David met Goliath!”

“Here Joshua made the sun stand still!”

At night the Bible was read to the exhausted warriors as a source of inspiration for the superhuman efforts the next day would call forth. Here, in Kadar’s territory, the fighting was hard and eonstant and the Arabs had confidence behind a strong leader.

An enormous convoy mustered in Tel Aviv for another all-out effort to save Jerusalem. The Hillmen Brigade’s job was to take the Arab village of Kastel, built on a Crusader fort dominating one of the main heights of the highway.