A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [193]
Others did not hesitate to claim that the Hebrew underground movements, the Irgun, the Stern Gang, and the Haganah, by their bloody actions against the English, particularly by blowing up the British HQ in the King David Hotel, had brought disaster upon us. No empire in history had turned a blind eye to such humiliating provocations, and the British had already decided to punish us with a savage bloodbath. The overhasty outrages of our fanatical Zionist leaders had made us so hated by the British public that London had decided simply to allow the Arabs to slaughter the lot of us: so far the British armed forces had stood between us and a general massacre by the Arab nations, but now they would step aside, and our blood would be on our own heads.
Some people reported that various well-connected Jews, rich people from Rehavia, contractors and wholesalers with connections to the British, high-ranking civil servants in the Mandatory administration, had been tipped that they would be better off going abroad as soon as possible, or at least sending their families to some safe haven. They mentioned such and such a family that had pushed off to America, and various well-to-do business people who had quit Jerusalem overnight and settled in Tel Aviv with their families. They must know for certain something that the rest of us could only imagine. Or they could imagine what was just a nightmare for us.
Others told of groups of young Arabs who combed our streets at night, armed with pots of paint and brushes, marking the Jewish houses and allocating them in advance. They claimed that armed Arab gangs, under the orders of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, already controlled all the hills around the city, and the British turned a blind eye to them. They said that the forces of the Trans-Jordanian Arab Legion, under the command of the British Brigadier Sir John Glubb, Glubb Pasha, were already deployed in various key positions across the country so that they could crush the Jews before they could even try to raise their heads. And that the fighters of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom the British had allowed to come in from Egypt with their arms and set up fortified positions in the hills around Jerusalem, were digging themselves in just across from Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. Some expressed the hope that when the British left, the American president, Truman, would step in despite everything. He would send his army in quickly, two gigantic American aircraft carriers had already been spotted off Sicily heading east; President Truman surely wouldn't allow a second Holocaust to happen here less than three years after the Holocaust of the Six Million. Surely the rich and influential American Jews would put pressure on him. They couldn't just stand idly by.
Some believed that the conscience of the civilized world, or progressive public opinion, or the international working class, or widespread guilt feelings over the sorry fate of the Jewish survivors, would all act to thwart the "Anglo-Arab plot to destroy us." At the very least, some of our friends and neighbors encouraged themselves at the onset of that strange, threatening autumn with the comforting thought that even if the Arabs didn't want us here, the last thing the peoples of Europe wanted was for us to go back and flood Europe again. And since the Europeans were far more powerful than the Arabs, it followed that there was a chance that we might be left here after all. They would force the Arabs to swallow what Europe was trying to spew forth.
One way or another, virtually everyone prophesied war. The underground broadcast passionate songs on the short waves. Grits, oil, candles, sugar, powdered milk, and flour almost vanished from the shelves in Mr. Auster's grocery shop: people were beginning to stock up in readiness for what was to come. Mother filled the kitchen cupboard with bags of flour and matzo meal, packets of rusks, Quaker oats, oil, preserves, canned food, olives, and sugar. Father bought two sealed canisters of paraffin and stored them under the basin in the bathroom.