Isaac's Beacon

by David L. Robbins

  Yakob stepped out of the crowd with other commanders of the bloc to speak with the policeman. No one else moved.

  Hugo strode into the open, to review the dead. The killing wounds in each fighter were plain. Many hands and arms were gone, noses and ears sliced off. They all wore the uniform of the Haganah, and many bore the patch of the Palmach.

  At the dusty boots of one fighter, Hugo eased to the ground. No one told him to get away from the bodies or questioned why he’d stepped forward. It would have made no difference if they had. The dead were shared; they were his. No one could tell him they were not.

  Hugo unbuttoned the Haganah fighter’s green vest and did not look away from the desecrated face. He dug into pockets and was not gentle, for gentleness served no purpose. Hugo searched for papers, identification, to know who this battered boy was. He found a wallet.

  Hugo held up a driver’s license to the crowd. “I’ve done this before.”

  He laid the license on the fighter’s chest, then slid on his knees to the next. Another man emerged from the crowd to help. He was small-framed like Hugo, little in his hands and feet.

  By the convoy’s headlamps, the leaders learned from the policeman the story of the lamed hey. Quietly with the other man, Hugo searched the corpses. After each had his name returned, the men of the Gush wrapped the bodies in sheets, then lifted them onto stretchers to bear them into Neve Ovadia.

  Inside the library, candles were lit behind each bloodied head, a guard of honor was posted. The murmur of shovels began in the dark cemetery. The digging would take the rest of the night to bury the thirty-five. The settlers went back to their homes, or to foxholes and lookouts.

  Chapter 87

  Rivkah

  January 17

  On her way to the dining hall, Rivkah found a place to vomit. Mrs. Pappel said she had a few more weeks until she would show.

  The child must be healthy to be so demanding. Rivkah spit to clear her mouth; a hand rested on her spine. She straightened against it but did not turn to Vince, her tongue too sour. He handed her a napkin.

  “How did you find me?”

  “It’s not hard. I just never lose you.”

  Her nausea and constant hunger, the dreadful events of the last few days, Vince’s answer, all made Rivkah cry. Vince reached for her, but she felt too queasy to be held, so she pulled her sweater tighter against the evening haze; this kept his arms away. Rain had come during the day and the dusk was damp, tufted and cold.

  They returned to the dining hall and joined Hugo, Mrs. Pappel, and Yakob at a table. Fifty rifles leaned against a wall.

  In the front of the murals and a hundred haverim, Uzi, the commander of the Haganah company in Gush Etzion, began the meeting. He was sabra, and long-legged like Vince.

  “I want to tell you what happened to the lamed hey. After the Arab attack on Gush Etzion three days ago, a convoy of thirty-five Palmach and Field Force students assembled to bring you supplies. The Arabs have blocked the roads, so they had to travel on foot. The night after the attack, the thirty-five left the village of Har-Tuv for the fifteen-mile hike. Each carried a hundred-pound pack of ammo, blood plasma, and batteries. They got a late start, and maybe they should have turned back as soon as it was clear they couldn’t make the whole trip during the dark. But they pushed on, knowing how badly the supplies were needed. At dawn, with the bloc three miles away, two Arab women spotted the platoon outside the village of Surif. They spared these women, who then alerted the local militia. An Arab force of eighty attacked the platoon in the valley between Surif and Jab’a. This force grew fast; more villagers joined until the column was facing over two hundred. The British in Bethlehem knew about the attack but did nothing. Six frontal assaults were made on the platoon. All six were repulsed.”

  Uzi took a wide stance, hands behind his back, a martial posture.

  “The surviving fighters carried their wounded to the top of a hill. They battled into the afternoon, until their ammo was gone. They fought with rocks. The Arabs launched a seventh assault. The rest, you know.”

  The Haganah commander paced in front of the mural.

  “When the thirty-five failed to arrive at the bloc on schedule, we alerted the British in Bethlehem. To their credit, they sent out patrols to find the bodies. Arab villagers refused to carry Jews on their camels to the army’s trucks. The British carried our dead themselves. We owe them thanks for that.”

  Uzi lowered his head. Some of the lamed hey were well known and beloved in the bloc, including the man Uzi had replaced as commander.

  “Your settlements are on land given to the Arabs by the UN’s map. The Arabs claim this land. The Haganah does not have enough soldiers and materiel to guarantee your safety. Right now, Jerusalem is under a massive blockade. But make no mistake, you are not without advantages. The Etzion bloc holds the high ground above the Hebron road. Any Arab force trying to attack Jerusalem out of the south has to go past you. The Haganah will send as many reinforcements as we can spare to help shore up your position, to hold that road. I don’t know how many and I don’t know when. But you are the southern defense of Jerusalem. Take me at my word. There will be another battle for Gush Etzion.”

  Pacing, Uzi said, “The force that attacked the lamed hey wasn’t just an Arab militia, but a mob that ran from their villages to take part in a bloodbath. The Jewish bodies were disfigured, you saw this for yourselves. The Arabs have made it plain. They will conduct a war of extermination. They won’t allow a single Jew to live on land they claim. Consider this when you decide today whether to go or stay.”

  Uzi stopped walking to face the haverim.

  “Once Haganah fighters arrive in Gush Etzion, you will all be given the chance to leave for Jerusalem. You’ve done your share. There’ll be no judgment.”

  The Haganah commander nodded, a curt gesture, then swept out of the hall.

  Red Yakob moved to the front. He called on Hugo.

  “When will the landing strip be done?”

  “Two or three days.”

  “Make it two.”

  Hugo grabbed his rifle from the wall and left for the bulldozer in the valley.

  The first to stand was Shmuel, one of the quarrymen, chiseled into a muscular figure. “You all know I’ve got no family. Most of you don’t, either. But if you’ve got a wife in Jerusalem, a child, then go. I won’t think anything bad about you. Like Uzi said. No one will.” Shmuel bent to take his seat, then straightened. “I’m done being a refugee. I’m staying.”

  The big lad sat. A second pioneer stood, the carpenter Meir, a lean boy in round glasses. He grabbed one of the rifles from against the wall. “I’d never held a gun before. Last month I shot a man. I don’t want to do it again. No one here does. But I will.”

  At Meir’s table, Orli, who worked in the fields and with Rivkah in the clinic, rose. “It doesn’t seem right for strangers to defend our homes without us. It doesn’t feel moral.”

  More stood to speak quickly, then sit. No one addressed the gathering in long or passionate ways but chose their words carefully; what they said would affect the lives of everyone in Massuot Yitzhak.

  Yakob reminded the haverim that the war would eventually end. When it did, Gush Etzion would be inside an Arab state. No one believed that was going to change. Unless they held their lands now, they’d have little hope of staying on them after peace was restored.

  A few voices in favor of evacuation made themselves heard.

  Natan, a shop worker, one of the first settlers of Massuot Yitzhak three years ago with Rivkah and Mrs. Pappel, said, “I came to Palestine to be a citizen of a Jewish State. Life under the Arabs will be living in a new diaspora. We’ll always be in danger, always in exile. It’s not what I hoped for.”

  At the same table, his brother Ehud, one of the boys who’d defended the orchard with Vince, got to his feet.

  �
�I’ve planted a whole orchard here. If we can’t hold onto it, I want to go plant a new one where I can watch it grow.”

  Aharon stood. “I’ve got the strength left to defend my home. Not for starting over on another hilltop. You all need to know, I’ll be the last one to leave.”

  The discussion struck a lull. Rivkah patted Mrs. Pappel’s hand, to rise as the elder.

  Mrs. Pappel got to her feet. “I understand. Every bit of this place is precious. But sentiment won’t defend it. We need to ask ourselves, are we being too brave? The Haganah will defend these hills, they’ll turn your homes and fields into a fortress. The thirty-five died trying to bring us guns and ammunition, not seeds. Ehud is right. The planting is done. Massuot Yitzhak is now a bunker for the defense of Jerusalem.”

  She indicated Meir, resting her hand over her heart.

  “I’ve never killed anyone either. I’m sorry for you.”

  Mrs. Pappel stepped into the center of the hall.

  “If anyone is considering leaving, if you have any doubt, you need to go. Go to your families. It’s been said already, no one will blame you. We may even envy you. If you’re unsure, you won’t add enough to the defense of our land to risk your lives. You’re farmers. Can a soldier plant a field, can a soldier turn salt into soil? No. You can. Palestine will need you when this is over. Think before you answer. Because if you stay, you stay as soldiers.”

  Yisakhar, a burly welder, asked, “What about that Arab attack? A thousand. And we held them off.”

  “A miracle. A miracle that was denied to the convoy of ten. Denied to the lamed hey. It might be withheld from us next time.”

  Shmuel spoke again. “Mrs. Pappel, what will you do?”

  She wended through the tables. Everyone hushed as she passed on her way to Shmuel, one of her first students three years ago. Mrs. Pappel bussed his cheek.

  “I’m old. I’m like the dead in the cemetery. They’re old, too, you see? No one gets older than that. I’ll stay with them.”

  Vince pressed Rivkah’s hand. “Tell them now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Rivkah stood before the settlers of Massuot Yitzhak.

  “My father was too brave. He stayed in Vienna when I asked him to go. If he had not been, he would have a grocery store today in Tel Aviv. My mother was too brave, she believed in my father. But Austria was not our home. Europe was not your home. Palestine was. For all of us, always. This was our homeland before we were born.”

  Rivkah stepped behind Vince. She lay one hand across her belly, the other rested on Vince’s shoulder.

  “Palestine is the homeland of my child, before it is born. We will stay.”

  Chapter 88

  Vince

  February 8

  Massuot Yitzhak

  Hugo finished bulldozing the airstrip. Then he set about making landmines.

  With a team of metal workers, Hugo welded them by the hundreds. He and his boys worked at night because that was when the generators ran, to power the perimeter lights and search beacon. They adapted tools and materials already in Massuot Yitzhak: unused TNT and ammonal from the quarry, empty tins, rifle cartridges, nails, and scrap iron.

  The Haganah’s airplanes brought him detonators. Hugo designed a firing mechanism from a sharpened nail and a steel spring. His team made blast mines and fragmentation mines.

  Vince’s team buried them.

  With a squad of diggers and armed guards, Vince burrowed in the tough soil. The earth made him and his helpers work as hard to lay a mine as to plant a tree. He took meticulous notes on the location of every minefield, badly scared with his boys as they lay mines, set the primers, and moved on.

  Under a lowering sky, in a wind the bare hills did nothing to hinder, Vince drove a shovel into the dirt and left it. He sent his team up the slope to rest. He’d fetch them in two hours.

  The young workers trudged away, already tired from night patrols, guard duty, training, and digging defense works. They were hungry, for though three convoys had reached Gush Etzion this month and planes were landing on Hugo’s runway, the bloc’s food, barely enough for two hundred settlers, now had to be shared with one hundred and fifty Haganah reinforcements.

  Vince’s eight boys reached the crest of the hill. None went on to the kibbutz but stayed in the orchard. Setting up ladders and handing out shears, they set to pruning the branches. They were farmers, too.

  Vince shuddered in the wind made cooler by his sweat. Instead of climbing the incline with his team, he walked the wadi to Massuot Yitzhak’s southern slope, where he would sit and take his rest admiring Rivkah.

  He passed foxholes and trenches of boys he couldn’t name, the Haganah fighters from Jerusalem. They were as young as the kibbutzniks, university students. Vince exchanged waves and walked on.

  Across the hillside, a phalanx of pickaxes rose and fell to extend a trench to the base of Rock Hill. Vince found a rock and took a seat unnoticed by Rivkah and the haverim laboring beside her.

  She worked stroke-for-stroke, one piston in the long machine of them. On the crest of Rock Hill, a half-dozen Palmachniks kept an eye out.

  Vince closed his eyes and found rhythm in the picks. Soon, a different sound arose, an engine. Vince watched a Piper Cub line up its approach to the landing strip. The diggers paused, too; this was a pretty sight.

  The plane touched down cleanly, even in the wind. A mule cart left Kfar Etzion to come unload the cargo.

  The pilot emerged, pulling on a leather jacket, then a heavyset man stepped out. He wasn’t dressed for the raw weather of the highlands. The pilot peeled off his jacket for him, then turned to dragging boxes out of the plane. The big visitor threw a carrier bag over his shoulder and followed where the pilot pointed, up toward Massuot Yitzhak.

  He walked with his head down, straining on the incline. Vince didn’t recognize him until he was much closer.

  The reporter waved at the line of diggers, affable. The leather jacket was too small.

  Vince stood to shout, “You’re looking for me.”

  The reporter stopped. “Haas?”

  The man made his way across the slope. Vince called out, “What are you doing here?”

  The reporter lifted an arm to signal they should wait until they were close enough to speak normally. Once in front of Vince, he put his hands on wide hips and said, “Whew.”

  “Still sitting at my desk?”

  “Not for a few months. I’ve been working out of Jerusalem. How are you, Haas? You look good.”

  The reporter, fists on his waist like a sugar bowl, did a slow pan to take in his surroundings, the Hebron hills, trenches and barbed wire, Jews digging, Jews on guard, guns on top of Rock Hill, Yellow Hill, Lone Tree Hill.

  “You ready to go home?”

  “What?”

  “Dennis sent me to come get you. Once the plane’s unloaded, we’re gone.”

  Rivkah climbed the hill. The reporter read Vince’s darting eyes.

  “Look, you don’t have to leave altogether. If you don’t want to go back to New York, Dennis said you can work out of Tel Aviv. Haas, everybody knows about the attacks on the convoys. The big attack on the bloc. I’ve talked to the cops, the army; I’ve talked to everybody. You’re surrounded by Arabs. They’re coming back for this place. Dennis doesn’t want you here for that. I don’t think you want to be here for that.” He looked around again. “I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

  Rivkah skirted the big reporter to stand with Vince. The reporter said “Hello,” but was ignored.

  He said to Vince, “You’ve done your bit.”

  Rivkah asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m from his newspaper.”

  “New York.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What do you want?”

  Vince put a ha
nd into the reporter’s chest, a small shove. “Give us a minute.”

  “Okay. But….” The reporter motioned at his wrist, as if to a watch. The plane wouldn’t stay much longer, nor would he. The reporter galumphed down the hill.

  Rivkah asked, “Is he your friend?”

  “No.”

  “Has he come to take you away?”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “What did you say?”

  Vince spread his hands. “What do you think I said?”

  She walked across the slope, away from the trench, Vince on her heels. She mopped her brow with a kerchief. He doffed his jacket to drape it over her shoulders; she’d taken hers off while digging. Rivkah shrugged it away.

  Vince said, “Come on,” appealing. She let him cover her against the wind.

  Rivkah did not speak until they reached the quarry road. She stopped on the path. From here, Vince could turn one way to the airplane, the other to Massuot Yitzhak.

  “You should go.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Your life has come to fetch you. Did you think it wouldn’t?”

  “It’s not just my life anymore. Listen. We can go together. To Tel Aviv. You and the baby will be safe.”

  Rivkah slipped his jacket from around her shoulders. She held it out to him, to say, take this with you to Tel Aviv.

  Vince said, “The other mothers left. Why not you?”

  “Their children were sent away. The women chose to go with them.”

  “Do you think I want you standing in that trench shooting at another thousand Arabs? They’re coming back. They’ll be ready next time.”

  Rivkah pointed with Vince’s jacket at the diggers downhill. “Tell me who you want in that trench instead of me. Aharon? Yakob? Hugo? Missus Pappel?”

  Again, she wrapped Vince’s coat around herself, accepting that it was cold.