- ----- --------------- - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - -

FOREWORD

When I last saw Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel, in the sunroom of his
simple Geneva suite overlooking Lake Leman, he said to me: "\Vo have a good
population. That is the best of all raw materials."
This book by "Izzy" Stone-my friend and the friend of all who love democracy
-is about that good population of Israel
I like to think that the people of Israel, in a sense, are different from any other.
people in the world; not in a chauvinistic sense, God help us, and not because they
have come to this land from every oppressed corner of the world. Our America, too,
was settled by a diversified population. Unlike American settlers, the immigrants to
Israel-whether they come from the Belgian Congo or New York City-are bound
together by a tradition, common to them all and of ancient standing, before they ar-
rive in the land of Israel. They are, in this "peculiar" way ( may I say that I use the
word "peculiar" in the Biblical sense) the only "foreigners" who can come into a
new country and be-as most of them say to you-at "home."
This was impressed upon me during my recent trip to Israel. As our DC3 ap-
proached the thin Jine of the Palestine shore, a little black-bearded Jew of 74 fell
into his seat and began to pray. He was coming from Ireland where he had lived
the past ten years after escaping from Lithuania. Ilis wife and 13 of his family had
been burned by the Nazis at Dachau.
"You see," he said to me through his tears, "the prophecy has come true. God
said to Isaiah: 'I will bring you home to Jerusalem on the wings of an eagle.' Look
at us! From South Africa, from Belgium, from Ireland and all the world we are
corning hack to Israel."
This unity of tradition common to the Jewish people is further tightened by the
physical characteristics of the new land and the conditions under which they must
live there.

9
 It is naturally difficult for us Americans, sprawled out over a third of a continent,
representing a kaleidoscope of varied backgrounds and interests, to appreciate the
complete unity of the people of Israel. Theirs is a small country and they live dose
together. The deep chasms between the rich and the poor, so familiar in America,
simply do not exist there. Nor is there great divergence between the official in power
and the man in the street. Even in time of \var there is no brass hat rule, and it is
difficult to persuade officers to wear the insignia of their rank. For the Army of Israel
is the people of Israel.
lt is not strange then, that there shouU be an affectionate closeness (sometimes
evidenced by griping) in the attitude of the people to\vard their country and the
,vorlcl which would be impossible elsewh<;re. Talk to a soldier on the front, a taxi
driver or a farmer from a collective settle11ent and you will find the same informed
interest that yon get in talking \Vith leaden of the Government. Necessarily, all have
a personal stake in the State ai 1d in the futJre of Israel. The alternative is death.
This perhaps accounts for the miracles they have performed in peace and in war.
They have built he::rntiful modern cities, snch as Tel Aviv and Haifa, on the edge
of the wilderness. They have made the cbscrt bloom like a California garden and
coaxed nourishiug crops from its arid soil. They have established universities snch
as ~H. Scopus, laboratories such as the \Veizrnann Institute, and theatres such as
Ilabima, which have become, if not the m1rvc1, certainly the wonder of the world.
\Vith their naked hands and bodies at first they defended what they have built
acrainst
b
five bureedv
.,,
states who had modern arms 1)laced in their hands hv "
an even
more nnconscionablc 011c, They have so:: up a government which is a model of
democrncv. ,·
Truly, as Dr. \Veizmann said, a good population.
To the task of acquainting Americans wilh thcsc people of Israel, "Iz-:y" Stone
hrings singular qualifications. He knows these people well,-as they know him and
trust hii.n. As spedal Jerusalem correspondent for PA-1 aml later the New Yark Star,
he has lived among them a long time; to say that he ''rubbed shoulders with them"
,~.roulcl. make the Displaced Persons laugh because it is such an understatement. He
,vent with, and as one of, a gronp of Jewish refugees from eastern Europe in
a crowded refugee ship on their tortured voyage to the Promised Land. He thus
kno\vs what is in their 1ninds and in their hearts, because they have opened both to
him. He can evaluate their achievements agaiiist their dreams better than alrnost
anyone I know; and, by what already has been accomplished, judge what is to come.
lVlr. Stone has, of conrse, set down what he knows and what he has seen, simply,
truthfully and eloquently. He always doe;. But here somehow it seems just a little
more important. \Ve Americans sccnrc in our own position, can, through this book,
warm omselves in the glory of a free people who made a two thousand year dream
come trnc in their mvn free land.
•

Bartley C. Crum

10
Israeli g, wrd overloold11g Lake Tiberius ( C oolce) ►
 \
After cease-fire (Capa)

Patrol moving over to direct night ►

convoys to Jerusalem (Capa)

A camoufiaged Isra.eli outpost on the roof of an Arab house (Capa)

 AfochiJW gunner.'! at camp (Capa)

,vomen also serve in the war for

independence (Cooke)

14
Afr raicl in Tel A..i;iv (Capa)

Haganah "senhrina" famous for

driving her jeep into hottest
a1'eas (Capa)

15
-Ilaganah girl at post above Arab village (Capa) Israeli plane (Kluger)
 t

• I

-- . ~ - _...
.J -~ ,_. .
---
V~iting his girl hetween she/lings (Capa) One more goodbye ( Capa)

USA Jewish Lahar Committee ambulance in service (Capa)

Gua·1:cli11g the Northern an>roach to Tel Av-iv (Cooke)

18
 THE PAINS OF BIRTH
in which Israel seems doomed by
diplomatic duplicity and Arab ambush

March 19, 1948, was a black Friday of all Palestine, there were only a few intrepid Jew-
for Israel. On that <lay the United ish pioneers. As late as 1945 the B1itish consus
States reversed its position on Pales- recorded but 100 Jewish inhabitants in the sub-
tine. This seemed to end hope for a district of Beersheba, which corresponds with the
Jewish State. The UN's Secretary General, Trygve Negev. Below the Gaza-Beersheba line there were
Lie, declared, "The first-born of the Unitefl Nations but three colonies at that time, all three new and
died today." experimental, ·first tentative stabs at the conquest of
The first-born was not yet dead, but its situation the desert. "Operation Negev" the night of October
was preca1ious. Intrigue at Lake Success was not 10, 1946, had added eleven more colonies. Five
the only threat to its existence. The Jewish com- others were established the following year. These
munity of Palestine held a tiny bridgehead on the settlements were not much more than fortified out-
.Mediterranean rim of a vast Arab and Moslem shore. posts in which a total of perhaps 1,500 Jews lived
The future state of Israel had little more than amid a shifting population of 20,000 to 30,000
650,000 people. It was surrounded by seven Arab Bedouins.
States with a population of 30,000,000. Behind these, In the northernmost end of their State, the Jews
in a territory reaching from the North African At- were also outnumbered. In Eastern Galilee, some
lantic to the Turkish straits and eastward to Pakistan 7,200 Jews lived among 47,000 Arabs. Only in the
and far Malaya, was the world of Mohammedanism, coastal plain from Tel Aviv to Haifa and in the val-
300,000,000 strong. ley between Haifa and the Jordan were the Jews
V\Tithin Palestine itself the sihrntion was ominous. firmly in the majority. Even here there were dense
The Jews made up hardly more than one-third of its enclaves of Arabs. Next to Tel Aviv was the Arab
population. Of some 650,000 Jews in Palestine, city of Jaffa, allocated to the Arab State, a huge
100,000 were in Jerusalem, cut off by Arab tenitory enemy base in the heart of t]1e Jewish area. In Haifa
from the coastal plain where most of the Jews dwelt. there were 71,000 Arabs and 84,000 Jews. All along
Another 8,300 hardy souls were in two dozen lonely the highways of the coastal plain were Arab villages
Jewish, settlements scattered like beleaguered isles from which snipers could operate.
in the te1Titory assigned the Arabs by the UN parti- The strategic situation was also bad. The borders
tion plan. Even in the tenito1y assigned the Jews, of the Jewish State were drawn as if to make certain
they were confronted with an Arab m inority of that it would be indefensible. On a map it looked
formidable dimensions. Of the 865,000 p eople in like three match sticks perched giddily on a wedge.
what was to be a Jewish State, 514,000 were Jews At the bottom was the broad wedge of the Negev
and 310,000 were Arabs. Behind this hostile minority tenitory assigned the Jews. Above this, on the west
stood almost a million fellow-Arabs in the rest of or left, extending in a narrow strip along the sea was
Palestine. :, the coastal plain, nmning north to Haifa Bay. From
The dishibution of the Jewish population was so there another narrow strip jutted southeastward
uneven as to endanger Israel's hold on the outlying across the country to the Jordan. This was the his-
sections of its own territory. In the southern desert toric highroad of ancient armies, the scene of Arma-
of the Negev, comprising almost half the total area geddon, the Vale of Jezreel, which modem Jews call

19
simply the Emek, or Valley. Northward from the Israel was wide open to attack. The Lebanese could
eastern end of this· strip, around the Sea of Galilee move south into Arab territ01y outflanking Haifa
and up the narrow valley between the mountains of Bay on the west and Jewish Galilee on the east.
Lebanon and Syria ran the fourth section of this The northern ann of the Jewish State was squeezed
gerrymandered State, the upper Jordan and Eastern between Lebanon and Arab· Palestine, Syria and
Galilee. Transjordan. In the center, invading forces from
This zigzag territory had no boundaries which Transjordan could move unhindered across the Jor-
were natural barriers to invasion and at three points dan into the heart of Arab Palestine, and to the
its communications ran through bottlenecks. These very borders of the narrow Jewish coastal plain.
bottlenecks were designed to give the central moun- In the south only an imaginary line separated the
tain ten-itory assigned the Arabs access to the two deserts of Egyptian Sinai from the desert of the
other parts of Palestine included in the Arab State. Palestinian Negev. There, too, easy avenues of inva-
Strong Arab forces striking within the connhy at sion lay open to the Egyptians along the coast up
these three points would threaten to split the Jewish through Arab Gaza toward Tel Aviv, on the east
State into three parts. through Arab Beersheba, to Jerusalem.

11 The Jews were besieged by hostile Arab armies tition vote was taken. The Council of the Arab
League recommended that the Arab States send mil-
on every side but one, the Mediterranean. There
they were confronted by an enemy of another kind, itary forces to the Palestinian borders in preparation
They faced the British Navy on blockade, and this for the Brifoh withdrawal. This was a challenge to
in turn was rninforced by the American arms em- the authority of the UN.
bargo. Support of'the United Nations was a principle of
The founders o{ the United States could only ap- British foreign policy. The UN had intervened in the
peal to "the conscience of mankind." The founders Palestine question at the request of Foreign Secre-
of Israel, in their struggle for independence, were tary Ernest Bevin. While Britain herself abstained
able to appeal to the international decision of an from voting, all the other members of tlie British
international tribunal. This soon proved as feeble a Commonwealth of Nations had cast their ballots
support. · for partition. W onld Britain loyally support the UN
For the second time in a generation, after a sec- decision?
ond world war, an attempt had been made to estab- At first the British seemed insistent only upon UN
lish a world order, the United Nations. The United help in enforcing any decision. Sir Alexander Cado~
Nations had set up an investigating committee. The gan, Britain's pennanent delegate to the UN, had
committee had recommended partition of Palestine warned the special Palestine session of the Assembly
into Jewish and Arabs States. The general Assembly that his government would not accept "the sole re-
of the United Nations had, by better than the two- sponsibility" for enforcement. But after the Assembly
thirds vote required, approved this decision. voted, Bevin told the House of Commons that BTitain
The UN had set up a commission representing five would not take part, "either individually or collec-
of the small Powers to supervise partition. The com- tively" in enforcing the UN decision.
mission, on arriving in Palestine, was to appoint a The UN commission was anxious to arrive in Pales-
provisional council in each state. The British, by the tine as soon as possible. It was asked not to come
terms of the Assembly resolution, were to withdraw until May 1, two weeks before the end of the man-
their occupation troops and terminate their mandate date. The British told the commission that they
on August l, 1948. In the meantime, the organs of could not guarantee its safety in Palestine. The UN
government were progressively to be transferred resolution had asked the British not later than Feb-
from the British to the two provisional State coun- ruary 1 to evacuate a seaport for Jewish immigra-
cils, Arab and Je"wish. Thus an orderly transition was tion. The British declined to do so. The British Navy
to be assured. continued its blockade of Palestine, seizing Jewish
This hope of peaceful implementation soon with- immigrants for internment in Cyprus and interfering
ered. The delegates of the six Arab States rose in a with Jewish attemrts to import military supplies. At
body and walked out of the Assembly after the rar- the same time the British supplied arms to t~c Arab

20
 States. Foreign Secretary Bevin was asked on April stituted a threat to the peace. This formula would
28 whether Britain would continue to supply the have been the first step toward the invocation of
Arabs with arms despite their avowed intention of sanctions against the Arab States. It would have
invading Palestine to fight the UN decision. Bevin's served notice that the United Nations would not
answer was, "we must honor our contracts." pe1mit its authority to be challenged. At the last mo-
The American government pursued an equivocal ment the American Government changed its mind.
. course, though American public opinion was over- On March 19, 1948, W ar:ren Austin, the American
whelmingly in favor of partition. Last minute pres- delegate, surprised the UN and the world with a
sure on the White House overcame State Depait- :reversal of the American position on Palestine. Ile
ment hmtility and led the U.S. to vote for partition. asked the Security Council to instruct the Palestine
But when the Arabs at once began .fighting in Pales- Commission "to suspend its efforts to implement the
tine, the State Department took a step which made proposed partition plan." This was to reward rather
it more difficult for the Jews to defend themselves. than to punish Arab aggression.
Six days after partition was voted, the Department Sixteen days before the adoption of the partition
announced that "in view of the cunent di~onlers resolution, a delegate had warned the General As-
in the Middle East," it would refuse. to license any sembly, "If States are to permit themselves-and to
arms shipments to that area. This tmilateral step was be permitted-to cooperate ·with the Organization
taken without consulti11g the UN. No attempt was when it suits them and to stand aside, or to attempt
made to ask British assurance that they would not to sabotage it when it docs not, this Organization
ship arms to the Arabs. This was to shut off arms \\1oul<l be rendered wholly abortive ..." The speaker
for the Jews while leaving the Arabs free to obtain was Sir Hartley Shawcross of the United Kingdom.
arms from the British. The occasion was a debate over constant use of the
Amhiguity turned into hostility in the course of veto by the Soviet Union. The words applied as
one extraordinary session of the Security Council. neatly to the attitude of the B1itish and American
Consultations were underway. The U.S., the Soviet Governments toward the Palestine decision.
Union, and France had _finally agreed in March that The effect was to invite the Arabs to destroy the
the invasion of Palestine by armed Arab bands con- new Jewish State before it could come into heing.

Ill Arab leaders made no secret of their inten-

tion. "The partition line proposed," Jamal Husseini
brought a new danger on the scene. The Arab Le-
gion of Transjor<lan, British officered, aimed, and
of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee boldly subsidized, anooll nced that it was "l'einforcing''
warned the UN, "shall be nothing but a line of blood Jaffa. Presumably tl1e Legion was in Palestine to·
and fire." Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, Secretary help the British mandatory government preserve
General of the Arab League, dropped the mask of order. Actually it began ah_11ost at once to engage in
moderation and told the Egyptian press, "This war attacks on Jews.
will be a war of extermination and a momentous Travel had become so difficult that trucks and
massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol buses b egan to move iu convoys, with anned guards.
massacres and the Crusades." On December 15 a convoy o.f supply trucks was mov-
The General Assembly vote for partition on No- ing from Tel Aviv to the CM.dren's Village of Ben
vember 29 was the signal. The Arabs had three Shemen in Arab territory. The convoy was attacked
aims: to disrupt communications, to gain control of by Arab Legion troops. They killed fourteen Jews.
Jerusalem, and to attack border settlements. The In ·those early days, Legiollnaires moved with ar-
day after the vote came the first of a series of attacks 1:ogauce even in the towns. In Haifa, two clays after
from ambush designed to make the highroads im- the attack near Ben Shemen, Arab Legion troops
. passable; seven Jews were killed near the ancient dragged two yow1g Jews and a Jewess from a car on
Crusader town of Ramle while on their way from the sh·eet and murdered them.
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Incidents of this kind became The press office of the British man datory govern-
a commonplace; h·avel grew hazardous. ment in Jerusalem began to compile and issue a daily
On December 3, fighting broke out on the border toll of the number killed and injured in Arab-Jewisl1
between Arab Jaffa and Jewish Tel Aviv. This fighting, as if to demonstrate tbe disorder sure to

21
 follow in the wake of ebbing British mle. At the end settlements in the Judean mountain country south of
of the first week after p artition was voted the death Jerusalem. These were between Arab Bethlehem and
toll stood at 66. At the enc.I of the first month it was Arab H ebron, off a highroad which ran entirely
489. thl'ough Al:ab territory and was completely in Arab
Across the border, in Damascus and Beirut, re- hands. The only other way to bring up supplies was
crnitin g stations were opened for a "Liberation by mulepack over hazardous mountain trails, ideal
Army" to fight against the Jews. Its leader was Fawzi for ambush.
el Kaukji, fresh from the Second World War, which On January 15, motorized Arab forces under Ab-
he had spent in Berlin with the ex-Mufti of Jem- dul Kader el Husseini, commander of the ex-Mufti's
salem. Sheik Hassan Bey Salameh, a former staff forces in the ·Jerusalem area, launched the first of a
officer u nder Rommel, also turned up among the series of attacks on this block of colonies. It was to
volunteers. Salameh had last appeared in Palestine take exactly four months, during which two supply
in 1944 when he was dropped by parachute as a columns were ambushed, before the Arabs could
Reichswehr major for sabotage duties. German subdue these colonies. In that first attack the Jews,
Nazis, Polish reactionaries, Yugoslav Chetniks, and by a ruse, inflicting a costly defeat on the Arab forces.
Bosnian Moslems flocked in for war against the Jews. The latter tried to seize a central point whose cap-
These raiders struck across the border for the first ture would have enabled the Arabs to subject Kfar
time on January 9, with an attack on Dan and Kfar Etzion to devastating fire and to cut it off from its
Szold at the far north of Eastern Galilee. They were three neighbo1·ing colonies. The defenders held this
well armed and fed, and probed for a weak spot, point for two hours, and then withdrew. Some two
for some isolated colony whose fall might strike ter- hundred Arab fighters moved into the position,
ror among the Jews, and raise the prestige of Arab yelling victoriously, only to find that they had been
arms. Nowhere did they succeed, in their objective; drawn into a p repared ambush. In the confusion,
the least defensible settlements showed unexpected Arabs began shooting wildly, often at each other.
powers of res.istance, but none knew how long they F ew of the 200 escaped. But this first victory did not
could hold, or where the Arabs might attack next. end apprehension. The difficulties of holding on to
The irregulars and the Arab Legion sought from these advanced outposts was b:agically demonstrated
I the beginning to reduce that handful of Jewish set- two nights later wh en 85 Haganah men on their way
' tlements within the territmy allotted the Arabs. o-,;,er the mountains to reinforce Kfar Et:.don were
Among the most isolated of these was the block of ambushed and massacred. It looked as if the Jews
four settlements at Kfar Etzion, the only Jewish were in for a long, hard, and costly stmggle.

·1V The Jcws had to contend with the British,

as well as with the Arabs. The day the UN voted
bilities. When the Mayor of Nablus, the unofficial
capital of Arab Palestine, called for iihad or holy
partition, Bl'itish soldiers in Jerusalem joined the war the day after the partition vote, there was an
Jews in celebration. This demonstration of good will immediate reaction from the High Commissioner, Sir
was no surprise to those who knew the British Alan Gordon Cunningham. Cunningham declared
Tommy. Unfortunately, British policy was not de- Britain was determined to keep order so long as it
termined by the instinctive reaction of the ordinary held the mandate. That first day police stopped Arab
British soldier, for whom the international verdict agitators from raising mobs in Jerusalem. But Cun-
promised the end of an unpleasant task. ningham did not determine policy. Events indicated
On the formal plane, British policy was as con-ect London had decided differently. On December 2,
as a well delivered snub. When gradual transfer of Arabs were pennitted to loot and burn the Jewish
authority from the British mandate was discussed at Commercial Center of Jerusalem without interfer-
Lake Success, the Britfah insisted that they a.lone ence by the British. The latter stepped in only to
must be responsible for law and order until the man- arrest some of the H aganah men who hied to restore
date ended. The disorder which was allowed to en- order.
gulf Palestine provided its own commentary. British policy seemed to be one of intervening just
There was a moment, at the very beginning, when enough to give the semblance of concem. On D e-
there was hope that Britain might fulfill its responsi- cember 17, Moshe Shcrtok charged at Lake Success

22
that the British were not only failing to protect Pal- stripped and murdered them. The British themselves
estinian Jews against Arab attack but were pre- arrested the army sergeant major in charge and an
venting the Jews from defending themselves. The investigation was ordered by tho General Officer
same day British troops went into action against Commanding.
Arab attackers for the first time. They came to the A group of British Fascist terrorists were blamed
aid of Jewish settlers standing off a raid by a hun- for the bombing of the Palestine Post building in
dred Arabs on the tiny Negev colony of Nevatim, Jerusalem on February 1. British personnel was also
seven miles west of Beersheba. believed responsible for Jerusalem's greatest single
Sometimes the British seemed to be confused disaster of the war, the Ben Yehuda Street bombing.
about what was required by their own policy. Jewish This occurred on February 22, when two truckloads
raiders blew up the Banat Yacov Bridge over the of explosives blew up three blocks of the Jewish
river Jordan to prevent its use by Arab raiders from business section along Ben Yehuda Street, killing 54
Syria. British engineers erected an emergency persons. Haganah road guards testified that the two
bridge, but later removed it. On February 5 British trucks were allowed to pass because they were es-
troops aided by Jewish convoy guards killed twelve, corted by a British police car.
wounded ten, and captured six of a uniformed Arab The British refused to comply with the provisions
gang of 150 who had penetrated into northern Pales- of the UN decision which called for the creation of
tine. After the battle the British disarmed and ar- Arab and Jewish militias, and the gradual transfer to
rested 38 of the Jews. them of responsibility for law and order in their
There were places where the British exercised an respective areas. "My government insists," Cadogan
odd "neutrality." On January 25, after a Haganah said at Lake Success, "on undivided control through-
road patrol was attacked by a band of 200 Arabs at out the country." But as early as January 2, the Brit-
Kastel, near Jerusalem, British soldiers arrived and ish had permitted the Arabs to take over control of
began firing indiscriminately at both sides. Ten the Old City in Jerusalem. In many areas 0£ Palestine
Haganah men lost their lives in this encounter. The British soldiers were already showing their passes to
British later expressed regrets. Arab guards.
Only once in these weeks of bloodshed did the \Vhile Arabs were encouraged to take over con-
British denounce the violence spreading in Palestine.
trol wherever they could, tho Jcws in exposed areas
This was on January 6, after the Hagan ah bombed
were advised to evacuate. A week after the UN par-
the Semiramis Hotel in J erusalcm. The Jewish
tition voted, the British military commander for the
Agency declared that the hotel was headquarters for
N egcv summoned representatives of its J cwish col-
Arab gangs. It asked why attacks on Jews had not
onies to a conference and advised them to evacuate.
been similarly denounced. An answer was indicated
Evacuation would have meant handing over the
by Sir Alexander Cadogan on January 21 when he
Negev to the Arabs without a fight, and the Jews
objected to "the Jewish story that the Arabs are the
refused.
attackers." Sir Alexander told the UN Palestine Com-
Early in January, similar advice was given the
mission, "The Arabs are determined to show that
they will not submit tamely to the UN Plan of Par- Jews of Jerusalem's Old City and similarly rejected.
tition." The "tamely" implied admiration and en- From the first, the British seemed to hope that the
couragement. Sir Alexander explained with unmfficd Jcws could be frightened into relinquishing the
objectivity that to t_he Arabs "The killing of Jews colonies established in the Negev and giving up
now transcends all other considerations," This was Jerusalem to the Arabs.
not the voice of a government .anxious to uphold Arab leadership shrewdly understood what was ex-
the UN. pected of them, and everywhere in those first weeks
Some British in Palestine seemed to feel it their Jewish life and property were in danger. The situ~-
dnty to help. There were among the British soldiers tion in Palestine, Colonial Secretary Creech Jones
a few who were savagely anti-Semitic, and there told the House of Commons on March 2, "is rapidly
was a brutal malice evident in certain occurrences. becoming insoluble." In the context of British en-
On February 12, a British military patrol arrested couragement to Arab lawlessness the announcement
Hagrmah members manning a road block in an ex- was cryptic. It was difficult to decide whether to
posed section of Jerusalem. They were taken to a read the remark as the expression of exhausted pa-
police station in the heart of the Arab area, dis- tience or gratified achievement.
anned and then set loose to face an Arab mob which The insolubility took fonn in a succession of dis-

23
 aster for the Jews. By Marcb they seemed to be Arabs, and wiped out. British troops arrived on the
doing as poorly on the military as on the diplomatic scene bnt withdrew, asserting that they were power-
front. The Jewish Agency headquarters in Jeru- less to interfere.
salem and the bead offices in Haifa of the Solcl The systematic Arab campaign against Jcwish
Boneh, Palestine's largest building concern, a Jewish truck convoys on tho roau from Tel Aviv reached the
labor cooperative, were bombed. In the norlh a con- proportions, of a siege, cutting Jerusalem oCT from
voy taking supplies to the isolated colony of Yehiam the seacoast and supplies. On i\farch 31, bread
near the Lebanese border was attrncked hy 2,000 rationing was instituted in Jewish Jr:rusalcm.

'

For maps of Palestine, see pages 94 and 95

24
r LUSTY BABY
..

in w hich the Jews implement

partition for themselves

The diplomatic front grew gloomier. of 178 trucks was able to reach Jernsalem on April
On April J, the U nitccl States asked 1.3. Its safe arrival gave au e11or111ous lilt to Jewish
for a 11ew special session of the As- morale.
sembly to rcconsic.lcr the vote for \Vhile Hagmrnh was battling on Lhe central front
partition on the ground that it conkl not be en- -to open the way for snpplies lo Jerusalcn1, Fawzr
forced. Exactly one year had passed since the Drit- el Kaukji, cornrnarnlcr of the Arab Liberation Army,
ish hacl referred tho l'alestine problem to the 'UN. launched a major attack in the north. A native of
Them had been a curnmittee of inq11 iry, u report, a Tripoli, Kankj i served as captain of cavalry with the
debate, and a vote, and now it looked as if the whole Tmks .in the First \Vorld vVar, wl1en he first made
process \vrn·e to begin all over again. Syria's Farb coulaet with the Germans. IIo played a leading part
cl-Khonri was jubilant; a special session, he said, in the ] ~)2:".i-27 Syrian revolt against the French and
would give the UN a chance to correct "the Llunder - was scnte1wec.l to death bt1t escaped to Iraq. In
which was committed" when it ckcidcd for pm-ti- August, Hl36, ]1c appeared in Palestine at the head
tion. r-.foshc Shcrtok of the Jewish Agency expressed of a force of several hunched Iraqi to fight against
angry disappointment. "We have passed the thresh- the British and the Jews. He only remained two
old of statehood," he told the Security Council. "'Ve months; his force was encircled by the flritish hut
refme to be thrm,vn back." This defiance seemed he and his men \.Vere alloweLl under the terms of a
pathetic, but there were surprises ahead for those truce to leave Palestine. He returned to Iraq where
who assnmec1, as the State Department did, that the he continued his anti-British activities and helped
Jews could not implement partition for themselves. organize the 1941 revolt. H c was woundeLl, 1Iown to
On April ,') the Haganah captnrcd Kastel, an Berlin in a G()rman aircraft, and on l1is recovery
Arab mountain top village just outside Jermalem on assisted in recruiting Moslems for the Nazis. He wab·
the road to Tel Aviv. The fall of this sniper citadel captured hy Soviet troops in Drescle11, escaped to
was followecl two days later by as important a vie- Berlin early in 19-17, reached Paris with his Ccnnan
tmy near the other end of the road. Haganah dem- wife, and enplam:d for Cairo. Jlis plane lamle1l in
olition squads succeeded in blowing up the 150- Palestine's Lydda airport, and though wanted by
room British Army Staff college near Rehovoth. TI1is the British, he was not arrested hy tlic authmities
had become the headquarters of -Hassan 13ey Sala- there and proceeded safely to Syria, where he was
meh, commander of the Arab forces in that area, aml greet(\d as a national hero. How Kankii managed to
its demolition was a serious blow to the forces with get through Lpkla remains a mystery.
which he had been preying on Jewish road traffic. Perhaps it was thought that Kankji, like the ex-
The Arahs realized that the siege of Jerusalem might 'l\fofti, would have his uses. The Arab League ap-
soon he broken, and fought hard to regain and hold pointed bim commander of the Arab Liberation
Kastel. Ahdnl Kader cl Husseini, the r:x-T\fofti's Army. A common purpose had created a bond be-
cousin and his commander for the Jerusalem area, tween Kaukji and the British. They made no effort to
was killed in the fighting. Kastel changed hands sev- , ~top him as he began to pour his men into Palestine.
era] times but after April 9 remained in the hands of The Driti~h seemed pleased with these 11na11thorized
the Jews. Thanks to these operations, a food convoy visitors. A n ritish In telligenec Newsletter on ·March

25
12,"' confirmed the arrival in Samaria of Kaukji him- British colonel complete with monocle and swagger
self: "He has indicated his desire not to embarrass stick, drove up to the gates, and asked to speak to
the authorities in any way, but when jn Transjordan the local Haganah commander. He said he would
recently it was reported that he talked about rc- like to armnge an extension of the truce, preferably
ne,vcd activity against Jewish settlements, possibly for an indefinite period. He was told the defenders
with the intention of influencing the Security Coun- of Mii;hmar had no authority to extend the truce.
cil." 'Tm afraid," the B1itish colonel said, "you are in no
A successful attack on a Jewish settlement would, position to reject such a generous peace offer." The
by the logic being applied in the Security Council, local commander's reply was, "We shall see."
"prove" that it would be better to abandon parti- At dawn of April 9, Kaukji's main force, strength-
tion. On April 4, Kaukji with 1,500 Syrian and ened by fresh reinforcements, opened a new attack.
Iraqi troops launched an attack on Mishmar Ha- But new forces had also come up <luring the night to
Emek. Kaukji's target \Vas no tiny isolated colony. strengthen the Haganah and this time the Arabs
Mishmar lies in the heart of the Emek, the Vale of were completely routed. At noon Kaukji dispatched
Jezreel, tl1e historic corridor from the seacoast to the Middleton, a British district commissioner, with the
Jordan Valley, and one of the main centers of Jew- offer of a truce on condition that the Jews refrain
ish settlement. It is 15 miles southeast of Haifa on from punishing villagers who had sheltered the at-
the main highway leading through the Emek to the tackers. Middleton was refused entry and after wait-
Sarnarian mountain triangle which is the stronghold ing about for an hour "looking disconsolate" ( ac-
and center of Arab Palestine. Mishmar, founded in cording to the Haganah men on guard), he left.
1926, is one of the largest colonies in the country, Thel'e was a lull on the tenth. On the eleventh,
with a population of 500 and the best children's Kankji opened a strong counterattack with fresh
school in Palestine. It js the mother colony of the forces, and succeeded in driving a wedge into Jewish
Left-wing Socialists, the Hashomer Hatzair. defenses. But commando attacks forced the Arabs to
For four clays the Arabs battered at the colony withdraw their heavy guns to avoid capture; on the
with mortars and 25-powid cannon. The women and twelfth, the wedge was pinched off. Reary fighting
children had to be evacuated on the second day, and · continued until the seventeenth, with both sides com-
Mishmar was heavily damaged. It was almost en- mitting more and more men to the battle. By the
tirely surrounded, but on the third day reinforce- time it ended, all the Arab villages in the area had
ments managed to get through, and more were dis- been overrun, their population was in flight; Kaukji's
patched from Eastern Galilee for a counterattack. Yarmuk Army had been smashed, and with it his
During a four-hour truce on April 8, the Arabs then reputation. The battle of Mishmar, the first large-
removed their own women and children from tbe scale engagement of the war, had ended with the
neighboring villages, and the British stepped .in. rout of the most experienced commander and the
Just before the truce expired that afternoon, a biggest army the Arabs had yet muirtercd.
0 'I'liese excerpls are taken from a series of 13ritis11 Military This was the news which greeted the UN's second
Intellige11ce Reports '1()]1/cll 'J'l,e ~1aUon Asso1,:il1tes 11111,lisliec/. Special Assembly on Palestine as it got underway
iri a 111e111ora11d11111 submitted lo the UN General As1embly 111
Ap-ril 1948. after April 16.

11 The British seemed to be as unsuccessful in

using the Arabs against the Jews as they were 150
ish "cavalry." At Ramat Yohanan near Haifa, a force
of invading Drnse battered in vain against a colony
years before in stirring up the Indians against the which blocked attack on the H aifa Bay area. The
American colonies. Mishmar was only one indica- Dmse itre a fighting p eople, and at one point with
tion that the Palestine problem was not to be solved knives in teeth and guns in hand made nine separate
by pogrom. On the Syrian frontier even artillery charges against machine gun and mortar positions
manned by veterans of the Reichswehr was not in an effort to dislodge the Jews; the Druse finally
enough to _enable 1,200 Syrian "volunteers" to take gave up and met Haganah in a reconciliation feast.
the border colony of Lehavoth Habashan; the artil- Ill-armed, outnumbered, however desperate their
lerymen themselves had to withdraw when out- circumstances, the Jcws stood fast. The Arabs very
flanked by a 1,nstily improvised detachment of Jew- early began to run away. First the wealthiest fam-

26
ilics went; it was estimated that 20,000 of them left twenty-five boys of the Haganah in two mmored
the cmmt1y in the first two months of internal hos- ems sped into the populous Arab Halissa quarter of
tilities. By the end of January, the exodus was al- the city. They crossed the bridge over the Wadi
ready so alarming that the Palestine Arab Higher Rushmeya, a precipitous gorge from whose rocky
Committee in alarm asked neighboring Arab coun- ~lopes snipers had made the main road from Jcwish
tries to refuse visas to these refugees and to seal the Haifa to the :Emek impassable, even for armored
borders against them. \Vhile the Arab guerrillas were cars. The Ncjada, the Palestinian Arab mmed youth
moving in, the Arab civilian population was moving formation, had its headquarters in a three-story stone
out. The movement was soon to take on a momentum building on the eastern side of the Wadi and had
and reach massive proportions. In the next six weeks built a special eight-foot high cement wall in front
-from April 1 to May 15-virtually the entire Arab of the building to protect it from attack. The Ha-
population of Tibcrias, Haifa, Safad, Jaffa, and Jeru- ganah force broke through the wall with explosives
salem were to Rec the country. and took the headquarters room by room with gre-
Tiberias, a city of 14,000, was the first to see a nades and Sten guns while sniper rifles awakened
mass exodus. The sudden Hight of its 6,000 Arabs and barked at them from near-by houses on the
was one of the psychological turning points of the slopes of the Wadi. Shells tore huge holes in the
war. An uneasy truce in this capital city of Lower roof and walls. Here two dozen Jewish boys held out
Galilee had been broken on April 8 when Arab Le- against hundreds of Arabs until the main attack
gion troops opened fire on Jews in the street. Ha- on the city the next day freed them from encircle-
gaoah forces fought for ten days against the Arab ment.
Legion and foreign volunteers in the city, and by The main battle began at one o'clock in the morn-
April 18, every Arab, soldier or civilian, had fled the ing. The Jews opened a mortar bombardment of the
city. This phenomenon was to repeat inself on a nanow streets and crowded ancient slums of the
larger scale within a few days in Haifa, Palestine's Arab quarters in the Old City at the bottom of
third largest city and main seaport. ~,fount Carmel. Two main columns struck down
Haifa was a city of 130,000, equally divided be- ~Jaunt Cannel in the early hours of the morning.
tween Jews and Arabs. In it, relations between the Another major Jewish stiiking force moved up fr<?m
two peoples were good, and had been so even dur- the business section along the docks into the Old
ing the 1936-39 Arab uprising. The government of City.
the municipality was a model of what could he ac- The Old City was taken house by house. The
complished in peaceful cooperation between Jew and c.ombination of mortar bombardment and surprise
Arab. They h:ad rotated and shared municipal offices night attack precipitated a flight from the Arab quar-
since tho First ·world \-Var. They worked side by ters. The worst shuggle occurred on the stone steps
side in the oil refineries, and in the municipality. down Mount Carmel which are centuries old. Here
Both sides wanted peace. The situation was ren- the forces coming down the· mountain had to inch
dered difficult, however, by men sent in on orders of their way forward in a bloody stniggle with Iraqi
the Mufti. troops whose retreat was cut off from below. By
A Briti~h Intelligence Report of Fehmary 13, says 11 a.m., of April 22, the fight was over, and a mass
that "Toward the end of January a delegation rep- exodus of Arabs from Haifa had begun by road and
resenting all classes of Arabs from Haifa, headed by water. Palestine's main seapmt and third largest city
Archbishop Hakim, visited the Mufti in Cairo with was in Jewish hands.
the intention, it was mmored, of obtaining support This sudden collapse of Arab resistance was as
for a plan to declare Haifa an "open city.' It was much a surprise to the Jews as it was to the British.
unsuccessful." Some of the latter thought the fighting would con-
The Arah gunmen inflltratinp; the city sought hy tinue for days and finally permit them to disarm both
sniping attacks on Jewish buses and vehicles to cut sides in a peace move which by then would be wel-
communications. lvfany Jews were killed. The British come to the civilian population, Jewish and Arab.
gave up control of the city on April 22, precipitating Haifa was one of the few places in Palestine where
an all-out battle between Te\.vs and Arabs. the local British command was scmpulously fair and
The battle took place a'n Febmary 22, but it was kept ·hands off during the fight, taking steps only to
preceded the day before by a daring surprise attack ensure that it did not engulf the port enclave into
on the pmt of the Jews. At dawn on February 21, which troops had been withdravm.

27
~~---------------------------------------------------~ -----

111 Palestine's largest all-Arab city, the port of

Jaffa, fell to the Jews at the end of April under cir-
the Criminal Investigation Division o{ the British
mandatory government. Haganah that day also cap-
cumstances which demonstrated even more vividly tured the Greek monastery of St. Simeon, an Arab
than Haifa the unwillingness of the Palestinian Arab military strongpoint, which had been a hase for
population to put up a la.~t-ditch fight. On April 25, Iraqi troops. Preceded by a barrage of cannon, mor-
in an effort to match Hagauah's success at Haifa, the tar· and a small arms, Ilaganah also advanced into
Irgnn Zvai. Leumi launched an attack from Tel Aviv Katamon, the wealthy _Arab quarter in soutln-vest
on Jaffa, from which Arab snipers had for months Jerusalem.
fired on the neighboring Jewish city. Two thousand It looked as though all Jerusalem would soon fall
Irgun fighters with armored cars and mortars cap- to the Jews. This evoked British resistance; the High
tured the border slum Manshieh district but bogged Commissioner threatened to send the RAF into
down after British fighter planes and artillery were action against Jewish positions unless the advance
turned on them April 28 to keep them from advanc- was halted. The evacuation was thrown into re-
ing to the center of the city and taking the harbor. verse; a thousand British commando troops ·wcrn dis-
Haganah, which had reached an agreement on the patched from Cyprus and Malta to Palestine. Tank~
twenty-seventh subordinating the lrgun to its eom- from Egypt and marines from Haifa poured into
rnand, then seized Jaffa eastern and southern sub- Jerusalem. A cease-fire ·was imposed after hasty one-
nrhs, threatening to cut off all retreat from the city. sided negotiations between the British High Com-
By April 29, the dty was encircled and its people missioner and the Arabs. TlH~ cease-fire was observed
hegan to flee. for three clays and then broke clown. The three-day
Jaffa became a ghost town. All but about 2,000 pause blunted the Jewish oliensive and gave the
ol its 70,000 people had fled. A few armed leftovers Arabs tirnc to bring up reinforcements under cover
of the Arab forcr)s, some Iraqi deserters, Chctniks, of British guns.
and a handful of Nazis still remained behind forag- In the meantime virtually the entire Arab popu-
i11g in the empty town, lurking in the smelly littic lation of the city had Heel. The manclatr~ ended with
the Jews in control of nine-tenths of Jerusalem.

I
• alleys and behind the drawn shutters of forlorn
houses. Iron shutters were clown in front of the shops
and the Jazireh Hotel had actually walled up its
The Arab Legion was entrenched in the Old City,
\-vhere 1,500 Jews were besieged, and in the Sheik
I entrance with concrete and mortar. The only sign of Jan-ah quarter dominating the approaches lo the
lrnsiness activity was an aged Arab offering a few Hadassah Hospital. From this r1uartcr, the: Arabs
radishes and encumbers for sale on the pavement had for weeks assaulted convoys on their way to the
outside the French hospital. Unlike the Arab sec- hospital. Herc in a 7-hour battle the Arabs on April
tions of Haifa, Jaffa was largely undamaged. "All 13 had killed 34 Jewish doctors, nurses, patients, an<l,
the Jews have to do," said a :British sergeant, "is Haganah gnards. Dr. Haim Yassky, director of the
flre one 2,5-pounder and thr:sc Arahs bale out." hospital, was one of the dead . Whe n Tlaganah troops
As April ended, the Jews took over most of Jeru- drove the Arabs out of the quarter on April 25, the
salem outside the Old City walls. Haganah men British intervened and forced the: Haganah out.
seized the central post office, largest public building This was a British farewell gift to the Arabs in
in Jerusalem and the old Russian compound ad_join- Jerusalem. Arab occupation of Sheik Jarrah made it
ing the post office, a miniature citadel behind whose impossible for the Jews to use Hadassah Hospital
walls, barbed wire, and barricades had been housed during the \var.

IV In the north, too, the tide turned in favor of

the Jews as tl1e mandate drew to a close. By all tlrn
mountainous L ebanese and Syrian frontiers, as if
waiting to be pinched off. The Jewish colonies here
rules, tbat po1tion of Jewish Palestine most in dan- lie wide open to bombardment and attack from both
ger of invasion and conquest was tl,e "finger" 0£ sides. Under British rule this was t he district of
E astern Galilee about eight miles wide which ex- Safad, so named for its capital city, an ancient cen-
tends northward into a narrow vise between the ter of Jewish learning perched on a mggcd citadel

28
 near Mt. Canaan. ln this district, lhe only settled whole road was under fire and bridges had been
area of Jewish Palestine in which the Jews were still destroyed. On the night of May 2, .lighting squads
a minority, there were seven thousand Jews living covered the mountains on both sides while others
among some 47,000 Arabs. The Jews were scattered worked all n!ght repairing the bridges and the
among 29 fanning settlements and the city of Safad. road. The next day, while squads still patrolled the
In the city itself, one of the few in which Jews have mountains, militai-y supplies were rushed north in
continued to live since the Diaspora, 1,/500 Jews were prepriration for an ollensivo. The Ilaganah forces,
completely outnumbered by more than 12,000 Arabs, striking out from Rosh Pina, cleared the entire
Safad's topography and strategic position make it quadrilateral of territory between Lake Tiberias and
the key lo Eastern Galilee. "Who holds Safad," it is Lake Hula. The main highway was cleared of hos-
said, "holds Eastern Galilee." Safad's Jews are an tile Arabs as far north as Ayeleth Hashachar near
old religious community antedating modern Zionism Lake Hula and Haganah forces striking eastward
by many generations. In 1920, 1929, and as late as drove all the Arab forces between the two lakes over
1936, these Jews suilered pogroms of the kind fa- the border into Syria. The populations of all the
miliar in Europe and the Orient. About the middle Arab villages in that area, with one exception, fled
of April, when the British were preparing to leave, in panic with their armed forces. The one exception,
they called in the heads of the community, warned a large village of anti-Husseini Arabs, opposed to
them that the Arabs would kill the Jews after the the Mufti's family, made an alliance with the Jews
British left, advised the Jcws to leave, and offered and as a token of its good faith put a detachment
buses and cars in which to evacuate them. The of its sons in the Hagan.ah. Thus successfully ended
Jews refused to go. the first stage of the H aganah campaign in Eastern
The commander of Eastern Galilee was Yigal Galileo.
Alon, a native-born Palestinian, only 29 years old but The next stage was the attempt to break the ring
already a man of considerable military experience. around the Jews of Safad. This hegan on tho night
He had been second-in-command of the Palmach, of :\fay 10. All the roads into the city were in the
the commando troops of the Haganah, since its foun- hands of the Arabs hut that night Haganah troops
dation. During the Second World War he led the penetrated into the city over mountain footpaths
famous Pahnach unit whose raid into Syria opened from the Jewish colony of Ein Zeitim, four kilometers
the way for invading Australian troops. He had com- to the north, and made a surprise attack on the Arah
manded the reinforcements which finally shattered forces iu the central citadel, where they occupied not
el Kaukji's Yarmuk Army in the profractcd battle of only the police station but a strongly built Jewish
Mishmar Ha-Emek. The forces at his command were schoolhouse which had also been handed over to the
small. He had only two battalions of Pahnach com- Arabs by the British. The Arabs- fought well anJ
mandos and one battalion of Hish, the Ilaganah there was a house-to-honse nght in the center of
infantry, or about 2,500 men altogether, while tho the city. The tide of battle was turned by a flank
Arnbs in Safad alone had about 3,000 troops includ- attack. That same night a detachment of Palrnach
ing 2,000 Palestinian Arabs and 1,000 Syrians, Leb- commandos, actually· only sixty boys in all, came
anese, and Iraqi. He had a very difficult decision to over the ·mountains from Rosh Pina on foot and at-
make. tacked the Arab village of Akbara, two kilometers
Attacks were occurring almost daily in the border south of Safad. The news created panic among the
region for which he was responsible; the colonies defenders of Safad. They feared that a major strik-
were poorly armed; appeals for aid came in con- ing force had begnn a movement designed to en-
stantly. He had to decide at the very start whether circle the city fro~n the south. The Arahs hegan to
to respond to these calls for help and disperse his flee, even abandoning the huge police station on Mt.
small forces all over the area, placing himself eve1y- Canaan which might )1ave resisted frontal attack for
where at the mercy of tho enemy's initiative, or to days. The Haganah had deliberately left open a
let the colonies fend for themselves and proceed on corriLlor of escape south and west into Arab-held
a systematic plan of offensive. He took a chance and Central Galilee and the entire Arab p.opulation of
chose the latter alternative. Safad, military and civilian took to flight down this
The Haganah proceeded according to its own of- corridor. So Safad fell to the Jevvs and the campaign
fensive plan. The fall of Tiberias earlier had opened for Eastern Galilee had succeeded.
the main road north as far as the colony of Genosar \Vestern Galilee between the Lebanese border and
halfway up Lake Tiberius, hut from there on the the city of Acre had heen assigned like Central

· 29
Galilee to the Arab State, although fai·-sighted column of about 40 cars with enough supplies for
Christian Lebanese as well ns Jews wnntcd a com- three months strnck north t o Nah a1iya, a seaside
mon boumlnrv for thcsc: two 11011-:'vloslem commun- settlement of German J ews and diamond \.Vorkers.
ities. Cut off 1·rorn lsrnel in this Arab territory were This was the .first convoy to reach !\alrnriya in six
seven isolntcd agriculhual scltlcmen ts and t he sea- mo nths.
si<le town of Nal1m:iya. Occasioual convoys at henvy Between mil1night and noon of the fourteenth this
cost had broken through to these colonies with sup- armored column cleared the whole north-sonth road
plies since the llghling begm1 o n November 29 and from Acre north to the Lebanese border and then as
there hacl bceu some communication by boat be- far east as the £runtier se ttlemeut of Eilon. All chil-
tween Nabariya and Haifa about 14 miles to the dren w ere evacnated to Nnhariya that morning from
south. the !hrne northwest border settlements, Hanita, Mat-
The Jews feared tbat their colonies in the north zuva, and Eilon. The colnmn then moved south-
wonld h e smashed and their people massacred unless ward. In a punitive action it destroyed the Arnb
they acted quickly. The Haganab decided to antic- village of Kabiri where six weeks before a cu11voy to
ipate attack. The commander of VVcstern Galilee at IT anita l1ad bee n ambushed and all 47 m e mbers of
that time was tvloshe Carmcli. H e was a member of the convoy, includfog a H aganah battle commander,
tho farm collective at Naan, But he had long been killed. l3y noon of May 14, the J ews held all of
o ne of the secrnt leaden; of the IIaganah a nd he had Western Galilee except Acre, its capital, aud Acre,
a special interest in Acre. Ile had b een imprisoned comple tely cut off, was soon to fall.
there for a year and a half after his arrest by the 'Thus the day l>efore the British mandate ended,
British in 1939 during a raid on a H aganah officers' the day the J ewish State was declared, tl1e Jews had
school and he ha<l written a book about his experi- effecti ve control of the territory allotted them by the
ences called lnsidci the Walls. UN, plus Western GauJee. Of the territory allotted
Canneli struck on the night of May 13. H is first the Jewish State by the UN, only Lydda a irport was
objective was the famous bluff just outside Acre in t he hands of the Arabs and this had b een handed
which commands b oth the city and the road ne twork over to them by the British. Of some 350,000 AJ-abs
to the north and east. This i.~ known as Givat Na- in the Jewish area, 300,000 had fled. Not a single
poleon or Napoleon's Hill hccause it was here that Jewish settlement on J ewish territory had fa llen.
Napoleon was stopped on h.is march northward dur- Eve n t hose settleme nts within Arab territory held
ing tho famous E1-,1yptian campaign. There were fast under repeated attack. It was not until the last
about 300 Iraqi soldiers stationed on the hill and in day of the B~itjsh mandate, May 14, that tho Arabs
a camp on the- other side of the road to the west of registered the ir first reaJ success. That day the Kfar
it. In a smprisc attack a Palmacl1 nnit ·with mortars Etzion bJock of four Jew.ish settlem ents, cut off in
and machine guns t ook this hill from the east. The the H ebron hills, constantly attacked over five
lraqi fled abandoning buth tl1c hill and the camp. months, fell to the Arab Legion.
But instead of laying siege to Acre, the H aganah From a military point of view, tbc Je'<vish State
that night covered the north-south road outside the was fully in existence the day it was declared. Par-
city w ith machine g uns and mortar fire from Givat titio n was an accomplished fact. T he Jews had done
:\)apoleo11. Umler this protective cover an armored the iob for thr.rnselv€'s.

30 ·
 The constant watch (Cooke)

Scout on horseback rnports

enemy movement (Capa)
I
I Inductees' car;ip just outside Tel Aviv ( Capa)

Bulldozer kee1is road to Jerusalem open while patrol chases snipers (Capa)

lI
I
I

32
 Just bqore an attack (Cooke)

Yemin Moshe section of Jerusalem. Old wall and YMCA tower in background (Cooke)

33
I
Ji.
 Haganah commanders directing op-
erations on road to Jerusalem (Capa)

A plat'oon r-ushing position on top of

an Arab house (Capa)

II

34
 THE WICKED MIDWIVES
in which the State Department .and the
Foreign Office try to bring about a stillbirth

The first-born of the UN was alive 100,000 Jewish "displaced persons" in Geiman and
and kicking. The U.S. reversal of Austrian camps dramatized the homelessness of the
March 19 ha_d failed to prevent par• survivors. At first their immigration to l'ale;;tine
tition. It took some time for this seemed a foregone conclusion. The Chamberlain
unexpected fact to impress itself upon the UN, and government, at the time of Munich, had sought ap-
the unwelcome news was slow in percolating through peasement in the East as well as the West. Its White
to the State Department. From March 19 to May 14, Paper on Palestine was also intended to conciliate
while the Haganah was making Israel a military enemies by sacrificing friends. In this announcement
reality, Anglo.American diplomacy was doing its the British Government declared that after five years
best to prevent a Jcwish State from coming into no more Jewish immigration into Palestine would be
being. permitted without Arab consent, A final 75,000 cer-
These efforts go back to the end of the Second tificates were to be granted during those last :6.ve
World vVar. They mark the constant attempt of the years. The effect would be to freeze the Jews into
American State Department to thwart the declared a pe1manent minority in Palestine, one-third its total
policy of the President, the pro-Zionist position con- population, and to turn the Jewish National Home
sistently taken by the American Congress, and the into a kind of restricted reservation for Jews. But
general friendliness of American public opinion to both Churchill and the Labour party had denounced
the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in the White Paper at the time, and it was hoped that
Palestine. the end of the war would see the end of this chapter
The hostility of the American diplomatic service in betrayal. In May of 1945, on the eve of its vic-
was shared by the military bureaucracy. The attitude • torious accession to power, the British Labour party
of both reflected the anti-Zionist influence exerted by reiterated its opposition to the White Paper and its
major American oil interests on the bankers-in-uni- support of Zionism.
form who took up so prominent a position in the The United States through the Wilson Adminis-
molding of policy in the closing days of the Second tration had played a major part in the framing of the
World War. Many of these personalities were at the Palestine mandate to establish a Jewish National
same time advocates of a soft peace for the Germans Home. It had certain treaty rights there and had
and a hard fate for the Jewish su{vivors of Nazi bar- never accepted the White Paper policy. Both the
barity. These pervasive influences fought a persistent Republican and Democratic party platforms in 1944
battle against humane impulse and Jewish national called for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Pales-
aspiration on cynical grounds: the supposed need tine. The new President, Harry S. Truman, was
for Arab oil and the desire to use the Arab States as sympathetic. He sent Dean Earl G. Han-ison, of the
allies in a new war, this time to be fought against University of Pennsylvania Law School, to Europe in
the Soviet Union. June of 1945 to survey the condition of the DP's.
The end of the Second World War disclosed that Harrison reported, "They want to be evacuated to
6,000,000 Jews _had been killed, many of them by Palestine ... just as other national groups are being
mass extermination devices, This, for a few days, repatriated to their homes," At the end of August the
shocked -the conscience of mankind. The plight of President asked the new British Labour Government

35
 to allow the migration to Palestine <Jf the 100,000 cast. "Transjonlau," arbitra1ily cut away from west-
Jewish DP's in Germany and Austria. The reply was ern Palestine in 1922 and closed to Jewish immigra-
unexpected. The new British Labo\lr Government tion, was now hastily erected into a puppet kingdom.
refused. It imggested an investigation instead. As if to forcstaJJ any possible action c!Fectiog this
The Jews protested that Palestine had been in- lru·ger portion of the original mandate, the British
vestigated enough. In the prewar period there ha<l on March 22, 1946, recognized Transjordan "as a
been no less than 17 Britjsh investigating committees fully independent state." No sucb dispatch was
in Palestine. A new investigation would leave the sbo.,vn in cleaHng with western Palestine. The British
gaunt, m, and demoralized Jews to spend the first Foreign Office calle<l for further consultation. The
winter of thefr "liberation" in the filthy, makeshift 'State Department gladly complied. It assigned
camps of Germany and Austria. The counter-pro- H enry F. Grady to head a delegation for fwther
posal for another commission of inquiry implied that talks in London. Mr. Grady's record on Palestine, as
the Labour pru:ty was reluctant to honor its pre- in Italy, Greece, and Inclia, made him one of Brit-
election pledges. Something uglier was indicated by ain's favorite American diplomats; his thinking al-
Foreign Secretary Bevin. On the day the composi- ways seemed happily to parallel that of the Foreign
tion of an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Ollice. The fruit of these discussions, the so-called
was announced, Bevin wained the Jews "with all Grady-Monison Plan, was made public in the House
their sufferings," not to "want to get too much at the of Commons on July 31.
head of the queue." This smelled of vulgar Ea~1: End Under the Grady-Morrison Plan the Jews would
anti-Semitism. have b een consigned to a small ghetto canton of
The members of the Committee visited the DP 1,500 square miles. They would have been granted
camps in Germany and what they saw had its eJfect. a provincial legislature, subject to a high commis-
"We were deeply impressed," the Committee said of sioner with the sweeping veto powers of a Brit-
the Jews in those camps, "by the tragedy of their ish royal governor in seventeenth century colonial
putJ)OSeless existence." Palestine seemed to these America. The British would have been given direct
survivors, "tbe only real chance of rebuilding their conb·ol of the Negev and Jerusalem. The cou rse of
shattered lives." The members were unanimous in the debate in the Commons exploded the claim that
recommending the issuance of 100,000 immigration the Grady-Monison Plan had been framed by "ex-
certificates immediately. The reactions of the British perts" to implement the recommendations of the
Government demonstrated that its good faith was Anglo-American Committee. Mr. Oliver Stanley,
not to be relied upon. Prime Minister Attlee found who had been 1,cacl of the Colonial Office jn the
"very great ... practical difficulties" in the recom- Churchill government, declared the plan was "no
mendation. new scheme." H e said, "The solution which the right
While Britain evaded action west of the Jordan, it honorable l!entleman has read out to us now was in
hastened to confer "independence" on that portion the Colonial Office last autumn." The revelation was
of the original Palestine mandate which 1ay to the only momentarily cmba1Ta~lring.

11 The rising temper of the Jewish community in Terrible scenes were etched on the memory of the
Palestine was rapidly leaving the .British with hut commtmHy. A few frightened refugees from the
two alternatives: Either to crush the Jewish com- Hitler tenor had managed under the most arduous
munity by foi-ce, or to leave Palestine. circumstances to reach the coast of Palestine; these
. For the Jews of Palestine, the fate of the Jews of pitiful few were turned away with a cold insistence
Europe was not a matter of tepid humanitarianism. on the letter of the White Paper that seemed more
They 1·e garded themselves as the builders of a nation inhumane than the pathological cm elty of the Nazis.
and they felt about the people waiting in the camps In April of 1939, the British began to apprellend
as the British had about their people at Dunkirk. In ships with "iJJegals," i.e. Jewish refogees who had
the eyes ot the Jews, the W bite Paper made the been unable to obtain a British immigration certifi-
British Government the accomplice of the Na:zis for cate. At the very beginning of the war in Septem-
it had shut the one possible avenue of escape for ber 1939, one of these ships, the Tigerhill, was fired
the victims of the crematorium. on by the Palestinian Coast Guard and three refu-

36
gees were killed; the rest were refused perm1ss1on and deportations-occurred on Saturday night, Feb-
to land. When questions were raised in the House of ruary 12, 1944, and had a significant target. In-
Cormnons, Colonial Secretary Malcolm :VIacDonald cendiary bombs were hurled at the offices of the
replied, "To authorize the indiscriminate landing of Department of Migration in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
refugees in l'alestine would worsen rather than im- This was the beginning of a series. of continuous
prove the security position there, which is at present attacks on British offidals, soldiers, g0vernment
satisfactory." To the Jews this was infuriatingly smug. buildings, and camps by lwo umlergrnund organiza-
A year later occurred. the <.:ase of the Patria. In tions, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the :righters for the
November 1940, some 1,770 Jews on three small ves- Freedom of lsrael, also known as the Stern gang. On
sels arrived in Haifa without immigration certifi- August 7, there was an attempt on the lifo of the
cates. The British decided to deport them to a Brit- British IIigh Commissioner, Sir Harold Madv1ichael,
ish colony on the island of Mauritius in the Indian On November 6, Lord Mayne, then acting as British
Ocean. They were transfcned on board the Patria. Minister Resident in the Middle East, was assassi-
On November 25, there was an explosion on the nated in Cairo.
Patria in Haifa harbor. The ship sank and 257 refu- These and other attacks were denounced by Jew-
gees lost their lives. The High Commissioner at once ish and Zionist authorities. But there were few
announced that the blowing up of the Patria would among the Jews who did not sympathize with Bet-
not interfere with deportation of the survivors but Zuri, one of tho assassins of Lord Mayne, when he
public protest from the United States and Great told the court which condemned him to death in
Britain resulted in the withdrawal of the deportation Cairn that the main cause of resentment was "a ter-
order, rible sense of frustration when they saw their peo-
The refugees who came on the Atl,antic were ple massacred through Europe by the million and
beaten with buncheons, and rushed off to Mauritius were given no opportunity to fight as Jcws against
while an appeal for them was still pending; many the monstrous enemy, or even to rescue those who
died there of tropical diseases. The 800 who arrived could be saved."
on the Darien from Rumania in March 1941, includ- Bitterness increased after the end of the war when
ing many trained formers and artisans anxious to there appeared no sign of a change in British policy.
help in the war effort, were kept close in detention; In September 1945, the Palestinian Jewish National
several went mad. These were the only ones allowed Council and the ·world Zionist Committee appealed
to leave camp. The Struma managed to get away in a joint proclamation to the British people "to open
from Rumania later that year but was blown up the doors of Palestine to large-scale immigration of
in the Bosphorus when the Turks ordered the ship surviving Jews from Europe," They warned that un-
back after the British refused to admit the refugees less this appeal were heeded "immigrants will stream
to Palestine. to Palestine hy' all means." The warning fore-
In April 1943, the remnants of the Warsaw ghetto shadowed the organized illegal immigration of the
were staging a hopeless uprising against the Nazis. postwar period,
Representatives of the Allied nations were meeting The British answer was to concentrate more
behind closed doors at the Bermuda Conference. The h·oops in Palestine. Constantine Paulas, an American
purpose was to find a: refuge for the survivors of the correspondent, \.vas expelled from Pale~tine after
Hitler terror. The British representatives insisted reporting that the country, in October 1945, re-
that Palestine was out of the question. The main- minded him of Greece in October 1944. He said,
tenance of the ,~lhite Paper of 1939 was "essential "Th"e stage was being set by the British for aimed
from the point of view of stability in the Middle intervention." In November the Jewish Agency sent
East." · a communication to the State Department charging
This was the background of bitterness which gave the British with introducing a reign of terror in
new strength to a small terrorist minority among the Palestine to intimidate the Jews into submission to
Jews. Tension increased as March 31, 1944, ar.- the \1/hite Paper policy. The Department had no
proached. This was the \-Vhite Paper deadline. After · difficulty in restraining its indignation.
that date even the limited quota of L':500 a month The Haganah declared it intended to bring in
Would be abolished. No Jewish immigration to Pales- illegal immigrants and to destroy military objectives
tine would be pennitted without "consulting" the interfering with its immigration program. In No-
Arabs. The first "outrages"-as they were quickly vember 1945, the Haganah blasted two coast guard
tenned by an officialdom unmoved by crematoriums stations. On the eve of Balfour Day, November 2,

37
 1945, tho Haganab destroyed bridges and cut the Jones told the Commons that these two organiza-
highways all over Palestine. One purpose was to tions had killed 73 British subjects during 1946.
demonstrate the ability of the Haganah to carry out Their daring attacks were damaging British prestige,
large scale military operations despite the British oc- and some of the steps taken against the terrorists
cupying forces. The other was to prevent the anti- boomeranged badly. When the British flogged sus-
Zionist demonstrations planned for that day by the pected terrorists, a British officer was kidnapped
Arabs. The Jewish National Council issued a mani- and whipped in l'etaliation. There were no more
festo on Janua1y 31, 1946, defying the White Paper floggings of suspects after that, but the incident
policy and declaring, "The Jewish nation will not created a sensation in the East, where a British
accept a fate of eternal wanderings. We demand the ·o.fficer had always been regarded as a superior being.
right to establish our independence ... and we will In Europe, the Haganah aided by Jewish veterans
defend our right with all our sh·ength." of the B1·itish and American armies, and often with
The year 1946 was a yea1· of continuous struggle the sympathetic aid of American military authorities,
between the British and the Jews. Palestine became, organized a vast underground. A whole fleet of ships,
as the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry saw it the relics and cast-offs of world navies and merchant
early that year, an armed camp. On June 29, 1946, marines, were pressed into service to carry Jewish
the British staged raids all over the country, search- immigrants illegally to Palestine. American Jewish
ing settlements for arms and taking into custody dollars supplied the funds to buy thjs fleet; American
nearly 3,000 Jews, including the top officials of the Jewish volunteers supplied most of the crews. These
Jewish Agency and virtually all the political leaders rickety, unseaworthy and overcrowded ships, drama-
of the country. The detainees were held for five tized for all tl1e world the determination of Jewry
months without h'ial and released without explana- and the cruelty of British policy. Their human car-
tion. goes arrived often without food or water, dirty and
The arrests failed to halt either the illegal immi- stinking, but their spirit was magnificent. Encoun-
gration activities of the Haganah or the attacks by ters, often pitched battles, with these miserable
tho two dissident terrorist organizations of Irgun and scarecrow vessels began to make His Majesty's Navy
Stem. In January 1947, Colonial Secretary Creech 1idiculous in the eyes of the world.

111 On February 18, 1947, Ilcvin told the Com-

mons that the Palestine issue was to be referred to
and America put forward a pro-Jewish solution, the
Soviet Union would support it. Later in 1945, when
the UN, and that Britain would relinquish the man- Dr. Emil Sommerstein, the Polish Jewish leader,
date. Perhaps the British government regarded this visited the Kremlin he asked Stalin whether he
as a last desperate device for further investigation, would be interested in an international solution o!
discussion and delay. A new development provided the Jewish problem. Stalin's answer, which he spe-
a new obstacle to this strategy. cilically authodzed Dr. Sommerstein to make public,
Ono of the m·guments utilized by the British and was, "Certainly and seriously." On the other hand
the State Deparbnent for their opposition to Jewish pruty literature showed little devfation from the
hopes was that any action in favor of the Jews would traditional anti-Zionist line.
throw the Arabs into the arms of the Soviet Union. Had the Soviet Union maintained the historic
This favored stock-in-trade of anti-Zionjst propa- Marxist position, it would have been able to utilize
ganda depended in tum on the attitude of the Soviet any pro-Zionist action by the United States and
Government. Both the Socialist and Communist wings Great Britain as material for anti-Western agitation
of the Marxist movement had been traditionally among the Arab and Moslem peoples. But on May
anti-Zionist. This had been the prevailing atti- 14, 1947, Andrei Gromyko, Soviet delegate to the
tude of the Communist parties and of the Soviet UN, rose to make an historic statement. In it, for the
Union, where Zionism had been decried as "bour- first time, the Soviet Union supported "the aspirn-
geois nationalism" and a tool of British imperialism. tion of the Jews for the Cl'eation of a state of their
I. But there were indications of a change. From the own." Gromyko recognized "the lawful interests of
Ame1ican delegation at the Yalta Conference this both peoples" Jewish and Arnb in Palestine. H e
writer heard that when Roosevelt brought up the thought that "the settlement of the problem of
future of Palestine, Stalin indicated that if England Palestine by the creation of a single Arab-Jewish

38
state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs might The British Government hoped that the Bevin
... be considered ... the solution most deserving plan for a cantonized Palestine under British rule
attep.tion." Up to that point,, the words of Gromyko might still be accepted. This was strongly supported
might still have been fitted into the plans of Bevin. in both the State and War Departments. It was also
For he also spoke of "a single Arab-Jewish state with favored by the Arabian-American Oil Company "
equal rights for Jews and Arabs." which had a powerful lobby at work in Washington.
But at this point Gromyko set off a bombshell. At Far from supporting the UN report vigornusly, the
the very close of his address he said that if this plan U.S. delegation pennitted its indifference to become
were "unrealizable" on account of the deterioration known to the states under American influence. It
of relations between Jews and Arabs, "then it would looked as if partition would be lost. On Thauksgiv-
be necessary to consider an alternative solution ... ing Day, November 28, 1947, there were desperate
the division of Palestine into two independent sep- last minute appeals made to the President.
arate states-one, Jewish, and one, Arab." On November 29, by a vote of 33-13, with ten
This meant the Soviet Union was prepared to abstentions, the General Assembly mustered the re-
join in implementing partition, the solution which quired two-thirds vote for partition. There were two
President Truman had endorsed in October 1946. votes to spare. Of those states closely dependent on
The Gromyko statement cleared. the way for inter- the United States, Cuba and Greece voted against
national action by providing a basis for cooperation partition while China abstained. These three votes
between the two great powers and insuring that should have exploded the myth that the U.S. had
neither would be able to make political capital of "cracked the whip" to line up votes for partition.
the issue at the expense· of the other. The Soviet The State and War Depa1tments fought to undo
statement provided the UN, badly split between the decision for which the U.S. had cast its vote.
eastern and western blocs, an opportunity for its first · The open reversal of March 19 was the culmination
constructive achievement. Events were to show that of these persistent efforts. President Truman seemed
this change in the Soviet position was unwelcome to to become the prisoner and dupe of the State De-
Anglo-American diplomacy. partment. The day before the American reversal he
The pro-partition findings of the UN investigat- assured an outstanding Zionist leader at the White
ing committee, the attitude of the Soviet Union and House of continued efforts to implement partition,
the position of the British Dominions-all of whom and gave this leader grounds for believing that the
voted for partition-provided an opportunity for President was disposed to lift the arms embargo
quickly accomplishing the objective to which the in the near future,
President had pledged himself. Yet the American 0
Jointly owned by Standard of California and Texa.~ Com-
delegation showed an extraordinary reluctance to pany, with whom Stcmcfo-rcl of New Jersey and Socony Vacuum
utilize the opportunity. were soon to become partners.

IV This was not to be the last about-face in an

American policy which seemed exasperatingly and
States was purely temporary. But the two resolu-
tions submitted to the Security Council five days
almost whimsically eccentric, but the next was to be later by the American delegation slyly pursued the
at the expense of the State Dcparhncnt. Frantic task of preventing the birth of the Jewish State in
eiforts were made by the Amerioan and B1itish del- Palestine. The Americans submitted a truce resolu-
egations to get the UN to reverse its partition de- tion under which the Security Council would have
cision between March 19 and April 14. These were directed a cease-fire order to the Jewish Agency for
given an air of almost comic unreality by the prog- Palestine and the Arab Higher Committee. The
ress which the Jews were making in establishing Amedcan draft resolution conspicuously omitted any
control of the territory allotted them. reference to the Arab States, whose armies would
The State Depaitment's course was rendered diffi- have been unaffected by the order.
cult by the need to keep the President and the The other resolution was hardly _in accord with
American public confused, On March 25, the Presi- the President's assurance that the United States still
dent declared that he was still in favor of paitition favored partition and was suggesting trusteeship as a
and that .the trusteeship proposed by the United temporary measure. The American draft resolution

39
 proposed that the Security Council declare that it Unfortuualcly these proposals coyly omitted any
"requests the Secretary General . . . to convoke a answer to the c1uestion-how and by whom would
spedal session of the General Assern bly to consider trusteeship be cnforce_d? The French deleg~tion
further the question of the future govemrnent of raised this question pointedly in a formal statement
Palestine." This meant throwing the ,vhole <111estion criticizing the American proposal. The United States
open again. The British Government which had until had hoped in informal conversations to persuade
then abstaiucr.l from voting on all issues connecte<l a majority of the Council to put fonvard trnstec-
with Palestine, announced that it ·would vole for the ship as the plan of the Council. Thus the Truman
American draft resolutions. These were adopted by Administration would be saved the political em-
tho Council and the Genernl Assemlily summoned . barrassment oJ pulling forth this proposal as its own.
into session on April 16. But these hopes foundered on the questions raised
The Council went ahead with the truce resolu- by tho French and other delegations. At the same
tion. The crucial test oF the American delegation time on April 12, the Zionist General Council, the
came on April 17 when the Russiaus moved an h ighest authority of the world Zionist movement,
I: amendment ordering all armed groups which had served notice that any attempt to impose foreign
invaded Palestine from the outside to be withdravm rule or h·usteeship on the Jews of l)alestine wou1d b e
I immediately. This amendment would have rectified
the one-sided character of the original resolution.
resisted by force.
Four days later the General Assembly convened
The United States joined with one of the aggressOI for its second special session on Palestine. The As-
states, Syria, and with the United Kingdom, to de- sembly proceeded to take up the one question on
feat the amendment. its agenda, "further considera'tiou of the question of
111e Council then adopted the American resolu- , the future government of Palestine." The American
tion, with Russia and the Ukraine abstaining. The delegation embarked on a devious course. It refused
resolution called on all governments to forbid the to inb.:oduce its tiusteesl1ip plan as a formal resolu-
export of weapons and war materials to the com- tion, but insisted on presenting its trusteeship draft
batants. This served two political purposes. It pro- . merely as a working paper for consideration. Amer-
vided the State Department with a weapon against ican sb:at egy seemed to have a double objective. One
the agitation for lifting the arrns embargo. Now, the was to avoid the onus of spo,n soring a trusteesh ip
Department could argue that the emhargo was in resolution fonnally. The second \vas to put forward
accord with the instructions of the Sceurit;,, Council. trusteeship in such a way that it would he adopted
At the same time the resolution gave an air of legal- as a purely "temporary" matter not requiring revo-
ity to the naval blockade imposed hy the British to cafion of the partition 1·esolution. For it was clear,
keep the Jews from bringing in arms and men. The as was stated by the French delegate, that it would
resolution also sought to prevent the Jews front he impossible t o muster the two-thfr.ds. vote nece.,;-
going ahead with preparations to cstablisl~ a govern- sary to revoke the original partition resolution as
ment when the mandate expired. voted on N ovcmber 29.
The American trusteeship proposal was likewise Ry the beginni;1g of May it became evident that
framed to prevent Jewish independence. Jt might the American working paper had no supporters. The
have been drafted in the Colonial Office. The trus- British sought to compromise with a modifim'l ver-
teeship was to he of indefinite duration. The countrv sion of the American proposal. On May 3, Colonial
was to be ruled bv a Governor General with broad Secretary Creech-Jones proposed that the UN should
powers responsibl~ to the trusteeship council-the undertake to set up some ~ort of temporary regime
one arm of the UN in which the Soviet Union was which would continue the central government serv-
not represented. Nothing- was said of :my measure ices. Tbis would have S(~TVed to postpone partition
of self-government for Jews or Arahs. The cwcial and Jewish statehood. Canada and the U.S. indi-
questions of Jewish immigration and land pnrehase cateci their support and on the next dav tbe Cuban
were to be decided a!'ter negotiation and consl1 lta- rlelegate proposed the appointment of a suh-com-
tion with the Arabs. This would continnc British mittec of eight to work out a plan for a provisional
mle in all but T)ame: the mandate would become a regime along the lines of tl1e British proposal. This
trusteeship; the High Commissioner would hccome a was approv~d on ?vlav 4 and the snb-eommittee pro-
Governor General; and the Governor General would ceeded "to hold cleve~ meetings behind closed doors.
be free to continue the \Vhite Paper policy of re- It was unable, however, to reach agreement on any

l I
stricting Jewish immigration. plan and instead submitted a draft resolution for

I 40

I
I
the appointment of a mediator to "promote a peace- new State of Israel. This, when finally verified by
ful adjustment of the situation in Palestine." the skeptical U.S. delegation, literally threw the As-
The last plenaiy meeting of the second special sembly iuto an uproar. At 6: 11 p.m. that day, eleven
session of the General Assembly opened at .five minutes after the British mandate had expired, an
o'dock p.m., on ~fay 14, to consider this resolution. cxtraordinarv event had occurred. President Tru-
When it met the Jews had already proclaimed the man had i;sucd a statement extending American
State of hrael. The A~sernbly proceeded to vote on recognition to the Jewish State. None present were
the plan for the appointment of a mediator but while more surprised than his own delegation \vhich had
it was voting strange news arrived. There was a been working so lmrd to keep that State from coming
rnmor that President Trnman had recognized the into existence.

On the following two pages: view of Haifa Ray from Mt. Carmel (Cooke) ►

41
 --,

Truck arrives with prefabricated houses (Gidal)

Potash worker (Gidal) Unskilled lar1ore1· (Gidal) Farmcre/.te (Cooke) Tractor drioer (Girlal)

\Vhile houses of tl new settlement go up, barricades are prepared agaimt poss-Ible aUacks (Gidal)
 In one da,y, a new sett·lement takes shape ( Giclal)

Installitig elect1·idty (Giclal) Yagu.r, Kibutz; near Hai.fa. (Gidal)

Expectant cr<>wd in Tel Aviv ·before declaration of statehood (Cooke)

Jewish leaders waiUng in Tel Aviv m-useuttJ)

46 for the momentous deolaration (Capa
47
 C',,uarding t he Museum during
session of the Jewish nati01tal
council prior to declaration
(Capa)

Cabinet sessiun (l. to r.): Fritz Bernstein, Minister of Commerce; Dr. Judah Leib Fishman, Minister of Religion, War
Damages and Reparations; David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister and Minister of Defense; Dr. Felix Rosenblitcth, Minister
of Justice; Alu1,ron Zisling, Mini.\ter uf Agriculture (Capa)
 Chaim Weizmann, 'first President of Israel
(Israeli Govemment)

Prirne Minister Ben-Curion signing the Declaration of Statehood on March 14, 1948. Foreign Minister Shertok
on right (Wide World)

49
i

F01· thfa moment; they waited two thousand years (Capa)

50
 ISRAEL IS BORN
.,·
f.

·~
in which for the first time since A. D. 70
a Jewish state is established
•

Ameriean recognition was as much so quickly to organize for resistance and to replace
a surprise in Israel as it had been at those government services liquidated by the British
Lake Success. Ilepresentatives of the in withdrawing.
State Department had been trying in The habits of democratic self-government had
private talks with Jewish leaders to postpone any deep roots in the Yishuv. The Jews of Poland and
declaration of statehood. There were circumspect Russia, whence a majority of the Jews of Palestine
hints that if the Jews went ahead, the United States in modern times had come, had been accustomed
Government might supplement the arm~ embargo under the Czarist empire to a measure of communal
with a dollar embargo, forbidding the transfer of autonomy. These habits of self-organization were
United Jewish Appeal funds to Palestine. A week carried over into Palestine where the Ottoman Code
before the declaration of statehood, uppermost in gave religious communities wille powers of jurisdic-
the minds of both officials and ordinary people in tion in matters affecting the personal status of their
the Palestinian Jewish community was one qnestion: members.
would America shnt off the flow of JC\-vish dollars if As early as 1903, the great Russian Jewish Zionist,
the Jews insisted on establishing a Jewish State? :Menahem Ussishkin, who was to play so creative
In some timid quarters there may have been a a role in the building of modern Palestine,· launched
tendency to consider compromise. Pressure from the the first attempt at organization on a national scale.
State Department had met with faint-heartedness on The Federation of Palestine Jews which was the
earlier occasions. Thero had been pressure from the frnit of this effort did not last long; the government
Department to halt the sailing of the immigrant of Abdul Hamid viewed it with disfavor. vVith the
ships, Pan York and Pan Crescent, from Bulgaria occupation of Palestine by tl1e British in 1917, Je-.,vish
in December 1947. A miniature revolt on the part organization began again. A conference was called
of the Haganah representatives at the embarkation representing all of Palestine. This elected a provis-
point thwarted the willingness of a majority in the ional committee to prepare the way for a Jewish
Jewish Agency to accede. This time, even if the Constituent Assembly. But Palestine was then under
leadership had been willing, public opinion would British military law. It was governed by OETA,
have made postponement impossible. Any Jewish the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, and
government which tried to postpone a declaration of this showed at the very beginning that stubborn
statehood would have been overthrown. antagonism to Jewish national aspiration which was ·
To speak of a J cwish "~overnment" being over- to become characte1istic of British mandatory rule.
thrown if it failed to declare statehood may seem Military opposition to Jewish nation al organization
a paradox. But a Jewish governmr.nt in all but name prevented the summoning of the Constituent Assem-
already existed in Palestine. For the Jews the dec- bly until 1920. This was attended by 300 deputies
laration of independent statehood \Vas only a last and elected the Vaad Leumi (National Council) as
and logical step. They had been accusto~ed for the official representative and unofficial government
years largely to govern and to defend themselves. To of Palestinian Jewl'y. ·
understand this is to understand one of the prin- This even extended to the sphere of culture. It
cipal reasons why the Jews of Palestine were able was typical of the Jewish community that the first

51
ceremonial act in the newly recognized "Jewish Na- Cabinet and the chairman of that Executive was in
tional Home" was the laying of the foundation stones effect a Prime Minister, The United Nations Special
for the Hebrew university. Although the Balfour Committee on Palestine found in 1946 that the
Declaration had just been issued, on November 2, Agency alrea_dy exercised "a decisive influence in
1917, the military at first refused permission for the major questions of policy and adminiso·ation, p ar-
ceremony and it took an appeal to the Foreign ticulal'ly in regard to immigration and argricultural
Office in London and a special order ovenuling the development."
military for the cornerstone to be laid on July 24, The makers of British policy failed to assess the
1918. Military opposition to Jewish national organi- significance of these institu tions and th:is generation
zation prevented the summoning of a Constituent · of comm unal self-government under the mandate.
Assembly until 1920. The Assembly, when held, was The mistake they made was to create chaos io P ales-
attended by 300 deputies and elected the first V aad tine by liquidating all semblance of central govern-
L eumi ( National Council) as the official representa- ment. H ad they m aintained orderly central govern-
tive and unofficial governing b ody of Palestinian ment until May 15, there would have b een a going
Jewry. concern which the United Nations m ight have taken
Two interlocking institutions were the nucleus of over under some form of t rusteeship. The existence
the Jewish self-government which developed under of such a regime would have made it difficult for the
the mandate. One rep resented the Jews of Palestine, Jews to set up a provisfonal independent government
the other all of world Jewry interested in the up- of their own, as the State D eparhnent and the Brit-
building of the counb:y. The Jews of Palestine by ish came to realize too late in the last frantic efforts
annual adult suffrage elected an Assembly of 71 made at Lake Success to improvise a trusteeship.
members. This was the number of the ancient San- British policy proved an unwitting blessing. T he
hedrin, which had provided a simHar kind of un- Jews found their opportunity in the chaos the Brit-
official Jewish government for Palestine under ish created . The existing instruments of Jewish
Roman sovereignty. The Assembly in turn elected self-government moved easily and quickly into the
the National Council of 23 members. In 1926 the vacuum developed as the British withdrew. T his was
promulgation by the mandatory government of the apparent ea1·ly to those whose eyes were not blinded
Religious Community Ordinance gave the National by hatred or misted by prejudice, including many
Council 01· Vaad Leumi statutory b asis and conferred British officials in Palestine itself. When an advance
upon it tl1e power to levy taxes for education, health, party of the UN Palestine Commission arrived in
and social weHare. Jerusalem in March, these officials, conceded that the
From the very beginning, steps were also taken to Jewish Administration was so well organized that
establish a quasi-governmental body through which transfer of authority to it would be very easy. Actu-
Ziomsts and non-Zionists in Palestine and abroad ally the transfer of authority was then already under-
could aid in the d evelopment of the Jewish National way. The Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi had
Home. In a memorandum submitted to the Ver- begun fully to govern b efore the British left.
saille~ Peace Confe1·ence, Zionist leaders asked that The transition from Jewish Agency to Jewish State
in promoting Jewish immigration and settlement the required little change. The sturdy Beo-Gurion as
mandatory "accept the cooperation of a Council chairman of the executive of the Agency was already
representative of the Jews in Palestine and of the acting as the Prime Minister of a Jewish State. The
world." The mandate as established und er the clever and multi-lingual Moshe Shertok, who h ad
League of Nations provided in Article 4 for a "Jew- been in charge of foreign relations at the Agency,
ish Agency" to h e recognized "as a public b ody for was functioning as a F oreign Minister in Tel Aviv,
the purpose of advising and cooperating wit~ the Lake Success, Washington and London, months b e-
Admini!ltration of Palestine in . . . the establish- fore the UN voted partition. The brilliant intellec-
ment of the Jewish national · home . . . and .. . to tual, Eliezcr Ka plan, a Jewish Alexander Hamilton,
assist and take p art in the development of the coun- had for year-s been Finance Minister in all but name.
try." This was t~e legal foundation of the Jewish I t was the consciousness that he spoke not only for a
Agency and this . was to become what the Royal united people but for a functioning government
Commission of 1937 called "a state within a state." which enabled Bcn-Gurion to declare so boldly on
The Agency was organized into departments cor- March 20, after the U.S. reversal, '1t is we who will
responding to those of other self-governing coun- decide the fate of Palestine . . ." It was this which
tries. Its E xecutive corresponded to an American Shertok had in mind when he told the UN Security

52
Council on April I, "We have passed the threshold half the population of Jewish Palestine lives, ex-
of Statehood. We refuse to be thrown back." actly as he had in more peaceful years. Buses and
On April 12, a month before the mandate ended, taxis operated as usual. British authority was con-
the General Council, highest organ of the world fined to a few restricted areas in Jerusalem and
Zionist movement, unanimously adopted a resolu- Haifa and at Rafah on the Egyptian border. An
tion declaring "after twenty-seven years of an op- interim Jewish government was already functioning
pressive foreign regime , .. the Jewish nation will with Tel Aviv as its capital. There sat a People's
establish its own State and independence in its Council of 37 representing all political parties in the
homeland." On April 26, the Vaad Leumi, as the country, There was a Jewish import and export
elected representative of the Jewish people of Pales- licensing authority, a national food controller, a col-
tine, announced the makeup of a provisional Cabinet lector of taxes, and a Jewish police force. Although
with Ben-Gurion as Prime Minister and She1tok as the British had cut off mail service on the 15th of
Foreign Minister. There could be no turning back. April and the American postal authorities had fol-
A visitor arriving in Palestine a week before the lowed suit, mail service had been restored within
declaration of statehood found a Jewish State al- the Jewish area. Post offices and postal staffs were
ready in existence. At a new Tel Aviv airport, still working under Jewish direction, as were the cable
under construction, he passed through Jewish pass- offices, and letters were already being franked with
port and customs control; the first impression created a Jewish stamp.
by Tel Aviv itself was one of extraordinary and The Declaration of Statehood, when finally made
bustling normality. He traveled from Tel Aviv to on May 14, was the declaration of an established
Haifa through the thriving coastal plain in which fact, not of a desperate or wistful aspiration.

11 For the first time in almost nineteen centuries,

since Jerusalem fell to the armies of Titus in A.D. 70,
deep dimples, wearing a zipper jacket with a fm
collar, jumped out of the car. He had the manner of
the Jews were about to reestablish themselves as an one accustomed to be obeyed. He began talking over
independent nation. the railing to a group of MP's while an adjutant
May 14 was a Friday and, since the Jewish Sab- stood at attention nearby.
bath begins at sundown on Friday, a half holiday. The Hebrew papers that morning brought the
The day was sunny. At eight o'clock in the morning news that the armies of six Arab States were massing
along Tel Aviv's Riviera-like beach front people were on the borders of Palestine for invasion as soon as
bathing. The veranda of the Hotel Armon where the British mandate ended at midnight. Neither this
most of the foreign correspondents stayed was foll news nor the sight of air raid precaution tents being
of military police in makeshift uniforms and blue put up off Hen Yehuda Street seemed to dampen the
and white arm bands eating a quick breakfast before festive atmosphere. Curious small boys gathered
reporting for duty at near-by Haganah reception around the tents and peered inside at the stretchers.
centers. It was hard to tell whether these tents were being
Newly inducted soldiers began to pour out of erected in preparation for raids or as a means of
these centers, many of them older men, some advertising the new State's first national loan. Signs
paunchy and bald, some tall, thin, and intellectual in Hebrew outside the tent solicited subscriptions
looking. All seemed in high spirit§. Many wore the for the loan.
Boy Scout style shorts Palestinians wear in hot Later in the morning news spread of the fall of
weather. A few carried knapsacks. One sported a Kfar Etzion, the first Arab victory in the war. The
h·opical helm.et. An elderly Jew rode past on a bi- British-officered Arab Legion supported by 2,000
cycle wearing a yarmelka ( black skull cap). A tribesmen from the Hebron hills had :finally suc-
woman went by in simple black costume without hat ceeded after four months in subduing ~ome 500
or adornment as if already mourning for the dead. isolated settlers. At Bab-el-Wad a bitter battle was
:\1en poured from taxis into the reception centers on for control of this nanow gorge, the bottleneck
and armored trucks pulled away with new recmits. 0£ the Tel Aviv-Jemsalem road.
A mud covered military car drove up. A big six- Every effort was made to keep the place and time
foot J cw with thick black brows, a strong face, and of the Declaration of Statehood secret.lest the meet-

53
 ing place be bombed by a hostile air force. Corre- the on ly one in its hjstory that started on lime, had
spondents were told to gather at press b eadqoarters no long speeches, and was brief and to the point.
on Ben Yebucla Street at 3:30. They piled into spe- Last of the J.3 ministers to enter was their chief,
. cial cars without being told their destination. The 61-year-old D avid Ben-Gurion, with a white bushy
streets tlu·ough which they drove w ere foll of holi- fringe of hair setting off his round bald h ead, the
day makers and the cafes were crowded. They shortest and widest of the thirteen. The impression
passed open trucks loaded with boys and girls going he gave was of strength and determination. This
out to the various fronts but the press corresp ond- little man, one of the early pioneers, seemed a kind
ents seemed the only apprehensive people in Tel of Jewish Churchill, an historically fitting embodi-
Aviv. ment of the Yishuv's will.
Small boys hawked blue and white Jewish flags on At four o'clock sharp he called lhe meeting to or-
th e street c..-orners. Excited crowds gathered to read der. The assembly rose and sang the Jewish national
news bulletins posted on shop windows and the anthem, '1-latikvah," while the Palestin e Symphony
orange juice s tands were doing a rnsb business. The Orchestra played from an adjoining room. The music
cars carrying the correspondents went down Herzl had hardly subsided when Ben-Gurion rose and in a
Street to Rothschild Boulevard which was roped off. strong, firm, and emphatic voice read in Hebrew the
There the correspondents got out, showed their in- Jewish D eclaration of Independence. Hastily written
vitations to the Ml>'s and proceeded to the Tel Aviv by leaders desperately engaged in the task of pre-
Art Museum, a white modern t wo-story building. paring for war, the D eclaration was a rather pla in,
The grassy island in the middle of tl1C Boulevard almost pedestrian affair. Io those present it touched
was foll of people gathered to watch the arrivals. A off chords of deep, proud, and painful feeling. The
Jewfah Bag :flew from a roof full of armed guards. Declaration spoke o.f the Exile, of H erzl's vision, of
On the sidewalk below at the entrance t (} the build- the achievements of the Return ( "They reclaimed a
ing was a guanl of honor. One lone ancient deHavi-· wilderness"), of tl1e Ra]fonr D eclaration, of the Nazi
land circled in the cloudless blue sky dropping leaf- "holocaust," and of the urgency it gave the "problem
lets containing the Jewish Declaration of Independ- of Jewish homelessness," of the immigrants who ··•un-
ence. Photographers' bulbs flashed and movie cam- deterred by hazards, hardships, aod obstacles" had
eras ground out rolls of film as the crowds cheered sought "unceasingly" to enter Palestine, and of the
celebrities they rec..-ognized. UN decision.
·within the museum, to which about 100 notables Th ose who listened saw again the forever vanished
and foreign correspondents h ad been admitted, a pious Jewish villages an<l ghettos of Eastern Eu-
dais ]1ad b een placed in the main exhibition hall rope, the desultory pace and hopeless faces b ehind
under a huge _portrait of Theodor Herzl, the founder the barbed wire of the Central E uropean DP camps,
of modem Zionism. On the dais was a long table the packed, di.i:ty lit tle ships from which worn human
at which Bon-Gmion and Ms twelve colleagues of cargoes looked with eager wonder for the first time
the Cabinet took their plac<!s. I3cfore them in tl1e at Mount Carmel in the early. morning Jight. Many
main hall sat the 37 members of the People's Coun- remembered the dear and close who h ad fallen in
cil and otJ1ex p oliticaJ, social and religious leaders of years of suffering mid struggle for the achievement
the commun ity. In silk top hats were the two Chief ol' this moment. Ben-G11rio11, in the name of the
Rabbis of T el Aviv, Rabbi I. M. Unterman of the Yishuv and the world Zionist movement, invoked
Ashkenazi community and Rabbi Jacob Moshe Tole- tlle "natural and historic Iight of the Jewish p eople"
dano of the Sephardic community. At the other end and the resolution of the UN General Assemhly and
of the sartorial scale were the two L eft-wing mem- declared, "We . . . hereby proclaim the c~tablish-
bers of the Cabinet, the editor, Mordecai :Ben-T ov, ment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called
Minister of Labor, ancl Aharon Zisling, :tvlinister of Israel." Th<~ whole assemblage rose and npplandcd,
Agriculture, both of the Unjted Workers Parties. and many among them wept.
They wore white shirts without jackets or neckties Hen-Gurion ended the Declaration of Independ-
and open at the tlwoat. Chairs had also been set up ence and the11 read the first official decree of the
in tl1e entrance ball leading to the main exhibition new Jewish government. This abolished the hatc~d
haJl and there sat repxesentatives of tbe local and White Pap er of 1939, removing the legal barrier to
foreign press. unrestricted Jewish immigration and to the free pur-
Here occurred tl1c most important meeting of the chase of land by Jews anywhere in their new State.
Zionist movement, its climax and fruition; perh aps The Declaration of Independence was signed by the

54
 members of the People's Council. Everyone stood iu the declaration made it a military crime to "print,
silence as the orchestra played "Hatikvah" again. reprOlluce, publish or circulate any document, pic-
13en-Gurion struck his gavel on the table at 4:38 ture, photograph, emblem or other similar thing in-
p.m., and said simply, "I hereby declare this meeting tended or of a 11aturc to cause disorder or disaffec-
adjourned. Onr State has been established." tion towards the authority of the General Officer
During the session, there was a stir of excitemcut. Commanding or troops under his command, or by
A soldier in uniform pushed through the crowd to any means circulate false statements, rumors or re-
smmnon one oJ those sitting in the main hall, a short, ports of a nature to endanger the maintenance of
shirdy man who looked like a younger edition of Ben- public order."
Gurion. This was Israel Calilli, secret commander lt was feared that if the British had enough sol-
of the IIaganah. He came out of the hall and walked diers left in the country to enforce these military
up some side stairs where he talked with the soldier regulations they <:ould hamstring Jewish military
for a moment. Then wiping the perspiration from movements, compressing the Jews into a seacoast
his face in the heat of the densely packed hall, ghetto between Tel Aviv and llaifa, while the Arabs
Galilli went up to the table with a smile and handed invaded and held the rest of tlic country. As it
a note to Bcn-Gurion. turned out, there must l1ave been a last-minute
\;yhen the session was over, it was leamcd the change in plans. For the British made no effort to
news brought by the soldier was that vVestern Gali- use these extraordinary powers except in a small en-
lee was now in Jewish hands. This added to the clave at Haifa and at Rafa, at the opposite emls of
jubilation. Old friends from many parts of the world this military zone.
gfeeted each other warmly. Many pushed fmward to While the Jews were establishing their ne,v State,
shake the hands of Ben-Gurion and other officials. His Excellency Lt. Gen. Sir Alan Cunningham, sev-
Outside, crowds cheered. Cameras clicked as the enth and last British High Commissioner in Pales-
heads of the new Jewish State took the salute of the tine, walked out of his official residence on Mt. Zion
Guard of Honor and entered their cars. in Jerusalem for the last tim~ on the morning of
Even as the new State was being established, May 14. A solitary bagpiper skirled a Highland la-
proclamations \.Vere being posted establishing a mili- ment. The Union Jack came down. Sir Alan sped
tary law zone running from north of Haifa around a.ff under armed guard for a plane which took him
the whole coastal area south to Rafa on the Egyp- to Haifa. There he took the salute of a company of
tian border., In this area the British military arro- Palestine police and shook hands with the Jewish
gated to itself the right to mlc as it pleased from the mayor and the Arab vice-mayor of Haifa. The cruiser
end of the mandate at midnight until its evacuation Euryalus waited in the harbor .to take him off at
was co;npleted, which was "expected to be about midnight. Sir Alan's route to the dock was closely
October 1." The proclamation was couched in the guardr:d. It lay mainly throngh Arab quarters aban-
rhetoric of a conqueror to a prostrate country: "Now, doned by their inhabitants in the battle of Haifa a
therefore, I, Lt. Gen. Gordon Holmes Alexander few weeks earlier.
Madviillan, Companion of the 1fost Honorable Or- Sir Alan said iu a farewell broadca~t to the people
der of the Bath, Commander of the Distinguished of Palestine the night before, "I have never believed
Service Order of the Military Cross, hereby pro- that a seed of agreement between Jew ancl Arab
claim . . ." docs not exist." Too little had been done to nurture
Stringent: regulations were promulgated establish- that seed during twenty-oue years of British rule,
ing military law in this area but declaring that "as much to prevent it from sprouting. Sir Alan, ahont
long as the inhabitants of the occttpied area remain to board the waiting lannch, took a quick look up-
peaceful and comply with my orders, they will be ward at a flawless blue sky. The last words of the
subjected to no more interference than I consider last British High Commissioner on Palestinian soil
essential in tbe performance of my duties." But what were dry and cryptic enough to invite tl1e suspicion
the General Officer Commanding might consider es- of humor.
sential seemed rather sweeping. Among other things "Good going-away weather," said Sir Alan.

55
 ;

·~-t~~,
I

>'i-...,.
~
. ;.?

~£
.:r•.,.
I ;.~-,:·-
I""
;...,
.
r

On guard near Tel Aviv (Cooke)

 •• .WHENCE COMETH MY HELP
in which we see the moral and material
sources of Israel's strength

Tel Aviv celebrated in a black-out 3,000,000 Jews poured out of Europe to the Amer-
that first night of Statehoou. Enemy icas. At the end of that period, 6,000,000 of those
air raids were expected, and began who ·stayed behind were killed. Beside these huge
at dawn. The new State had solidi- totals, the -people of Israel seemed a handful, but
fied itself internally and repelled irregular attack. an eamest of what a handful could do.
Now it was to meet invasion by the regular armies The fanaticism which led a minority of the Jews
of six Arab States. What were the sources from to persist in returning to the land that was theirs-
which Israel could draw power to resist? as they said-two thousand years before, often
To understand Israel'~ resources one must glance seemed as mad to their Jewish as to their non-Jewish
back at the story of the Jews and of Zionism. For contemporaries; it took Hitler and the crematoriums
factors more basic than those discussed in military to make the Jewish people everywhere Zionist in
manuals were tu make themselves felt. There was their sympathies. History records few such quixotic
a deep attachment to tho Land; the capital L but adventures as that which took a few hundred thou-
dimly indicates the love and longing in the Hebrew sand Europeans of advanced culture to a primitive
word eretz. There was the sense of being fully and country of parched desert, malarial plain and eroded
completely at home in Palestine. There was the hills in sentimental quest of a legendary past. Their
secret weapon ( as the Jews there were fond of success in establishing themselves long seemed a tri-
calling it), ein breroh, which means "no alternative," umph of will over reason. People of this kind do
the realization that the people of Israel had no re- not easily surrender.
treat open to them, and that they must win and live Three ideas went into the making of modern
or lose and die, that the Arabs would show them Israel. Their full flavor can only be grasped in its
no mercy in defeat. They had the proud sense of revived language, the ancient Hebrew.
being a trustee for the homeless waiting in Europe The first idea was that of aliyah, the return of the
and an advance guard on whose efforts would de- Jews to Palestine. The word means to go up, as to
pend the prestige, the honor, and perhaps ultimately a high place, and on pilgrimage. Tho word first ap-
the safety of Jews elsewhere in the world. pears in the Bible wlien Abraham took Sarah, his
Whatever the others, these few in Palestine were wife, and went up out of Egypt's river valley, back
indeed a chosen, a self-chosen people. The reestab- to mountainous Canaan, where lay the lancl prom-
lishment of a Jewish State in the land of Israel was ised him; this is the first record of a J cwish return
the achievement of a single-minded· and stout- to Palestine. The mystical notion of a Return was
heaited minority, willing to ventme everything in the basic ingredient of Zionism.
pursuit of an idea; such men are not easily van- Tho State which emerged owed its roots and
quished. The hare statistics indicate the extent to strength to two other ideas, developed out of painful
which the rebirth of the Tews as a nation, like most experience. One was kihbush avodah, the conquest
of history's accomplishm.ents, was the work of a of labor; the other was 1wgana.h, self-defense. One
few. The· community which declared itself a State on was the idea that the Jews could not become a na-
May 14 had rnanag~d to grow in 70 years to 650,000 tion again unless thosr. who returned to Palestinr.
people. In that same period of two generations, were willing to do its work witl1 their own hands,

·57
 whether on the land, along the wharves, or in the Greek, Parthian and I\.oman in the turbulent power
factories. The other was the jdea that they would politics of tbe strategic land bridge on which Pales-
never be secure until they could defend themselves. tine is located.
These ideas am the source of I srael's strength. There was much opposition to Zionism among the
The earliest of these was atiyah . .Because of recur- Jews. Some were comfortable where they w ere, and
i-ent anti-Semitism, a sense o(beiug a people apart, ~aw no reason to move. Others preferred accustomed
the reaction of pride to persecution; because the evils to unknown dallgers. Like other human beings,
People, the Laud, and the Book seemed inextricable, the Jews disliked change. W calthy and high placed
there was a constant longing for a return. This ap - Jews feared the position they had won might be
pears in prophecy, in the liternturc after the first •endangered. The assimilationist prized his officer's
T emple, and in the liturgy. Jn their morning service commission, his country club membership, or equiva-
the Jews prayed, "Oh bring us in p eace from the lent syn)bol of belonging with a passion known only
four corners of the earth and make us go uprigl1t to those who secretly feel that they don't. Ile wanted
to our land." There was no cenhny in which some to be a Prussian martinet, a romantic Polish patriot,
did not go. In the Middle Ages, before the rise of a Russian intellectual, a Viennese wit, a Parisian
nationalism, these migrations took the form of re- bonlcvardicr, a reserved English nobleman-why
ligious movements, precipitaled by men who claimed couldn't those professional Jews leave him alone'r
to be the Messiah ; tl1e Jews, too, had lhe iJ· Cru- The ortllOdox considered Zionism impious; the Mes-
sades. Piety fed these movements; livelihood re- siah would take the Jews hack in God's own good
strained them. The rich had too much to ]eave time. The liberals and socialists considered Zionism
behind; the poor lacked means to move away. old-fashioned, almost quaint; with the revolution all
It may be asked why Zionism did not appear and would be well with the Jews. They fought anti-
find successful expression until the end of the nine- s e mitism, but they rejected the notion of the Jews
teenth a:nd the beginning of the twentieth cenluries. as a people, with a right to national aspirations of
Renewed p ersecutions, Rrst in Russia and then in their own.
Germany, gave the urge to re turn reuewcd force; Events affirmed what liberalism denied. Zionism
they demonstrated that anti-Semitism could become drew much of its leadership from disillusioned lib-
virulent again in a n enligl1tened age. Dut neither eral intellectuals who had staked their h opes on
these outbreaks of savagery nor the e>.istence almost progress. The 1840 Damascus ritual murd<ir t1·ial
everywhere of covert antagonism were nc~w. These shocked Moses Hess from conventional socialism to
were familia r in every century . Jewish nationalism. The pogroms of 1881 a\vakcncd
Titcre were new factors which created Zioni~rn the Jew in L eo Pinsker, a physician who had advo-
and made its fulfillmeut possible. Nationalism be- cated Russification for the Jcws of the Czarist E m-
came a force in human thinking; in an age which pire. The French a1Jti-Scmitism w.h ich culminated in
sa-w tl1e resurrection in Eastern and Cent1·al. Europe the Dreyfus trial of 1894 played the same role in
of long sobmerged peoples, Jewish and non-Jewish the dcvd opment of Theodore H e rzl, the Viennese
thinkers hegan to ask why the Jews, too, should journalist an<l playwright, w ho founded the modern
not be a nation. The advance of science played a Zionist move ment with h is hook, The Jewish State,
part. · Better communications enab1ed Jewish corn- in 1896.
mnnitics scaltcred all over the world to take united Herzl, like Hnsker, soon found himself bored with
action on matters of common interest, as they did in polemics against anti-Semitism; he cons idered them
the l.840's in combating the false accusabon·s of the futile. H e noted bitterly, "In countries whore we
Damascus ritual murder trial. The improvement in have lived for centm'ies we are still cried down as
transportation made Palest ine nearer and morr. ac- strangers." H e declared the Jewish qnestion was a
cessible. With modern capitalism, there came a large national question, to b e solved only by rcestahlish ing
enough growth of capital in Jewish hands to finance a Jewish State. "Everything," !10 wrote, "depends on
a return. The decline a nd hreak-up of the Ottoman our propelling force." And what was that propc:.\Jing
Empire provided a p olitical oppo;tunity; from Na- force to be? Herzl answered, "the. mise1y nf the
poleon to Balfour, there were Western statesmen J ews." He said shrewdly, "a little despair is indispen-
who were ready to give Zionism a role as an auxil- sable to the formation of a great undertaking." He
iary weapon of imperial expansion. This was some- who in bis lifetime did not spend more than half n
thing the Tews had not known s.ince ancient times w eek in P alestine was to shape its future. Tn a
wl,en they h ad used, and been used by, Babvlonian. utopian novel, Otd-New Land, Herzl anticipated

58·
Electrical Works in the Jordan Valley (Gidal)

much in its development, including the Lowdermilk "not only dominated the Congress but adorned it,
plan for a TVA on the Jordan. On the title page of for his tall distinguished and handsome figure, with
this book, Her:tl put the motto which became the his well-shaped head, lofty brow, dark, penetrat-
keynote of the movement which built Israel, ''If ing eyes, and Hawing black beard, was reminis-
you will it, it need not remain a dream." cent of an Assyrian monarch." He opened the Con-
The first reactions to his proposals were derisive. gress with majestic simplicity. ''We are here," he be-
It was among the masses of East European Jewry gan, "to lay the foundation stone of the house which
that ordinary folk first caught fire from his vision. is to shelter the Jewish nation." In his diary, Herzl
This dilettante turned prophet was able in eight wrote a few days later, "If I were to sum up the
short years, until his sudden death at 44, to lay the Basel Congress in one word-which I shall not do
foundations of tho Zionist movement. This Jew who openly-it would be this: at Basel I founded the Jew-
was almost a goy, with little root in Jewish culture ish State." To this he added, "If I were to say this
or tradition, began to seem a kind of Messiah. The today, I would be met by universal laughter. In five
correspondence evoked by "The Jewish State" made years, perhaps, and certainly in fifty, everyone will
it possible for him within a year and a ha1f to sum- see it." That was September 1897. The Jewish State
rnon the .first world Congress of Jewry, the first Con- was dcelan~d in May 1948. Herzl's prophetic guess
gress of Zionism. This opened on August 29, 1897, was only wrong ·by nine months.
in Basel, Switzerland, with 197 delegates present, The fifty years, so triumphant in retrospect,
representing :virtually every country in which Jews seemed a succession of heart-breaks for those who
lived. pa1ticipatcd in them, most of all for Herzl himself.
Israel Cohen, one of the historians of tho Zionist The memo1y of those past difficulties overcome gave
movement, was present. He has given us a vivid the Yishuv courage when new difficulties arose. This,
picture of the proceedings. "Herzl," Cohen wrote, too, was a sourc~ of strength.

59
Jo:rdan Valley after 20 years of cultivation (Gidal)

11 That aliyah, the return of the Jews to Palestine,

was not enough in itself to create a healthy commu-
within three months; this regulation, in force until
the First World War, made all who stayed on during
nity was soon demonstrated in the first wave of those years "illegals."
modern Jewish colonization. This began 15 years The Russian government was as hostile to the emi-
before the first Zionist Congress. It was precipitated gration of the Jews as the Turkish government was
by the disillusion created among Russian Jewish in- to their immigration. The Russian government issu ed
tellectuals in the wake of the 1881 pogroms. Societies an order forbidding the intended exodus of the 500.
of "Lovers of Zion" were fmmcd. Tbejr aim was a Only 20 of them managed to evade the Russian
return to Palestine. They proved attractive to student authorities at one end and the Turkish at the other.
youth, After many adventures, during which what little
The obstacles were greater than tlle enthusiasm, money they had was stolen, they managed to reach
and the first results were meagre. A group of 25 Jew- Palestine. Of this first intrepid 20, ten young men in
ish students at Kharkov University set out on a trip 1882 established the first colony in Palestine. They
through Russia in which they recruited 500 enthusi- settled on a site south of Jaffa and they proudly
asts for the first Chalutz movement. Chalut"z is the called their settlement, Rishon Le-Zion, "First in
word for pioneer in Hebrew, and the chalutz has Zion." This was the beginning of modern Israel.
ever since been the symbol of what was best in the Tiny bands of the stout-hearted few laid the foun-
life of Jewjsh Palestine. dations for the future State. Of the original twenty,
This energetic band sent delegates to Constanti- the other ten restored Petach Tikvah, •·1ne -Gate of
nople to negotiate for the purchase of land in Pales- Hope." This, the first Jewish farm settlement in mod-
tine. They met with hostility. The Turkish govern- ern Palestine, had been established by Jews from
ment feared these pionee1·s as the vanguard of a Je1usalem, but abandoned owing to an outbreak of
Jewish invasion, and sought to make entry into Pal- malaria. Later that same year of 1882, Rumanian
estine more difficult. One device, instituted in 1883, Jewish pioneers began two new settlements, one at
was the "Red Certificate'' which was issued to every Rosh Pinah .in Galilee and the other at Samarin on
new arrival and required him to leave Palestine . .
the coastal plain south of Haifa. This was later re-

60
named Zichron Yacov "Memorial of Jacob" in honor and he sometimes bought their entire output himself
of the father of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the when no other purchaser could be found. But this
principal supporter of these first settlements. benevolence had its drawbacks. It began to deprive
Like Sir Moses Montefiorc in an earlier generation the settlers of independence and initiative. Though
rmd Baron Maurice de Hirsch in his own, Baron Ed- these early settlements are now thriving towns and
mond of the French branch of the famous banking villages, they began for a time to seem philanthropic
family was one of those high placed wealthy Jews institutions.
who were not afraid to identify themselves with their Those settlers who succeeded sometimes seemed
people and to aid them in their struggle. Unlike de worse than those who failed. They often became a
Ilirsch, Rothschild believed in the future of Palestine caricature of the earlier ideal. They preferred Arab
though he was but slowly won to political Zionism. workers to Jewish on their plantations, for the former
For fifty years, from those early efforts in the would work for so much less. They lost faith in Pal-
1880's, Baron Edmond was by far the largest single estine; many of their children drifted away to other
financial patron of the Yishuv. In those first days of lands. There was danger that the Yishuv would de-
struggle against primitive conditions an<l the omni- generate into another Oriental ghetto and that its
present malaria, he was the patient, long-suffering Jewish famners would become like the planters of
and generous friend of the settlers. They needed Africa and 1-falaya, Jiving off cheap native labor.
help. How terrible conditions were in those days Arthur Ruppin, one of the builders of Israel, drew
may be seen from the story of Hedera, founded in a discouraging picture of these first colonies in a
1890 on marshes the Arabs shunned in what is now a report to an early Zionist Congress. He said that in
thriving part of the coastal plain. Of the original 540 traveling through Palestine in ] 907 "what depressed
settlers, 214 died in the first few years. me most was the lack of energy and courage that I
The Baron provided funds for houses, synagogues, found among the Jews, especially in the colonies in
schools, and hospitals. He sent men to teach the Judea, Samaria and Upper Galilee." He declared
colonists how to plant vines in the coastal plain and that many colonies "looked just like homes of the
to raise silkworms in Galilee. He built wine-cellars aged."

61
,l
111 This description reads strangely today. Those
who know contemporary Jewish Palestine know it as
an almost religious significance by one of their lead-
ing figures, Aaron David Gordon. He was a Hebrew
a community of intense and youthful vitality. That writer who was employed as a bookkeeper on a large
it is so is due largely to the Second Aliyah, the sec- farm in Russia, Ile was drawn to the Zionist move-
ond wave of modern immigration, which began in ment but he was not content to write about it from
1904-. This set a new pattern for the future, infusing afar. He was obsessed by the desire to help rebuild
new energy and new ideas into the community. The the land of Israel, to help in a literal sense, lo build'
pioneers of the Second Aliyah laid the foundations with his own hands. In his late forties, he suddenly
for the characteristic institutions of Israel: its farm left his family and went to Palestine, where he be-
collectives and cooperatives; its powerful labor or- came a laborer, working on the roads and in the
ganization, the Histadruth; and its people's army, colonies. A bearded stalwart man, he is still re-
the Haganah, membered by younger folk who worked beside him;
The men and women of the Second Aliyah, like hearty and humorous, full of good cheer, a man
those of the .6rst, were mostly from Russia and Po- whose socialism was of a profoundly spiritual char-
land, The. migration was precipitated by the series acter. He left an impress on the imagination of
of pogroms which began with the Kishnielf massacre Palestine's youth, and still inspires the latter-day
in 1903. These pioneers brought a mixture of Tol- c1wlutz. "If we do not till the soil with our very own
stoyan, socialist, and single tax conceptions to the hands," Gordon wrote, "the soil will not be ours."
building of the Yishuv. They felt the Jews could not Practical necessities as much as socialist theo1y de-
become a normal and healthy people until they termined the course of devel_opment in the Yishuv.
turned from intellectual and middle class pursuits to Clwlutzirn, mostly of middle class and intellectual
labor in the factory and on the land. background, wished to be workers, but not to re-
This conception of the need to labor was given create an exploited Jewish proletariat or to compete

I1,

Shepherd in Upper Galilee (Gidal)

62
 with a depressed Arab. They had no capital and how quickly early idealism had degenerated into a
they did not wish to be plantation owners or gentle- fever of land speculation, the speed with which the
men farmers. They looked around for new forms of surviving pioneers had slipped into living on a com-
colonization and hit upon the kvutzah (lit. "grnup"), bination of rising land values and cheap Arab labor.
or collective farm. In the kvutzah they could work He who was no socialist turned finally in despair to
for themselves, and the kvutzah had many advan- the "one hope left for us-those young workers who
tages also from the standpoint of the Zionist organi- come ready to give thefr life for the national ideal."
zation. lt meaut that a larger number of Jews could He saw that if the trend of the '90's continued, the
be settled with a lower per capita investment in Jews of Palestine would forever remain "a 'superior'
machinexy and land. Under frontier conditions, the cultural minority whose power will lie in its brain
settler had more security in a collective than alone. and capital." He felt that "If the workers do not
Mutual aid, the sharing of knowledge, and a division 8ltccced in solving this problem, it will be a sign
of labor within the collective all made it an economi- that the national ideal is incapable of creating those
cally sound form of organization, and attractive to inner powers so necessary for our cause." The prob-
idealists. lem was solved through two closely inter-related
Those who colonized Palestine, like those who institutions, the Jewish National Fund and the His-
colonized America, were men with the courage to tadruth, the Federation of Jewish Labor in Palestine.
face a wilderness. But Palestine was a wilderness of The basic principle of the Jewish National Fund,
another kind. ln America, the settlers found a huge, which now holds about half the Jewish owned land
1ich and virgin continent at their disposal. They had of Palestine, is that the land it acquires shall remain
plenty of "elbow room." The conditions of life bred the inalienable possession of the J~wish people. This
individualism, and the circumstances were ideal for has imp01tant consequences. Land so acquired is
the development of capitalism, which re(1uires above withdrawn from the market, and removed from the
all else a wide margin for experiment and waste. reach of the speculator. Every influx of capital, in
Conditions in Palestine were exactly the reverse. the 1890's, in the middle '20's and in the early '30's,
On a tiny rim of the Mediterranean, mostly desert, was marked by a dcmorali7.ing outbreak~£ gambling
marsh and eroded hill, homes had to be made for in land. "Every Jew who spoke a little Arabic," says
hundreds of thousands of people. The investment of a Hebrew writer of the earliest real estate 'boom,'"
capital, labor and devotion required to restore a land . . . "became a broker. They were joined hy others
that had been despoiled by centuries of ill treatment who were tingling to get rich." Jews bidding against
was too enormous to be profitable. Costs were rela- each other pushed up the price of Arab lands to
tively high from the beginning. The influx of new- fantastic levels. Those who brought in capital often
comers led as in other new countries to bursts of seemed more interested in a quick and profitable
shameful land speculation; the small area available turnover than in constructive achievement; each
dramatized vividly and quickly the evils to which time land values were pushed higher, creating evils
Henry George had first called attention. And single which still haunt Israel in the shape of overcrowded,
tax, as well as socialist conceptions, were forced ill-built and costly urban housing; a citrus industry
upon the Yishuv and the Zionist movements by so overcapitalized as almost to wipe out l'alestine's
necessity. One of the world's most individualistic unusual advantages in this £mm of agriculture; and
peoples, "Protestant" in their religious faith before extraordinarily high costs for new land, even in des-
Protestantism, "capitali.~t" before capitalism, and ert areas like the N cgev. Private capital showed little
democratic by ancient tradition and persistent habit, enterprise in pioncering,and little courage in danger;
was impelled toward a coopcrati~e and collectivist it ended virtually by pricing itself out of the mar-
way of life, though-characteristically-the pattern ket. Since the Arab riots of '36, new acquisitions
th.is was to assume would he variegated and volun- have been made almost entirely by the Jewish Na-
tary, home-grown from the grass roots np, not im- tional Fnnd. It has become almost the sole provider
posed by blueprint from above. of new land for expansion and settlcmr:nt. And be-
Israel is far from being a socialist commonwealth. cause of the high land cost, the new settlements have
Basically it is still capitalist. But its distinctive char- been almost entirdy on the basis of collective and
acter and pioneering forces spring largely from the cooperative settlements.
labor movement and from socialist idealism. As early To build Israel, it was necessary not only to re-
as the l890's, the foremost Hebrew philosopher of generate a land but to reshape a people; to make
modern times, Achad Ha Am, was horrified to .6.nd something other than profit the guide of their lives.

63
 .....
,. .
;

• ,. :~;:.:! t 6,

. . .* -
... ·. ":~~, :; -~\!·..
":.-· :-- "•-Y~~ ,.-.~
-1~ ;.♦-!.' ·.: .? ;•t
-1; . .•. ... •.... ...
-

. ...

'
•

...
.. A-

;r-f:.-r:..::·':·_-.•,.·- ...- :-
........... ,

'.
I • • _.

.;·~, ~ ,. ~1~
.. ~ . .; ~- 1 -: : t,":,~~·~: ~

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'o,#

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.ii'~ ,,. .,r 4'<.: ••
·... "';,- ~ ,

Ait'view of a completely isolated Negev settlement (Cooke)

64
Water pipe line to the Negev (Gidal)

65
 Sand into fertile soil ( Gidal) Naharia water tower: also a museum and library ( Giclal)

I
i

Workers settlement near Haifa (Gidal) Sarne settlement a few ysars wter (Gidal)

66
 The withdrawal of land from speculation was not his own family or comrades without hired labor; and
the only function of the Jewish National Fund. Its it clianncls its settlements almost entirely into co-
land is leased, not sold, to the user, and the terms operative and collective form.
of the lease arc framed to protect the land from abuse 'I11e Jewish National Fund was established in
and to ensure its devotion to national pmposes. 1901. H did not begin practical work until 1908,
The philosDphy of the Jewish National Fund is often · when Arthur Ruppiu opened the Palestine Office.
traced back to the Biblical, "ye are only my ten- The first experiments in cooperative living were at
ants in the land." The clearest exposition of its prin- Sejera, Merhavia, and Degania Aleph; only the last
ciples was by tho brilliant Geiman Jewish sociolo- developed into a true collective. It was the first
gist, Franz Oppenheimer, who helped to pioneer kvutzah to succeed, and Joseph Baratz, one of its
both the idea of national ownership of tho land ancl founders, has given us a touching record of those
its resettlement on cooperative and collective prin- early days in his famous pamphlet history of De-
ciples, gania, which was to become Gordon's favorite colony
"Private ownership in Palestine," he wrote, "has and home.
produced aJl its well known consequences . . . it The colony was on what then seemed a lonely
has in many cases converted owners into speculators and distant frontier, the malarial valley into which
. . . And private ownership of land has further the river Jordan emerged from the Sea of Galilee.
shown itself here as the wedge that sunders a nation The contact between this :first kvutzah and Dr. Rup-
apart, which as Plato says, 'converts a single people pin's Palestine OiRce was very close in those early
into two nations that assume a hostile attitude to- days. 'vVhen a mare died," Baratz relates, "the mis-
ward one another.' The free landowner, who is al- fortune was sorrowfully reported to the Palestine
lowed every use and abuse of his land, engaged the Office, and words of comfort would come in reply.
cheapest lahorer . . . so will Jewish colonies in Pal- Or, if a wedding or other happy event took place,
estine, which are based upon wage labor, be Arnb- cordial congratulations were sure to follow."
ised for the most part, because the Tewish "landowner These were the gentle sorrows and joys of those
prefers the nncivilizcd and lowly Fellah to a fcllo,v early days; this was the spirit in which the men of
Jew." Only Jewish labor may be employed on JNF the Second Aliyah laid the foundations for a new
land; it limits its leases to what a man can till with Yishuv.

IV Certain peculiarities of Jewish Palestine,

which derive from the Second Aliyah, simplified two
This labor movement was impelled by two ne-
cessities toward activities which arc not normally
problems which bedevil war eff01ts in most coun- part of trade unionism. The slogan of k-ibbush
tries: the mobilization of labor and of the peasantry. avodah-the conquest of labor-led it also into the
In Israel the labor movement is more nationalist than creation of work through cooperative enterprises de-
the "capitalist"; the latter if left to his own devices veloped as subsidiaries of the Hista<lruth. The con-
would have subordinated the building of a Jewish ditions of life for workers under socially backward
nation to the exploitation of native Arab labor. An- regimes, first Turkish and then British Colonial
other peculiarity is that the "peasantry" in hrael is Office, also forced the Histadruth to take on many
more advanced than tho urban worker; it was in the functions, notably in the field of social service and
collectives and cooperatives of the countryside that security, which arc ordinarily performed by govern-
pioneering immigration was first able to apply its ment. In addition, since the farm cooperatives and
free ~ocialist ideals. A third pec'11liarity is that the collectives were part of tho Hista<lmth, it had a
Histadruth, the labor federation of Palestine, in- special interest in strengthening itself and the "so-
cludes the "peasanh'y" as well as the industrial work- cialist sector" of the Palestinian economy by world-
ers; in fact its roots and stronghold are still in the wide propaganda, recruiting, and training eff01ts
countryside, though industry itself is highly union- designed to attract idealistic Jewish youth to agricul-
ized. This means that workers and farmers are united tural pioneering in Palestine. It is due to these spe-
in a powerful labor movement not only patriotic, cial factors that the Histadruth became the most
but a~cnstomed to leadership in the struggle for powerful institution of the Yishuv, the main instru-
nationhood. ment of Zionist colonization and a miniature workers'

67
society within the Jewish community. The Hista- world organization, Ilcchalutz, used for givirig agri-
dmth from the beginning was intended to be more cultural and other training to young pioneers plau-
than a mechanism for collective bargaining. It was ning to go lo Palestine, had worldwide contacts
intended, as Ben-Gurion once said, to be "the work- which proved useful in many ways. Already, in aid-
ers' instrument for the founding of a State, for the irig the British war effort in the Second World \Var,
building of a land, for the liberation of a people." the Histadmth had shown its potentialities for or-
The Histadruth is unlike any other trade union in ganizing skilled manpower and military productive
the world. Within the Ilistadruth are 165,000 adult facilities, and began to train for the task which was
workers, about tbree-fourths of the total Jewish coming.
working population. Ilut the Histadruth, through an · Sold Boneh, the Histadruth's building cooperative,
amazing network of cooperatives, operates also as an which dominates the construction industry of Pales-
employer in the fields of bankh1g, marketing, pur- tine, became the biggest military contractor in the
chasing, agrieu lhual contracting, building, housing, Middle East, constructing fortifications, gun em-
transport, industrial production, fishing, water sup- placements, underground camps, and airdromes.
ply, and publishing. These Histadruth activities ac- Solel Boneh provided 400 ;;killed Jewish workers to
count for about one-fifth of the economy of Pales- the Abadan Oil Refineries, 200 skilled workers to the
tine, but these cooperatives are strongest in mixed Royal Navy, large numbers for ground service tasks
farming ( where they control about three-fourths of at airports. Histadruth workers were recruited for
the output) and weakest in industry ( where they the merchant marine; these and other graduates of
account for not much morn_ than 10 per cent of total lhe Histadruth's maritime school in Haifa became
product). The workers of Palestine through the His- the nucleus of the future Jewish Navy, which had its
tadruth also developed their own social insurance origin in two ;;ources, the Histadruth's seafa1ing and
system, "public" housing schemes, and old age pen- fishing coop, Nakhshon Ltd., and the "illegal" ship8
sions. of the anti-White Paper immigration. Similarly the
Dr. G. i'vluenzncr, in Jewish Labor Economy in Jewish Air Force in the Jewish war of independence
Palestine, the most authoritative work on the subject, traces back to the trai~ing and facilities provided by
estimates that the Histadmth controls about 11 per another Histadruth coop, Aviron, Ltd.; which was
cent of the capital of Israel. Since the life it supports formed at the end of 1937.
is communal and cooperative, it attains a maximum This by no means completes the catalogue of His-
of livelihood for a minimum of capital investment. tadmth activities which made it a preparing ground
The Histadruth with 10 per cent of the capital con- and arsenal for the war. The Ila'argaz coop factory
trols 20 per cent of the economy; this 20 per cent during the Second World War filled large scale or-
in hun provides employment for 30 per cent of the ders for vehicle bodies, armored cars, light tanks for
workers in Palestine. the British Army, the RAF and the Transjorrlan
The Ilistadruth sector includes the most idealistic Frontier Force. The Hamgaper factory, another His-
elements of the community. In the cities it com- tadruth coop, the largest_ rubber manufacturing plant
mands the devotion of men of great business ability in the Middle East, retreaded nearly 40,000 tires for
and energy like David Hacohen in Haifa, of the huge the British A1my during the war and built rubber
cooperative building combine, Solel Boneh. These tracks for tanks. The Vulcan foundries which Solel
men arc go-getters American style, except that they Boneh took over from unsuccessful pTivate owners
are content to work on small salaries in running co- in 1941 made not only patrol and water containers
operatives. This network of cooperatives placed huge for the desert armies but also · land mines of various
resources of capital, productive capacity, and man- kinds. The drivers of the huge bus coops, owned by
power at the disposal of the most nationally con- Histadruth, wl10 played so grave a role in the Jewish
scious section of the Jewish community. The Hista- war eIIort, learned much in serving the British in
druth, as a labor organization less open to supervi- the Second '~'orld War, as drivers for military trans-
sion than the Jewish Agency, could do many things port. The experience of the Histadruth in war pro-
the latter could not venture in the way of training, duction and transportation was one of Israel's most
preparing, and organizing for wl1at was to prove in important assets on the eve of mass attack by its
1948 the great Jewish war effort. The Histadruth's Arab neighbors.

68
Bttildi11g a bridge at the Potash Works on the 'Deacl Sea (Oidal)

69
Klndergt1:rten class (Cooke)

70
Babies in a Kibutz (Cooke)

Food delicery in a Kibutz (Cooke)

71
 F 1·iendly Je1oish ancl Arab horsemen gather at a
I celebration (Gidal)

!
I
I
II
I

The Valley of Israel.'· cultivated under guard

,· (Gidal)

72
V Life for the first settlers in the '80's-and for
many years after-was like life on the American fron-
were reluctant, lest this provide a rc-canerging nation
with a military fowe of its own. They not only re- ·
tier. The early pioneers developed men whose prow- fmed to permit formation of such a force but exiled
ess as fighters became legendary. l'he respect they those who had proposed it, including Ben-Gurion.
evoked among the Arabs gave way to contempt The exiles went to America where, after the Balfour
when in the course of time the Jews began to de- Declaration, they raisc<l a regiment of American
pend on Arab guards as well as Arab labor. In some Jewish volunteers to join the Jewish Legion, which
of the older settlements, Arab workers and Arab serv.-cl under Allenby in the conquest of Palestine.
guards sometimes outnumbered the Jews. The settle- In the First World War, as in the Second, lhe British
ments began as clients and ended as prey. Powerful authorities were hostile to the idea of accepting Jew-
sheiks fought among themselves for the lucrative ish volunteers as a separate group; lest this establish
privilege of "protecting" Jewish settlements. This, political and moral claims which might run counter
too, disgusted the newcomers of the Second Aliyah. to imperial policy.
They wished to sec Jewish settlements again de- Britain was one of the principal sources of modern
fended by Jewish arms. They founded Hashomer, Zionism. Byron, Lord Shaftesbury, Disraeli, and
"The ·watchman," the first Jewish home guard, fore- George Eliot in the nineteenth century helped to
runner of the Haganah. populari'.t.e the idea of a Jewish return to Zion. Brit-
The urge toward self-defense paralleled the urge ish statesmen, foreseeing the breakup of the Otto-
for self-labor. The first group of tho Hashomer and man Empire, saw imperial advantages in planting a
the first farm collective originated at the same time, Jewish colony under British protection in Palestine.
in tho same place, and with the same group of young These h·ends, and the wish to enlist American Jewish
pioneers. This was Sejera in 1907; one of the group sympathy, led the British Government, early in 1917,
was David Ben-Gurion, later to be the first Prime to issue the Balfour Declaration, which pledged
Minister and War Minister of Israel. England to aid in the establishment of a Jewish Na-
The HashomN became a picked body of armed tional Home in Palestine.
horsemen. They learned the language and customs, But General Hill, the Scotch Commanding Officer
and often adopted the dress of their Bedouin neigh- who had conquered Jaffa and Petach Tikvah, gave
bors in order more effectively to fulfill their tasks. the Jews some sound if unofficial advice in 1917.
They became an elite, with all the dangers implicit On the day after Tel Aviv was taken, General Hill
in such a force. "It was necessary," one of the summoned· the repi:escntatives of the Yishuv and told
founders wrote, "to appear before the Arabs as hon- them, "You kno·w that there is a widcsrread opinion
orable, strong, and influential people." The watcl1- in the army that we have conquered this country
men had to behave like sheiks. "That led," he wrote, on your behalf, but yon cannot depend on this. In
"to the need to preen oneself somewhat, both as order to be sure of your country, you need a force,
regards clothes, horse, and arms." Some members an army of your own . . . ensuring that the decla-
gave way to "the lnst for power and self-adornment.'' rations will aetuallv be carried ont."
They began to feel and ad as superiors, and this The Jews at fir;t were nai've. Late in 1918 and
was resented. Relations between watchmen and 1919, J~wish settlers voluntarily surrendered cait-
workers were often strained. loads of arms and ammunition to the }hitish when
The ITaganah, which began ~o ,he orga1iizcd se- the latter assured them that henceforth the British
cretly at the end of the First ·vvorld vVar, was based ·would maintain security. But the Arab attacks which
on different principles. It hoped to avoid the draw- followed in 1920 and 1921 began to make the Jews
backs of the Hashomer and to provide the broadest understand what General Hill had meant. The com-
possible hase for Jewish self-defense. It sought more plaisant attitude taken by the British toward the
than the replacement of Arab with Jewish guards. Arab attackers contrasted \.Vith the severe penalties
Its aim was to make of the Jewish people in Palestine they imposed on Jewish legionnaires who had tried to
a nation in arms, to trnin every able-bodied man and organi:i:e to defend the Jews. The outcry which fol-
woman for defense. lowed an.cl the suspicion that the British themselves
\Vhen the First World \Var began, the founders had a hand in the disturbances led to the ending of
of ITashomer tried to organize a Jewish mililia to the Milita1y Administration and the initiation of
take palt in the defense of the country. The Turks civilian mle.

73
 The new civil authorities, like the military before various areas of operation. By H>40, the number of
them, refused to countenance the organization of a the supernumeraries had reached 16,000, a sizable
Jewish defense force though it did allow isolated little army in itself.
Jewish settlements to keep a few shotguns in scaled It was in this period also that the late Orde \Vin-
cases for use in extremity. One of the chief fomenters gate began bis association with Jewish self-defense.
of the 1920 excesses, IIaj Muhammed Amin al- "Wingate vvas a British Colonial officer who came to
Husaini, was not only freed from jail as part of the Palestine as a ca1)tain in 1937 front the Anglo-
general amnesty bnt also appointed :Mufti of Jcnt- Egyptian Sudan. Uc was an intelligence officer of
salem by the first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert unorthodox and brilliant miml who rose to the rank
Samuel, a Jew; how badly this experiment in turning of General and was killed during the Second \i\-'orld
the other cheek fared has since become notorious. \Var in the Burma campaign.
In 1929, Arabs incited by the Mufti killed 150 Jewish Wingate felt, as did the lea<lers of the Hagauah,
men, women, and children in Jerusalem, Hebron, that the British would never be able to make head-
Safad, Jaffa, Haifa, Hulda, and Heer Tuvia, burning way against Arab guerrillas as long as they nsed
and pillaging Jewish property. cumbersome and conventional regular army tactics.
Just as the '20-2 l riots occurred after the Jews had He wanted to use gucrrilJa tactics against the Arabs
voluntarily surrendered much of their arms, so the and was given permission to try. \Vith a group of
outbreaks of 1929 occurred a short time after the young volunteers from the Haganah, some of whom
British authorities had withdrawn the sealed cases tume<l np later in major posts during the Jewish
with licensed shotguns from Jewish settlements. war, he formed thee famous Special Night Squads.
Where the Jews had illegal arms, they successfully This protected the oil pipe-line running from Iraq
resisted attack. Elsewhere they were slaughtered. to Haifa and cleared northern Palestine of Arab
The '29 outbreaks did not change the British attih1dc bands. A Christian of genuinely religions outlook,
toward Jewish self-defense and no action was taken \Vingate was completely ,von over by the spirit of
against the Mufti. But the Jews now began seriously Palestine and became one of the heroes of its
aud intensively to huy arms secretly and to train younger generation. The experience gained in the
themselves for the future. The story of those days Special Night Squads was later utilized in the
has yet to he told by those few who knew the facts Palmach, the mobile commando division of Ha-
about these preparations. These were carried out ganah.
largely through the facilities made available by the In the Second ·world vVar the British Government
Histadruth and the agricultural settlements, where seemed to do its best to discourage Jewish participa-
Haganah men could be trained with a secrecy im- tion, perhaps from a fear that this might establish a
possible in the cities. greater obligation to revoke the \Vhitc Paper and
These preparations made thernsdves felt in the that it would add to the ability of the Yislmv to
Arab rebellion of 193G-39. Thanks to the anns gath- fight for its own rights after tho war. The Jewish
ered and the training accomplished since the: Hl29 community was the only one in the Mid<lle East that
riots, there were no more pogroms in Palestine. No wanted to fight on I3ritain's side. ~fore than 130,000
Jewish land was given up. No Jewish settlement was of the half million Jews in Palestine registered for
wiped out or evacuated. The Haganah not only national service after tho outbreak of the war and
succeeded in defending all the Jews had, hut estab- the Yishuv offered to raise a Jewish fighting force
lished more Jewish agricultural settlements than in composed of every eligible Je\.v. The offer was re-
,my previous period. Sir Arthur Wauchope, one of jected. It was not until the autumn of 1944 that the
the most under.~tancling of the British High Com- British Government, after much pressure from Amer-
missioners during the period of the mandate, granted ican public opinion, finally acceded to the forma-
a kind of nnofficial recognition to the Haganah. He tion of a Jewish I3rigado.
allowed several thousm1d of its members in the agri- The IIaganah carried out secret missions for the
cultnrnl settlements to be enrolled as supernumerary British in Syria and in Europe. In June HJ41, whren
police with legal rifles for the task of defense. Unlike lhe British invaded Svria thcv did so onlv after
the police and the civil bureaucracy, the British mili- Haganah men had prepared th~ way by blo\~ing up
tary in that period were glad to have the cooperation communications and even capturing a number or
of the Haganah and each British unit had a Jewish enemy strongpoints. The commandeer of that group
"interpreter" who was actually the liaison between was the famous Haganah leader, yfoshe Dayan, who
the British army and secret Haganah forces in its lost an eye in the campaign. TJc was one of 43

74
 Haganah men arrested and sentenced to long term refugees in the middle of the war would treat tho
imprisonment in November 1939 in a British raid Jews sympathetically after the war was over. Ben-
on a Haganah training unit. Gurion, then chairman of the Executive of the J cw-
In the summer of 1942, when it looked as though ish Agency, said when the war began, "We shall
' Hommel might invade Egypt, British military au- fight besiJe Britain in this war as if there were no
, thorities finally agreed to liaison with the Haganah. White Paper. And we shall fight the \iVbite Paper
, 1fajor General B. T. ,vilson, chief of commando as if there were no war." Even in the days of closest
operations in the Middle East, headed a special mis- cooperation before El Alarnein, the Haganah wisely
sion which worked out pla11s for guerrilla and other refused to disclose its basic strength and personnel
operations in the event of a German occupation of to the British.
Palestine. Training headquarters were established at When the war ended the Jewish Brigade, like
1v1ishmar Hacmek. It was at this time, with the aid many American Jewish Cl's, played a great role in
of British instructors, that the Palmach was organ- helping the surviving Jews of Europe and organizing
ized to act as a commando force. the underground railway · through which homeless
Early in Hl43, during this period of close co- Jews began to be shipped "illegally" to Palestine.
operation, Jewish leaders in Palestine approached In Palestine itself the Haganah began a struggle
the British with a plan to drop a secret force of against the ·white Paper. This began on the night of
Palestine Jews by parachute into Gemrn.n-occupicd October 10, 1945, when Haganah units surrounded
Europe. The purpose would he to organize the vari- the Athlit detention camp, overpowered the guards,
ous Jewish guerrilla movements in the occupied ter- and released 200 illegal refngees. I3evin bad declared
ritories into a mass-resistance force which could that he could not admit 100,000 Jews to Palestine
harry the Nazis on a vast internal front, save Jews because he would have to send another division of
from extermination camps, transmit intelligence to British troops to put down Arab protests. The Ha-
British GHQ, and assist Allied prisoners of war. Had ganah set out to show Britain's Foreign Secretary
such a scheme succeeded it would have increased that it wonld take more than a division to keep
the moral obligation on Britain after the war to re- 100,000 Jews out.
voke the White Paper policy and there might aho Thus Haganah grew, sometimes in cooperation
have been more Jews clamoring for admission. Per- with, more often in struggle against, the British.
haps cy11ical reflections played their part in the Long before the declaration of · Statehood, it had
rejection of this scheme. The British did allow small been able to require every young J cw in Palestine,
groups of Palestinian Jcws to go into Eurnpe and it youth or girl, to give a year of national service in
was in these missions that the gifted Italian Zionist, ·training. It had its secret stores of anns, and its own
Enzo Sereni, and the Hungarian Jewish poetess, intelligence network among Arabs and British. It
Hannah Szenes, lost their lives. was not yet an army, hut it had created a nation in
The 'White Paper haunted Anglo-Jewish coopera- arms. This was the fruit 0£ the Second Aliyah which
tion. The leaders of the Haganah were not too insisted that the Jcws themselves handle the rifle
hopeful that a regime which could turn away Jewish as well as the plow.

. ,

75
 The .few/sh Agency records of fi00,000 Nazi dctims still
1maccoun/,ed f<-;r. In ,9 years, this office has located ,'32,000
1nissing persons (Cidalj

I
76 A survivor of l\.uschwil:z, Mautha11sen and Dr1chau (CidaO

I I
 \ ·~
,·,,,';,:._(:'- .... _ -·...
.
.... (

,.
_,

.
, ..
;,.·~
·.
- .
.
-
·· _-:
"Illegals" at Athbit Cmnp wait for release (Gidal)

Mother fi.11ds daughter anw-ng arrivals from, Europe (Giclal)

77
 Each child is interviewed to decide his future education ( Gidal)

To 'these 01phans fonel means home (Gidal) .Refugee tells Dr. Chaim Weizmann hls· story (Gidal)

Orphans brought to Israel by Youth Aliyah (Gidal)

78.
An"iving at Tel Avio ha.rho1' between air mids (Capa)

79
 Guarding Weizmann Institute against attack (Cooke)

No 1rwns land in Tel Aviv outskirts (Cooke)

80
The late Cul. David Marcus, American Jewish ·west Pointer,
who did so rnucft to whip l8rar::l's army into shape ( C apa)

81

l
 C
This grin holds the secret of Israel's strength (Capa)
 THE TEST OF OPEN WAR
in which Israel stands off seven Arab
armies and is about to win a decisive
victory when a truce is imposed

From Transjordan, the avenue of Dangor. "This place," the Associated Press noted,
main attack, the Arabs began the "did not show on available maps." It did not show
invasion gaily, as if it were a racing on available maps because there was no such place.
event. King Abdullah, according to . Al Dangor may have been mythical, but there
the Associated Press report from his hill-town capi- was nothing mytfocal about Arab superiority in ma-
tal, Amman, was supposed personally to "fire the first • teriel. This was eviuent in the skies over Tel Aviv,
shot against Zionism." The shot tnrned out to be a where Egyptian planes dropped bombs several times
signal fired by the King with a pistol on the Trans- daily, Except for the rare occasion when a lone
jordan side of the Allenhy Bridge over the Jordan. Israeli plane took the air against them, they had
The shot was fired at midnight and immediately little interference beyond stray puffs of ack-ack from
· afterward his British-paid Arab Legion "invaded" the few anti-aircraft guns available to protect the
Palestine and "occupied" Jericho on the other side. metropolis of the new State, Arab superiority in
Jericho was an all-Arab city in all-Arab tcrritmy. matericl was evident in every isolated colony, where
Arab Legionnaires had been on duty there for planes bombed and strafed with impunity, and long
months as a police force under the British mandate. distance artillery could shell for days without danger
A portion of this force staged what the United Press of reply. These colonies which had machine guns
called "a token withdrawal." It marched over the or mortars were fortunate; many had nothing but
bridge into Trausjordan before midnight on the four- rifles and homemade Sten guns with which to de-
teenth as part of the British "evact1ation" and fend thems~lves; the latter, a light machim, gun,
marched back again after midnight on the fifteenth was good only for close fighting.
as part of the Arab "invasion." The invasion, like For those who soon realized how little the Jews
the evacuation, was carried out under the command had in the way of arms for large scale warfare, it
of the same British officers. But these-so the Foreign seemed a miracle that the State of Israel was not
Office in London insisted-had been transformed cut to pieces by invading a1mies within a few clays
from servants of King George to servants of King after May 15. The Haganah, like all armies, tended
Abdullah hy the stroke of midnight, like Cinderella to prepare for the last war, and its last war was the
and the pumpkin. 1936-39 Arab uprising. Then it had to fight Arab
TI1e Associated Press, as if with tongue in cheek, guerrillas; It was not prepared for a miniature war
reported that the invaders showed "excellent march of a modern type, a war against bombing planes,
discipline." Excellent march discipline was all that tanks, motorized armies, and long range guns. Dy
was· ncccssa1y for the victory also reported that first the time its leaders realized what was coming, the
clay by the invading Egyptian army in the south American embargo and the British blockade had
of Palestine. The Egyptians announced they ha<l made it difficult to obtain those weapons the Jewish
"captured" Caza. Gaza, like Jericho, was an afl-Arah community could not produce for itself: planes, ar-
dty in territory allotted the Arabs by tho UN. The tillery and tanks. These weapons the British \Vere
Egyptians matched Anglo-Arab whimsicality in a supplying in quantity to the Arab armies. The Jews
triumph of their own. Their communique said one had a few, a very few planes, and enough armor,
army column destroyeu the Jewish colony of Al machine guns, jeeps, and anti-tank guns for a few

83
 thousand commandos of the Palmach, but at the be- January. The Atabs at Latrun had cut the Tel Aviv-
ginning there were not even enough rifles, shoes, Jerusalem supply line. The Egyptians bad but to
canteens, and uniforms for the Ar.my which Israel march through Arub territory from Gaza to Beer
was mobilizing. She ba to Hebron to Bethlehem in order to attack
Abdullah's boast that this would be a ten-day war Jernsalcm from the south and make juncturn w,rn
only reflected the smug expectations evident in the the Ai-ab L egion already within the city. Similarly,
farewelJs of British officials to Jewish friends as they by a march up the Arab end of the coastal plain, the
left early iu May. The time schedule of the British- Egyptians could approach to withiL1 10 miles of Tel
officered Arah L egion called for the captme of Ilaifa Aviv. That city could easily be cncirclec.l. The L egion
in five days and of ·tel Aviv and Jciusalem in ten, ' was already in Ramle and Lydda, some 15 miles
with Abdullah to be crowned king of a reunited to the southeast. The Iraqis were at Ras el-Ein. 15
Palestine and Transjordan in the latter city. It was in m iles to the northeast. Other Iraqi forces sh·iking
keeping with this timetable that the British in the from Tulkarm could cut the T el Aviv-Haifa road
£nal ~ession of the General Assembly on 1fa.y 15 about five miles to the west of them, cutting the
helped to defeat all American proposal for a tem- communicativns of the coastal plain.
porary UN trusteeshjp over Jerusalem. A UN trustee- The Lebanese and the Syrians could pinch off
ship would have taken the Holy City out of the Eastern Galilee while further south only a few weak,
arena of the war and ended the hope that Britain's ill-prepared colonies in the Jordan Valley barred o
I protege, Abdullah, might take it over.
Theoretically it looked easy. The Leg.ion was cn-
joint Syrian-Transjordanfan invasion below the Sea
of Galilee. On paper, Israel was as good as clcsh·oyed
I b·enched in the O ld Walled City wbere the British
bad allowed the Arabs to establish themselves in
already. Abdullah would conb·ol both Palestine ancl
Trnnsjordan, and Britain would control Abdullah.

I 11 The full story of those .li.rst four weeks of fight-

iug was known only to a few, and could not b e told
ward positions gained in night attack into conclusive
victory by day. There were moments when the
I when this book was being written; the war was not whole Jewish war effo1·t seemed an incredi ble snafu.
over and an uneasy truce reigned. At the beginning And those who visited ou'tlying settlements soon dis-
tJ1e army of Israel was not yet a reality; one bad but covered with how little the borders of the new State
to catch a glimpse of tl1e oddly assorted, often dis- were being defe11cled.
tinctly mid~e-aged levies of men marching off from The Haganab needed time. It was basically a
Tel Aviv reception centers in odds and ends of horne guard 'vvith a small commando detachment
khaki to see how new and raw were the materials rather than an army. It did not yet know enough
of that army. about the larger formations and tactics of full scale
The military fronts were barred to tho correspond- war. It had the task of welding t ogether disparate
ents in tJ1os0 first weeks but strange whispers came elements both in its .command and in its h·oops. The
back of men thrown into battle with a few hours nobly mmtial and quietly impressive Yaakov Dori,
jI of basic training. Foreign military advisers com- long the Haganah's secret Chief of Staff, was a vet-
plained that some 0£ the new soldiers "didn't know eran of the Jeyvish L egion in the First World War.
one end of a rifle from the other." T here were places The leading officers of the Womeo,s Auxiliary Army
where arms were so shmt that men coming off the ( the initials in Hebrew spelled charm) served in
field of battle had to hand their hot rifles over to the British ATS during the Second World War.
the fresh troops going out. There were brilliant tacticians like the youthful Yigal
Arms were not the only shortage. There was a Alon, chief of staff of Palmach, the victor of Mish-
sh01'tage of items as simple as shoes, and those who mar H a-Emek and Eastern Galilee, ·whose entire
have stumbled over the rocky de.Bies in Judea or military education was in Haganah. There were
Galilee know just how vital strong shoes would be to graduates of the military academies of almost all
an army op erating on that kind of terrain. There the great Powers among the Jews, including the Brit-
were limes, as in the long and dreadful battle at jsh, tile German, the Austrian, the Russian, and the
Latruo, when h\ck of canteens under a merciless American. One commander was a graduate of both
stm m ade it impossible for the Jews to translate for- the German and Ilritis11 military staff schools, hav-

84
 ing gone through the latter in exile from Hitler Ger- the youngsters at once. He was democralic, unpre-
many and become a major in the British army's tentious, buoyant; the l'alestinians liked him. He had
Jewish Brigade in the Second ,vorld 'War. Another the touch of genius, and was one of those natural
was a third geueration Pmssian Jewish oflicer who born soldieJs who love war. He went off to the
enlisted as a private in the Jcwish Brigade and south with a handful of men and jeeps and had
ended as staff officer of a British division in Italy. himself a time raiding the Egyptian forces. He led
There was an Austriau Jew who had fought in the commandos on one occasion into the very walls of
Socialist Schntzbund against Dollfuss and then Latnm. These exploits, which seemed so boyish,
served as an officer of the International Brigade in served a pmpose; they won him a right to com-
Spain. · mand. Ry the time he died he was being obeyed
It \vas not easy to create a unific<l comnmnd from because he was loved and respected. The army
officer material ·with such diiTerent training, habits which finally emerged owed much to his teaching
and background. Even language was a problem, in and example.
the ranks as well as in the command, for there were Time was needed. Time was provided. In the,
many Jews from abroad who knew no Hehrew. In cities there was no panic. In 1940, Italian air raids
the ranks one encountered Jcws from places as far had demoralized Tel Aviv; now it took three or
and strange as Bokhara, and each had his own four raids daily in its stride. Beside the fearful
mother tongue. Must of those who derived from anxiety abroad, the mood in Palestine seemed al-
European stock could speak a little Yiddish. The most frivolous. This high morale was reflected in
Spanish Jews of the Mediterranean still spoke the production and transport, which would have been
lan~uage of Cervantes. There were Oriental Jews badly disrupted if the populace had lost its head.
whose mother tongue was Arabic. In the Air Force, In the countryside, too, wherever possible, work
which wa~ mostly made up of American, Canadiau, went on as usual; at Hulda, within gunshot of
British, South African, and Australian volunteer:,, the Latrun, the settlers harvested 80 tons of brearlstuffs
official language had to be English. This confusion in between raids and shelling. In battered Nogha,
of tongues was often a' battle handicap, as in the within sight of advance Egyptian positions, the co]-
tcnible struggle at Latmn where six different mother onbts could still joke with a visiting journalist before
tongues had to be used in transmitting orders to a breakfast when the Egyptian bomber failed to arrive
polyglot mass of new volunteers aud immigrants. at his accustomed time for the morning bombing of
The army seemed to be in constant tumult, from the their homes.
top down where the forceful Ben-Gurion, as War Time was provided Ly the frontier settlements.
MinisteT, did not often see eye to eye with Israel Their stubborn tenacity and unexpected fightin~
Galilli, a collective farmer, political commander of power made them steadfast guardians. They stood
the Haganah, a man of brilliant mind and magnani- up to heavy shelling, air bombardment and armored
mmrn spirit, simple and unpretentious, whom the attack. They prnvidcd bases for troops. They proved
youngsters of the lighting force revered. miniatnrc fortresses. For those who were there dur-
Discipline had never been a virtue of the indi- ing the war, the very names are like a roll of
vidualistic Jews, but discipline was necessary. The rlrums, a roster of the heroic: Ramat'Rachel, which
Haganah had been close to the people, democratic, locked Jerusalem's back door against invasion;
with little distinction of rank except individual merit. Dafne, Dan and Kfar Szold which held the far north
No\v it had to become an army, and there was fear of Galilee; Ramat Naftali, where so few held out
that tho old spirit might vanish. The various po- so long with so little; the two De~anias, which saved
litical factions suspected each· other of trying to the Jordan Valley from invasion; brave Gesher and
wield too much influence within the new army. The lonely Tirat Zvi; isolated Ychiam, which defied the
IIaganah men were contemptuous of those who had Lebanese; far southern Nirim, where two dozen boys
served in the British Army, and the homemade sol- and girls repulsed an armored Egyptian column with
diers of Israel in general regarded the professional heavy losses the very first day of the war.
soldiers with suspicion. It was an American Jcw, These gave the army of lsracl time. And the
Colo11cl David Marcus, a graduate of West Point, Palmach gave it time. Much of the secret of Jewish
who did more than perhaps any other single man resistance in the first days of the war lay in the
to bridge oveT these differences and help whip the amazing mobility and fanatical'flghting power shown
army of Israel into shape before his tragic dr.ath. No hy some 5,000 Palmach commandos spread thin all
one could have been less the brass hat. This won through the bordeT areas. They managed to hold

85
 off and defeat anned forces many times their num- jected the Jewish metropolis to a costly siege. As it is,
b er and for better equipped than they; some of their a pru:t of the Egyptian troops and the major part of
exploits deserve to b e studied in the military man- the Arab Legion was pinned down in the unsuccessful
uals of the future, as in the battle of Malikiya where nght for Jerusalem and the attempt to cut the Jeru-
they put to rout a strongly entrenched Lebanese salem-Tel Aviv road. Britain's eagerness to crown its
fol'ce by a surprise foray across the mountains aud Arab puppet Abdullah king in Jerusalem gave the
an unexpected attack over Lebanese tenitory at the Jews clsewhcrn the time they needed to strengthen
rear of the Lebanese defense~ . This was Yigal Alon's their defenses and organi:7:e their flghting force. In
h andiwork. Some of the bravest, the best, the most this sense Jerusalem saved Israel.
precious of Israel's youth fell in the ranks of the ' Time was also provided by the fact that the Arabs
Palmach. showed little .6ghting heart. There were exceptions
Time was inadvertently provided by British pol- but on the whole tJ1eir troops displayed Httle readi-
icy. Had Jerusalem and its environs been placed ness to risk their lives in battle. Time after time
under a UN trusteeship with enough guards to keep they might h ave won if they bad been willing to pay
it out of the sphere of war, the main body of the the price, and time after time they faltered at the
Arab forces, tho Arab L egion, could have by-passed crucial moment. The1·e were many places where a
the Holy City and struck with ease at Tel Aviv from few dozen brave Arabs willing to d ie for their cause
prepared .Arab positions within 15 miles of that city. could h ave broken open the gates agafost invasion.
The Egyptians instead of splitting off part of their The Arab armies seemed to have few men of that
forces for an unsuccessful attempt to enter Jem salem kind. Many Arabs, like almost all the Jews, felt that
from the south, could have concentrated their forces this was a British war. The Jews held and the Arnbs

i on the push north toward Tel Aviv. These, with the

Iraqis to the northeast of the city, could have st1b-
failed b ecause one p eople cared enough to die and
the other didn't.
I
.111 Nowhcl'C was this better shown than in the blue waters of GaJiloe and on the right far below the
lush subtropical Jordan Valley with its palms and
defense of the Jordan Valley south of the Sea of
GaJilcc. The story of bow Degani.i, the oldest exist- banana plantations. Along the river stretched a line
ing collective in Palestine, foL1gbt and won a crucial of Jewish colonies with their white walled houses
battle, blocking a Syrian invasion, deserves to be re- and red tiled rooftops. F1ll'tl1er east one saw the gray
corded, lest easy phrases e1·eate the impression of ruins of mud-walled Samakh like the remains of
an easy resistance. D cgania A is on the east bank of some shapeless thing smashed along the seafront.
the Jm-dau at the point where the liver empties out vVar began for this part of the Jordan Valley long
on the Sea of Galilee. A thin line· of Svc colonies before :M ay 15, though the heaviest attack only came
stretches flvc µliles south of the Sea guarding the after the d eclaration of statehood. The British left
east bank of the Jordan. These contained about 3,500 on April 27, handing over the poHce station between
people at the time the war began. Degania A and Samakh to the Arabs, and Iragi
On the very edge of. the Sea of Galilee between troops entrenched themselves there and in Samakh.
Degania A and the shore runs a highway which con- The Jews knew that control ·of the police station
nects Syria and Transjordan with Palestine. A glance meaut control of the highway foto Israel. T he colo-
at the map will show that this road is one of the ni~1s, with the ai<l of Pairnaeh commandos, opened
main highways for any invading army from the cast. a surprise attack at midnight; sappers blew a hole in
To the cast of Degania on the shore of the Galilean the side of the police station, and drove the Iraqi
Sea was the ancient Arab town of Sarnakh. HPtwecn out with grenades. Another detachment attacked the
the Arab town and the Jewish colony was a British city of Samakh. By daybreak the Jews h eld both the
police fortress. station and the city.
This is how the Jordan Valley looked to one who At 5 a.m. of May 15, the Arabs opened an oHcnsive
saw it during the war. Coming from the Ernek one designed to retake Samakh and smash through the
clhnbcd high up into the mountains of Galilee lovely Jordan Valley colonies in to Israel. Iraqi and Syrian
with the red poppies and blue corn_fiowers of a late planes bombed the whole area that clay and again 0 11
spring. At the top of the rise one suddenly saw lhe Sunday, when they scored several bits on the police

86
 station. There some 40 colonists weie holding out age from 18 to 57 years. One 0£ those who had been
with Ml few rifles that some had to take turns at the in the front lines under shelling all this lime was a
guns. On J\fouday, the defenders could sric Arab 57-year-old member with heart trouble who had had
troops coming down from the highlands to the east only as much sleep as he could catch in a slit trench.
, with tanks and armored cars. Artillery was being "We had enough rifles and a few Sten guns, two
placed on the hills. At dawn on Tuesday there ,vas a light machine guns and one Fiat anti-tank gun, no
·. heavy barrage and then the attack began. The first mortars, plenty of grenades, and everybody had
objective was the railroad station in Samakh where homemade Molotov cocktails." All the defenders of
30 boys of the I-laganah in makeshift trenclws had the colony were pretty badly exhausted by the time
been holding out under hombarJment for three the attack came. They had been in the trenches
days, the last two of them without food or water. waiting for the attack since Saturday. On Tuesday
The size and weight of the armored forces which there had been a direct hit by a shell on the water
went into action that morning against the railroad to,,ver at Degania B and its defenders had been with-
station and the police station were overwhelming. out water for two days when the attack began. The
That morning, tanks had encircled the police station - attacking force came across the fields from the north-
and its defenders were completely cut off. Between south road along the Syrian border. They had two
6:30 and 7 a.m. the colonies of Kinnereth, Degania A big tanks, several heavy armored cars with 2-pounder
and Degania B sent out reinforcements in an effort cannon and machine guns and about 15 light tanks.
to break through to the police station. Twenty-eight "First," said one of the members, "we ·could do
youngsters went. They had riRes and Molotov cock- nothing but lay low in the trenches. \Vhen the
tails. The Arabs saw them coming and sent out armored cars and tanks came closer the Arahs had
aimored cars which met them on the road and killed to stop shelling because otherwise they would have
all but .6ve. The slaughter was such that the dead had to .shell their own tanks. This was about 6
had to be buried later in a common grave; most of o'clock in the morning and infantry came up with
them could no longer be identified. By 8 o'clock that the tanks and armor. Soldiers walkeu among the
morning both the !lolice and railroad .stations had to tanks aud annored cars. It was hard to say how
he given up. Those few who could get away were many troops came with them hut one prisoner we
evacuated to Dcgania A. took said there were about 600, mostly regular
The outlook for the Jordan Valley colonies was Syrian army. ·
bad. Shelling had become heavier. At 7 a.m., on "Our orders were not to waste riRe fl.re on the
Tuesday, it ,~as decided to evacuate all children. tanks but to wait until they were close enough for
Most of the women were to go with the children. tho grenades and Molotov cocktails. We opened fire
Edith Wagner of Buffalo, New York, a member of on the infantry with our rifles when they got close
Degania B, described the evaeuat'ion, "We each took to our fence. The first attack was repulsed. The
two children by the hand and we just ran and attackers withdrew and heavy sl1elling- followed.
flopped, and ran and flopped. There was a slight lull There was a renewed attack at ten o'clock ancl ar.am
in -the shelling of Degania because the Arabs were the Syrians ·withdrew after fire was opened on,'thc
busy with the fight at the police station. Whenever infantry. Their tanks and armored cars didn't try to
we heard cannon fire, we would flop nntil the blast, break through the fence."
then start up again. There were some buses waiting In the third attack about ] l:,'30, the infantry cmm~
for 1.1s on the side of the road about 500 vards west as close as .fifty yards to the gate of the col~ny be-
of Degania A. Planes circled overhead ·but didn't fore they retreated again. At one time an attempt
bomb us and all the small children were gotten out was made to encircle Degania B from the south but
safely." the attackers faltered and retreated under heavy flrc
All Tuesday night there was heavy shelling. There from the defenders. ·
was more shelling Wednesday. At 4 a.m. Thursday, In the meantime there was an attack under way
the attack began on Degania A and 13, with heavy at Degania A. The account which follows was that
shelling and an advance 0£ tanks under cover of of Dr. Aaron Shapiro, a 39-year-old Polish Jew, fif-
machine gun fire. This is the course of the battle teen years in Palestine, the veterinarian of the Jor-
at Degania A and B as told a few days later by those dan Valley district. He was in command of that side
who took part in it. of Degania A which took the brunt of tho attack.
In Degania B there were sixty front lioe :fighters The colony had been shelled and bom}ied for three
all memhers of the colony or neighhors ranging in days to soften it up for the attack. Luckily the colo-

87
 n ists had three underground shelte rs pw~p<1red a nd tl1cir Molotov cocktails until the tnnk was almost
were able to cook during the shelling. Only four 11pon them. As the tank bore down on the trench,
were killed and all the children had been gotten out a young mnn of 24, Sholem H ochbnum of Katowicz,
safely. The clefend~rs w ere weary and morale was l 'oJand, jump ed o ut of the trench with a co<:ktail
low hut ,vhen the attack enmc there was a sudden in either haucl and threw them at the tank. Jt burst
bmst oJ exhilaration and "we felt like people at a into Hames. This boy spent five years in German
wedding." concentration camps, ·was liberated in Bergen Bel-
Early on the m orning of T hursday after the pre- sen, and came to Palestine "illegally" on the Tel Hai.
liminnry shel]jng they saw six or seven tauks coming He had b een in the colony two years.
toward the colony along the road from Sanrnkh. The defenders of D egonia wrecked the second
"Two tanks advanced to the gate, the others came tank just outsille the fence and a third tank re-
straight to my post between the gate and the orange trcnted afte1· two ~lolotov cocktails were thrown at
grove lo the south," the doctor related. "I ha(l for ty it. Ah out t\vo o'clock that afternoon Jewish artillery
men on my side of the colony w ith r ifles, two ligh t anivcd and went into action for the first t ime in the
mnchinc guns and a few grenacfos." The oldest sol- war. It shdlecl tho Syrian positi()ns. That night the
dier was 55 aud the youngest 16, all of them mem- Palmach with the support of two small planes drove
b ers of the colony. Dr. Shnpiro said the 16-year-old the Syrians ont of Samakh. In Samakh the next
boy, "Jieskcla" Gleicl1cr , was the bravest of all. He morning the Jews caphll'ed more th an half a to11 of
was a pct oJ the colony, one of the "Tchenm or- arms including rifles, machine guns, helmets, and
plians" who cam e out of Soviet },,{iddle Asia w ith thousands of rounds of b ullets and at least one
the Anders army in 1941. It was "H eskela" who car- armored cal'.
riecl ;\folotov cocktai1s fro m the dining room where There were 200 casnaltics in the Jordan Valley
they were being ma de to the front line trenches colonies. About 15 w ere killed. 130th D eganias w ere
under :fire during the battle. badly damaged and lost most of their cnttle. Tllis
The cliim1.x of the battle came when a light Re- was how the m embers of Pakst ine's first collective
nault tank crashed through the fence of the colony and its n eighbors in th e Jordan Valley a cquitted
wh ile two others covered it from tbe road in tl1n themselves under l1eavy ar metl a ttack. 111is was how
rear w ith cannon and mach ine gun fin). Dr. Shapiro th ey prcventecl the Syrian army from b n iakin g in to
bad his m en in a slit trench with orders not !o throw Israel. ·

IV The first four weeks of the war w ere a hold -

ing opcratiott. Between November 29 anu ~fay J.5
ican arms embargo and the British blockade which
shut off all but a trickle of anns.
the Jcv>'s had proven that the Arab s could not crnsh To w r ite down the words holdi11g operat ion is
them by infiltration and guerrill,i warfare, even when to sd down w ords which provide faint conception
snpportf',d hy the British ru1d the Arab States. By oJ the reality behind them. The Jews clung stuh-
May 15, they had cleared their ten itory an<l taken bornly and passiot1ately to their land. In the colony
Western Galilee and some 350,000 of the 400,000 of N cgba in the line of the E gyptian advance, dur-
11 Arabs on their territory hatl fled. In the four week ing the war, the writer saw what the resistance nnd
I I truce period of w arfare b etween :\fay 15 and the the American arms embargo meant: horn bing several
first trncc, the Jews proved that the "H ome Guard" times daily, rep eated shelling hy the E gyptians from
of the Ilaganah in t he border colonies and a few the near-by police for.t ress of Iraq Suweidnn, which
thousand badly overv,•orked Palmach w er e strong the Brit ish had handed over to th e Arabs when they
enough to hold this t erritory and new Jerusalcrn and Ieft. IJ e lcnrnecl how it feels to see barns, cattle,
the Je rusalem road as far west as Ba h cl-\-Vad 01<1chinc shops, and houses go up in Hames; to cower
agail~st the armies of the Ar ab L eagne, though the in slit trenches while an Egyptian flier in a British
League commanded armies totalling a quarter mil- Spitfire circkd with impmiity overhead, like some
lion men, h alf of them regu lar troops, amply sup- malignant giant insect hunting clown human beings.
plied w ith :field artillery, annon~d cars and light To hear the "tuk tnk" of h is aerial cannon over· a
tanks. These armies had the advantage of the offen- colony with nothing hut riHes for its defen.•w v.'as to
sive while the Jews were h,mdicappe<l by the Amer- understand in one's very bowels the mea11ing of th e

88
 American arms embargo, to be suddenly unimpressed saved Jerusalem, This hilltop colony at Jerusalem's
by de fado reeoguilion. back door toward Bethlehem prevented the Egyp-
Nowhere did Jews dbplay their mettle more tian arm)' from eutering the city in the south and
rnagniiicently than in bclcagucreu Jemsalem. The making juncture with the Arab Legion battering
, 100,000 Jews of lhe Holy City showed themselves away from the north ;iml east. A visitor the first day
8S stubborn as the Jews whose fanatical last ditch of the truce saw the vivid relics of its resistance.
resistance to the armies of Titus in A.u. 70 still lives The colony had changed bands six times in the fight-
for ns in the pages oJ Tacitus. Nervous, worn, un- ing. Every building, dwelliug, cow barn, and shed
washed, hungry, and weary they nevertheless held was wrecked and bnrned except for the huge stone
fast to their homes and city cluriug four weeks of c~ntral dining hall. Dchin<l its shell-pocked walls
constaut shelling of such intensity that all schools and blasteu windows Jewish soldiers were still hold-
were closed and it was difficult to keep the stores ing out when the truce began. The stink 0£ death
open one or two hours a day to handle the meager was everywhere. A tuft of tail sticking out of a
rations of bread and other supplies. There was little charred mess identiiied what had once been a cow.
clcctriuily and less water and the people one eucoun- . On the wreckage of a hill top lay an unburied Egyp-
teJed on the glass-.~trewn streets, with their tank tian burned almost beyond recognition, his face
traps and road blocks, had the pinched faces of the blackened like something out of a nightmarish min-
s<-mi-starved. strel show.
Casualties were stiJl a military secret but in oue Of all that was done in the war, perhaps nothing
fortnight there were more than J,300, a numher was quite as thrilling as the steps taken by the Jews
which v•..as perha11.~ not cxcecdccl in the gravest pe- to keep those meager snpplies of food, water, and
riod of the London Blitz. One need only recall that ammunition flowing into Jernsalcm while the Arabs
London's population is about 60 times that of Jewish still held Latnm, the Lottleneck of the Jcrusalem-
Jernsalem to realize the extent o( the .suffering. Tel Aviv road. The Je,vs built themselves a Bunna
Among the heroes of the siege were the workers and Road around Latru~ under £.re and over rugged
physicians of Hadassah which handled a huge vol- hills. Hut even hofore this road ,vas opened a ln;man
ume of treatments and operations in two emergency mule train of volunteers, each with a gun and a
hospitals. Surgeons often worked 24-hour shifts and pack on his back, had been carrying supplies nightly
patients had to be put on mattresses on the iioor across the mountains around Latrun to Jewish trucks
of the hallways. Other heroes of the siege ·were the waiting on the other side at Bab el-Wad. Workers
linemen who strung up new elech·ic wires as fast came from the factories of Tel Aviv and the docks
as shelling brought down old ones; emergency ,vires of Haifa to risk their lives nightly in this gruelling
festooned important bnildings as thick as vines. The march. To stumble and slip across these rocky defiles
water carriers, wl1ose wagons brought the ration of in the starlight with these men, to sec the gray
two gallons of water a day per person, risked their shapes ahead of one bowed under heavy packs like
lives daily. Of great .importance for morale was the silent ghosts moving forward in a lunar purgatory,
quiet heroism shown hy Gershon Agronsky, editor of was to sec a demonstration of dctcnnination, in-
the Palestine Post and his staff, in putting out his genuity, and devotion which £lied a Jew with pride
paper regularly in a newspaper lmilding which was l1eadier than the cold mountain air.
a favorite target of the Arab Legion. One side had Against effort of this kind Abclullah's timetable
been reduced to 1uins and all the ,vinchrws were bogged down. The Arab armies never took Jerusa-
gone bnt the stairs still held and the floor of the lem, much less Tel Aviv or Haifa. All Abdullah
news room romaincd. One snrviving linotype in the achieved was to dislodge tlic Jews in the Old City,
basement made the daily miracle possible. Agronsky, where tl;lcy had been nmfor constant siege and shell-
who was one of the American Jewish vohmteers in fire for five months. The Old City and Sheik Jarrah
the Legion which served under Allcnby in the First quarter were all that the Arab Legion had been able
'\-\1orld '\~lar, managed to publish his paper every to take of Terusalern hy the time the first trnce was
day except Saturday as usual during tlw siege. It imposed. · ·
was too late for distribution only once. Three times In those £rst four weeks of war, Egyptian armies
the paper was produced ,vith stencils because no never succeeded in getting past Ramat Rahel. They
power ,vas available for the presses and linotype never made junction with the Legion forces as
machine. planned. The 100,000 Jews of New Jerusalem held
Jf Jerusalem, in a sense, saved Israel, Ramat Rahel fast. Its outnumbered defenders never gave way to

89
II
Ii
vastly superior annor and manpower, although the at least once by the Egyptian radio, was never even
attack on Jerusalem had taken the Jews by surprise. shelled. The Jews on the other hand had taken 700
The city was supposed to he part of an international square kilometers of territory originally assigned the
zone under the UN partition scheme, not part of the Arab State. They controlled all the ports except
Jewish State; little preparation had been made to Gaza. They had all but four miles around Latrnn of
defend it. the main l;ighway to Jernsalem.
Elsewhere, the invading Arab armies had made The tnwe was imposed just as a new Jewish offen-
hardly a dent in the Jewish State and not a single sive, the first major drive of the war, had forced the
settlement on Jewish soil had been taken, though Arabs out of Jenin, the northern end of the Arab
several on the borders had been destroyed. The '"triangle" and threatened a large scale attack on the
Egyptian army moving north to Tel Aviv had not central Samariau plateau which is the heart of Arab
succeeded even in marching the foll length of the Palestine. A new Jewish "navy" had won its first
Arab C{)astal strip; it had been vainly struggling for battle off Tel Aviv. And as the first phase of the war
days to break out of an encircling vise at the Arab drew to its dose the new Jewish Air Force hegan
town of Isdud on Arab territmy, 23 miles south of to go into action. It hornbed Abdullah's capital,
Tel Aviv. Amman, on June 1, while the heads of the Arab
The Lebanese and Syrian armies had not suc- League were meeting there. It strnck at Damascus
ceeded in breaking into Israel. The Iraqi forces at on Juno 10, a few hours before the trnce went into
Tulkarm and Ras el-Ein had never gotten beyond effect. By that time the new Jewish State had fully
these points. Nathanya, whose capture was claimed demonstrated that it could hold its own.

V The first cease-fire in the Israeli war of in-

dependence expired after four weeks on July 9. In
fell to a pincers movement designed to force el-
Kankji's "Liberation Army" out of the sacred town
ten days of renewed fighting, the Jews held off the without bombardment or frontal assault. The Jews
Egyptians in the south and the Syrians in the cast. already had Western and Eastern Galileo; the cap-
On the central and northern fronts, the Israeli forces ture of Nazareth gave them the key road junction
were in the midst of successful operations against which controls Central Galilee.
the Iraqi, the British-officered Transjordanian Arab On the central front, at Lydda, the Israeli forces
Legion and Fawzi el-Kaukji's "Liberation Anny" took Palestine's largest airport in a nocturnal attack
when a ne\.v truce, hastily imposed by the UN Secu- so sudden and violent that the Arab Legion fled
rity Council, went into effect on July 18. without attempting to destroy the runways or the
In the first attack of the Arab States on Mav 15, terminal buildings. At Ras el-Ein the Jews recovered
the forces put into the field by the Jews had 'been the pumping station which controls Jemsalem's
loosely organized and poorly armed. 111e nucleus water supply and drove the Iraqi ont of a hase from
of Palmach cormnandoes and Haganah infantry was which they bad been shelling Petach Tikvah, only
hardy and well-trained hut desperately small. Often twelve miles northeast of Tel Aviv. Ramie's surren-
-as in the continuous struggle around Latrun-raw der, the climax of a sweep cast and south, cleared
recruits had to be thrown into battle with little more the Arabs from the coastal plain near Tel Aviv,
than a few instructions in the handling of a l'iflc. pushed their forces up into the Judean foothi1ls and
These hastily improvised levies emerged from the gave the Jews control of the main Jerusalem road as
four-week truce with unexpectedly heavy firepower far east as Latrun. From Jerusalem, "mopping up"
and armor, using heavy tanks for the first time. operations north and west clean,d a five-mile corri-
The troops which struck east from Tel Aviv and dor westward to Bab el-Wall, leaving the Legion at
Haifa on tl1e night of July 9-10 showed the effect Latnm in control. of hut throe milc:s along the Tel
of intensive training. Tho course of the campaign Aviv-Jcn1salcm road. Tho recapture of Hartuv to the
indicated sharp improvement in staff work, a poi;;t south opened an alternative detour around Lahun
at which Haganah had hitherto been weak. superior to the hastily if heroically constructed
In a series of swift enveloping actions, the Israeli "J3urma Road." These victories made available a
army took Lyd<la, H.amlc, and Ras el-Ein on tho route which cut the traveling time from Tel Aviv to
central front and Nazareth in the north. Nazareth Jerusalem from three hours to 75 minutes.

90
 Latruu itself, which withstood repeated frontal tfons with the British delegation" (as the New York
attack by the Jews iu the first stage of the war, was 'Times reported) the U.S. delegate brought iu a reso-
rendered untenable in the closing hours of the sec- lution ordering ,; tmce within th1:ce days. The ma-
ond. Just before the new truce, the Jews captured chine1y of the UN was whirring rapidly at last,
the Arab village of Beit Nuba high up in the hill \vhen the aggressors were in danger.
country on the Ramallah road, thus bringing La- In \-Vhitehall the situation may, indeed, have
trnn's one remaining supply ronte under fire. I~ seemed alarming. Despite the American arms block-
Jerusalem itself the l'Csumed battle turned sharply ade, and British aid, the assault of seven Arab States
against the Arab Legion in the Old City and Sheik with 30,000,000 people on the new-born Jewish State
Jarrah quarter, the only sections Abdullah's British- with less than '650,000 had misfired. The Arabs had
led troops had managed to seize and hold. taken 205 srprnre miles of Jewish territory but most
As long as the Legion was shelling the rest of the of this was unoccupied desert around Beersheba.
city with some hope of driving the Jews out, the Twelve isolated Jewish settlements on territory
British bloc ·at Lake Success were planning to re- allotted the Arabs by the UN had fallen, but their
ward Abdullah by making Jerusalem his capital. armies had succeeded in holding only one lone bor-
Now the Belgian Consul General, chainnan of the der settlement, Mishmar IIa-Yarden, on Jewish terri-
UN Security Council's Truce Commission in the tory.
Holy City, cabled frantically that the Je\lvs might Tho Jews, on the other hand, had conquered 810
soon take it over. "Unless the Security Council in- square miles of territory allotted the Arabs, includ-
tervenes immediately and with the greatest energy," ing Western and Central Galilee, the Arab cities of
he warned, "the international character of the city Jaffa, Acre, Ramle, Lydda, and Nazareth and most
stipulated in decision of Assembly on November 28 of the road to Jerusalem with its• adjacent Arab
last appears to be dangerously threatened." lands and villages. Some 350,000 Palestinian Arabs
The UN's sense of urgency seemed to deepen with Red eastward and northward from tho Israeli am1ies,
Arab defeat. "My firm opinion," Count Bernadotte, in many cases abandoning homes and fields out of
the UN Mediator, told the Security Council on July sheer fright without attack.
13, "is that the UN should not permit the Palestine The war was not without its useful by-prorlucts for
problem to be worked out on the field of battle," an the British. Arab governments weakened by thco cost
opinion with which the British delegation now of the invasion and angry reactions at home were
warmly agreed. On May 29, when the two-\,,eck-old in no positionto be aggressive in negotiations about
Jewish State seemed to be waging a hopeless strug- si1ch matters as the Sudan or Irarrian air bases. The
gle against Arab armies invading it from all sides, British in their Arabic broadcasts from Cyprus ex-
Sir Alexander Cadogan blocked passage of a U.S. plained that they supported the trnce because they
resolution which would have ordered a truce under felt this could do more for the Arabs by diplomatic
penalty of sanctions. Now, "after frequent consulta- means.

VI The diplomatic means was to be mediation.

The UN had two choices before it. One was to en-
the Palestine dispute, as the result of an American
resolution offered in the General Assembly on May
force the November 29 partition decision. The other 12, two days before the Jewish State was <leclared.
was to meuiate between the Jews ,and the Arabs. To Tho resolution was offered when it.became apparent
meuiate vvas to place those who had taken up arms that the American plan to sideh·ack partition for a
against the u;\1 on the same plane with thi~ir in- trusteeship had failed. The terms of the rnsolution
tended victims. It implied willingness to conciliate indicated that the United States with British support
the aggressors, and they could be conciliated only by was seeking a new means to revise pa1tition.
redudng the territory and power of the new State Bernadottc's first proposals were made public on
agahist which they had taken up arms. July 4. They called for sharp revision of the Novem-
That this was in fact the purpose of the mediation ber 29 decision at the expense of the Jews. Berna-
machinery is shown by the circumstances in which dotte proposed to give Jerusalcm and the Negev to
it originated. Count Folke Bernadotte, President of the Arabs, and to allow Britain's retainer, Abdullah,
the Swedish Red Cross, was appointed Mediator in to add Arab Palestine to Transjordan, with Jerusalem

91
 as his capital. Less obviously, the Bernadotte pro• free to attack UN observers without prntest from
posals would also have allowed Abdullah to extend Bernadotte. On August 1, Arab troops at Latmn
his sovereign power over Jewish Palestine. Israel was wounded two Ame1ican UN observers accompanying
to be granted Statehood but in name only, for its a convoy to Jerusalem and on August 28 i.wo French
foreign policy, defense arrangements, and immigra• officers in a clearly marked UN plane were killed
tion would have been snbject to outsid e conh·ol. "A after they landed at an Egyptian airfield by Egyp·
Council of the Union" was to "coordinate" the for. tians near Gaza. I n Je1usalcm there were con:-tant
eign policy aml <.;Ommon defense of the two States, efforts by the Arabs to extend the:ir lines an<l there
Arab and Jewish, and after two years Jewish immi• were many days on which there was truce in name
gration w as to he subject to Arab appeal to this , only i11 Jerusalem.
Council and from it lo the UN Economic and Social The Jews begged the UN to set a term to the
Council. The London New Statesman described the truce and to permit them to resume the war if the
Bernadotte proposals as "the 1939 White Paper Arabs refused p eace talks. The trnce was becoming
translated into 1948 language with the full approval a peace of attrition; the enemies of I srael in London
of the Foreign OHicc a nd the State Department." and Washington were hoping that the cost of keep•
Under cover of a desire to conciliate the Arabs, ing the new State fully mobilized WOltkl so weaken
these proposals would have served the pnrposes of the Jews as to make them ready' for compromise.
empire, and allowed the Ilritish to resume effective The Sccuritv Council refused to flx a termination
control of Pale~-tine. Transjordan was already allie<l date for the, h'uce. At the· same time, even when i~s
to Britain; tu "coordinate" Israel's foreign policy with own ohservcrs were killed, the Council seemed curi•
Transjordan's under this Siamese Twin plan wou1d ously disinterested in violations of the truce by the
require the Jews also to ally themselves with the Ari:1.bs.
very power which had organized and egged on the It looked as if, with the Tews in position to win a
Arab attack against them. The "coordination" of de- military decision, the Angio-American hloc in the
fense raised more immediate and sinister possibili- UN was determined to enforce the truce against the
ties. This would have made Jewish defense depend- Jews but wink at. its violation by the Arabs. The
ent in sgme m easme on Glnbb Pasha, the British American State D epartment showed that it was still
commander of Abdullah's Briti~h paid army. The as hostile as ever to Israe.l. It joined the British in a
Jews would be "protected" by the man who had just one-sided Interpretation of the truce terms in orde r
been attacking them. Their Haganah wonld be ''c;o. to bar the immigration to Palestine of men of mili-
ordina ted" with Glubb's Arab L egion. The plan was tary age. vVhile the British held 10,000 Tews in the
ingenious, but tran!'lparent. These proposals and Ber• Cyprus camps, the State D epartment forbade the
nadotte's handling of the truce itself soon made him immigration of male Jews of military aµ-e from 'the
deeply unpopular. DP canms of Germany and Austria. It protested to
All through the first truce .B ernadotte bad failed Czechoslovak;a against arms shipments from tha t
to cmure Jerusalem's water .rnpply although obli- coun ~ry to Israel; without aid of this kind from the
gated to do so under the terms of the tmce. During Czechs, Israel would have been in hard straits in-
the second trnce Bernadotte assured the Jews that he deed.
woul<l see that water was allowed to How throu~h The State Department also indicated that it was
the Latmn pumping station. The UN Consular ready to put pressure on Israel to accept the Berna•
Commission in Jt:rusalcm on August 5 had declared dottc proposals. Anglo-American strategy was to re•
the Arab refmal to permit w~ter to fl.ow through duce the territory and hobble the sovereignty of the
L ahun a violation of truce. But Bernadotte did not new State, but to postpone action until after the
order the Legion out; instead ]1e asked the Jews American presidential elections. Tt was hoped that
to wait while he negotiated further. On Au~u;t 1] the UN Assembly in Paris would approve ~erna-
the Arabs agreed to turn the pumpin!:! station over dotte's modification of the partition nlan, maneuver-
to UN observers. These left it u ngnatded overnight , ing the Jews into a position where they must either
and it was blown up by the Arahs. surrender or fight the UN. A cmcial question was
All over Israel tl1e Arab forces violated the truce that of the Negev; the Jews wanted this desert in
w ith impunity. The Egyptians refused tbe reanest of order to make it fruitful for resettlement bv the
UN observers that they allow convovs to pass homeless. The British wanted it for use as a militar y
through to the NeP-ev and Israel was forced to sun- · basP-.
ply the colonic's there by air. Arabs seemed to be On September 17, on the eve of a new meeting

92
 of the UN_ General Assembly in Paris, an event Ly adding the 420 square miles of Wes tern Galilee
occurred ""hich played into the hands of Israel's to Jewish territory but taking away 3,800 square
enemies. Count Bernadotte was ambushed and as- miles of Negev land originally assigned the Jews by
sassinated in Jerusalem apparently by members of the UN decision.
: a hitherto unknown terrorist group, "Th~ Fatherland To lose the Negev meant the loss of the principal
. .Front," a splitoff from the Sternists. This handful of area on which the Jews ha<l depended for resettle-
. extremists, by a crime which shuck the Jewish com- ment. The new Statclet, as lvfarshall and Bevin hoped
munity with horror, gave Anglo-American diplomacy to truncate it, would be too small to absorb many of
the emotional impetus it needed for an attempt to the homeless waiting in Europe. The Palestine ques-
steam-roller through the Assembly Bernadotte's la'st tion, precipitated by the plight of these survivors of
proposals. These, intended to be tentative, were now Ilitlerism, was to be solved by a new decision which
accepted by Marshall and Bevin as final. They in- would effectively shut off most of Palestine to them.
volved the recognition of Israel as an independent An American President had begun by asking the
State but proposed to cut away three-fifths of the British to open Palestine to Jewish immigration; his
territory granted it by the UN partition plan: Israel Secretary of State was joining the British three years
was to have heen ,5,500 s111rnre miles in size, or about later in a move intended to bar Jews from four-fifths
two-thirds the size of New Jersey. Marshall and of tiny Wes tern Palestine. This foreshadowed the
Bevin, in supporting the new Bernadotte proposals, start of a new and _fateful battle for Israel and the
moved to reduce its area to about 2,100 square miles Jews.

Palestine after
Designated the severing of
under Tran5jordan
Balfour by Great
Declaration Britain

1922

State of Isru.el
as designated Bernadotte
by UN Plan
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.... 1947

93 I
 SfaJ:e o£Israe1
as proposed oy
1!,NS-pecWaiinmiJ:ke

ANS -NS-
J / N

,.E.GYP
¢.~,i',,<,~)?},
7](11-1..,

The rJartition boundaries accepted by the United The Bernadotte Plan boundaries would allot only
Nations on November 29, 1947, allotted 5,500 square about 2,400 square miles, a reduction to 5.3 of the
miles of the remaining 10,000 to the Jews · original Mandate

94
 lzrd
•

-~reas 7.bukrIsmili
• .A:ntS' Occupal:wn> In 1917, when the Balfour
Ju:Jg 18, 1948 Declaration wkU issued,
Palestine comprised 45,000
AlPenetrafums square miles extending
It/ oEArdhForr:es along both sides of the Jor-
I-ni:o Isrne7., dan. The Mandate was ap-
proved on July 24, 1922, by
the Council of the L eague
of Nations. It was to take
effect on September 29.

Between July 24 and Sep-

tember 29, 1922, the British
Government submitted a
memorandum to the Coun-
cil announcing that TrartS
Jordan (an area of 35,000
square miles) was being
severed from Palestine and
p7aced under the rule of
the present King Abdullah.
0 10 . 20 30 Miles What remained was the
-RAILROADS ~ROADS western area: see black out-
. -<>-" ., e , ·OIL PIPELINE
lines on maps, Page 94.

At the beginning of the sec011d tnice the Israeli Government had est·a.blished con-
trol over practically the entire 5,500 square miles allotted to them by the ON Par-
tition plcm, mu:l had placed ·Ltncler milita1·y OCCL1,pat·io1i at1 a:cld<itional 500 square miles
(Maps by Detje)

95
 Hible is studied with map of the countryside in religious school (Cidal)

◄ The River Jordan at Lake Tiberius (Cooke)

Children cm their way to help with a new ,s·~ttlem_e nt in the Judean hills (Gidal)

97
 Abraham Tabib, 1im1nirwnt leader of the Yemenite coin1nunity in Palestine (Cooke)

llousewives buy kerosene on Alle11hy Road in 'l'el Ai;iv (Coolce)

"

98
 't
C
I
~f, .. /, • U
\ • . , , ~ . .: • ... j }1 , ..•

Bazaar in the Yemenite section of Tel Aviv (Cooke)

Ye1nenite girls in a Hihlical da1ic,; at Meir Shfya (Gidal)

99
 Textile facto-ry (Cooke)

Textile tJlant near Haifa (Cooke)

I'
I
!

100
 Israeli w01-Tcer at Dead Sea potash works (Gidal)

Harvesting, Emek lsrnei (Gidal)

101
 --

Electrical installations on tlw road from Tiherius to Haifa (Cooke)

!
I
I Fishing d!lage of Ein Gee on Lake Tiberius (Cooke)~
1l

I Citrus fntit on iwy to cannr!ry (Cooke) Washing the salt out of the soil ( Gidal)
I
;I
I

I.I
II

102
 Exporting oranges to Europe (Gidal) Radio equipment produced in Jerusalem (Gidal)

Matzoth factory, Haifa Bay ( Gidal)

n1m nwnn m nJ
nun r!lil ,u11
UJ • i1ID
,,,.,ID'W11JI , 'DOil "ll10il
'""- rQraniJ ..>., 'Jrnn.1
BlKJACTORY. ttAUOnt
OWMU THl IW.lA W Ull1P,l
I,wun. D'A..WllMWml -,,
TMlAlOlD"UM11HU •0 ~

104
II
 \

Orcmge fuice ready fo1· export (Cooke) Israeli pharmaceutical products (Gidal)

Textile plant (Cooke)

105
 Rothschild - Ilad(J.)·sah
University H ospital, Mt.
Scopus (Hadassah)

~~~~~
~ ~!

,I
,I

Mai n e-ntrance ha.ll to

hospital above
(Hadassah)

106
lllllllf"

Arab Legionnaire and Bedouin

woman entering H adassah hos-
pital (Hadassah)

Jewish doctor visits Redouin

neighbors in Jordan Valley
(Gimd)

107
 --

Hallet in the amphitheatre of /Jrn

Ilehrcw UniDersity, Monnt Seo- -
r>us. The mou:11tafr1s of T·rci11s-
jordan in hackgro1md (Gicl(ll)

Hebrew University Library (Gidal)

Sports on the Hehrew University campu.~ (Gidal)

.,...

I
I
108
I
 Central High School, Mishma1· Haemek (Gidal)

II

110
 II
J

Haifa Technical Jnyfitute, foremost of its kind in -t he .Middle East (Cooke)

Toscanini conducts Palestfae Symphony Orchesti·a (Gidal)

Krauss Ballet in the Univet'sity amphitheatre (Gidal)

113
 Aliyah girl from Mishmar Haen,ek (Gidal) Student in Haifa Technical In~+itute (Cooke)

"\Vherever you go, the people sing (Gidal)

114
 Class in session (Gidal)

Recess at a Tel Aviv sr:hoo/ (Gidal)

115
r.
'

Musicale in Kibutz Givat Brenner (Gidal)

Hollywood comes to a movie house in Tel Aviv (Cooke)

116
 Sho~·hana Damari, famous Yemenite enter~
tainer, i,n her dressing room (Cooke)

"lvlidsummer Night's Dream" presented by Hebrew University students (Gidal) 117

 .....
I I

On way to a football match in

Geva (Gidal)

I
I

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of

a settlement in the Valley of Israel
(Gidal)
I I

118
r -f.

;
_ __..:...i/
.
-
~
"'•·

. _,,.,.,._,-
, •••_,.;,,r-
~--"--

"'Children's Village" at play (Cooke)

---

The Star of David on this little

girl's dress, which Jews in Ger-
num concentrat-ion camps were
forced to wear as a badge of
sl1mne, is worn with pride as a
badge of honor in Israel (Gidal)

119
·"""'. ~ -
. ' ........ :,- - -
'":·- ....:._~

120 . .
_ / '
Dizengofj C.ire le, m od em
• resident1al
. sect,1011 of Tel A viv
·
(Cooke)

H ntel T eltsch on Mount C armel (Gidal)

121
Children'.,; food delivered to nurses in Kibutz (Cooke)
123
Old Crusader fortress in Tiberius, Sea of Galilee (Cooke)

Early morning in Tel At-'iv (Cooke)~

Tel Aviv: One of lhe bcautiful proml'na<les of the world (Capa)

126
 EPILOGUE AS PROLOGUE

The outlook for Israel was thus full Jewish State in the '30's many hundreds of thousands
of difficulties, and 110 thoughtful more could have been saved from the Nazi catastro-
perrnn underestimated thr~ damage phe; at the very least it coukl have provided pass-
which could be done it, but none ports for the stateless, at best it could have nego-
who knew its people doubted its future. lts Presi- tiated a migration as alternative to mass murder.
dent Chaim Vi/eizmann, the greatest single figure in The far-seeing remembered that <ledinc and insecu-
Zionism next to Herzl, personified a r1uality Jews had rity always spelled trouble for the Jews, as for other
acquired the hard way in Palestine: patience. This minorities; decline and insecmity were- the charac-
chemist with a poet's gift for the vivid phrase, this teristics of postwar \Vestern Europe. They saw that
J~~w out of Pinsk who became something of an I3ritain's rulers had been dabbling in anti-Semitism
English gentleman, this Zionist leader who looked as a means of generating popular support for the
like romantic ·western notions of an old desert chief- White l'aper policy. They saw a period of reaction
tain, had converted Balfour to Zionism and won in America like that \.Vhich followed the First World
recognition from Truman. ln Weizmann, Israel had \Var. But whether anti-Semitism grew or lessened,
a statesman of first rank and world reputation to the building of Israel would go on: it had positive
help guide it through hostile blocs of world Powers values which would continue to attract from abroad
and to good relations witl1 the Arab peoples. J
many of the best in cwry, and ( as was soon evident
Israel had proved it could win the war. Its more in my visit to Israel) not a few idealists from non-
difficnlt task was to win the peace. Its future de- Jcwry, particularly among the youth.
pended on friendship and commerce with its Arab There were many who saw visions and dreamed
neighbors, and its wisest looked toward a Middle dreams. They ~aw Israel not as a retreat from the
Eastern Federation in which Jews, Druses, Leba- world, but as a new means to play a self-respecting,
nese, Kmds, and Assyrian Christians could enjoy an honorable, and a creative part in the society of
safety and the satisfaction of their national aspira- nations. The State of Israel might become, as many
tions in a broader and more stable regional frame- hoped, a laboratory in the building 0£ a new society.
work, which would protect them from Moslem ex- It, mixed economy, its voluntary farm collectives,
tremists and imperialist intrigue. Israel's people, like its network of cooperatives, already indicated how
those of all the small Powers, depended also on the socialist devices and democratic methods could be
strengthening of the United Nations as their own combined, social justice achieved without sacrifice
protection against a division of the world into con- of individual freedom. There were some who hoped
tending groups moving toward common catastrophe. that again the law might go forth from Jerusalem,
They wanted to be everybody's friend and nobody's and light from Zion.
tool. The first-horn of the United Nations still looked The rebirth of Israel followed the greatest mo-
to its parent, though sometimes more in desperation ment of despair in the history of the Jews; after the
than in hope. terrible dcg1;adations of the Hitler period, this oc-
Those Jews prepared to learn from the past real- cnrred, as -if by miraculous dispensation. But the
ized that the survival of Israel was of first concern miracle lay in what men could accomplish who
to world Jewry. They knew that had tl1cre been a woulu not lose heart. From Israel and its people

127
may again be learned lessons in the potency of faith. conquered marsh, J'ock, and desert in the flrst half
One learned that no battle is over until the last shot century of Zionism in Palestine. A few such h ad
is .fired, that if one but hangs on, no situation is hope- made it possible for this tiny Statelet to defend itself
less, no defeat predetermined. One learned that against the whole Arab world, supported by power-
numbers do not count, that a few men ·who care ful allies in :London and Washington.
deeply are worth thousands content to accept the The unbreakable spirit of these self-chosen few-
frustration of pallid desires. A few who cared had this is Israel. ·

128