Exodus - Leon Uris [161]
Shortly after the land purchase Ari Ben Canaan and two other top young men in Haganah were called to Tel Aviv to Avidan’s secret headquarters.
The bald-headed leader of Jewish defense unfolded a map and pointed out the new parcel of land. Its importance to the continuation of the Arab revolt was obvious.
“I want you three boys to take command of a unit to go up to this land and build a kibbutz there. We are carefully picking eighty of our top men and twenty women to go with you. I don’t have to tell you what to expect.”
They nodded.
“We know the Mufti is going to stop everything else in an effort to run you out. This is the first time we have picked a spot for a kibbutz because of its strategic value.”
Sarah Ben Canaan was sick at heart. For years she had not seen her son without a whip or a gun near at hand. Now she feared this mission as she had feared none of the others. A hundred of the best members of the Yishuv were being put into a suicidal position. Ari kissed his mother and brushed away her tears and in his simple way said that it would be all right. He shook his father’s hand and said nothing, for the understanding between them was complete.
Dafna knocked on the door and they said good-by to her too.
Dafna and Ari walked out the gates of Yad El and turned to look back briefly at the fields and at the friends who had gathered. Barak sighed and put his arm on Sarah’s shoulder as the younger couple disappeared down the road.
“They want so little from life,” Sarah said. “How long ... how long must we go on giving him?”
Barak shook his great head and his eyes narrowed to catch a last glimpse of his boy and Dafna.
“God asked Abraham to give his son in sacrifice. I suppose we of the Yishuv live in that shadow. We must keep giving Ari so long as God wills it.”
A hundred of the finest young men and women of the Yishuv went up to the border of Lebanon and placed themselves in the path of thieves and murderers. Ari Ben Canaan, at twenty-two years of age, was second in command.
They called the place Ha Mishmar, the Guardpost.
Chapter Sixteen
TEN TRUCKS CARRYING a hundred Haganah boys and girls and their equipment sped along the coastal road past the last Jewish settlement at Nahariya in northern Galilee and penetrated into territory where no Jew had gone before. A thousand pairs of Arab eyes watched the convoy as it moved up into the foothills of the mountains on the Lebanese border below the Taggart wall.
They stopped, set out guards, and unloaded the trucks quickly. The trucks rushed back to Nahariya before dark. The hundred were alone. Above them the hills were filled with Arab marauder gangs. Behind them were a dozen hostile Arab villages.
They erected a small stockade, dug in, and waited out the night.
By next morning the word had spread from Hebron to Beirut ... “The Jews have moved into the hills!” Haj Amin el Husseini in Beirut was enraged. It was an open challenge. He swore by the beard of Allah that the Jews would be thrown into the sea.
During the next few days the Haganah force worked themselves to exhaustion tightening the defenses of the base camp at the bottom of the hill against the attack that had to come. Each night when they weren’t standing guard, Dafna and Ari fell into exhausted slumber in each other’s arms.
On the fourth night the attack came!
The Jews had never undergone anything like it. A thousand Arab riflemen flanked with machine guns poured a steady tattoo of fire into the Jews’ stockade for five consecutive hours from the top of the hill. For the first time the Arabs used mortar fire. Ari and his forces lay low and waited for the Arabs to try an assault.
The attack came when Arab thugs began slithering along the ground with knives between their teeth.
Suddenly——
Half a dozen searchlights darted out from the stockade and swept the field. The light caught the Arabs in close. The Jews poured on a deadly counterfire and in the very first burst shot sixty Arabs dead.