Chapter 44
May twenty-third in Dallas, Texas, promised to be hot that afternoon, but the air-conditioned restaurant felt cool to Caleb’s father at noon. His friend across the table would provide the perspective he wanted since he’d had theological training in a Dallas seminary before becoming an assistant pastor of their large church.
During their meal, Joseph explained to Pastor Sam the conversation he and Helen had with their son a week ago that so upset them. “When the subject of Israel becoming a nation for the first time in two thousand years came up, instead of being excited and happy about it, he told of terrible killings of Arabs in Haifa by Jewish militias. Also that he knows Arab Christians that can trace their roots back many centuries. He questioned whether the Jews returning to the land means that we are in the end times and that Jesus will come back in our own generation. Do you know about all this?”
“Yes I do, Joe. Also, I visited your son there, as you know. Okay. Let’s take these one at a time. About the Jews returning to the land.” Sam stopped, lowering his head to attack his burrito. “We assume that the current Jewish people are the descendants of the tribe of Judah in Bible times. Some people don’t agree that all the promises in the Old Testament of the Jews returning to the land apply to the current Zionists, but we do. Some say that is a political movement only and that Judaism is not involved. In other words, that we are mistakenly mixing politics and religion.”
“Is it good to mix them, Sam?”
“I’m not sure in general, maybe not in the Muslim world. It can lead to a lot of injustice. But we conservatives seem to find synchrony between our religious and political views here in America. The political Jews of today are just fulfilling the old prophecies in their part of the Bible.”
“If we ever have a Catholic president, we’d be mixing religion and politics wouldn’t we?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, and we don’t want the Pope influencing him. So in that case, it would be bad.
“But to go on, I’d never heard of Arab Christians in Palestine until your son told me of them. Didn’t know there were any. I had always assumed that any people left in the Holy Land were Muslims, and mostly Bedouins.”
“Caleb knows some Arab Christians, so they must exist.”
“I guess so. I traveled with Jewish guides so we had no contact with them.” Pastor Sam paused to take a couple of bites of his lunch. “There are lots of terrorists among them and it is dangerous to go to Arab villages. But yes, there are Syrian Christians and Egyptians and in most other countries of the Middle East. But we are not part of the World Council of Churches so we never meet them. Let’s see, what else did you say that Caleb reported?”
“Okay. He said that Jewish militias had killed many Arabs in Haifa, and that he picked up bodies there and tended to wounded people, apparently civilians. Have you heard of such things going on?”
“No. We have never heard or read anything like that. We do know that the persecuted people, special to God, have a right to the land. So whatever they do must be okay. I’m sure that your son’s experience is unusual. I suppose any barrel can have its bad apples. But no, we celebrate with the persecuted Jewish people that they at long last have a home they can call their own, ‘a people without a land for a land without a people.’ That has been the motto of the Zionist movement for a long time, to move back to the empty land God gave them. And make the desert bloom.”
“So you think what Caleb experienced was an isolated event, and not representative of the new nation.”
“Of course. We know that. Our President Truman knows that as well, or we would not have been the first nation of the world to recognize the state of Israel. It’s exciting to think that the biblical country under King David is now taking its rightful place among the nations of the world. As evangelical Christians and dispensationalists, we know we are therefore in the end times and that Jesus will return in our lifetime. Exciting. Think of it!”
***
Every step his stretcher-bearers took caused pain in Eldad’s thigh. It throbbed. He had trouble thinking about the attack because of it. Occasional sniper fire erupted. He had not relinquished his command. He saw his soldiers running around wildly, firing randomly into homes, darting behind walls and bushes, seemingly unregulated. Others tried to find the occasional Arab sniper shooting at them from a house.
He must take command. Pulling up his radio he ordered his lieutenants to have their troops herd all the inhabitants of Tantura down to the beach. He would meet with his officers there and together they would decide what to do with them. Somehow the idea of allowing an open gate of escape for the Tanturians hadn’t worked. So they were left with a large population of people trapped.
Eldad winced at the pain, but continued, shouting into his radio phone, “Round up all the Arab snipers you can find! There are others we have to deal with as well, criminals, other terrorists, older men who fought in the 1936 uprising.” He clicked off for a moment, moaning in severe pain and then continued. “Shimshon Mashvitz, the intelligence officer is coming from his nearby village. He has the information we need to take care of the situation. Our local collaborator, the guy with a hood will point out who we’ll have to eliminate.”
He clicked off the radio. The pain seemed to increase. Seeing Valerie walking alongside his stretcher startled Eldad. He momentarily had forgotten her. He hoped she hadn’t heard the radio conversation on his end. It hit him with force, this Jewish lady, his real mother. She seemed to really care about him. Nothing made any sense. His troops running amok. Out of control. These Jewish women, Sabria and Valerie, in an Arab village.
Despite the pain in his thigh, Eldad’s mind raced. He had never had anyone really care for him. Every encounter in life always ended in a struggle for power, every person really only self-interested. But she showed she cared for him without anything to gain. Probably saved his life in Qatamon, and now in Tantura endangering herself to help him. His mother. Here at what could be the end of his life, he had found her. No, she had found him. But back to everything gone wrong. He couldn’t enforce the command he had just ordered. Nor could he stop it.
***
Their stroll in the setting sun with Sabria, the harbor, the fishing boats, the beach all brought memories to Caleb as he marched along with an armed militia guard. But now only several days later, this same area of Tantura bordering the sea bristled with soldiers and people of the village in panic, some wounded and dying. Some fresh corpses. Terrified, to him the whole scene seemed surreal.
Caleb had no idea what would happen. The soldier who threatened to shoot him didn’t understand English and that he was an American. Besides, in the melee’ the noise of shooting, explosions, and the house burning, drowned out his aborted plea. He would just go along. He had no choice. Somewhere along the line he would be able to make it plain that he was from the US and that any harm to him could become an international incident. He would not panic. He must not. He could get shot.
But another part of him looked on the experience as fascinating. Here he was in the midst of a tragedy that he could write about and tell when and if he arrived back in America. To be able to relate real life experience of the catastrophe that his people at home didn’t understand, would make the event worth suffering through.
Caleb tripped on a rock and nearly fell, stumbling forward, ran a few steps instinctively to catch his balance. His guard fired, and Caleb heard a whistling sound. Apparently the bullet had just grazed his left ear. He felt it for blood. Nothing. He raised his hands into the air. The soldier shouted something as he kept walking forward. They continued moving toward a large group of people in the street and overflowing onto the beach past the harbor.
Finally stopping, Caleb looked for Sabria and the family. The large crowd with people still coming along with armed soldiers made it difficult to find them. What a tragedy, he thought. This family being cut adrift from their own harbor into the storm, uncertain of survival and having no place to go. For what crime? Wh
at had any of these people done to deserve this cruelty?
And Sabria, both brave and beautiful. She has been through so much, first as a spectator, then a helper, and now a victim. He must find her and her family. He couldn’t just escape if they let him because he was a foreign student. He couldn’t flee and return home. His heart ached for Sabria and her family. He would help the family in whatever way he could. Leave Sabria to be used by some soldier? He’d seen some women taken already. It made him shudder to think of it. He loved Sabria and would stand by her no matter what happened.
Chapter 45
Sabria, along with the rest of her family and Rana’s, turned to the left as they approached the waterfront of Tantura. Several hundred people stood waiting on a street just south of the fishing boats and next to the beach. She looked around at the nearby mass of people. She had stayed near her grandfather Adnan who stumbled and nearly fell several times as they climbed a rise to an open area. As they ascended Sabria saw soldiers separating out the men up to about fifty years of age, and sending them down toward the waterfront. Ilias among them. She could see him scanning the men standing below, looking for his son Jamal as he descended the street to the harbor. His wife Rana did the same, and spotted her husband Ilias.
Hava, shouting to her daughter, pointed to Sabria’s father, Khalid. He waited in a separate group of men. Then she saw Jamal in that same group. Smaller, that group seemed singled out from the rest. Sabria watched Ilias who tried to get to his son through the mass of men in the larger crowd of prisoners, but soldiers stopped him. Puzzled, she wondered why the two groups, one smaller with Jamal and her father Khalid, and another farther north, larger and away from the beach with Ilias in it.
Then she saw Eldad on a stretcher on the slope above and to her right, propped up to a sitting position on top of a wall where he could see all his men and the prisoners below. Valerie stood by him and suddenly pointed into the larger crowd of men. Sabria followed where Eldad now looked with binoculars. She spotted Caleb. She held her breath. Was he being singled out for . . . for what? Eldad now had his radio out. She watched intently as soldiers muscled their way through the crowd of men, one of them with a small radio-telephone to his ear. He moved slowly finally reaching Caleb.
Sabria watched. She couldn’t breathe. The guy with the radio tapped Caleb on the shoulder and gestured for him to follow. Threading their way to the open street, she saw with alarm that one of the other soldiers raised his weapon toward Caleb and suddenly with a gesture of “go” and pointed up the slope. Caleb held his hands up as he turned and began to walk. He headed toward her. Sabria held her breath. Would they shoot when he had walked a bit. He kept going at a steady pace. “Run!” she shouted without thinking. Then she realized he had heard her as he lifted his head and saw her in the crowd of mostly women and children. He shook his head slightly. She noticed and realized how foolish it would be to run. Tears came to her eyes as she saw him walk slowly and deliberately up the hill toward her. She began to cry. It was too much. She gave in to all that was happening. He continued his steady pace until he reached her. They embraced as she laid her head on his shoulder sobbing.
After several moments they released as Sabria looked up at Caleb through the tears with a questioning shrug. “What happened? Why did they come to get you out after you had been arrested?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten through to them that I am an American and not Arab. I tried to reach for my passport, but they apparently thought I was trying to get to a pistol. They nearly shot me. I couldn’t understand their language, I think Yiddish, and they couldn’t understand English. I tried to shout ‘American’ earlier but one guy clapped his hand over my mouth and wrestled me to the ground. So I assumed they didn’t want to know who I am.”
“Did you know Eldad was shot by my father? So Eldad is down there on a stretcher. She pointed to him. And guess who is right by him?”
Caleb looked, and squinted. “My distant vision is not like yours, but it looks like Valerie standing below him.”
“Yes. I think she told Eldad you are an American.”
“That may be why they came to take me out of the prisoner group? Wow! I may owe her my life.” Caleb kept squinting and grimaced. “What is going on with those two enemies?”
“They may not be enemies.”
Caleb raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. “You are not serious.”
“I am, but I’ll explain later. Do you see my father down there? Look at the smaller group of men guarded by the soldiers. He’s on the right side. And Jamal is there too, standing at the edge of the group on the left. They probably don’t know each other is there.”
“What is going on? Why are they separate? I waited in the larger group I think. I didn’t know of a second set of prisoners.”
“We’ll have to watch. I don’t know what they’ll do with the men.”
“Where are the others of your family?”
“They’re here.”
Caleb looked around. Nearby in the crowd he spotted Rana whose tear-filled eyes were watching her son, Jamal. Ilias still stood in the larger company, separated from Jamal’s. On the other side of Sabria, her mother along with the younger children stared in the same direction to watch their father Khalid who remained unmoving not far from Jamal. Judith and her brood stood up the slope just behind the family with Adnan who sat down appearing exhausted.
***
Caleb watched Jamal and the collection of prisoners that surrounded him and Khalid. He wondered why the selection of a separate group. What was different about those men? It suddenly dawned on him that both Jamal and Khalid now had a record of aggression against the militias, Jamal in Tel Aviv and Khalid shooting Eldad. Perhaps that explained it, that the smaller group were singled out for different punishment.
Then he looked down and to the right. He saw Eldad with his radio held to his ear. Then below near Jamal, a portly older man with a yarmulke walked back and forth. He had a whip and used it on the unarmed men in the smaller group including Jamal. The men rushed backward to get out of range of the flashing cord. He continued using it as the crowd compressed, but the fringe of the group including Jamal could not escape the lashes. The man laughed at the newly injured men. He then picked out about ten of them including Jamal, and with armed soldiers, marched them to the beach. The ten, forced to stand in a line, faced the sparkling sea. Caleb heard a shout, then with rifles raised behind the men, ten soldiers fired. All ten prisoners dropped to the sand, immobile. Other armed soldiers rushed forward, kicked the bodies with their feet, rolling them over. One soldier raised his rifle and put another bullet into the heart of a man who moved his arm. Then they dragged the bodies down the beach.
Sabria screamed as she saw Jamal fall and then a soldier grabbed his feet to pull him over the sand. She hid her eyes and sobbed as Caleb tried to comfort her.
“My dear friend, my schoolmate, my dear Jamal!” she shouted. “They’ve killed him! For what? For trying to save our country, our land! You brutes! How could you do this to him? To us?” Sabria collapsed to the ground, her body shaking with sobs. Caleb knelt to hold her tightly. He had tears too. Jamal’s mother Rana stood behind them silently in grief too deep for words.
After a few moments Caleb observed the next pool of ten men lined up and shot. More soldiers appeared to guard the collection of remaining victims around Khalid. Suddenly several young men ran trying to escape. They shot all six as they ran, multiple times as several on the ground still moved. Caleb looked down at her as he held Sabria close. He could feel her trembling and weak, her knees starting to buckle occasionally as they watched each succeeding group of ten or so village neighbors forced to line up on the beach with the same result.
One lieutenant with a radio to his ear seemed to be in charge of the murders, ordering each guarded cluster to line up. He walked back and forth as the soldiers proceeded with their grisly work. He appeared agitated. Caleb turned to see Eldad sitting up on his stretcher, holding his rif
le, similarly agitated and gesticulating wildly with his free hand. Only one clutch of Arab men remained of the nearly one hundred originally. It was forced at gunpoint to walk to the area of the beach in front of the firing squad. Khalid would be the last executed. Staring in horror, Caleb noticed Eldad raise his rifle from his stretcher, and with its sharp crack, the lieutenant with the radio fell and didn’t move. A nearby soldier brought his weapon up and fired at Eldad who fell back, dropping his rifle, bleeding from his mouth. Caleb saw Valerie reach up to turn his face toward her, burying her face on his unmoving chest. He could hear her loud sobs from the distance in the hush of a crowd suddenly quiet at the shock of events. “My son, my son. I would have died for you!”
Chapter 46
In the stunned silence after seeing both the executioner and his commander shot dead, the prisoners quickly broke into pandemonium as Arab men began running uphill to their families. Sabria watched in disbelief as rifle shots rang out and several men fell. She suddenly saw her father, Khalid, running wildly toward them, breaking quickly to one side and another to avoid the bullets. As he approached the families watching he spotted his own and streaked toward them. The gunfire had stopped as he tripped and fell, nearly knocking Sabria over. She kneeled down beside him, sobbing uncontrollably.
After comforting her father still breathing hard, she rose to survey the scene. Soldiers appeared from everywhere surrounding the Tantura survivors. They had nowhere to run. Escape became impossible. Soldiers forced the remaining men below her off into the street toward the fishing boats. They passed Eldad’s stretcher and one soldier fired a round into his body. By this time Valerie had left her son, and Sabria saw her rushing up the hill toward them. She broke through the line of soldiers guarding the families. They let her go.
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