Exodus - Leon Uris [295]
The Haganah immediately appealed to the International Red Cross to supervise the surrender of the other three Etzion group settlements, which were also close to being out of ammunition. Only this move prevented mass murder there, too.
In the Negev Desert near the Dead Sea, the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan attacked again.
This time they hit a kibbutz that the Jews had built in the lowest and hottest place on the earth. It was called Beth Ha-Arava—the House in the Wilderness. In the summertime it was one hundred and twenty-five degrees in the shade. When the Jews came to this place no living thing had grown in the alkaline soil in all of history. They washed the soil down, acre by acre, to free it of salts, and by this painstaking process and through the creation of spillways, dams, and cisterns to trap the rainfall, they built a modern farm.
With the nearest Jews a hundred miles away and facing unbeatable odds, Beth Ha-Arava surrendered to the Arab Legion, and as the people walked from the House in the Wilderness the Jews set a torch to it and burned their houses and fields which had been built with inhuman toil.
And so, the Arabs had got their victories at last—Beth Ha-Arava—the House in the Wilderness—and the blood-stained conquest of the Etzion group.
On the night of May 13, 1948, the British High Commissioner for Palestine quietly left embattled Jerusalem. The Union Jack, a symbol here of the misuse of power, came down from the staff—forever.
MAY 14, 1948
In Tel Aviv the leaders of the Yishuv and the world Zionists met in the house of Meier Dizengoff, the founder and first mayor of the city. Outside the house, Sten-gun-bearing guards kept back anxious crowds.
In Cairo, in New York, in Jerusalem, and in Paris and London and Washington they turned their eyes and ears to this house.
“This is Kol Israel—the Voice of Israel,” the announcer said slowly from the radio station. “I have just been handed a document concerning the end of the British mandate which I shall now read to you.”
“Quiet! Quiet!” Dr. Lieberman said to the crowd of children who had gathered in his cottage. “Quiet!”
“The Land of Israel,” the voice over the radio said, “was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.”
Bruce Sutherland and Joab Yarkoni stopped the chess game in Remez’s hotel and, with Remez, listened raptly.
“Exiled from the Land of Israel, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.”
In Paris, the static on the radio increased and drowned out the voice as Barak Ben Canaan and the Yishuv agents frantically twisted the dials and beat on the receiver.
“Impelled by this historic association, Jews strove throughout the centuries to go back to the land of their fathers and regain their statehood. In recent decades they returned in their masses. They reclaimed the wilderness, revived their language, built cities and villages, and established an ever-growing community with its own economic and cultural life. They sought peace, yet were prepared to defend themselves. They brought the blessings of progress to all inhabitants ...”
In Safed, the Cabalists listened in hope of words to fulfill the ancient prophecies. In the Jerusalem corridor the dog-tired Palmach fighters of the Hillmen Brigade listened, and in the isolated and besieged settlements of the blistering Negev Desert they listened.
“... right was acknowledged by the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, and reaffirmed by the mandate of the League of Nations, which gave explicit international recognition ...”
David Ben Ami rushed into the commander’s office at Ein Or kibbutz. Ari held his finger to his lips and pointed to the radio.
“... the recent holocaust which engulfed