Leon Uris (46 page)

The years had aged Akiva far more than his brother Barak. His face looked tired and his beard was nearly gray. He never fully recovered from the death of Ruth and Sharona. It was a bitterness he carried with him every day of his life.

He was the unofficial leader of the fringe element within the Haganah who demanded more action. As time went on and the trouble heightened, Akiva’s group became very militant. Outside Palestine, splinter groups formed from the main Zionist body to support them.

When the British threw the blockade along the coast of Palestine, Akiva could stand it no longer. He called a rump session of his supporters within the Haganah. They were all angry men like himself and they reached a decision that rocked the Yishuv to its core.

In the spring of 1934 Barak received an urgent call from Avidan to come to Jerusalem.

“A terrible thing has happened, Barak,” Avidan said. “Your brother, Akiva, has withdrawn from the Haganah and taken dozens of our top men with him. Hundreds of rank-and-file people are beginning to follow.”

When the initial shock had passed, Barak sighed. “He has threatened to do that for years. I have been amazed at the restraint he has shown till now. Akiva has been smoldering for decades, ever since our father was killed. He has never recovered from his wife’s death.”

“You know,” Avidan said, “that half my work in the Haganah is to hold our boys back. If we let them, they’d make war on the British tomorrow. Your feelings, my feelings, and Akiva’s feelings are the same, but he can destroy us all. One reason we have been able to achieve what we have in Palestine is that despite our differences we have acted in unison in our outside dealings. The British and the Arabs have always had to negotiate as though with a single person. Now Akiva has a hot-tempered gang of activists. If they start terror tactics the entire Yishuv will have to answer for his actions.”

Barak traveled back north to Ein Or, which was not far from his own
moshav
of Yad El. Ein Or, like most of the older
kibbutzim
, had been turned into a veritable garden. As senior member and one of the founders Akiva had a separate little two-room cottage of his own which was filled with books. He even had his own radio and toilet—a rarity in
kibbutz
life. Akiva loved Ein Or as he had loved Shoshanna before it. Barak had wanted him to live with them at Yad El after the death of Ruth and his daughter but Akiva loved
kibbutz
life and remained, unhealthily, with their ghosts.

Barak talked softly to his brother. Akiva had heard all the arguments before. He was nervous and restless at the prospect of a showdown with his brother.

“So, the gentlemen of Yishuv Central have sent you around to cry for them. They are becoming experts at appeasement.”

“I would have come without their invitation when I heard what an insane thing you have done,” Barak said.

Akiva paced the room again. Barak studied him. He was alive with the same angry fire he had had as a boy. “All I am doing is something the Yishuv Central recognizes and is afraid to do. Sooner or later even they are going to have to face the facts of life. The British are our enemy.”

“We do not believe that, Akiva. All told we have done very well under British rule.”

“Then you are a fool.”

“I have been wrong before. The British represent the constituted government of Palestine.”

“While they cut our throats,” Akiva mocked. “The gentlemen of the Yishuv Central carry their brief cases to conferences and read their little notes and findings and bow and scrape while the Mufti and his cutthroats run wild. Do you see the Arabs negotiating?”

“We will achieve our aims legally.”

“We will achieve our aims by fighting for them!”

“Then if we must fight, let us fight as a unified people. You put yourself in the category of the Mufti by starting a band of outlaws. Have you ever thought of the consequences if the British leave Palestine? No matter how bitter your feelings ... and mine ... the British are still our greatest instrument for achieving statehood.”

Akiva waved his hand in disgust. “We will achieve statehood the same way we redeemed this land ... with our sweat and blood. I refuse to sit around and wait for British handouts.”

“For the last time, Akiva ... don’t do this thing. You will only give our enemies an opportunity to point their fingers at us and increase their lies.”

“Aha!” Akiva cried. “Now we have come to the guts of the matter! Jews must play the games by the rules. Jews cannot be wrong! Jews must beg and appeal! Jews must turn their cheeks!”

“Stop it!”

“God no!” Akiva cried. “Whatever you do, don’t fight! You wouldn’t want the Germans and the Arabs and the British to think you are bad boys.”

“I said stop it.”

“Ghetto Jew Barak. That is what you are and that is what the Yishuv Central is. Well, let me tell you something else, dear brother. Here is one Jew who may be wrong but intends to live. So let us be wrong in the eyes of the whole damned world.”

Barak trembled with rage. He sat motionless to try to hide his anger. Akiva ranted on. Was Akiva really wrong? How much pain and degradation and betrayal and suffering must a man take before fighting back?

Barak got out of his chair and walked to the door.

“Tell Avidan and the gentlemen of the Yishuv Central and all the little negotiators that Akiva and the Maccabees have a message for the British and the Arabs ... ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!’ ”

“You are never to set foot in my house again,” Barak said.

The two brothers glared at each other for many moments. Tears welled in Akiva’s eyes. “Not set foot in your house?”

Barak was frozen.

“We are brothers, Barak. You carried me to Palestine on your back.”

“And I have lived to regret it.”

Akiva’s lips trembled. “I am a Jew who loves Palestine no less than you do. You condemn me for following the dictates of my conscience ...”

Barak stepped back into the room. “It is you, Akiva, and your Maccabees who have turned brother against brother. Since we were children I have heard your convenient quotations from the Bible. Well ... perhaps you had better read again about the Zealots who turned brother against brother and divided Jewish unity and brought on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Maccabees you call yourselves. I call you Zealots.” Barak again walked to the door.

“Remember one thing, Barak Ben Canaan,” Akiva said. “Nothing we do, right or wrong, can ever compare to what has been done to the Jewish people. Nothing the Maccabees do can even be considered an injustice in comparison to two thousand years of murder.”

Y
AD
E
L BLOSSOMED
into a Garden of Eden. The
moshav
continued to push back the swamps so that its cultivable land was increased to bring in another hundred families. There were two dozen pieces of heavy machinery and an experimental station. The entire
moshav
worked the fishponds as a joint crop.

The streets of Yad El were green all year round and there was a blaze of colors in the spring and autumn. Yad El had a primary and secondary school, large community center with a swimming pool, library and theater, and a small hospital with two full-time doctors.

The greatest event of all occurred when electricity was brought in! The celebration throughout the Huleh Valley settlements made all other celebrations look small as the lights went on in Ein Or and Kfar Giladi and Ayelet Hashahar and Yad El simultaneously.

In the same year, the Jews of Yad El helped bring tap water to Abu Yesha, making it the first Arab village in all of Palestine to have it. Yad El extended some of the electric irrigation pumps into Abu Yesha fields to show the Arabs how to farm intensively through irrigation.

To show his gratitude, Kammal gave several
dunams
of a hillside site to the Zion Settlement Society when he learned the Jews were looking for land in the area for a youth village.

Ari Ben Canaan was the pride of his father’s heart. By the age of seventeen he was six feet tall and had the strength of a lion. Besides Hebrew and English he mastered Arabic, German, French, and Yiddish, which Sarah slipped back to in moments of anger or excitement.

Ari loved farming.

He and Dafna and most of the
moshav
’s youngsters belonged to a youth group, as did most of the young people in the Yishuv. They would tramp the length and breadth of Palestine to the sites of ancient battles and tombs and cities. They climbed the mountain at Masada where the Hebrews held out against the Roman siege for over three years and they tramped through the desert over the route of Moses and the twelve tribes. They wore the traditional blue shirts and shorts and they were always filled with the songs and dances and ideals of the redemption of the homeland.

Dafna had developed into a buxom, earthy, attractive girl filled with love for the son of Barak Ben Canaan. It appeared that Ari and Dafna would marry at an early age. They would either open a new farm at Yad El or travel out with a youth group to begin a new
moshav
or
kibbutz
as was sometimes the tradition after schooling. But as the troubles mounted in Palestine, Ari and Dafna had less and less time to spend together. Ari had shown remarkable skill and leadership within the Haganah and despite his tender age was considered by Avidan one of the most promising soldiers in all of Palestine. In fact, most of the outstanding soldiers were in their late teens.

By the age of seventeen Ari had set up defenses at Yad El, Ein Or, and half a dozen
kibbutzim
and had done so well that he went into Haganah work almost full time.

When the illegal immigration war with the British began, Ari was called to duty at the sites where Aliyah Bet ships beached. Ari worked at getting the illegal immigrants hidden in
kibbutzim
and at collecting the visas and passports of “tourists” who had entered Palestine.

When he had a day or two free he would often phone Yad El and Dafna would hitchhike to Tel Aviv to meet him. They could hear the new philharmonic symphony which had been formed largely with German musicians and whose initial concert was conducted by Toscanini—or they could go to the art exhibits or lectures at the Youth Headquarters—or merely walk along Ben Yehuda Street and Allenby Road where crowds sipped coffee in the sidewalk cafés. Or perhaps they would stroll along the quiet beaches north of Tel Aviv. Each separation became more and more difficult. Ari did not wish to marry until he could get a parcel of land and build a home. With trouble constant and his services more and more in demand it seemed as though that time would never come. They loved each other very much. By the time she was seventeen and he was nineteen she had given herself to him. Now in their rendezvous they spent their few hours discovering the wonder of each other.

The tension which began with the German Aliyah in 1933 hit a peak in the year 1935 when the Jews succeeded in bringing in more immigrants than ever before, legally and illegally. Just as the Second Aliyah brought ideals and leaders and the Third Aliyah brought the pioneers—the German Aliyah resulted in a tremendous cultural and scientific spurt in the Yishuv.

The effendis who were watching the continued progress of the Jews became frantic—frantic enough, in fact, to unite their dissident political groups for the first time and as a unified body make definite demands on the British that all selling of land to Jews and all Jewish immigration be stopped.

Early in 1936 Yishuv Central requested several thousand visas from the British to conform with the growing anxiety of the Jews in Germany. Under violent Arab pressure the British granted less than a thousand visas.

The Mufti, seeing the growing British weakness, made his move at last for control of Palestine. In the spring of 1936 he stirred up a new series of riots. They began in Jaffa with the fable that the Jews were snatching all the Arabs in Tel Aviv and murdering them, and they spread from city to city. As usual, the majority of the victims were defenseless old Orthodox Jews in the holy cities. Immediately after the first outbursts Haj Amin announced the formation of a Higher Arab Committee, with himself as head, for the purpose of “directing” another Arab general strike in protest against the “pro-Jewish” British policies.

This time the Mufti moved after careful preparation. The instant the Higher Arab Committee was announced, the El Husseini mob, flanked by hired thugs, fanned out throughout the Arab community to “enforce” the general strike, and to see that a full boycott was carried out. A wanton rash of assassinations began systematically to wipe out any known Arab opponent of the Mufti. Although the rebellion was supposedly directed against the Jews and the British, its major objective was to kill off all the Mufti’s political opponents.

Kammal, the long-time friend of Barak Ben Canaan, and the muktar of Abu Yesha, was made to pay for his friendship with the Yishuv. Husseini’s henchmen found the aging muktar kneeling at prayer in the little mosque by the stream in his village—and they slit his throat.

Taha, the son, was whisked away into Yad El to live in the Ben Canaan home where he would be safe. The Mufti’s blood orgy continued to enforce the general strike and the boycott of the Jews. Without a market the Arab crops rotted in the fields. The port of Jaffa and the commerce around it ground to a near halt. The strike was paralyzing the Arab population, but they were helpless against the Mufti. Haj Amin el Husseini again used his pulpit to twist the blame upon the Jews; and as the Arab hardship heightened, so did their desperation and anger. Soon the Arabs began to dare to attack settlements and burn fields and steal crops. When an isolated and unarmed Jew was found his murder was always followed by decapitation, dismemberment, eye gouging, and the most primitive brutalities.

As the atrocities increased, Avidan called upon the Yishuv to exercise self-restraint. The Arab population was being victimized, he declared, and no good would corne of returning their cruelties.

It was a different story with Akiva and the Maccabees. Soon after the Maccabees broke from the Haganah the British outlawed them and forced them underground. The British, to some extent, turned their backs on the Haganah because they knew about the policy of self-restraint and the fact that the Haganah fought only in self-defense. Furthermore, the Haganah never fought against the British. Not so the Maccabees. They were avowed enemies of the British and they had no intention of exercising restraint. The Maccabees, therefore, had to move into the cover of the three major cities: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.