His concerns dissipated when a large majority of the General Assembly (33 in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions) decided, with the support of the world’s two rival superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union – to adopt the majority recommendation of UNSCOP with only minor modifications and to establish a Jewish state and an Arab state west of the Jordan River. The resolution actually passed due to a change in US policy. Aware that both the State Department and Department of Defense vociferously opposed the partition plan, US President Harry S Truman was initially hesitant about unequivocally supporting the UN resolution. Ultimately, however, his view was swayed by a meeting with Chaim Weizmann, arranged at the pleading of Truman’s former business partner. Truman defied his own cabinet and on October 11, 1947, the United States announced its support for the partition plan. Truman instructed US officials to support the resolution in the General Assembly and to persuade other countries to do the same. The Americans succeeded in mobilizing the required two-thirds majority. It is therefore no wonder that the Zionist leadership viewed Truman as the leader who steered the United Nations to its historic decision. The cries of joy heard throughout Tel Aviv swept up all the city’s residents and Eli was no exception. He too rushed down to Allenby Street to meet his friends and dance until dawn. Although the revelers who filled the streets understood that their celebration actually marked the beginning of a new drama that would involve bloodshed and war, this did not diminish the widespread sense of joy that permeated the city that evening.
By the following day, however, the mood had changed. Cries of joy and celebratory dancing gave way to fear and anxiety regarding the future. The Arab population of Palestine wasted no time and, with the backing of Arab states,15 quickly announced their rejection of the General Assembly resolution. That very night, they launched violent attacks on Jewish targets throughout the mandate in an effort to derail the process that the General Assembly resolution had started.
These momentous developments did not stop Eli, his teachers, or his classmates from returning to school. Their general impression was that the Jewish sector would be able to continue functioning as it had during past periods of tension, such as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. Eli’s school carried on operating as usual: teachers taught classes and social activities continued uninterrupted. The Scouts also maintained its regular activities. For a moment, it appeared as if everything had returned to normal.
But everything was far from normal and war was in the offing. Eli and his friends were able to sense this even before the UN resolution, leading them to become more active in the Haganah.16 The immediacy of the war was also emphasized by the mobile clandestine Haganah radio station temporarily set up in Eli’s home on King George Street. In order to avoid being shut down, the station and all its equipment and personnel was constantly being shuttled from place to place. One day, it appeared at the Hurvitzes’ house and set up shop in their bathroom, broadcasting from there for an hour a day for a number of weeks until being moved to a bathroom in a different home. For Eli, this was a formative experience. The war had entered his home. His sister’s involvement in the Haganah, his mother’s discernible anxiety, his father’s relative indifference, the guards posted outside his house and bathroom, the antenna that stretched from his house to the building next door, and the mysterious suitcase that apparently contained codebooks or transmission equipment were all indicative of what the country’s Jewish community was really going through at the time. Eli was sent out of the house during the daily broadcasts under various pretenses, although he knew very well why he was being asked to leave.
This was Eli’s first real encounter with the quickly approaching war. Later, he began participating in secret military training sessions under the auspices of the Haganah. During the training, it became evident that he was too young. At this point, the youngest teenagers being recruited were born in 1931 and Haganah protocol prohibited enlisting minors. Although Eli sat side by side with them in school, he was younger than his classmates since he had started school early. Eli, however, did not give up: no one, he resolved, could prevent him from fighting alongside his classmates. He lied about his age and, when asked for a birth certificate, claimed it had been destroyed in a fire. Eli’s friends assured the Haganah recruiters that he had in fact been born in 1931 and when completing the paperwork, he used a new birthday: October 20, 1931.
Eli continued to attend school like everyone else, but his ears were fully attuned to the developments on the front. When he was not in school, he devoted his time to the Haganah. To avoid detection by the British, training was conducted in secrecy. The teenagers had already undergone training in hand-to-hand combat using staffs on the grounds of Carmel Elementary, their former school. Next, they engaged in physical training, jumping from the roof of one of the buildings of the Herzliya Gymnasium into a tarp on the ground below, crawling, running, and performing night exercises. Finally, the reached what they had all been waiting for – weapons training, which included learning how to dismantle and reassemble a pistol and a submachine gun. They did not dare to shoot the weapons they were learning to use, but assumed that this too would come with time.
The aims of the Haganah’s paramilitary activities were not military alone. Eli and his friends would have had to train much more than they actually did to be ready for battle. Even their intense training over the course of several weekends – Eli and some of his friends were sent to the Bilu camp, while other youths were sent to the training camp at Jo’ara –did not constitute serious preparation for battle. They actually were sent to Bilu to serve as a cover for the presence of the Haganah Field Forces (known in Hebrew as heil sadeh or hish) training there at the time. The Haganah sought to conceal its field forces from British eyes by using the young Haganah members as camouflage. Nonetheless, the youngsters took great pride in having been mobilized for the war effort.
Eli and his close friend Zvika Levanon were also involved in activity that was more practical or “combat” oriented in nature, to use the terminology of the times. They delivered supplies, sometimes including weapons and ammunition, to the line of fortifications that stretched through the heart of Tel Aviv, from the Hatikva neighborhood to Salame Street. Haganah fighters had dug in along this line in an effort to defend Tel Aviv from the southeast. Eli’s cousin Zvi was their commander, directing them to distribute orders, correspondences, ammunition, weapons, and food to the positions along the line.
When David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister and defense minister of the provisional government, announced the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, it seemed likely that the declaration of independence would be followed by a full-scale war with the Arab states. Eli was certain that he would be mobilized; indeed, the informal training he and his friends were undergoing increased in scope and intensity after May 14. The army was still considering whether to mobilize Eli’s age group (17-year-olds), even though they were still in high school, since Ben-Gurion and his colleagues were seeking solutions to the increasingly severe shortage in fighters. A decision finally was made during the first UN ceasefire, which was declared in early June 1948 and accepted by the belligerent parties. The newly established Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was not in a great position in comparison to the military forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinians. The Egyptians still occupied part of the Negev and were besieging the rest of it. The Western Galilee and other regions also were in Arab hands, while Palestinian irregulars in Lydda, Ramle, and the surrounding area had cut off Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. All this led the new country’s leadership to conclude that the time had come to prepare for a major campaign that would determine the fate of the new Jewish state. The provisional government therefore drafted additional forces, including the 17-year-olds, who were to be mobilized for intensive military training for two months and then serve as a reserve force to be sent into battle only when absolutely necessary. Youth mobilization was carried out under the ausp
ices of the IDF’s Gadna (a Hebrew acronym for Gdudei Noar, which means youth battalions) Command. However, Eli and his companions were affiliated with the agricultural settlement training program and were therefore designated to constitute a distinct force that would later come to be known as Nahal (a Hebrew acronym for Noar Halutzi Lohem, meaning fighting pioneer youth).
On June 12, 1948, Eli and his comrades were among 630 youths from across the country who were inducted into the IDF and assembled at a military camp at Kfar Yona. His group of friends from the Scouts, which had aspired to establish an agricultural community of their own, now was part of a large battalion. Eli and his 94 fellow group members began training and were issued firearms. This was significant since the IDF did not have sufficient military equipment for all its soldiers at the time and certainly was not able to arm all the new recruits. The fact that Eli’s platoon was believed to consist of high-quality recruits apparently gave them precedence over others; they were issued some of the IDF’s newly acquired weaponry from Czechoslovakia.17 Eli was issued a locally manufactured British Sten submachine gun, which was considered a decent personal firearm at the time despite its flaws. He received a heavy machine gun later.
The day after Eli arrived at the military camp, the Tel Aviv shoreline bore witness to one of the most dramatic events experienced by the young State of Israel and its leadership during the War of Independence. The Irgun (short for Irgun Zeva’i Le’ummi, meaning the national military organization; it also was known by its Hebrew acronym Etzel), which had split off from the Haganah in the 1930s, was attempting to bring in weapons on a ship known as the Altalena. When the ship reached the new state’s coasts, the provisional government instructed the Irgun to immediately turn over the weapons to the IDF since after the establishment of the state, all the underground organizations, including the Irgun and the Haganah, had officially been disbanded and their members had been instructed to join the IDF. However, due to their acrimonious relationship with the provisional government, the Irgun leadership refused to hand over the arms and instead began unloading them near Kfar Vitkin, approximately 30 kilometers north of Tel Aviv. The IDF used force to halt the unloading and presented the Irgun with an ultimatum: hand over the weapons to the IDF immediately because unloading and using them was a “serious violation of the laws of the State of Israel [… and of] an explicit agreement that had been reached with the Irgun leadership” or suffer the consequences. When the Irgun commander, Menachem Begin, and his colleagues ignored this and began unloading the weapons off the coast of Tel Aviv, Palmah18 forces shelled the vessel, killing a few crew members and injuring dozens. In the end, it was Begin who flinched first, refusing to become embroiled in what could escalate into civil war while the enemy was at the gates. Begin agreed to dismantle the Irgun forces and facilitate their gradual integration into the regular units of the IDF.
Eli’s recently mobilized group was assigned to serve as a reserve force to assist the Palmah soldiers, if necessary, in putting down the Altalena rebellion. Although they did not participate in the fighting, since the Palmah did all the work, the fact that they had been sent to the Tel Aviv shore to take part in the drama was extremely significant to them.
Eli and his fellow soldiers supported Ben-Gurion’s position in the confrontation. They viewed the Irgun’s actions as a rebellion in the full sense of the word and regarded his order to fire on the ship as completely justified. At the same time, they were glad to have been spared the dilemma of taking part in the battle itself.
“They were going to order us to fire on Jews – on friends!” he exclaimed later in amazement. “As far as we were concerned, that was out of the question.”
Afterwards, he and his fellow soldiers returned to Kfar Yona, where they remained until they completed basic training two months later. In the meantime, the first ceasefire ended and the large quantity of weapons and equipment that the IDF had received from the Soviets in Czechoslovakia during the ceasefire tipped the scales decisively in Israel’s favor. When the fighting resumed on July 8, Eli’s unit was sent to the front to take part in what is known as the “Battles of the Ten Days” (July 8-July 18, 1948). This time, they were assigned to serve as a reserve force for the better organized units of the Alexandroni Brigade, which were engaged in defending the line between Karkur and Pardes Hannah. The IDF was concerned that Iraqi forces might penetrate the Israeli lines there so the teenage soldiers were sent into the trenches to await the enemy. The encounter was brief. Eli and his friends fired on the approaching forces, but none of them could ascertain what they had accomplished. For them, however, it did not matter whether they or other soldiers had been responsible for stopping the invading forces. They were proud to have been involved in fighting off the enemy at Israel’s gates.
On July 18, another ceasefire began. Eli’s company returned to its base and the exhausting daily training regimen, gradually evolving into a well-trained and well-equipped unit that was ready for battle.
“I think we were one of the best trained units in the army,” Eli recounted with pride. “We trained day after day, hour after hour, with briefings and with the highest-quality weapons. We didn’t even conserve ammunition. We threw hand grenades, which was something that few people did during training.”
Nonetheless, Eli and his comrades in arms were younger than the rest of the soldiers and Ben-Gurion had promised their parents that he would not send them to the front lines. As a result, to their great frustration, they continued to serve as a rear reserve force. Except for the one instance when they were sent to hold off the approaching Iraqi forces, they did not participate in battles and spent all their time training.
•••
At the end of basic training, the enlisted high-school students were assigned to different IDF units. Eli and his friends, who had formed a tight-knit group that aspired to establish a pioneering agricultural settlement together even before they had joined the army, now waited to be sent to their designated site. Since the war was still underway, it was not clear if they would be sent to establish a new settlement while their fellow soldiers were still fighting. However, the young country’s leadership regarded establishing new agricultural settlements, particularly along the borders, as an urgent military necessity at the time. Israeli authorities eventually came up with a creative solution: the IDF’s Nahal program, which was established to simultaneously pursue the dual interests of settlement and defense.
Since the IDF seemed to be making progress in the war, the Nahal command decided that at the end of basic training, Eli’s age group would be sent to Kibbutz Ramat David in the Jezreel Valley to begin settlement training. They would remain there until the end of summer vacation and then return to high school. Soldiers who were not high-school students would remain at the kibbutz until it was decided to establish a permanent settlement for the members of the group. So Eli was sent to the kibbutz, where he had previously attended a work camp with his fellow Scouts.
Then in September 1948, after taking part in the War of Independence at the young age of 16, Eli returned to Tel Aviv to begin his last year of high school. The war had changed things at Ironi Aleph high school. The students’ minds were now focused squarely on the fighting and some even came to school in their military uniform.
“The teachers demonstrated great respect for us,” Eli explained, recalling his return to high school during the war.
He and his comrades spent a lot of time training and little time studying. They devoted their remaining time to participating in semi-military frameworks, such as the activities of the Scouts.
Upon his return from basic training, Eli became a major figure in the Kehila troop on Melchett Street and served as the leader of the entire troop. Prior to the war, he regarded educating the younger members as a mission of critical importance. Now he viewed his activities in the Scouts through the prism of the war. Like his fellow counselors and the younger movement members, he believed that movemen
t activity had assumed greater importance than in the past. In their minds, the Scouts were the first step on the path to the army, and, in the frenzied days of 1948, nothing could be more important. The Kehila troop now became a sort of improvised military unit with some members who were counting the days to enlistment and others who were certain that they too had something to contribute to the war effort. Brief marches were still conducted prior to the beginning of activities as they had been before the war, but now they became part of the youth movement’s “military” activity. Even the marching cadence (“left-right-left”) assumed new significance. Amidst all this the troop members never forgot that they were destined for settlement training, which added an additional component to the military experience that had become part of their daily life.
•••
In March 1949, the war ended in a decisive Israeli victory. The IDF established control over the territory that the UN partition plan had allocated to the Jewish state, as well as large swathes of the areas that had been allocated to an Arab state. As a result, the country’s 1949 borders, which is generally referred to as the Green Line, encompassed areas beyond the borders of the Jewish state approved in the partition resolution of November 1947. The new country extended over approximately 74% (or 21,000 square kilometers) of the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine, stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, instead of 54% as stipulated in the UN partition resolution. The 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and the surrounding Arab states formalized this situation, at least temporarily.
Eli Hurvitz and the creation of Teva Pharmaceuticals: An Israeli Biography Page 5