Leon Uris (86 page)

Three days later, with Safed nearly empty of Arab civilian population and with hundreds of the irregulars deserted, Ari Ben Canaan, Remez, and Joab Yarkoni led a better planned, three-pronged attack and took the acropolis.

The tables were turned. The Jews were on the high ground above the Arab police station. Now those who had for decades tormented and murdered the Cabalists in wild mobs had their chance to stand and fight, but they fled in the face of the Jewish wrath. The police station fell and Ari immediately headed outside of the town to block off the huge Taggart fort on Mount Canaan, the strongest of the Arab positions. When he arrived he was astounded to discover that the Arabs had abandoned the Taggart fort, a position it would have been impossible to take. With the fort in his hands, the conquest of Safed was complete.

The victory of Safed was staggering. The vulnerable position thought impossible to defend had not only been defended but the defenders had conquered the city—with a few hundred fighters and a weird weapon called the Little David.

There were many theories and much discussion on just how this victory came about. Even the Cabalists of Safed were split on the subject. Rabbi Bairn of the Ashkenazim or European school was quite certain of divine intervention as foretold in Job:

When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating. He shall flee from the iron weapon ...

Rabbi Meir of the Sephardic or Oriental school disputed Bairn and was just as certain of divine intervention as described in Ezekiel:

Thy walls shall shake at the noise ... he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach ... thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground.

Bruce Sutherland returned to his villa on Mount Canaan. The Arabs had desolated it. They had trampled his lovely rose garden to the earth and they had stolen everything including the doorknobs. It did not matter to Sutherland, for it would all be rebuilt again. He and Yarkoni and Remez walked out to his rear patio and looked over the valley to Safed. They drank a lot of brandy and they began to chuckle.

Neither they nor anyone else was aware of it yet, but the stampede of Safed’s population had opened a new and tragic chapter—it began the creation of Arab refugees.

Somewhere in the Galilee, an obsolete Liberator bomber piloted by a volunteer crew of South Africans and Americans looked to the earth for a pair of blue flares.

The flares were spotted and they landed the bomber blind, with only a few flashlights marking the airfield. The plane bumped harshly over a pitted runway and skidded to a stop. The motors were cut quickly.

Swarms of people engulfed the plane and emptied it of its cargo, the first shipment of modern arms. Rifles, machine guns, mortars, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition were snatched from its waist and tail sections and its converted bomb bays.

The working parties stripped the Liberator clean in minutes. They loaded up a dozen trucks, which scattered in as many different directions. In a dozen
kibbutzim
Gadna youths stood ready to clean the weapons and get them out to the embattled settlements. The plane was turned and made a hair’s-breadth take-off and flew back to Europe to get another load of arms.

In the morning British troops came to investigate Arab complaints that they had heard an airplane landing in the area. The British were unable to find a single trace of a plane and were certain the Arab imagination was being carried away again.

By the time the fourth and fifth shipment of arms arrived, the Jews began to roll up victories. Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee had fallen to the Jews. The huge Gesher Taggart fort was grabbed by the Jews and held off repeated attacks by Iraqi irregulars.

With the fall of Safed, the Jews launched their first co-ordinated offensive, Operation Iron Broom, to sweep Galilee clean of hostile villages. Iron Broom was led by machine-gun-bearing jeeps which blazed into the villages and stampeded the Arabs. Safed had started a crack in Arab morale that gave Iron Broom a psychological jump.

With a score of local victories behind them and the knowledge that they could mount a successful offensive, the Haganah went after the vital port of Haifa.

The Haganah swept down the slopes of Mount Carmel in a four-pronged attack, each action aimed at an Arab strong point. The Arab troops, consisting of home guards, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi irregulars, mounted a strong defense and were at first able to contain the battle. The British, who still controlled the dock area, called truce after truce to stop the Jewish offenses, and at times took away hardwon vantage points.

The Arabs continued to hold well against the steady Jewish pressure. Then, as the fighting reached a peak, the Arab commander and his entire staff slipped out and quietly fled. Arab resistance became demoralized and collapsed entirely. Again the British called a truce as the Jews swept into the Arab quarters.

At that point a fantastic event took place. The Arabs suddenly announced, to the general astonishment, that the entire population wished to leave. The procedure followed the curious pattern of Safed and many of the villages. It was a strange spectacle to see whole Arab populations stampeding for the Lebanese border, with no one pursuing them.

Acre, an all-Arab city crammed with refugees, fell to the Haganah after a halfhearted and feeble defense that lasted only three days. The infection spread to the Arab city of Jaffa, where the Maccabees held the center of the line and launched an attack which took this oldest port in the world—and the Arabs of Jaffa fled.

In the Jerusalem corridor, Abdul Kadar succeeded in driving the Jews from the vital height of the Kastel, but the Haganah and Palmach came right back and threw the Arabs off in turn. Kadar rallied his people for still another attempt on the Kastel, and in this try he was killed. The loss of their one good commander was a further severe blow to the demoralized Arabs.

May 1948 came into being. The British had only two more weeks left to complete their evacuation and give up the mandate.

On the borders, the revengeful armies of Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq stood poised to cross and crush the conquering Jews.

The hour of decision—to declare statehood or not to declare statehood—was at hand.

B
ETWEEN
N
OVEMBER OF 1947
and May of 1948, the Yishuv had staged a spectacular show by successfully fighting against overwhelming odds with little more than nothing. During that period of time the Jews had converted the Haganah from an underground defense unit into the nucleus of a real army. They had trained new troops and staff men and organized tactical schools, operations, supply and transport and the hundreds of other things that marked the conversion from guerrilla fighting to organized warfare.

The first air force of grenade-throwing Piper Cub pilots had grown to include a few Spitfires manned by Jews who had flown with the American, British, and South African air forces. The Navy had begun with the rickety immigration runners and now had a few corvettes and PT boats.

From the beginning the Jews had appreciated the importance of administration, intelligence, and command. Each day they gained in experience and their victories brought confidence. They had shown they could organize and co-ordinate small-scale efforts: the convoys to Jerusalem, Operation Iron Broom, and other local actions.

They had met the challenge and triumphed. Yet they knew that they had only fought a small war, against an enemy who did not have a tremendous desire to fight. The Arabs had little organization or leadership and no stomach for sustained fighting. The Arab debacle proved that it took more than slogans to give a man the stamina and courage to put his life on the block.

The planeloads of small arms had helped to save the Yishuv. As the hour of decision came near the reality came with it that these arms would have to face regular armies with tanks, artillery, and modern air forces.

Those who believed that the Arab countries were bluffing soon got a rude awakening as the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan wantonly violated every concept of honor. The Legion operated in Palestine as a British police force. This “British police force” began open action against the isolated Etzion Group settlements on the Bethlehem Road.

The four villages in the Etzion group were manned by Orthodox Jews who chose to stay and fight, as did every settlement in the Yishuv. Led by British officers, the Trans-Jordan Arab Legion shelled the four settlements without mercy and completely cut them off from outside help.

Kibbutz
Etzion was the first target of the Legion. After blasting the
kibbutz
apart, the Legion attacked the siege-weary, half-starved settlement. The Orthodox Jews of
kibbutz
Etzion held fast until their last round of ammunition had been fired and only then did they surrender. Arab villagers who had followed the Legion rushed into the
kibbutz
and massacred almost all the survivors. The Legion made an attempt to stop the slaughter but when it was over only four Jews had survived.

The Haganah immediately appealed to the International Red Cross to supervise the surrender of the other three Etzion group settlements, which were also close to being out of ammunition. Only this move prevented mass murder there, too.

In the Negev Desert near the Dead Sea, the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan attacked again.

This time they hit a
kibbutz
that the Jews had built in the lowest and hottest place on the earth. It was called Beth Ha-Arava—the House in the Wilderness. In the summertime it was one hundred and twenty-five degrees in the shade. When the Jews came to this place no living thing had grown in the alkaline soil in all of history. They washed the soil down, acre by acre, to free it of salts, and by this painstaking process and through the creation of spillways, dams, and cisterns to trap the rainfall, they built a modern farm.

With the nearest Jews a hundred miles away and facing unbeatable odds, Beth Ha-Arava surrendered to the Arab Legion, and as the people walked from the House in the Wilderness the Jews set a torch to it and burned their houses and fields which had been built with inhuman toil.

And so, the Arabs had got their victories at last—Beth Ha-Arava—the House in the Wilderness—and the blood-stained conquest of the Etzion group.

On the night of May 13, 1948, the British High Commissioner for Palestine quietly left embattled Jerusalem. The Union Jack, a symbol here of the misuse of power, came down from the staff—forever.

MAY 14, 1948

In Tel Aviv the leaders of the Yishuv and the world Zionists met in the house of Meier Dizengoff, the founder and first mayor of the city. Outside the house, Sten-gun-bearing guards kept back anxious crowds.

In Cairo, in New York, in Jerusalem, and in Paris and London and Washington they turned their eyes and ears to this house.

“This is Kol Israel—the Voice of Israel,” the announcer said slowly from the radio station. “I have just been handed a document concerning the end of the British mandate which I shall now read to you.”

“Quiet! Quiet!” Dr. Lieberman said to the crowd of children who had gathered in his cottage. “Quiet!”

“The Land of Israel,” the voice over the radio said, “was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.”

Bruce Sutherland and Joab Yarkoni stopped the chess game in Remez’s hotel and, with Remez, listened raptly.

“Exiled from the Land of Israel, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.”

In Paris, the static on the radio increased and drowned out the voice as Barak Ben Canaan and the Yishuv agents frantically twisted the dials and beat on the receiver.

“Impelled by this historic association, Jews strove throughout the centuries to go back to the land of their fathers and regain their statehood. In recent decades they returned in their masses. They reclaimed the wilderness, revived their language, built cities and villages, and established an ever-growing community with its own economic and cultural life. They sought peace, yet were prepared to defend themselves. They brought the blessings of progress to all inhabitants ...”

In Safed, the Cabalists listened in hope of words to fulfill the ancient prophecies. In the Jerusalem corridor the dog-tired Palmach fighters of the Hillmen Brigade listened, and in the isolated and besieged settlements of the blistering Negev Desert they listened.

“... right was acknowledged by the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, and reaffirmed by the mandate of the League of Nations, which gave explicit international recognition ...”

David Ben Ami rushed into the commander’s office at Ein Or
kibbutz.
Ari held his finger to his lips and pointed to the radio.

“... the recent holocaust which engulfed millions of Jews in Europe proved anew the need ...”

Sarah Ben Canaan listened at Yad El and she remembered the first time she had seen Barak ride into Rosh Pinna on a white Arab steed with his great red beard flowing down on his tunic.

“... re-establishment of the Jewish state, which would open the gates to all Jews and endow the Jewish people with equality of status among the family of nations ...”

Dov and Karen held hands quietly in the dining hall and listened to the loud-speaker.

“In the second world war the Jewish people in Palestine made their full contribution to the struggle.... On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution requiring the establishing of a Jewish state in Palestine ... the right of the Jewish people to establish their independent state is unassailable. It is the natural right of the Jewish people to lead, as do all other nations, an independent existence as a sovereign state.