Exodus - Leon Uris [156]
Akiva paced the room again. Barak studied him. He was alive with the same angry fire he had had as a boy. “All I am doing is something the Yishuv Central recognizes and is afraid to do. Sooner or later even they are going to have to face the facts of life. The British are our enemy.”
“We do not believe that, Akiva. All told we have done very well under British rule.”
“Then you are a fool.”
“I have been wrong before. The British represent the constituted government of Palestine.”
“While they cut our throats,” Akiva mocked. “The gentlemen of the Yishuv Central carry their brief cases to conferences and read their little notes and findings and bow and scrape while the Mufti and his cutthroats run wild. Do you see the Arabs negotiating?”
“We will achieve our aims legally.”
“We will achieve our aims by fighting for them!”
“Then if we must fight, let us fight as a unified people. You put yourself in the category of the Mufti by starting a band of outlaws. Have you ever thought of the consequences if the British leave Palestine? No matter how bitter your feelings ... and mine ... the British are still our greatest instrument for achieving statehood.”
Akiva waved his hand in disgust. “We will achieve statehood the same way we redeemed this land ... with our sweat and blood. I refuse to sit around and wait for British handouts.”
“For the last time, Akiva ... don’t do this thing. You will only give our enemies an opportunity to point their fingers at us and increase their lies.”
“Aha!” Akiva cried. “Now we have come to the guts of the matter! Jews must play the games by the rules. Jews cannot be wrong! Jews must beg and appeal! Jews must turn their cheeks!”
“Stop it!”
“God no!” Akiva cried. “Whatever you do, don’t fight! You wouldn’t want the Germans and the Arabs and the British to think you are bad boys.”
“I said stop it.”
“Ghetto Jew Barak. That is what you are and that is what the Yishuv Central is. Well, let me tell you something else, dear brother. Here is one Jew who may be wrong but intends to live. So let us be wrong in the eyes of the whole damned world.”
Barak trembled with rage. He sat motionless to try to hide his anger. Akiva ranted on. Was Akiva really wrong? How much pain and degradation and betrayal and suffering must a man take before fighting back?
Barak got out of his chair and walked to the door.
“Tell Avidan and the gentlemen of the Yishuv Central and all the little negotiators that Akiva and the Maccabees have a message for the British and the Arabs ... ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!’ ”
“You are never to set foot in my house again,” Barak said.
The two brothers glared at each other for many moments. Tears welled in Akiva’s eyes. “Not set foot in your house?”
Barak was frozen.
“We are brothers, Barak. You carried me to Palestine on your back.”
“And I have lived to regret it.”
Akiva’s lips trembled. “I am a Jew who loves Palestine no less than you do. You condemn me for following the dictates of my conscience ...”
Barak stepped back into the room. “It is you, Akiva, and your Maccabees who have turned brother against brother. Since we were children I have heard your convenient quotations from the Bible. Well ... perhaps you had better read again about the Zealots who turned brother against brother and divided Jewish unity and brought on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Maccabees you call yourselves. I call you Zealots.” Barak again walked to the door.
“Remember one thing, Barak Ben Canaan,” Akiva said. “Nothing we do, right or wrong, can ever compare to what has been done to the Jewish people. Nothing the Maccabees do can even be considered an injustice in comparison to two thousand years of murder.”
Chapter Fifteen
YAD EL BLOSSOMED into a Garden of Eden. The moshav continued to push back the swamps so that its cultivable land was increased to bring in another hundred families. There were two dozen pieces of heavy machinery and an experimental station. The entire moshav worked the fishponds as a joint crop.
The streets of Yad El were green all year