Exodus - Leon Uris [167]
Ari Ben Canaan became a devoted disciple of this eccentric Englishman, as did all of the Raiders. He went alongside Malcolm in a hundred raids against the enemy and never once was Malcolm guilty of error. It was almost as though he were divinely guided as well as divinely inspired. He created a flawless text on Arab fighting. He demanded iron discipline and fanatical and unquestioning devotion in payment for victory after victory.
The Raider Unit put a fear into the Arabs which was even greater than that of the Husseinis. With a hundred and fifty men he ripped the rebellion to shreds. The marauders began to flee and Kawukji’s grand army of liberation raced back to Lebanon. In floundering desperation the Mufti turned his fire on the oil line which ran from the Mosul fields to Haifa.
“Twenty thousand of those dunderheaded Englishmen could not defend that pipeline,” Malcolm said. “We will do it with our Raider Unit. Our plans are simple. Each time there is a break in the line the nearest Arab village to that break will be attacked and flattened by the Raider Unit. This will teach the Arab villages to guard the lines against marauders in the interest of their own safety and it will teach them not to shelter those thugs. Reprisal ... remember that, for the Jews are outnumbered ... we must use the principle of reprisal.”
Every time the Arabs moved they got it right back in the teeth. Reprisal, from then on, became the key to Jewish defense.
The Arab revolt petered out and died. It had been a miserable and costly failure. The Arabs had bankrupted their entire community and murdered their foremost spokesmen. Three years of riots and bloodshed had put them on the brink of destitution. In all that time they did not displace a single Jewish settlement or keep some fifty new ones from going up.
With the death throes of the Arab uprising Whitehall made a clean sweep of their government in the mandate.
Major P. P. Malcolm was told he must leave Palestine, for his continued consorting with the Jews now would cause them nothing but embarrassment. Malcolm had been the greatest single instrument in breaking the backs of the Arabs. The Jews he trained were the nucleus of a greater new army—his brilliant tactics their military Bible.
For the last time Major P. P. Malcolm stood before his Jews at Ein Or. The Raider Unit honored by red badges on their blue farmer’s clothing stood at attention, and there were tears in the eyes of many.
Malcolm opened his Bible. “... Gird thy sword upon thy thigh O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness.”
He walked away quickly to the waiting car. His heart was broken. The Yishuv had bestowed upon him the greatest honor they could give a non-Jew. They called him “the Friend.”
Ari Ben Canaan returned to Yad El after the Raider Unit was disbanded. His heart seemed always on a lonely hill on the Lebanese border where Dafna lay in eternal sleep alongside twenty other Haganah boys and girls who had fallen for Ha Mishmar.
With things quiet and safer, Taha left Yad El, where he had lived all this time under the protection of the Ben Canaan family, to assume the job of muktar of Abu Yesha. Both Barak and Sarah realized that in the eighteen months Taha had lived with them he had fallen in love with Jordana, who was now past her thirteenth birthday. Love of a younger girl was not uncommon among Taha’s people. Both of the parents never spoke a word about it and hoped that the boy would get over it without too much pain.
The new British administration, under the command of General Haven-Hurst, came to Palestine. They soon rounded up the Raider Unit men. The latter were hauled into court and thrown into jail for terms of six months to five years! The charge—illegal use of arms!
Ari and a hundred other Haganah members of Malcolm’s Raider Unit were locked in the dungeon-like Acre jail. Many of them regarded their plight as rather