The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine (5 page)

Eliezer became one of the founders of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, an institution that turned the Hebrew language, dormant for nearly 2,000 years, into a modern spoken language. He died of cancer when I was three. Baruch passed away in his sleep during Passover, 1962, when I was nearly six months old.

When I was four, my family moved to Motza, and Sara moved into the apartment we had vacated on the upper floor on 18 Rashba Street, just upstairs from Savta Sima.

The relationship between the two grandmothers would make a great script for a BBC sitcom. “She doesn’t speak real Russian. She speaks the same Russian our servants spoke,” Sima would say with disdain, referring to Sara’s colloquial version of the language. Sarah would jab, “She couldn’t cook or even boil an egg to save her life,” which was also true. They were two accomplished women who, in their own way, contributed to creating a homeland for their people in the Land of Israel. They represent two aspects of the Zionist pioneers: One, an educated Jewish woman with a strong sense of social hierarchy who made it in early twentieth century Europe, and then lent her talents and education to the Zionist enterprise. The other, a working class woman whose world, the world of the Jewish shtetl, had come to an end and who ended up participating in the Zionist project as a laborer and as a mother, which in those days, in the height of socialism, was as noble a position as one could hold. The value and importance of protecting the rights of workers and women and minorities was passed down to me through these two women and their life stories.

As a child, I preferred Savta Sara. As an adult, I learned to appreciate Savta Sima, and I found it puzzling that my mother, who is such a pleasant woman, had a stern mother while my father, who was stern and often severe, had a warm and loving mother.

1
Savta
means “grandmother” and
Saba
means “grandfather” in Hebrew.

I am my parents’ fourth child and by the time I was born in December of 1961, my father was 38 years old. He was 5’11”, with broad shoulders, serious eyes, and— ever since I knew him—silver hair combed back from a wide forehead.

As an adult, my father made his mark on Israeli history. First as a young officer, who distinguished himself in battle as a fearless, committed, and levelheaded leader of men during Israel’s War of Independence. Then as a career officer who dedicated himself to building a well-organized fighting force for the young state of Israel. But probably most notably as one of the generals of the Six-Day War of 1967, when the Israeli army captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula.

My father later became a professor of Arabic language and literature, a groundbreaking member of Israel’s parliament, and a peace activist decades ahead of his time. But whatever hat Matti Peled wore—general, scholar, father—he had a cool and rational way.

I was only 14 or 15 when he caught me smoking. I was outside by the car lighting up, certain that no one would see me, when suddenly I noticed him walking up the hill. He was deep in thought, as always, and his gaze was down. I had no idea how he would react, but I assumed I was going to be in trouble. He was already quite close before he looked up and recognized me. The unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke was all around, and the cigarette was in my hand.

“You smoke?” he asked, with mild surprise. “Isn’t it a waste for an athlete like you to ruin your lungs?”

What I said was: “I don’t really smoke, and I have no intention of smoking.” A stupid reply under the circumstances, but it was true: It was my first or second try, and I didn’t like it at all. As he walked away, I added, “Please don’t tell mom.”

I stood there for a while, waiting for my anxiety to dissipate. I was stunned— not only by the fact that I’d been caught, but also by his direct and dispassionate reaction. Of course my father didn’t want me to smoke, but he didn’t show any anger. In the end, he left it up to me: It was my body, my life, and my choice.

My father was born Mattityahu Ifland, Matti for short, in the port city of Haifa in what was then northern Palestine. The day was July 20, 1923, and according to the Jewish calendar, it was
Tisha B’Av
, the ninth day of the month of Av—when Jewish people lament the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by Roman legions in 70 AD.

His family lived on a kibbutz, but they didn’t stay long. In those days, kibbutz members believed mothers should not raise their own children. The babies lived and slept in the nursery and were raised and cared for by nurses while the parents worked. Parents would see their children for a couple of hours each day in the afternoon. Matti’s mother, Sara, could not bear the separation from her son, and when my father was a year old, they moved to Jerusalem, where my grandfather opened a carpentry shop that he operated for many years.

“Your grandfather was a socialist at heart,” my grandmother liked to tell me, “and always made sure that his income was the same as his workers.”

He grew up to be a Zionist to the core; till the day he died, he firmly believed in creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and he acted on this belief. His was the first generation for which Hebrew, a language that had only recently been revived, was the native tongue. From an early age, he made sure his Hebrew was perfect and that he pronounced it correctly. While still in high school, he traveled up and down the country—indeed, he knew it well and loved it dearly. Many years later, when my father came to criticize Israeli policies, it was still in the name of what was best for the future of Israel. Despite his mounting concerns, he continued to believe in securing the future of the Jewish people in their homeland. And when his loyalty to the Zionist cause was put in question, he demanded and was given recognition from the Israeli Supreme Court that he was in fact a patriot and a Zionist.

At the age of 16, he volunteered to serve in the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, which was the largest Jewish militia in the years leading to the creation of Israel. He joined without his parents’ knowledge or permission, and he would skip school to participate in military training. He served in the Jerusalem platoon with Yitzhak Rabin, with whom he would maintain a lifelong relationship.

It was during that time that my father changed his name. Members of the Palmach were required to Hebraize their names—to make them sound more Hebrew as opposed to the more European-Jewish sounding names that characterized Jews in exile. It was part of the national Zionist mission to bring about a new Hebrew identity. My father, Matti Ifland, chose the name Peled, because it means “iron” in Hebrew. Later, other officers changed their names to Peled as well.

Fighting the British, who occupied Palestine at the time, and demanding Jewish independence was the premise under which the Palmach had been created. By the mid-1940s, my father had grown disillusioned with the Palmach. He thought they weren’t doing enough to fight off the British and if they were not going to fight, he saw no point in staying. So, true to his character, he did something that was considered unthinkable at the time: He quit the Palmach and went to school.

In 1946, he and my mother, Zika Katznelson, were married. In the small Jewish community in Jerusalem, this marriage was no small thing. A daughter of the Katznelson family was marrying a man who came from a family of no consequence or position. “Several friends of my father tried to dissuade me, but I loved your father,” my mother told me during one of our conversations in her kitchen. I was an adult by then and in the process of gathering information for a future book.

The family had managed to scrape together enough funds to allow my father to go to law school in London. Because they were still tight, however, he went alone, leaving immediately after they got married. His passport, issued by His Majesty’s Government, stated under “country”: Palestine. And under “citizenship”: Palestinian. Nine months later, my older brother, Yoav, was born, and my father returned. While he was home, in the fall of 1947, hostilities erupted—a war that would later be called Israel’s War of Independence had begun. My father stayed to fight and never returned to law school.

He served as a captain in the Givati Brigade’s 51st regiment, and commanded the second infantry company, or Company B. The role of Company B became the stuff of legends.

My father’s passport issued in February 1947, nationality: Palestinian.

In a journal he kept, my father describes rebuilding the company after it had suffered terrible losses in the war and its commander was removed. He writes about instilling both morale and discipline in his soldiers, who were a mishmash of new, inexperienced immigrants and hardened World War II veterans who volunteered to fight for the Jewish cause. I found what he wrote about soldiers wounded in battle particularly interesting:

A sergeant and a squad commander were wounded but continued to advance without complaining. I found their behavior responsible and intelligent. Another soldier that was wounded began screaming. I ran to him and yelled at him to shut up….There is nothing worse for morale than wounded soldiers screaming…. Surely a soldier going into battle knows he may be injured, so why scream?

I remember finding this diary while I was going through his desk just a few days after he died. It was fascinating to read, but this particular passage intrigued me more than anything else. Did he really not understand why a wounded young man, scared for his life and in terrible pain, might scream? I suppose he expected everyone to possess the same levelheadedness and dedication that he demanded of himself. He did not see that this was an impossible thing to expect.

His cool and direct reasoning became somewhat of a hallmark for people who knew him. In October 1948, the company took part in a crucial battle as part of Operation Yoav—which coincidentally shared my brother’s name—to claim the Negev region, in the southern part of the country. The company suffered many casualties, their communication was lost, and two officers died in battle. My father himself was seriously wounded twice during the battle. Once communication was restored, he was instructed to retreat but insisted they carry on—a third of the company was injured, and there was no one to carry the wounded. He maintained that they could hold on and complete their mission.

Apparently General Yigal Allon, commander of the southern region, intervened at this point. The young company commander convinced Allon that they could hold out through the night. As it turned out the Egyptian forces retreated by morning, and it was an important, albeit costly, victory. My father nearly lost both of his eyes as a result of grenades blowing up near his head, and for the rest of his life he had shrapnel embedded in the back of his head. My mother still has the helmet that saved his life, resting now in his study.

I remember learning about this particular battle in my sixth grade history class. By then my father was a professor teaching Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University. I sat and listened with a mixture of awe and discomfort as we learned that he commanded the legendary Company B which, as the poet Abba Kovner wrote, “distinguished itself beyond any other… turned weakness into courage,” pushed the Egyptian army back, and opened a crucial intersection that connected between the central and southern parts of what was to become the state of Israel.

My father as a young officer.

The awe I felt was partly a result of having never heard the story placed in a larger context. I had heard bits and pieces about this battle from my father when we would drive south and pass by the region where the battle took place. On Independence Day, we used to take trips with friends, many of whom participated in the War of Independence, and during lunch everyone sat together and the dads would tell stories of the war. People always asked that my father tell the story of that particular battle, and he always agreed. But I was already at that age: though my father was a hero, he was still my father, and I couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed when he told stories in the company of my peers.

During the war my mother and older brother Yoav lived in Jerusalem with my mother’s parents. Being the wife of an officer, my mother was offered a house in Katamon, a Palestinian neighborhood whose inhabitants were forced to flee as a result of the war. The homes of the Palestinians, spacious and beautiful, were all seized by the Israeli army and given to Israeli families. My mother recalls how the contents of these homes, which belonged to well-to-do families, were taken by looters.

“I knew the Palestinian families as a child growing up in Jerusalem,” she said. “On Saturdays I would walk through the neighborhood and see the families sitting on their balconies. There was usually a lemon tree in the front and a garden with fruit trees in the back.”