Leon Uris (51 page)

Many of the former Raider Unit men joined the Palmach to indoctrinate the youngsters in the methods of Major P. P. Malcolm.

The troops wore no uniforms nor was there rank below the officers, and boys and girls were treated exactly the same. They were trained with the same sense of Biblical destiny that Malcolm had given his fighters.

Two of the soldiers showed such promise and leadership that they were advanced to lead units directly under Ari. One was a heavy-set
kibbutznik
from the Galilee. His name was Zev Gilboa. He wore a big black mustache which later became the badge of a male Palmachnik. The other was a small intense young student from Jerusalem named David Ben Ami. Neither David nor Zev was yet twenty.

One day they were paid a visit by General Haven-Hurst. He was a tall thin blond man in his early fifties. As he inspected the camp he was aware of the coldness which greeted his presence. After the inspection, Haven-Hurst asked Ari to report to the camp’s headquarters.

As Ari entered the office, the two men nodded stiffly, neither concealing his dislike for the other.

“Sit down, Lieutenant Ben Canaan,” Haven-Hurst said. “You are to be commended on your work here with these Palmach troops.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Matter of fact, I’ve been studying your record ... or your case history, if you will. You’ve been a busy chap.”

“The conditions of my environment and the unfortunate circumstances of my birth have dictated it,” Ari said. “I am a farmer at heart.”

Haven-Hurst took the rebuff without showing it.

“My main purpose for coming to Beth Alonim today was to ask you to volunteer for a special assignment. I know that when you enlisted it was on the proviso that you could train Palmach troops, but we feel this is urgent enough to alter that.”

“I am a soldier in the British Army, General Haven-Hurst. I will accept any assignment given me.”

“Good. Briefly, here is what it consists of. There has been a large German build-up in Syria. We feel they may attempt an invasion of Palestine this spring.”

Ari nodded.

“We are not at war with the Vichy French and we cannot invade Syria, but we do have sufficient Free French forces to do the job, provided we get flawless intelligence. We have selected you for this job because you know Syria and Lebanon from your Ha Mishmar days, and also because of your mastery of Arabic. We want you to reassemble those lads who were at Ha Mishmar with you and return there to use it as a reconnoitering base. When the invasion begins there will also be special assignments. There will be a captain’s rank in this for you.”

“I see one problem, sir.”

“Yes?”

“A great number of my comrades from Ha Mishmar have been thrown into jail by the British.”

Haven-Hurst’s face turned crimson. “We will arrange releases.”

“Yes, sir. One more thing, sir. I have two men here who are exceptional soldiers. I would like to take them to Ha Mishmar with me and have them transferred into the British Army.”

“Very well,” Haven-Hurst said, “take them with you.”

Ari walked to the door. “An invasion of Syria at this time is excellent strategy, sir. It will give the British Eighth Army plenty of room to retreat to India.”

Haven-Hurst glared at the Jew. “I suppose it is unnecessary to say, Ben Canaan, that you and I will be on opposite sides of the fence one day.”

“We already are, sir.”

Ari left Beth Alonim with Zev Gilboa and David Ben Ami as his sergeants and returned to Ha Mishmar on the hill which held such bitter memories for him. Fifty of the original Haganah gang were assembled—some from many parts of the world where they had been serving in the British forces.

Using Ha Mishmar as headquarters, Ari’s patrols worked all the way up to Damascus. Extreme caution was needed, for the invasion was to be a complete surprise. Ari’s basic method was simple. Most of his people spoke fluent Arabic and were familiar with the territory. He sent them out during the day, dressed as Arabs, and they merely walked along the roads gathering information. Although his intelligence was proving flawless, Ari wanted to get right inside Damascus and Beirut. This was a touchy job, and Ari reckoned it called for an individual foray. The one selected had to be able to move perfectly without raising suspicion. Ari checked with Haganah and they sent him a seventeen-year-old boy named Joab Yarkoni.

Yarkoni was a Moroccan Jew born in Casablanca and could indeed pass for an Arab anywhere. He was small, with saucer-like flashing black eyes and an overabundant sense of humor.

In Casablanca he and his family had lived in a
mellah
, the Oriental-African version of a ghetto. These Oriental and African Jews had little in common culturally with their Russian or German counterparts. Most of them were descendants of ancestors who had fled the Spanish Inquisition. Many still had Spanish names.

In some Arab lands the Jews were treated with a measure of fairness and near equality. Of course, no Jew could be entirely equal to a Moslem. A thousand years before, when Islam swept the world, Jews had been among the most honored of the Arab citizens. They were the court doctors, the philosophers, and the artisans—the top of the Arab society. In the demise of the Arab world that followed the Mongol wars, the demise of the Jews was worse.

There were Jews in Bagdad and Cairo and Damascus and Fez and Kurdistan and Casablanca, throughout the coast of Africa and deep into countries of the Middle East.

The Moslems never went to the extremes of the Christians in the matter of killing Jews. Arab riots were always kept within reasonable bounds—a few dozen murders at a time.

Joab Yarkoni and his family had escaped the
mellah
of Casablanca when he was but a youngster. His family settled down in a
kibbutz
in Samaria that hugged the sea. It was at Caesarea and called Sdot Yam, Fields of the Sea. Many illegal boats beached near Caesarea and it was here that Joab first went to work for Aliyah Bet as a gun runner when he was only twelve years of age.

When he was fifteen he took it upon himself to try a daring feat that spread his fame throughout the Yishuv. Joab walked from Sdot Yam with a donkey to Bagdad. There he stole some of the precious Iraqi date-palm saplings and smuggled them into Palestine. The saplings were sent to Shoshanna
kibbutz
on the Sea of Galilee and were instrumental in opening an entire new export crop for the Yishuv.

Ari’s job was easy for young Joab. He walked to Damascus to Beirut to Tyre and returned to Ha Mishmar within three weeks. His information confirmed everything they already knew and further located Vichy strength nearly to a man.

Free French Forces moved quietly into Palestine, to the Galilee, and deployed for the invasion.

Ari’s fifty men were bolstered by a special hand-picked group of forty Australians, experts in mines, automatic weapons, and explosives.

This ninety-man force was split into three units of thirty each. Each unit was given a special assignment to cross into Lebanon and Syria ahead of the invasion, advance and hold key roads and bridges against a counterattack until the main body could reach them.

Ari’s force had the most dangerous of the missions. He was to lead his thirty men right up along the Lebanese coast, penetrate close to a Vichy garrison, and keep them from getting to half a dozen vital mountain bridges which could halt the Free French advance. Ari took Joab, Zev, and David with him. He had sixteen more Jews and ten Australians.

His unit moved out twenty-four hours before the invasion and sped up the coast with beautiful ease, for they knew every inch of the way. They passed the six crucial bridges one by one.

They stopped three miles from the Vichy garrison of Fort Henried and in a mountain pass mined the roads, set in their machine guns, and waited for the invasion to reach them.

As so often happens in a large-scale battle, an error was made. How, why, who made it is not so important after it occurs. The eastern arm of the invasion crossed from Trans-Jordan into Syria twelve hours ahead of H-Hour. As they moved toward Damascus they tipped off the entire operation.

For Ari it meant he would have to hold his mountain pass for twelve hours plus the additional three or four hours it would take for the main body to reach him.

Within a few hours after the error was made the Vichyites had massed two battalions with tanks and artillery at Fort Henried and started down the coastal road to blow up the mountain bridges.

As soon as Ari saw them coming he realized something had gone wrong. Quickly he dispatched David and Zev back to Palestine to bring help.

The Vichy troops marched blindly into the pass and were pulverized by explosions and crossfire from both sides of the hill. They fell back, reassembled, and sent artillery fire into the pass.

Six unbelievable hours passed before David and Zev came back with a battalion of Free French troops.

All the bridges were intact. There was no break-through. The pass was littered with over four hundred dead Vichyites who had tried to break Ari’s position.

Five men of Ari’s force were alive when help arrived. Ari Ben Canaan himself was at death’s door. His back was filled with shrapnel, two bullets were lodged in his body, and his leg and nose were broken.

The Free French went on to complete the invasion of Syria.

For Ari Ben Canaan the war was over. He was taken back to Palestine for a long slow recovery. The British promoted him to major and he was decorated for his stand at the mountain pass.

Ari had played his role for Allied victory. So had the Yishuv.

Members of the Yishuv were in suicide squads that helped capture Tobruk and Bardia. Later a battalion of Palestinians was at the epic defense of Tobruk.

They fought in Italy and in Greece and in Crete and in the Lowlands. They numbered thousands in the Royal Air Force. They ran the “death” patrol along the Mediterranean coast. The home guard kept the Arabs under control within Palestine. They fought in the desert in the captures of Sidi Barrani, Sollum, and Fort Capuzzo.

Jewish suicide units were picked for their valor in the campaigns in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Three thousand of the Yishuv joined the Free Forces of Czechoslovakia, Holland, France—and even Poland. A suicide force of Jews went out to destroy the oil refinery at Tripoli. Every member perished. Jews were used by the British for special spying missions. German Jews were dressed in German uniforms and worked right in Rommel’s headquarters. Jews guarded the Mosul oil fields against continued Arab attempts to disrupt production.

When the British needed spies in the Balkans they turned to the Jews and trained them as parachutists. They reasoned that any Jew would be protected by the rest of the Jews in the country where he was dropped. Several were parachuted—few returned. One girl, Hanna Senesh, from Joab Yarkoni’s
kibbutz
was dropped into Hungary and captured. She became a martyr by refusing to her death to break under the cruelest Nazi torture.

The Yishuv covered itself with glory. Just as in World War I the British glorified the Arab revolt—so they tried to hide the efforts of the Yishuv in World War II. No country gave with so much vitality to the war. But the British Government did not want the Jews to use this as a bargaining point for their homeland aspirations later on. Whitehall and Chatham House kept the Yishuv’s war effort one of the best secrets of the war.

Rommel never reached Alexandria—they never broke the defenses of Stalingrad.

As the tide turned in favor of the British the Arabs no longer looked for the Germans to liberate them. Quickly they “declared war” on Germany. The main purpose behind the Arab declarations of War was to gain a vote at the peace conferences and block the Zionists who had no vote but only the blood of their sons to show for their efforts.

Despite the Yishuv’s magnificent record the British did not revoke the White Paper. Despite the Arab treachery and the fact that they did not raise a finger for victory they did not revoke it. Even with the ghastly news of the murder of six million Jews the British would not allow the survivors in.

The Haganah grew restless. Its ranks were filled with experienced soldiers. But it was the Maccabees who called off the truce! A series of terror bombings shook Palestine from end to end and again sent the British into their Taggart forts. The Maccabees, now numbering in the thousands, blew up one British installation after another.

General Haven-Hurst went after the Maccabees. With surprising swiftness he snared and deported several hundred Maccabee leaders to the Sudan. But Akiva’s avenging warriors were not deterred.

Haven-Hurst ordered newly captured Maccabees to be lashed. The Maccabees retorted by catching British soldiers and whipping them in public.

Maccabees were hanged. British soldiers were caught and hanged. A dozen Maccabee bullets and grenades found their mark on a dozen of the more outspoken anti-Jewish officers.

Violent and sordid murders were perpetrated by the Arabs in answer to the Maccabees. The Holy Land reeled under the terror.

Haj Amin el Husseini was placed on the list of war criminals by the Yugoslav government. He had made himself spiritual head of the Yugoslav Moslems who had fought for the German Army. He was placed under arrest in France. The British, however, wanted El Husseini alive and ready to stir up trouble when they needed him, so they helped him escape to Egypt where he was welcomed as a Moslem hero. In Palestine his nephew Jemal seized control of the Arab community.

A new phase of history was bringing the United States into focus as the new power in the Middle East. In addition, since most of the European Jewish communities had been wiped out, by mere process of elimination Jews and others in the United States became the world leaders of the Zionist movement.

With America’s rise, the British proposed a joint Anglo-American inquiry into the Palestine situation. This joint committee made another exhaustive survey of the Arabs and the Yishuv. They went to Europe to the DP camps. They came to the only human conclusion possible—“
100,000 JEWS MUST BE ALLOWED INTO PALESTINE AT ONCE
.”