Friday, April 17, 2009

O Jerusalem!

Today I read the masterpiece O Jerusalem!, written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. O Jerusalem! shocked me out of my complacency regarding the state of Israel. I believe that the idea of the state and the profound meaning behind Yom Ha'Atzmaut was not taught to me appropriately. In the schools I have attended, Yom Ha'Atzmaut was always regarded as a cultural celebration in which we were served blue-and-white donuts, got to ride on camels, made sand-art and ate falafel. The terrible price that was paid for the land, the men and women who fought for the country and held on to it with the skin of their teeth...this was never presented to me as vividly as it was today. There is one excerpt of the book that to me, symbolizes the entire idea behind the Jewish people and Jewish nationalism. I reproduce it below.

~

Two Haganah veterans of the British Army, Harry Jaffe and Bronislav Bar-Shemer, were assigned the job of organizing the convoys that would carry Joseph's supplies to Jerusalem. The Canadian told them they would need a minimum of three hundred trucks. After two days of scouring Tel Aviv's trucking firms, Bar-Shemer had managed to assemble barely sixty vehicles. To get the rest, he chose a simple expedient. He decided to hijack them.

"I took the Haganah boys from their training camps and sent them to the busy intersections," he later recalled. "They started stopping every truck that came along. I don't know who was more scared, the drivers or the soldiers pointing their guns at them, telling them to drive to a big empty field at Kiryat Meir."

Every time a score of trucks had collected in his playing field, Bar-Shemer formed their loudly protesting drivers into a convoy and, under the command of his teenage soldiers and their Sten guns, packed them off to the assembly point for the Nachshon convoys, an abandoned British Army camp called Kfar Bilu. The drivers were the most disgruntled group of human beings Bar-Shemer had ever seen. "They hated our guts," he remembered. "None of them had any idea of what was happening." Some of them, Bar-Shemer knew, "had wives who were giving birth and here we'd kidnapped them at high noon or in the middle of the night." Fortunately for Bar-Shemer, most of those drivers owned their trucks, and the vehicles represented their livelihood. They were not inclined to abandon them to Bar-Shemer, not even for a wife in childbirth.

Feeding his group of captive drivers soon became a serious problem. A firm believer in direct action, Bar-Shemer walked into one of the Tel Aviv's most popular restaurants, Chaskal's. "The Jewish nation needs you," he told its owner, Yecheskel Weinstein. In about three minutes' time Bar-Shemer explained what he required and placed a truck and a squad of soldiers at Weinstein's disposition. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. At five o'clock in the afternoon Weinstein was ladling out a hot meal to four hundred men at Kfar Bilu.

[...]

The former British Army camp of Kfar Bilu swarmed with Bronislav Bar-Shemer's kidnapped truck drivers, mechanics, Haganah men, all milling around the stocks of goods commandeered on Dov Joseph's orders from Tel Aviv's warehouses. To load them onto the waiting trucks, the Haganah had rounded up a team of Salonikan stevedores from the port of Tel Aviv. Squat, heavily muscled men whose leaders had ordered them a special diet of sardines, rice, apples and cheese, they set to work by the flickering glare of torches.

"It was like an automatic chain belt," the wondering Tel Aviv restaurateur Yecheskel Weinstein recalled. "Every five minutes they loaded a truck. Two young boys stood beside them playing a guitar while they worked. Greek music filled the night and those stevedores kept heaving crates and sacks of food to one another without a break in their rhythm."

Standing by the side of the road in the darkness, Bar-Shemer watched the trucks set off. There was an incredible variety of vehicles in that line passing before his eyes. There were vans from the Tnuvah dairy, Bedfords, Fords, factory trucks, delivery vans, heavy Mack dump trucks, open kibbutz farm trucks, White semitrailers, Rio hay wagons. They came in every size, shape and color imaginable, many of them splashed with posters advertising soap, baby food, a kosher butcher in Haifa, a brick kiln in Ramat Gan or a shoe factory in Tel Aviv. The light ones came first. The heavier, slower vehicles brought up the rear, each rigged out with a steel cable to take in tow the trucks that faltered along the way.

None of them had its lights on. Bar-Shemer had seen to that. His men had meticulously removed the bulbs from every headlight in the convoy so that no panicky flick of a light switch would illuminate the column for Arab snipers. Their escorts swung on board as they rolled past the kibbutz of Hulda. Iska Shadmi landed in a load of potatoes and quickly dug himself a foxhole.

Looking up at the sullen, fearful faces of those drivers his men had kidnapped a few days before, Bar-Shemer thought, "If looks could kill, I'd be dead." From his vantage point he followed their progress, a long column stretching out in the moonlight like an immense caterpillar. "The delicious odor of orange blossoms," he noted, "filled the night." Ahead, the road ran straight and flat for six miles up to a gentle hilltop rising on the left. There the steeple and the ochre facade of the Trappist Monastery of Latrun towered above a stand of olive trees. Then an easy arc to the right past the monastery's vineyards brought the column to the foothills marking the entry to Bab el Wad. Waiting for the last truck to leave Hulda so that he could fall in at the end of the convoy, Bar-Shemer noted far off in the distance the echo of sporadic rifle fire. "They're moving into Bab el Wad," he thought.

Riding at the head of the column, Harry Jaffe, the convoy commander, heard three of those rounds clang into the panel of his new blue 1947 Ford. He prayed that they were only the work of an isolated sniper. The trucks strung out behind him had none of the protective armor of the vehicles that had been used previously on the Jerusalem road. Huddled in his pile of potatoes, Iska Shadmi angrily scanned the dark forests above him for some sign of a foe. All the way up to Jerusalem, he would see only one human being in those pines, an old Arab with a white beard.

As Jaffe had hoped, apart from a few snipers there were no Arab forces in the hills. Shaking the night with the steady drone of their engines, the trucks ground slowly up the pass toward Jerusalem. Some lurched along with two or three fires flattened by sniper fire. From others, overheated by the long, slow trip, Jaffe saw jets of steam squirting into the air. All along the column, like huntsmen spurring on a pack of hounds, his men shouted, "Kadima, Kadima! Forward! Forward!" to the harried truckers.

In Jerusalem, the news that the convoy was coming rippled through the city. Hundreds of people ran down Jaffa Road to watch it come in: women in bathrobes and slippers and pincurlers, schoolchildren, religious Jews coming from morning service in the synagogues, their prayer shawls still draped over their shoulders. They hung out of windows, clambered onto rooftops and balconies, to watch in awe and gratitude. They sang and cheered and clapped as the convoy hove into sight. They were a desperate, hungry people existing that week on a ration of two ounces of margarine, a quarter of a pound of potatoes and a quarter of a pound of dried meat. For two weeks not a single vehicle had reached the city, and now they were rumbling forward in a steady stream as far back as the eye could see- dozens of trucks bumper to bumper, their swaying vans crammed with supplies.

Mature men watching them from the curb wept openly. Children scrambled up onto the trucks with flowers. Women sprang onto dashboards to kiss the drivers. In front of the Sephardic Home for the Aged an elderly woman embraced Yehuda Lash, and the young veteran of so many Jerusalem convoys sighed, "If only it could have been her daughter." Riding on his pile of potatoes, Iska Shadmi remembered all his lessons in the Palmach and the youth movement about "how, if we were strong, we would become a nation." Suddenly, seeing those grateful Jerusalemites, that theory became reality for Shadmi. Even the sullen truck drivers Bar-Shemer had forced to make this journey were transformed. Rolling down the corridor of ecstatic human beings, they understood they had saved a city.

Above all else, one memory would remain engraved upon the minds of those Jerusalemites watching the convoy stream down the streets of their city that happy April morning. It was the first glimpse many of them had of the convoy- the front bumper of the blue Ford of Harry Jaffe.

On it, Jaffe had painted six words: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem..."

~252-259 in the hardcover version of O Jerusalem!

~

This image, so brilliantly presented and seared into my mind, represents to me the tenacity, strength, kindness and resourcefulness of the nation that made Israel theirs, reclaiming the land given to them by God.

17 comments:

Interested In Zion said...

I am curious to know if as someone who has celebrated i the ways you mentioned, were you taken aback by some of the negative portrayals of the Israelis in the book?

Chana said...

Interested in Zion,

Right, so perhaps what I found most horrifying was the depiction of the attack on Deir Yassin. There is one paragraph there that is amazingly telling; Shaltiel's adjutant is speaking and he says, "You are swine" to the Sten commander. This is because of how barbaric the spectacle is (280). Eliyahu Arieli who commanded the Gadna, youth organization, states that "All of the killed, with very few exceptions were old men, women or children" (279). He believed that the dead found were "all unjust victims and none of them had died with a weapon in their hands" (279). However, looking at this from the viewpoint of Jewish history in general, I do not find the behavior, by default, as indicative of meaning anything per se (as in, I don't think the fact that sometimes the Israelis were brutal means that their cause was wrong.) After all, didn't an entire city allow Pilegesh B'Givah to be raped and abused? Wasn't there a civil war made on Binyamin that was horribly destructive? From the dawn of time, didn't Joseph's brothers sell him and persuade their father he was dead, ripped to shreds by a wild animal? And if this is the way the Jewish people acts to its own, how much the more so its enemies! The Jewish people as an entity that could act in barbaric and brutal fashion is not a new situation; we have seen that throughout time. Are there places in which the nation acts in a manner which is horrifying? Absolutely. Does it undermine their cause as a whole (their peoplehood, statehood etc?) I do not think so.

Interested In Zion said...

I never meant to suggest that. What I was asking was simply whether tis was new to you, being that your celebrations were not in a somber fashion, did this escape you all those years as well.

Chana said...

Interested in Zion,

Well, to be honest with you, I have been confused about the Israel-Arab/ Middle East Conflict for a while. When I was in 8th grade, I was horrified by the supposed atrocities committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians (I was always on the side of whoever seemed to be the underdog) and thought that someone ought to defend the poor Palestinians. Then, I simply ignored everything going on in Israel for a while, and after that, I decided to come down in support of the Israeli side. But I have not studied this conflict well enough to have any idea of how to justly determine who is right, who is wrong, and which side has behaved more badly, asit were. So I shall leave it as an unknown. That the Israelis have not always been perfect people is not new to me- we are all human, are we not? In 10th grade, I was told to read Perfidy; I have yet to read that. But I knew of the offenses committed against the Yemenite Jews (both because of an informative Bais Yaakov play put on in Chicago and because my father has never claimed in black-and-white fashion that a side must be wholly right.) What I do know is that if we apply Solomonic wisdom to the conflict, and think about which mother wants the child slit in half, well, there is one side here who sends its children out as suicide bombers, and another which does not...

Interested In Zion said...

I agree with you whole heartedly that it is definitely not a simple manner which can be decided by reading one book, as fascinating as it may be. The examples you refer to of atrocities are more related to what is known as "The Arab Israeli Conflict" and needs to be separated from what you called in the previous comment, "their cause as a whole". While the first is a question of who is "more" right or wrong and thus atrocities and the way the government will treat even their own (Yemenite children) can be brought as an argument, as far as the right to statehood those isues do not have much bearing Many Jews prefer to look at the State within the framework of Judaism and Jewish history. So while bot these monumental issues should be studies and addressed, they should never be confused.

P.S. As I am not religious, some of those references you had made in the last comment are unfamiliar to me, I will take the time and research them

Anonymous said...

you might also research the intra-zionist squabbles (haganah vs, irgun tzvai leumi ) to see why the irgun's history of what happened at dir yassin was totally ignored.
KT
Joel Rich

Chana said...

Joel Rich,

Where would one look in order to research the alternative renderings of what happened at Deir Yassin?

Interested in Zion,

To explain at least one of the references, the story of the Solomonic wisdom to which I refer appears in Kings I 3:16-28. It is explained more fully here. I think in several ways it is an apt parable. Firstly, when it comes to the issue of land, many times the Israelis have been willing to give up land (most recently the Gaza Disengagement)- we might substitute, "Please, my lord, give her the living land," whereas we have seen that the Palestinians prefer to destroy that land rather than utilize it productively - so long as the Israelis do not have it, that is enough for them. But I meant to apply it in the case of the children and the fact that we do not have Israeli children who blow themselves up, or as Golda Meir said: "Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us."

Interested In Zion said...

Thank you for the explanation

The occurrences Deir Yassin are far from simple. The issue has been hotly debated for quite a while. There was a book published that is definitely not a blatant denial of events but rather puts things in perspective and tries to cut through the inner politics as Joel put it. You should definitely take a look at it.
http://urimilstein.com/product.sc?categoryId=1&productId=13

Anonymous said...

Chana,
Try this book (and you should generally read his bio as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Story-Irgun-Menachem-Begin/dp/0840213700

Kol Tuv,
Joel Rich

Chana said...

Thanks IIZ and Joel Rich!

IIZ said...

If you do not have the Begin book, all pertinent quotes regarding DY were discussed in the statement put out by the ZOA some years ago regarding the topic

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/674327/posts

Anonymous said...

Chana,
I'd still read the book (as well as white nights) and consider booking a tour at the Begin museum when you are next in-couhtry/at home. eino domeh kria lshmia.
Shabbat Shalom
Joel Rich

הצעיר שלמה בן רפאל לבית שריקי ס"ט said...

Yeah, uh, I just wanted to mention along the lines mentioned in the post is that I was always a "big Zionist" but grew up in Borough Park, so...not a lot of support there...but when I got a bit older I thought the Modern Orthodox were better because they were "Zionists". When I got closer to their strongholds, though, I came to realize that they were just Zionists by name. They were no lovers of Zion as those the Psalmist describes. They praised Israel in their mouths but their hearts were far from it. They just wave their Israeli flags by that Israel Day parade, and buy one or two Israel bonds, but after their parade they just put away their flags and ride back to their comfy homes in Edison.

..now, while it's true that Israel would perhaps not exist if it were not for American Jewry, and that "we need" there to always be wealthy and powerful Jews in America who politically and financially support Israel, that doesn't mean there's no "chiyuv gavra" (individual responsibility) for every American Jew to take advantage of the realities and the gifts that destiny is placing in their laps; to move to Israel by the plain-loads and help to better the economic situation in G-d's holy land.

הצעיר שלמה בן רפאל לבית שריקי ס"ט said...

Chana: Oh, and uh, in regards to what you said about not having researched the Israeli-Palestinian issue:

1. In today's day I think it's very important for every Jew to personally study both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian story. It's an aspect of "da ma lehashiv". You (...especially you!) should know how to defend your people against the haters of G-d and His people.

2. Listen, uh, while it's true that the current Israeli government is not quite perfect, it's safe to say that in regards to the Palestinian issue they're aware that they're fighting a media war with the pro-Palestinian journalists as well, which necessitates them to be as just as possible weather they like it or not.

(One recent and obvious example was the bombed Mosque in Gaza that (as made evident by the ensuing explosion) was housing great amounts of weapons and ammunition.)

Gil Student said...

You read almost 600 pages in one day?

Chicagoan said...

Gil-To those of us who know chana, that is hardly surprising

Chana said...

R' Student,

I read very fast. I have been going slightly crazy and stole my brothers' books (Bustenai, Akiva, To Kill A Mockingbird, etc) because I had read all of mine already. Then I ransacked my father's library and discovered O Jerusalem! Today I read Birth Control in Jewish Law: Marital Relations, Contraception, and Abortion As Set Forth in the Classic Texts of Jewish Law by David Feldman, Homeland, and Made in Heaven. So yeah.