One day my mother asked Louis what would happen if Rommel’s troops tried to reach Palestine. Louis’s answer was blunt.
“We would have to sort it out ourselves. This is what we are preparing for. The leaders of the Yishuv have been taking measures for quite some time for us to be on the alert. The British know that they will need our help.”
The news that came from Europe made us extremely depressed. We knew that the Germans were taking the Jews to concentration camps, but we could not have imagined even in our worst nightmares that these were really extermination camps. We knew that Jews disappeared, just as we knew about the tragedy of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, or the persecution that they were suffering throughout Europe.
What the men of the Yishuv did from the start was to ask the British for permission to fight alongside them.
The British didn’t trust us then, so only very few of us were allowed to fight on the front lines, but some were accepted into auxiliary roles. Then the British changed their minds and even helped create the Palmach, a commando unit made up from members of the Haganah.
My confidence in human nature was lessened by two events that marked me. The first was an argument between Louis and Mikhail and Moshe. It affected me not because of the argument itself, but because of its cause.
We were having Sabbath dinner, and although we didn’t normally invite Moshe and Eva, on that occasion we did so. My mother and Marinna had made the food, and along with our two guests at the table were Igor, Ben, and me. We didn’t know if Louis was going to turn up, but we had become accustomed to not waiting for him.
The dinner was uneventful until Louis and Mikhail arrived. They didn’t even say good evening. Louis stood still, looking with hatred at Moshe, and Mikhail went over to him and grabbed him by the neck, forcing him to his feet.
We were dumbstruck. No one understood what was happening. Mikhail pushed Moshe up against the wall, then gave him a punch and kicked him in the stomach, forcing him to double up and fall to the ground. Eva leapt to her feet and ran shouting toward her husband. My mother and Marinna also got to their feet and asked what was going on, and Igor tried to get between Moshe and Mikhail.
Mikhail was like a raging bear, he got away from Igor and carried on punching Moshe, who had no time to respond to any of the blows he was receiving.
“For God’s sake, stop! Stop! You’re mad!” Eva shouted, trying to hold her husband and protect him with her own body. But Mikhail pulled her to one side and threw her to the floor as well. Mikhail gave Moshe a few seconds to stand up and defend himself. They fought so violently that the room became a battlefield.
Ben and I were dumbfounded and didn’t know what to do. Louis had lit a cigarette and was looking at this violence that could put an end to Moshe with no emotion at all on his face.
My mother got between the two of them in the end, she knew that Mikhail would not dare lift a hand against her.
“Enough! That’s enough! Do you want to kill him?” she shouted.
“Yes! I’m going to kill him!”
My mother pushed Mikhail and he stood in front of her with his face twisted.
“No one will kill anyone in this house. And if you try, then you will have to kill me first.”
Louis went up to Mikhail and put a hand on his shoulder, to calm him down.
“You will leave tonight, Moshe. You will leave forever,” he said, and his voice was cold as ice.
“But why? Why?” Eva said as she cried and held her husband’s head, which was little more than a bloody pulp.
“Because we don’t deal with murderers,” Louis replied calmly.
“What happened?” Igor asked, his face twisted at the sight of such violence.
“His friends from the Stern Gang have decided to fight on their own terms. And that means putting us all in danger. If you carry on attacking the British and hiding from them, then you will have to hide from us, too. We will not allow you to kill innocent people,” Louis said, and breathed in a mouthful of smoke.
“Moshe is not a member of the Stern Gang! You know he’s with the Irgun!” Eva shouted.
“Two sides of the same coin. You people from the Irgun and Lehi make me sick,” Mikhail shouted.
“Two days ago, Moshe met with the Stern Gang. It was not the first time he did so. Maybe your husband has swapped the Irgun for Lehi, the Stern Gang, and you don’t know about it,” Louis said.
“Speaking to someone from the Stern Gang doesn’t make you a part of it,” Igor said, upset by the scene.
“Alright, then we’ll ask Moshe: Have you left the Irgun to join Lehi? It’s a simple question, yes or no.”
Marinna passed a glass of water to Eva so that Moshe could drink something, even a few sips.
“I’m not with Lehi. I’m still with the Irgun,” Moshe said in a voice that showed how much pain he was in.
“Right . . . So what were you doing talking to that man from Lehi?”
“He’s a friend of my oldest son,” Moshe managed to say as he coughed and spat a stream of blood from his mouth.
Eva looked at him in shock and I realized that whatever her husband had done, Eva knew nothing about it.
“Your oldest son lives in Haifa,” Louis replied.
“Yes, he does,” Moshe replied without adding any further details.
“So your son is in Lehi.”
“I didn’t say that. Is anyone responsible for what his friends do? They met each other through the Irgun. This man decided to follow Stern, and that’s it.”
“And what were you talking about?”
“I’m not in Lehi, I promise,” Moshe insisted.
“Tell us what you were talking about with this man.” Louis was giving an order.
Moshe did not reply. Eva, with my mother’s help, pulled him to his feet.
“Now go, Moshe, and try not to cross our path again. We will work with the British to get you all sent to prison. We don’t want to deal with terrorists, much less with traitors. If you are still here at dawn, I will hand you over to the British myself,” Louis declared.
When Eva and Moshe had left our house we sat for a few minutes in silence. Marinna gave Mikhail a wet towel so he could clean his face.
“And now, can you tell us what’s going on?” Igor demanded.
“As you know, when the war broke out, the Irgun decided to follow the Haganah’s lead and stop fighting the British. Germany is the enemy now. But one of the leaders of the Irgun, Avraham Stern, has formed his own group and is attacking the English. The Haganah found out that the Stern Gang are preparing an attack against British soldiers in a place where there are also likely to be civilian casualties,” Louis explained. “Do you know what that means?”
“Are you sure about this?” Igor’s face showed he was upset.
“We have our ears everywhere,” Mikhail said, preempting Louis’s answer.
“It’s a very grave accusation, even against people like the Stern Gang.”
“The Irgun doesn’t want to know anything. More than that, it doesn’t seem to mind everyone being arrested. And the Irgun is not known for their restraint. They have never been characterized by having too many scruples, but they’ve realized that while the war is on we have enemies more important than the British,” Mikhail said.
“I hate them,” Ben said.
“And are you sure that Moshe is one of them?” my mother asked.
“He has dealings with the Stern Gang,” Mikhail affirmed.
“But they could be his friends, or his son’s friends, like he said; they were all members of the Irgun until quite recently,” my mother said.
“It’s better that they go, even if it’s just for our own safety. The Jewish Agency and the Haganah are not going to have any mercy on Stern, or on his followers. Moshe knew what the risks were in having a relationship with them,”
Louis said, and ended the discussion.
I don’t think any of us slept that night. I was spying through my window on Moshe and Eva’s house, where the lights burned brightly until morning. Then I saw them go out and fill their car with suitcases and tools. Eva was crying but Moshe paid no attention to her tears and forced her to hurry up. I couldn’t stop myself from asking what my father would have done, what he would have thought. I didn’t know the answer.
“It’s not that I miss them, we didn’t see them very often, but I think that now nothing is left of Hope Orchard.”
My mother was talking with Marinna. They both seemed depressed.
Marinna agreed. She, too, felt the emptiness now present in the community where she had grown up, and which my father Samuel had transformed into a home for a group of strangers who had ended up linked together through bonds that were closer than those of blood.
I didn’t want to leave Hope Orchard, it was my home; but I asked myself, just as my mother did, if it still made sense for us to stay there.
Ben and I spoke about the Stern Gang.
“I hate them. I hope they all get captured and hanged. I know that the Jewish Agency and the Haganah are going to work with the British to have them all arrested,” Ben said.
It wasn’t easy. Avraham Stern always slipped out of the hands of the British, but in 1942 they found him in one of his hidey-holes in Tel Aviv. Someone had told them where he was hiding.
But before this happened, I suffered my second disappointment.
On October 27, 1941, the mufti had been received with full honors by Benito Mussolini at Palazzo Venezia in Rome. The newspapers informed us that the two men had agreed there was no place for the Jews in Palestine or in Europe.
But it was not only by Mussolini that the mufti was received as a friend; a month later, Adolf Hitler did the same and received him with full honors in Berlin.
Hitler agreed with Mufti al-Husseini that after finishing off all the Jews of Europe, he would do the same with those of the Middle East.
This would not be the last time that the mufti would be received by members of the upper hierarchies of the Nazi Party in Berlin. Heinrich Himmler, the sinister chief of the SS, developed a good relationship with the mufti. Not only this, but the mufti asked his own followers to enlist with the Nazi forces. His speeches on Radio Berlin were heard all over the Middle East. Hitler and the mufti had a common goal, to finish with the Jews and, in passing, to deal with the British as well.
When we found out about the visit of the mufti to Berlin, I went to ask Wädi to explain himself. It hurt me to do this, because aside from my mother he was the person I loved most in the world, and I sometimes thought I loved him even more.
We argued for the first time. He tried to explain me why some Arabs supported the Germans.
“You know that neither my family nor I are supporters of the mufti. I was ashamed to see in the newspaper that the mufti had decided to side with Germany. But don’t believe that all the Arabs who follow the mufti are Nazis or opposed to the Jews. They are only nationalists who are defending their country and who want the British, the French . . . all the European powers to leave forever. Why do the Egyptians need to be under a British mandate? Why do we have to put up with it ourselves? As for the French, they are in Syria and Lebanon.”
“Alright, I can understand why the Arabs fight against the English; so do we, although Ben-Gurion ordered us to collaborate with them in the war against Germany. But it’s one thing to fight the British, and quite another to join forces with Germany, knowing that they want to exterminate the Jews. Don’t you know that the Jews are being taken to concentration camps? That they are made to work there until they are exhausted, or even dead? There is nowhere in Europe where the Jews are not persecuted, arrested, and sent to these camps.”
“I don’t understand why the mufti hates the Jews, neither does my father. You know that. I don’t need to remind you that even Omar Salem is suspicious of us ever since my father criticized the mufti. My Uncle Yusuf now says that Omar Salem doesn’t trust us as much as before.”
“Yes, I know, and I know you’ve had problems for not allying yourself with him, but even so . . . Does no one dare stop this man?”
“He’s the mufti of Jerusalem and his family is as old as it is important. You know that some of our friends have died for daring to oppose him.”
“You want to say that they were murdered. Does it cost you so much to acknowledge that this is what the mufti does with those who disagree with him? Don’t you know that your father’s own life has been at risk?”
“If it weren’t for Yusuf, who is married to my Aunt Aya, then my father might well not be alive,” Wädi acknowledged.
“So . . .”
“So you need to think that lots of people follow the mufti because he is the only person who represents the interests of the Arabs. Lots of us have nothing against the Jews, they are neighbors, even friends, but we are not going to allow immigration to continue. Palestine cannot be Jewish, which is not to say that there cannot be a large number of Jews living here, but immigration has to stop. We also cannot tolerate the British dividing our territory and handing a large proportion of it over to the Jewish Agency. What right do they have to do so?”
Wädi was always patient with me and offered me explanations of what had happened, although he never convinced me. I was very young and all I understood was that some of my schoolmates were now allied with the Nazis and were aiming to destroy us. This was not the case with the Ziad family, I was sure of that; Mohammed and Wädi both hated the Nazis and laughed at their propaganda and their theories about the superiority of the Aryan race. But I did not understand how, for all the annoyance felt by the Palestinian Arabs at Jewish immigration, they were capable of allying themselves to a group of people whose aim was to remove us from the face of the earth.
I was fairly innocent in those days. My mother had taught me that there were two options in anyone’s life, good and bad, and that whatever the circumstances one should not be prevented from following the path of the good. It was a philosophy that boiled down to the idea that the end did not justify the means. My mother was very inflexible in this respect. So I thought that nothing could justify the Stern Gang, or the members of the Irgun, taking other people’s lives. It was also hard for me to understand how many Arabs openly sympathized with the Nazis because of their nationalist beliefs, whether they were from Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, or Lebanon,.
Whether through Ben’s insistence, or my mother and Marinna’s thinking that a few months’ change would do us good, in the end they allowed us to spend a few months on a kibbutz. The excuse was that we should go visit my brother Daniel on the kibbutz where he lived, in the Negev. Mikhail would come with us, along with Yasmin. My cousin Yasmin was very fond of Daniel, more so than of my sister Dalida and me.
I can’t forget the words my mother said to me on the morning that we were to leave on our trip.
“This is not the world that I wanted for you, I would have liked for us to live in peace, but things are as they are, and you are a part of the future, so you have to do what you need to do to ensure this future. All I ask is that you don’t hate anyone, and that you don’t think that there is anything that makes you any different from anyone else. Praying in a different way does not make us different. And this is how things have been up until now in Palestine. They have persecuted Jews for centuries in Europe, but here we have shared the fate of the Muslims, for good or for ill. If we could only all just be sensible for a moment . . . I don’t want a Jewish state, but I cannot tell you what you should want.”
It took me several years to understand my mother. She was a Palestinian, she had been born and brought up in this land, just as her ancestors had been, sharing the land with other Palestinians whose only difference was one of religion, but for whom this had never been any kind of problem. They had lived un
der the control of the Ottoman Empire, and her first husband had died defending that empire. She had nothing against the Turks, in spite of the suffering they had caused us, and felt the same about the British. In fact, for my mother, control of Palestine had passed from Ottoman to British hands without it causing her any major kind of turmoil. She did not understand the pioneers who wanted to have a nation. She had allowed herself to be carried along with the flow, all she wanted to do was live, love, dream, see her children grow, and die. Everything else was out of her hands.
It was the end of the spring of 1942 when we arrived at the kibbutz. I was surprised to see Daniel. My brother appeared not to be the same man. His skin was dark, a result of the long hours of work in the sun, his hair was untamed and a contagious serenity radiated from him. I wasn’t sure he liked having Ben and me there, and perhaps because of this he told us that exceptions would not be made for us and he would not specially look out for us. And this was how he behaved, in spades. No one would have said that we were half-brothers, such was the indifference he showed me. In fact, we avoided any occasion where we could be alone together, and we spent whole days without talking to one another. Daniel had never felt comfortable with the family his mother, my mother, had made with Samuel. It was clear that he had not forgiven her for marrying again, and certainly not for having had other children, and he must have felt very lonely during the years we lived together.
But I was proud to have him as my half-brother, as I realized that Daniel’s opinions were well respected by the other members of the kibbutz.
Now I can admit that it took me a lot of effort to adapt to the lifestyle in this peculiar community. It wasn’t that we lived a life of luxury at Hope Orchard, but at least we had our own rooms, and although we weren’t related it wasn’t hard for us to form bonds similar to those of a family.
Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead Page 61