Exodus - Leon Uris [171]
One day, several months after the war had begun, Ari returned one evening from the fields to find Avidan himself waiting to see him. After dinner Ari, Avidan, and Barak retired to the living room to talk.
“I suppose you know why I came,” Avidan said.
“I can imagine.”
“Let me get right to the point. There are a few dozen of our boys that we feel should join up. The British have contacted Haganah half a dozen times and asked for you. They are willing to give you an officer’s commission.”
“I’m not interested.”
“They want you badly, Ari. I’m sure we can put you into a position—say, Arab intelligence—where you could be of great value to the Haganah too.”
“That’s very nice. I thought they’d have me shoveling garbage with the rest of the Yishuv troops. It’s good to know I’m one of the good Jews.”
“Don’t make me issue this to you as an order.”
“You may be surprised if you do.”
Avidan, who was an iron disciplinarian, was somewhat taken aback. Ari Ben Canaan had been as reliable and unquestioning a soldier as any in the Haganah.
“I’m glad this is in the open,” Barak said. “This boy has been eating his heart out since his return from Berlin.”
“Ari ... I’m afraid we are going to have to insist upon it.”
“Why should I wear a British uniform? So they can throw me into prison again for bearing arms for them.”
Barak threw up his hands.
“All right, Father ... if you want it in the open. Five years ago Uncle Akiva had the courage to name our enemy.”
“You are not to mention his name in this house!” Barak roared.
“It’s about time it was mentioned. I might even have joined the Maccabees except that I would not go against you.”
“But Ari,” Avidan said quickly, “even Akiva and the Maccabees have called a truce with the British.”
Ari turned and started for the door. “I’ll be playing backgammon at Taha’s house. Call me if the Germans invade.”
The German avalanche thundered across Europe. The British suffered one debacle after another. Dunkirk! Crete! Greece! London underwent merciless bombing.
Even as the Yishuv poured its energy into the British war effort it was forced to swallow degradation by the British. A series of unbelievably horrible events occurred which rankled in the hearts of even the most benevolent Jews.
A pathetic, fifty-foot Danube river boat named the Struma crept into Istanbul loaded with nearly eight hundred frantic Jews trying to escape from Europe. The boat was unsafe and the people in dire straits. Yishuv Central literally begged the British for visas. The British refused. In fact, they turned heavy diplomatic pressure on the Turkish government to get the Struma out of Istanbul. Turkish police boarded the Struma and towed it through the Bosporus and cut it adrift in the Black Sea without food, water, or fuel. The Struma sank. Seven hundred and ninety-nine human beings drowned. One survived.
Two battered steamers reached Palestine with two thousand refugees and the British quickly ordered them transferred to the Patria for exile to Mauritius, an island east of Africa. The Patria sank off Palestine’s shores in sight of Haifa, and hundreds of refugees drowned.
And so it went—the British clung to the White Paper—the Arabs had to be kept calm!
The war continued badly for the British. By the end of 1941 Palestinian Jews had made their way into fighting units despite General Haven-Hurst’s forebodings, for the British were desperate and they were getting no manpower at all from the Arabs. As the Arabs sat, fifty thousand of the cream of the Yishuv wore British uniforms.
With western Europe crushed, German barges waited in the English Channel to invade. England had her back to the wall! And this was the moment of English glory! The Germans, who had beaten the Russians and the Greeks and the Yugoslavs, stood and balked at the showdown with those pale, scrawny wonders—the dogged Englishman. They feared the English as they feared no others.
As England had carved up the Ottoman Empire, so now the Germans prepared to carve up the British Empire. Rommel’s powerful Afrika Korps was building toward a series of strikes