Leon Uris (76 page)

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

The statue of Dafna stood its vigil. “
Shalom, Giveret
Kitty,” a group of youngsters shrilled as they raced to the recreation hall.

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

“Karen. Are you here, dear?”

There was a note on the kitchen table.

Dear Kitty: The gang wanted to have a farewell campfire. I won’t stay out too late. Love.

Karen

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

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

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

“
Shalom
,” Kitty said.

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

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

“Kitty ... my dear ...”

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

Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities are overpast.

He shall send from heaven, and save me; he reproacheth him that would swallow me up ... God shall send forth his mercy and his truth.

My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.

They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen, themselves ... Awake up, my glory ... I will rouse the dawn ...

The Fifty-Seventh Psalm of David

AUTUMN 1947

UNITED NATIONS

FLUSHING MEADOW, NEW YORK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To win partition a two thirds majority was needed. The Yishuv had to get twenty-two votes merely to offset the eleven of the Arab-Moslem bloc. From that point on they had to obtain two votes to each one the Arabs obtained. Mathematically the Arabs needed only a half dozen additional votes to eliminate partition. With their oil as an additional bargaining factor, it would be an easy matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Romulo of the Philippines stood against partition.

The Colombians were overtly anti-Jewish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mammoth chess game went on. In the dramatic maneuverings Granados and Pearson became key figures. After much labor these two succeeded in the momentous achievement of closeting the United States and the Soviet Union in a meeting. They emerged from their conference with an electrifying joint statement of definite support of partition.