Exodus - Leon Uris [332]
Karen Hansen Clement grew from a beautiful girl into a magnificent woman. She was striking perfection, with the tenderness and kindness which had characterized her youth following her into maturity.
In the depths of Kitty’s mind the thought sometimes rose that Karen might come with her to America, but it was pure wishful thinking. In more realistic moments she knew that Karen did not need her. She had done her job for the girl just as she had done it for Israel. Karen was a part of Israel now, too deeply rooted to be torn away. And Kitty knew that she did not need Karen now. Once she believed she would never be able to part from the girl. But that void, the emotional starvation in Kitty, had been filled by years of unselfish devotion to “her children.”
Kitty not only knew she could leave Karen, but she dared hope that normalcy and true happiness awaited her somewhere, sometime, again.
No, for Karen and herself, Kitty had no fears about leaving Israel. But there was one fear—a fear for Israel itself.
The Arabs sat at Israel’s borders, licking their wounds and waiting for that day they would pounce on the little nation and destroy her in their much-advertised “second round.”
The Arab leaders handed their masses guns instead of plowshares. Those few who saw the light of Israel and wanted to make peace were murdered. The old harangues poured from the Arab press, from its radio, its leaders, and from the Moslem pulpits.
The Arab people, already bled dry by willful men, were bled even dryer to pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in arms.
The refugee situation was distorted so as to be made insolvable.
Nasser, the one-time army captain who sat in the pocket at Faluja under siege, inflamed the Arab world like a would-be Hitler.
The Suez Canal was blocked by Egypt to Israeli ships and ships of other nations bringing cargo to Israel, in violation of international law.
The Gulf of Akaba was blockaded to keep the Jews from operating a port at Elath.
The Legion of Jordan blatantly ignored the truce agreement whereby Jews were to have free access to Old Jerusalem for worship at their holiest shrine, the Wall of Solomon’s Temple.
All Arab nations refused to recognize the existence of Israel; all Arab nations sworc to destroy Israel.
Then came the most vicious move. The Arabs, mainly the Egyptians in the Gaza strip, organized fedayeen gangs for the purpose of murdering Israelis. These gangs crossed the border nightly to kill, to burn fields, to cut water-pipe lines, to destroy. Tormented Palestine refugees were used in these gangs, goaded by hate-spewing leaders.
Israel, with all of her other burdens, had to adopt an axiom of reality: “When Hitler said he was going to exterminate the Jews, the world did not believe him. When the Arabs say it, we in Israel believe them.”
Military training in Israel was compulsory for girls as well as for boys. They learned at early ages to handle arms. All men received training one month out of each year until the age of forty-five. Israel became the most efficiently organized and largest—in proportion to population—standing militia in the world.
The notorious fedayeen continued to commit atrocity after atrocity. They reached a new depth by the bombing of children’s houses on the border settlements.
At last Israel had no choice but reprisal. The army of Israel swore to kill ten for one. Unfortunately, reprisal seemed to be the only language that the Arabs understood, the only thing that might stop them.
One of the defensive measures used by Israel was the creation of Nahal. Nahal was a militarized intensification of settlements in strategic places. Many youth groups of boys and girls went into the army to take their training as a unit. After basic