by James Srodes
Her father Ephraim had at first been kept in ignorance of what she was doing and, still grieving for the loss of his wife, he showed no interest. But finally she had made him aware and took comfort that while he remained on the sidelines, he seemed to approve. At least at first. Zvi began to complain to Ephraim that he should take charge at Athlit, that Sarah was causing alarm among the elders of Zichron Ya’akov with her sudden unescorted trips away to who-knew-where. And whenever Naaman Belkind arrived with fresh intelligence from the south, he had begun asking pointed questions about Absalom and his absence.
Her only reliable companion was something of a surprise. A local youth named Liova Schneersohn had accompanied Aaron to Constantinople the summer before, posing as his secretary. His real function was to stay there after Aaron set out for London and Cairo, and serve as a communications link so that messages sent through contacts in Berlin could be passed on to Sarah and Absalom. But by the end of 1916, Schneersohn had despaired of hearing any more from Aaron. Short of funds, and after warnings that Turkish authorities were suspicious of his identity papers, he returned to Haifa as the servant of a German officer. From there he ran away to Athlit and turned up at Sarah’s door in early February.
Sarah welcomed Liova at first. He knew the area and knew how to arrange to meet other spy ring members without running afoul of Turkish police or nosy neighbors. Most of the time, however, he kept watch from Aaron’s studio on the top floor of the station for signs that the British were trying to contact them from the sea. One problem developed. Liova soon fell in love with Sarah and, despite her discouraging him, he remained devoted to her. It was an inconvenient complication for Sarah, whose emotions already were under enough of a strain from worrying over the whereabouts of her brother and the fate of Absalom, the love of her life.
She had a brief respite of happiness when Aaron’s second attempt to reach Athlit was successful. The navy had only provided Aaron with a small fishing trawler and while two young swimmers recruited from the Palestinian refugee community made it ashore, the captain of the vessel panicked at the rough seas and refused to wait for their return.
Sarah at first was delighted at the arrival of the young messengers, for they brought along with gold and fresh orders a personal gift: Aaron’s magnifying glass and his penknife as a sign that he was back and in contact. But then she faced being stuck with the two boys, and her worries returned when they said they had never heard of Absalom having reached Egypt. The two strangers were a temporary problem to be kept from sight during the day until it could be arranged to safely spirit them away at night back to their home villages and their families. The money, a few hundred pounds, was an enormous relief—it meant she could pay the back wages of the loyal Arab workers at the station and replenish the scant supplies of food available for Ephraim at home. But most important was the proof that Aaron was back. She would carry on.
On the next attempt in early March, the Managem paused off Athlit during daylight, and after exchanging signals went on its patrol up the coast before returning under cover of darkness. Along with Aaron, a recovered Josef Lishansky was aboard—and it was he who was rowed ashore and greeted by Liova Schneersohn and another veteran, Gideonite Reuven Schwartz. Aaron had insisted on being in the skiff that beached and after an emotional reunion, Liova joined him to return to the ship.
Once aboard, Schneersohn almost at once asked about Absalom, and Aaron broke the tragic news to him. While the two comrades were mourning, one of the ship’s officers approached them to ask what code signal password for the Athlit group should be used for future visits. Liova had included a pocket-sized Hebrew Bible that had been a gift from Absalom in his possessions and he turned to it. It was a custom to let the Bible fall open to a random page and to seek a sign from some line of Scripture. The book fell open to the Book of Samuel and counting down seven lines on the page they read the passage where Samuel, the high priest, rebukes King Saul, saying “Nitzach Israel lo Ishakari,” or, “The Eternity of Israel shall not lie.” Taking the Hebrew initials, the two chose NILI as the group’s name, and while the British continued to refer to it as “the A Organization,” the NILI name quickly spread among the spy band as a brave call to arms.
Meanwhile at Athlit, Lishansky broke the terrible news of Absalom’s death to Sarah. Lishansky’s bags of British gold coins and supplies were vitally needed, but they were overshadowed by the loss of one of the group’s mythic figure. Sarah must have been shattered by the rush of encouragement and horror that Josef brought. In tears he told her the details of his trek across the desert with Absalom. He told how the guide had deserted them, about the Bedouin ambush and running gunfight that had followed. He sobbed as he told how he struggled to drag Absalom’s body away despite his own wounds, and how his friend had died in his arms. Through it all, Sarah remained stoic as if frozen. At the end, she told Josef that above all, he should not blame himself, then she sent him downstairs to rest and locked the door of her upper room to grieve alone.
Afterward, Sarah rarely spoke to anyone about her sorrow over Absalom’s death. But in the next exchange of intelligence sent when the Managem returned, Sarah included two letters, one with intelligence written before Josef had come ashore, the other a reflection on the heartbreaking news. The second letter showed just how iron-willed she had become.
She wrote, “Enclosed here you will find the letter I wrote when I still knew nothing. Today I already know about our horrible disaster. But it is with a brave heart, filled with feelings of revenge that I want to continue his work. The disaster is too overwhelming to make comfort. But with courage God will let us live so that we may carry on. Nobody else here knows. . . .”
In the next exchange she told Aaron, “It is hard for me to put down on paper what I feel. . . . It is terrible and there is no comfort. But I must tell you that I am stronger than iron and very cool. I would never have believed that I could find such strength in myself. There are times when I feel as though I am dead or a worthless vessel, for how is it possible that I am able to restrain myself in the face of such an awful sacrifice? Maybe it is the work allotted to me, the debt I owe to continue the work our dear one began. Yes, I want only to continue. And revenge.”
Later, in July, she was able to write a consoling letter to Rivka, still in New York. “Even if we succeed in our work and the redemption of Israel will have been achieved by such a sacrifice, I would not wish for such a sacrifice. However much we talk and however many tears we shed our hearts will not be lightened. . . . But why should I pour salt on the wound. You, Rivka, are miserable and suffering more than any of us. . . .”
One thing that emerged from the tragedy: Sarah resolved that she alone would remain in command of an organization she had expanded on her own. Whatever Aaron had intended, and whatever arguments Josef made, to hand over the reins of the group would be a betrayal of the memory of the man she had allowed herself to love. If tragedy had left her alone, so be it. She would carry on.
CHAPTER NINE
Sarah and NILI Make a Difference
April–July 1917
Sarah and Josef Lishansky, Cairo, May 1917
In early March, the British High Command finally recognized the “A Organization” as its primary source of reliable intelligence from Syria–Palestine. The Managem began to make regular voyages to Athlit, bringing questions for specific information along with supplies, and, most important, twenty-pound leather sacks of British gold sovereign coins. The money was doubly important, for it meant Sarah could pay her Arab workers their back wages and Josef Lishansky could distribute tangible aid to the nearly destitute Jewish villages along the length of the coast.
Now time suddenly became important for the Cairo planners for up-to-the-minute intelligence. There were discussions about an attempt to send radio telegraphy equipment to Athlit, but it was rightly judged that it was too far for the broadcast technology of the time to make it possible. Instead, Sarah was surprised and a bit amused to have one of the early de
liveries of supplies from the Managem bring crates of homing pigeons and instructions for their care and use for putting enciphered messages into tiny capsules that were fixed to one of the bird’s legs.
Raising and training homing pigeons has for centuries been a popular hobby for breeders who raced them both in Europe and the Middle East. With a unique navigational skill, the birds can find their way home over distances of up to a thousand miles. Early warriors including Genghis Khan used them and the British Army had a special corps devoted to their training and use. Sarah received an official pamphlet that detailed how to construct the coops to house the creatures. Since the distance between Athlit and the EMSIB offices in Port Said was just under three hundred miles, NILI could now get critical news of troop movements there and on to Cairo in a day instead of two weeks.
The British also allowed Aaron to include money that had begun to come to him from his American Zionist supporters, who were unaware of his spying activities. While the new flow of funds did alleviate the near-starvation conditions in Palestine, it totaled a pittance when compared to the hundreds of thousands of pounds the British were investing to ignite the still-smoldering Arab Revolt.
There had been a problem immediately after Aaron’s first successful landing at the station. Lishansky stayed behind and assumed that he would take command of the spy group, and at first was offended when Sarah flatly refused to hand over authority to him. He finally was convinced to follow her orders and was mollified when his role became more public as the dispenser of aid, while Sarah remained at Athlit logging in the intelligence information that arrived and organizing it for translation once it reached Cairo.
First, however, toward the end of March, the two set out on a marathon journey through the entire region. With their loyal Arab driver Abu Farid and the Aaronsohn family’s sturdy carriage, they first traveled north to Damascus and took a room in the most prominent hotel there, which was the gathering place for off-duty German officers. Josef posed as a businessman and spent time in the bar while Sarah, more decorously, would take tea in the lobby or pretend to be writing letters. Since both were fluent in German it was easy enough to strike up conversations and overhear gossip.
Eight days later they arrived in Jerusalem, and found the modern Hotel Fast to be the favorite of young German officers on leave from the front. They repeated their earlier tactic and in two days gathered priceless details enabling them to produce a report estimating, among other details, that the Germans had roughly 50,000 troops throughout Syria–Palestine, along with their locations. They also acquired a map of the fortifications around Jerusalem, locations of artillery and machine guns as well as gossip about troop movements, changes in commanders, and the almost universal complaints about the corruption and incompetence of the Turks of the Fourth Army.
As they traveled between Damascus and Jerusalem they noted new bridges, the state of roads, and the various depots where the Turks stored ammunition and fodder for their draft animals. Along the way they assigned new tasks to those NILI members who would be active providers of information and recruited more casual sources who were to support the active spies. The most important news was about Turkish plans to reinforce their positions along the Gaza, which ran from that city to its flank at Beersheba. This was vital intelligence since General Murray planned a major attack on those very positions in the first weeks of April.
One unexpected problem cropped up. While they were in the south they stopped at Rishon-le-Zion, where Naaman Belkind had assumed control of the NILI agents. When he came to a rendezvous with Sarah he was upset to find Lishansky with her and acting as an equal. He demanded to know what had happened to his cousin Absalom Feinberg, and dismissed their story of his going to England for flight training. He told Sarah privately that he suspected Lishansky had somehow betrayed Absalom, and was only temporarily mollified by her assurances.
The twelve-day journey was an exhausting ordeal, for even in the comfort of a carriage the main road was so rutted and ruined by the Turkish transports, and outside the main cities the accommodations were so primitive, that the malnourished Sarah got little rest. While the trip had been an intelligence success, it proved a public relations mistake. All the suspicious villagers of Zichron Ya’akov saw was Sarah and Josef in their stylish clothes arriving at the house on Founders Street after what appeared to be a scandalous holiday. Both Sarah and Josef were married to others, after all, so the envious drew their own conclusions and gossip flowed.
Oblivious to the suspicions of their neighbors, Sarah and Josef hastened to organize their up-to-date intelligence into reports in time for the next contact. Back at the Athlit station, they drafted a summary of all they had seen and heard. Then they combed through the trove of information that had arrived recently from other operatives.
The resulting file was enormous in bulk and the most current portrait of the state of the Fourth Army that could be obtained. Indeed, it was probably a better grasp of what the Turkish Army in the region was capable of than Djamal Pasha could have obtained from his own sources. When it arrived in Cairo ten days later, General Clayton’s staff was able to circulate what in military parlance is called an order of battle.
Crediting “our most trusted source in Palestine,” the document reported the precise number of troops in Djamal’s army, but perhaps more importantly, it gave a realistic appraisal of the number of “effectives,” soldiers who were actually fit enough and properly armed to be brought into action. The NILI reports, astonishingly, gave a precise listing of all the artillery, machine guns, airplanes, motorized transports, and rifles—which were in such short supply that many units had two infantrymen share a single weapon.
Aaron, in some of his early questions that he sent ashore to Sarah, admonished her to strictly report without comment or opinion on what the group was observing. He also chided her to require that the NILI operatives include in their reports more information about agricultural developments, reports on crops, rainfall, and other phenomena. Later he softened his instructions when the British intelligence analysts praised Sarah’s reports that included German officer gossip and signs of rising public opposition to the orgy of public hangings that Djamal ordered to suppress dissent. There was even laughter when she reported that Djamal had ordered a new design of helmet worn by Fourth Army infantrymen and then patented it and lobbied the two other Pashas to make it standard issue throughout the Turkish Army. This example of Djamal’s greed was considered excessive even by Turkish standards and caused a public opinion backlash that rippled all the way back to Constantinople.
The NILI spies also caused excitement among the senior British commanders with the first news that the Germans had begun to weaken their presence in Palestine. For much of the war the Kaiser had sent important senior commanders to provide the organizational skills and strategic planning the Turks had lacked. Equally important, German troops had bolstered key fortified points.
But now NILI reported that some of the better known German generals and whole units of line troops were being transferred back to the Western Front in France. This new information was a double insight of the highest importance. It meant the German resources were so stretched in France that forces were being brought back from elsewhere to boost the strength of the next huge offensive expected that spring. The Allies fully anticipated that as the Americans edged ever closer to joining the war, the Germans would attempt an all-out attack on the Western Front designed to force a victorious settlement before the tide could turn.
Equally cheering, a drawdown of German forces in Palestine also could reflect a growing doubt among planners in Berlin that their Turkish ally could ever seize the Suez Canal or force the British out of Egypt. If so, the time was quickly coming when a British attack might actually overrun Turkish positions and make the politically important capture of Jerusalem possible.
Harried by demands from London, General Murray had carefully reorganized his forces into a new formation that coupled foot infantry, mounted troo
ps, and airplanes, called the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF). In planning his attack he selectively picked those NILI intelligence items arriving from Athlit that showed the weaknesses of the Fourth Army, and ignored the insights that argued for attacking the Turkish flank positions. As always, Murray was unwilling to try a flank attack on Beersheba because it was firmly believed that a large enough force could not be moved over the desert approaches where there was no water, despite Aaron’s continued insistence that he had mapped the closely guarded wells of the Bedouin.
Instead, on March 26, a combined force of four divisions of British and ANZAC troops hit the Turks at their strongest point—the ancient coastal city of Gaza. The ground forces were bolstered by more than a dozen Royal Flying Corps planes dropping bombs on the city and on Turk gun emplacements. Even though the EEF managed to seize control of outer suburbs of Gaza, Murray’s field commanders fretted over the approach of darkness and reports of Turkish reinforcements, and withdrew back to their old lines.
On April 17–19, the Second Battle of Gaza was fought. Again, Murray hurled the EEF against the strongest points of the Fourth Army positions. This time, however, despite early gains by the assault, the Turks had used the respite to add more artillery and machine guns. The air war also tilted their way with the arrival of half a dozen new German fighter planes that took control. The EEF suffered nearly fifty percent casualties until, hurt and discouraged, they were withdrawn back into their Egyptian defensive line. Ultimately London would decide that having twice snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, General Murray would have to go and soon. He would be brought home, given medals and a promotion, and spend the rest of the war in charge of a training depot.