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The Road to Latrun: Veterans ofIsrael’s War of Independence

Efrem Sigel

oussa Yarkoni, a tall and limber 80-year old who fought in the milchemet ha atzma’ut,Israel’s War of Independence, remembers only too well the shortage of food in Jerusalem inthe spring of 1948. From the end of March until the beginning of June, local Arab

fighters, backed by the British-led Arab Legion, occupied high points along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road,choking off supplies of food, fuel, and ammunition. The key control point on this road was the villageof Latrun, overlooking the Ayalon Valley. By occupying the former British police station here, theLegion was able to pour murderous fire on any vehicle that tried to pass.

“Every week each person [in Jerusalem]got two eggs,” Moussa recalls. “No coffee.No meat. Cooking oil, too, it was necessaryto ration….There was bread, but not much,because there was no flour. There was teathat they rationed….There wasn’t [enough]fuel for cooking.” Soldiers were given moreto eat, but Uri Barzel, who also fought inJerusalem remembers the monotony: “Dayafter day we got the same porridge.”

Water, too, was strictly controlled. OnMay 7, the Arabs cut the pipes supplyingthe city. Whatever could be collected fromcisterns scattered through the city, “that wasthe water,” Moussa says. The city administra-tion harvested this water from each cisternand then distributed it, using horse-drawnwater tanks.

Moussa spoke to me at length at his homein Haifa in February and then by telephonewhen I was back in New York. Uri Barzelreceived me at his home in Riverdale, NY.The two of them were among more than 30veterans of the Independence War whom Iinterviewed between November, 2007 andMarch, 2008, most of them in Israel, severalin New York and another seven or eight bytelephone.

AY 14, 2008 marks 60 yearssince David Ben-Gurionproclaimed the Jewish state, but

for most of these veterans the sights, sounds,and lessons of the War of Independence arealmost as fresh today as they were in 1947and 1948.

AY 14, 2008 MARKS 60YEARS SINCE DAVID BEN-GURION

PROCLAIMED THE JEWISH STATE,BUT FOR MOST OF THESE VETER-ANS [INTERVIEWED FOR THIS

ARTICLE] THE SIGHTS, SOUNDS,AND LESSONS OF THE WAR OF

INDEPENDENCE ARE ALMOST AS

FRESH TODAY AS THEY WERE IN1947 AND 1948.

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To honor Israel’s 60th anniversary, we asked writer EFREM SIGEL to interview soldiers who had fought in thewars for Israel’s independence and to capture, in their own words, their memories of 1948. The result is thefollowing two articles—one about the Israelis who fought for their country’s survival, and the other aboutvolunteers from the U.S. and Canada who came to offer their services for the new state of Israel. Followingthese two accounts is DANNY GROSSMAN’s homage to Israel’s first fighter-pilot hero.

C O N G R E S S M O N T H L Y6

The declaration set off an invasion by fiveArab armies determined to drive the Jewsinto the sea. The ensuing war, furious yetrelatively short-lived, confirmed the reality ofIsrael’s existence and shaped the contours ofthe modern Middle East with its seeminglyintractable conflicts.

ISTORIANS like Alon Kadish,professor of history at the HebrewUniversity in Jerusalem, and

Michael Oren, author of Six Days of War,say there were really two wars. The first,between November 30 and May 14, was acivil war between Jews and Arabs. On theone side were the Haganah and Palmach(Palmach, an acronym in Hebrew, literallymeans “the elite striking force of theHaganah”), the backbone of what wouldsoon be an Israeli army. On the other sidewere a collection of Arab militias andvolunteers. Except for the crisis on the roadsto Jerusalem and the battles in the Old City,the Jews quickly gained the upper hand inmost of this early fighting, securing Jaffa, TelAviv, Haifa, Akko, and Tiberias.

When the Arab armies invaded in themiddle of May, however, the war changedfrom a civil war to a war for Israel’s survival.

As historian Michael Oren put it in aninterview: “Israel was being invaded byhundreds of tanks, hundreds of war-planes, and countless artillery pieces andmachine guns . . . and Israel didn’t have asingle tank. That was a thoroughly existen-tial situation.”

IGHTING in the first war began theday after the November 29 UNGeneral Assembly vote in favor of the

partition of Palestine. Moussa, who grew upin Jerusalem, describes how he used to visitArab towns before that November: “Insummer, we were going to Ramallah to havea drink, and in winter we were going toJericho because it was warm. No problem….But in December ’47, straight after the UNdeclaration, things were changed in oneday.”

One of his first assignments was to bepart of the security force (“the women withhand grenades, the men with Sten guns”)protecting funeral processions that had towend their way through Arab villages on theway to the Mount of Olives.

Hannah Eshel, an Israeli sculptor, pain-ter and photographer now living in NewYork, highlights for me the contrast betweenTel Aviv and Jerusalem right after the vote.In Tel Aviv, “everyone was happy anddancing in the street,” she says. “Then Iwent to Jerusalem and they were shootingon us.”

Ben-Gurion thought the key to savingJerusalem was Latrun, and between lateMay and mid-July at his orders the Jewsattacked the stronghold four times. Eachattack ended in defeat; at least 139 soldiersdied (the actual toll may have been a lothigher). What finally saved the city wasnot capturing Latrun, but bypassing it.Led by an American colonel, David“Mickey” Marcus, the new army builtan alternate road across and over the steephills between Hulda and Jerusalem, onterritory controlled by the Jews. As theroad was being completed in early June,Marcus was killed by friendly fire: a Jewishsentry mistook him for an Arab.Moussa Yarkoni, 1948 Moussa Yarkoni, 2008

H FHEN THE ARAB ARMIES IN-

VADED IN THE MIDDLE OF MAY

[1948], HOWEVER, THE WAR

CHANGED FROM A CIVIL WAR TO AWAR FOR ISRAEL’S SURVIVAL. AS

HISTORIAN MICHAEL OREN PUT

IT IN AN INTERVIEW: “ISRAEL WAS

BEING INVADED BY HUNDREDS OF

TANKS, HUNDREDS OF WAR-PLANES, AND COUNTLESS ARTIL-LERY PIECES AND MACHINE GUNS

. . . AND ISRAEL DIDN’T HAVE ASINGLE TANK. . . .”

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Uri Barzel, 1948

“I intend to attack the British”

ESIDES the Haganahand Palmach, anotherJewish defense force was

active in the months and yearsleading up to 1948: the Irgun,headed by Menachem Begin.The Irgun was known by itsHebrew acronym, Etzel; itspawned an even more radicaloffshoot, the Lechi (known inEnglish as the Stern Gang).These groups carried outnumerous attacks on the Britishand on Arab civilians before May1948.

administration in Palestine, Cactus stood infront of the YMCA, directly opposite thehotel, with a concealed Tommy gun. Hisinstructions: “You will provide the securitybackup. If the police come, you fire onthem.”

Both Cactus and those setting theexplosives got away undetected; the bombkilled 90 British, Arabs, and Jews. After-ward, the Irgun insisted they called theheadquarters staff 40 minutes before thebomb was to go off and warned them toevacuate the building; they claim that thiswarning was ignored. It seems a hollowexcuse for an act of terrorism, but Cactus hasno regrets about any of his activities.

In 1948, when the Irgun finally agreedto come under the command of a unifiedIsraeli army, Cactus became an army officer,beginning a career that would last 25 years.

“Why did Old Jerusalem surrender?”

HAUL TUVAL stands in the JewishQuarter of the Old City, two bodylengths from the Zion Gate. “This is

where he stood,” he says, talking aboutAbdullah al-Tal, commander of the ArabLegion in Jerusalem in 1948.

Shaul’s family came to Palestine in the1880s from Aleppo (Halab, in Arabic), a cityin Syria that was, at one time, a center bothof trade and of Torah study. When the war

began, he was teaching in a Talmud Torahfor Sephardim in the Old City; he soonorganized and commanded a company of 90boys and girls there. As a fluent Arab speaker,he was sent by Moshe Russnak, the Haganahcommander, on May 28, 1948 to negotiate acease-fire in the Jewish Quarter.

“Like this,” he says, showing me how al-Tal leaned against the wall, his right footbent at the knee, the sole of his shoe pressingagainst the ancient stones.

S UVAL is short and white-haired,with a dry, husky voice and thebrisk energy of a man with a

mission. At the age of 87, he walks soquickly along the cobblestones of the JewishQuarter that I have to step up my pace tokeep abreast of him. Before our trip to theOld City, we talk in the study of hisapartment on the outskirts of West Jerusa-lem. There, his desk is piled with papers andbooks; he is hard at work on a book called,Why Did Old Jerusalem Surrender?

Al-Tal wanted no part of a cease fire,Shaul recalls; instead, he demanded thesurrender of the Jewish Quarter. Shaulbalked; he had no authority to discusssurrender. He pretended to walk away,then pivoted to face the commander. “Imight as well hear your conditions,” hesaid, and asked al-Tal to write them out

One of the Etzel veterans is Zvi Barzel(perhaps a distant relation to Uri, thoughneither man knows the other). His Irguncomrades nicknamed him “Cactus,” a namethat stuck throughout his army career.Today he is hard of hearing, he has a badright eye, but even so, the way his largeframe flows into and around the easy chair inwhich he sits makes it possible to imaginehim as a strapping young man with a bigmouth and an ardent desire to bring about aJewish state by kicking out the British.

It was brash talk that got him into theIrgun. As he recalls it, “I met friends in acoffee house in King George Street. Theywere talking about this and that. It was1945. The news had arrived of the tragedyof the [European] Jews, [and I said to themthat] I intended to attack the British. Oneday one of them said to me, ‘what are youtalking for— do something!’” When Cactusasked where he could serve, his friend’s shortanswer was: “in the Etzel.”

“Twice a week in Dizengoff St.,” his wifeChava tells me, “he meets at a coffee housewith the friends who are still alive…. Theyretell all the stories as if it happened lastnight.” Quick-witted and sharp-tongued,Chava often cuts in to answer my questionsbefore Cactus can formulate his response (inwhich case I ask him a second time).

In the 1946 bombing of a wing of theKing David hotel housing the British

Shaul Tuval (middle), 1948Shaul Tuval, 2008, showing where al-Tal stood.

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at a time when the gleaming new buildingsin the Jewish Quarter housing the yeshivotof the various Orthodox and ultra-Orthodoxgroups were impossible to even imagine, letalone see. Accompanying me to and fromone of the interviews, which he helpedorganize, he cautions me about the limita-tions of trying to soak up the avira, theatmosphere, of this or that site. “Things havechanged so much that it’s impossible torecognize. The fields where the battles wenton, today there are towns, skyscrapers.”

The keeper of the photos

EVERAL times a week Dita (Yehudit)Perach catches the quarter to seven busfrom kibbutz Bet Ha Shita in the

Jordan Valley to the Ramat Aviv section ofTel Aviv. It’s a two-and-a-half hour trip, andat the end of the day she boards the bus forthe return trip. In between bus trips, she sitsat a desk in Bet Ha Palmach, the PalmachMuseum, sorting photos.

The archives where Dita works alreadyhouses many dozens of oversized albumsfilled with photos of the fighters of thePalmach—young men and women, smilingas they kneel, stand, sit in half tracks or trainon ropes.

“In 1910 my parents were among thefirst members of kibbutz Degania Alef,the first kibbutz in Israel,” Dita tells me,during my visit to the museum. “Motherwas from Odessa and father was from theregion of Kiev, the son of a rabbi. I wasborn in Degania Alef.” Dita joined thePalmach in 1943; by 1946, after marryinga kibbutznik from Bet Ha Shita, she wasliving there with a young son. Meanwhileher husband, a member of the Palyam, thePalmach navy, was busy transporting asmany Jewish refugees as he could fromEurope.

After the thousands of pictures that shehas cataloged and put in albums, I canimagine that Dita’s own memories blur intothose of the photos. As veterans die, theirfamilies bring still more photos to themuseum. “So many photos,” she says.

so he could take them to hiscommander.

With dwindling ammunitionand with no hope of reinforce-ments, the Jews surrendered. Theold people and the women wereallowed passage through the OldCity gates to West Jerusalem.Shaul Tuval and the rest of themen were taken prisoner andtransported to a prison in Trans-Jordan. There they remained fornine months, until they were freed

in a general prisoner exchange.Shaul walks me past the Zion gate to

show me where the narrow passagewaywidens into the street leading to theArmenian Quarter, and explains howRussnak, assuming that the openness of thepassage constituted a danger, pulled hissoldiers back and thus forfeited his bestchance of defense.

The Haganah had plenty of sand andcement, he says, and could have quicklybuilt a defensive wall overlooking thepassageway: “This is a ‘topographicalfortification’—this is a fortification fromwhich you can stand and fire on thosebelow.” He asks me to measure the widthof the passageway here, and I pace it off:three, maybe four meters.

He drives home his point. “So youhave a narrow passageway like this. Youplace our men here and here and here,and when anyone enters you fire. Andyou kill their soldiers.” By controlling thehigh points, he insists, the Haganah couldhave created a shetach hashmada—afield of extermination for the enemyand thus saved the Old City.

“It’s impossible to recognize”

S we wend our way throughthe Jewish Quarter, Shaul mustconstantly point out what has

changed: this building wasn’t here, thatbuilding wasn’t here, this spot was just ahill. Another Haganah veteran, courtlyJehuda Margalit, also fought in Jerusalem—

Dita (Yehudit) Perach, 2008

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SNOTHER HAGANAH VETERAN,

COURTLY JEHUDA MARGALIT,ALSO FOUGHT IN JERUSALEM—AT

A TIME WHEN THE GLEAMING

NEW BUILDINGS IN THE JEWISH

QUARTER HOUSING THE

YESHIVOT OF THE VARIOUS OR-THODOX AND ULTRA-ORTHODOX

GROUPS WERE IMPOSSIBLE TO

EVEN IMAGINE, LET ALONE SEE.. . . “THINGS HAVE CHANGED SO

MUCH THAT IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO

RECOGNIZE. THE FIELDS WHERE

THE BATTLES WENT ON, TODAY

THERE ARE TOWNS, SKYSCRAPERS.”

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The conqueror of Eilat

T is late in the afternoon when I reachthe home of Bren Adan (his given nameis Avraham, but the whole county

knows him as Bren, for the Bren gun thatwas his favorite weapon). I am jet-lagged,tired from a day of interviewing Palmachniksand I misunderstand the directions andwind up on the wrong intersection some-where in Ramat Ha Sharon. Mercifully,before I can get even more lost, Bren comesto fetch me in his compact Mitsubishi.

He joined the Palmach in 1943; at firstthey trained with sticks, made forcedmarches, practiced hand-to-hand combat. Inthe Negev in March 1949, he commanded aplatoon that captured Eilat—then a villageof a few huts—just prior to signing thearmistice with Jordan. The action gave thenew state a port on the Red Sea. Later hewould fight in the Sinai campaign, the SixDay War, and the Yom Kippur War; in thislast war he led his division across the SuezCanal to cut off the retreat of the Egyptianarmy. By the time he retired, the formerplatoon leader had reached the rank ofmajor general.

Bren is thoughtful, businesslike; hespeaks without hesitation, in well-organizedHebrew sentences that are both clear andevocative. Recalling the early days in theNegev, pre-1948, he says, “I remember timeswhen we didn’t have anything; all we hadwas personal weapons….In the beginningwe didn’t even have personal weapons. Wedidn’t have uniforms; we didn’t haveammunition; we didn’t have experience; wedidn’t have military know-how. But we hadlots of motivation. And little by little we gotartillery; we got tanks.” It took barely ayear—from spring 1948 to spring 1949—for the Jews to create the strongest army inthe Middle East.

“Fear? Yes, but so what?”

OUSSA (Moshe) Yarkoni, ex-company commander, later aquarry manager, has a playful

voice and a laugh that fills the sitting roomof his quiet house. Unlike some otherveterans, he has only optimism about thefuture of Israel. Showing me a photo of oneof his grandsons in army uniform, he says,“With ones like this it’ll be fine.”

ARKONI was born in Jerusalemin 1928, a year after his parentscame to Palestine from Poland. He

joined the Haganah in 1944. After his stintguarding funeral processions, he got anotherassignment.

On January 15, 1948 a platoon ofHaganah and Palmach soldiers sent toreinforce Kfar Etzion, near Hebron, wasambushed. All 35 were killed, their bodiesmutilated. Several days later when head-quarters still did not know their fate, Moussawas part of a larger force dispatched to lookfor the missing men.

“We went on the road to Kfar Etzion,and on the way there was a small plane—aPiper. The [Jewish] pilot knew that all hadbeen killed and dropped a note with a stonetelling us what happened. That’s the way itwas”—a Piper Cub with no wireless, no wayto communicate except to tie a piece of paperto a stone. To avoid the same fate, the forceturned back to Jerusalem.

Bren (Avraham) Adan, 1948 Bren (Avraham) Adan, 2008

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YNLIKE SOME OTHER VETER-

ANS, [MOUSSA YARKONI] HAS

ONLY OPTIMISM ABOUT THE

FUTURE OF ISRAEL. SHOWING

ME A PHOTO OF ONE OF HIS

GRANDSONS IN ARMY UNIFORM,HE SAYS, “WITH ONES LIKE

THIS IT’LL BE FINE.”

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Moussa left Jerusalem in February for anofficer’s training course in Netanya. “Therewere 150 buddies in the course. Thirty-fiveto forty percent were killed in the war.”When it was time to return, the Arabs werefiring, with deadly results, on every vehiclethat tried to bring supplies from Tel Aviv.

“It was impossible to get through toJerusalem. My parents, father and mother,didn’t know where I was. No letters,nothing. The road to Jerusalem had alreadybeen closed one month. So we went byconvoy, on April 13th—a convoy of 200automobiles. We left in the night, the wholeroad filled with Palmach men.”

This convoy made it and Moussa wasonce more in Jerusalem, but other veteransdescribed to me the feeling of helpless terroras they sat in cars or half-tracks of convoysbound for Jerusalem, easy targets for Arabfighters.

“Fear?” Moussa says. “Jerusalem was ourhome. Of course fear, but so what? Do wego away? If I go to the hospital for anoperation, isn’t there fear? Yes, but it [theoperation] is necessary. Fear, yes, but weknew we had to fight.”

NOTHER of the veterans I met,Romek Fein, tells me with barely atrace of a smile, “I had always luck.”

He avoided almost certain death when, after

three months in Kfar Etzion, his unit left thesettlement toward the end of March. Thatwas six weeks before its capture by Arabirregulars, who proceeded to massacre all buta handful of those who surrendered.Afterwards, Romek returned to Jerusalemfrom Tel Aviv; of three large convoys at thetime, he was in the only one to escape heavydamage.

Moussa’s enduring memories of theindependence war are not of battles but ofpeople, especially the company of 90 olimchadashim, new immigrants, that he wasgiven to lead. “They didn’t know a word ofHebrew—not a word. I had to speakYiddish to them. [Years later] I met one. Heis principal of a high school in Tel Aviv. Youknow what this is?” Moussa repeats thelesson for me, as he often does throughoutour interview, enunciating each Hebrewword for added emphasis: “He didn’t knowa word of Hebrew, and he is principal of ahigh school in Tel Aviv.”

“If you kill his camel, that’s a horrible blow”

HAUL SAPIR, a happy warrior,fought in every one of Israel’s warsfrom 1948 to the first Lebanon war in

1982. In his deep, rumbling voice, changingpitch as his excitement grows, he tells me thathe comes from a very rich family in Syria.They arrived in Palestine in 1931.

Shaul joined the Palmach in 1944, at theage of 15. By 1946 and 1947 he wasalready in the south with a small Palmach

Shaul Sapir,1948

Shaul Sapir, 2008

commando unit; they told the British theywere scouts. Although Ben-Gurion, perhapsanticipating the Egyptian invasion two yearslater, had done his best to dot the south withsettlements, most of the Negev was empty.

“There was nothing. Desert,” Shaul says.“We traveled around the desert for twomonths, identifying places for kibbutzim orelectrical stations.” They had little food andwater, lived out of tents, scrounged for foodamong the Bedouin, fought when they hadto, protected themselves with knives. TheArabs called them animals, so the Palmach-niks adopted the name, calling themselves“chayot ha Negev,” animals of the Negev.

T one point, Shaul recalls, “TheArab Bedouins came and blew upthe water line” supplying the

isolated settlements. Shaul went to head-quarters and told his colonel: “Listen, here ishow we fight against the Bedouins…. Thereis one way—not normal, not moral, but waris war. We will go out at night, enter an Arabvillage and we will kill there several camels,several horses, and several donkeys. An ArabBedouin, if you kill his brother, his mother,his son, it’s not terrible, but if you kill hiscamel, that’s a horrible blow.” Inside, peopleat headquarters told Shaul he was “nuts,”but outside, Haim Bar Lev, a commandingofficer and future chief of staff, asked himif his plan would really work.

“I say, ‘Listen….I grew up [with Arabs]. Iknow what it is to kill camels.” Then,according to Shaul, Bar Lev told him, inEnglish: “Do it. But I didn’t tell youanything.” Shaul went out at night andkilled 14 camels, horses, and donkeys.Afterwards, he warned the Bedouins,“Listen, the Jews will kill every camel, everyhorse, every donkey if you cut the waterline….There was not another blowing up ofthe water line.”

At the museum, Shaul recounts thePalmach history time and again for visitors—soldiers and commanders. One of theofficers said to him, “If today the soldiersfought the way you fought, with knives, foreach soldier I would need two lawyers.”

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“To save our lives”; “I didn’t kill myself”

ANNAH ESHEL grew up inJerusalem on Rehov Ha Neveiim,the Street of the Prophets. Hers

was a religious family; she joined theHaganah in 1947 at the age of 21, againstthe wishes of her father.

The Haganah sent her for training inradio and telephone communications. Toprovide communications between platoonand company commanders and headquar-ters, she lugged around the Mem Kuf Esrim(MK 20), a behemoth of a wireless radio

Hannah Eshel,1948Hannah Eshel,2008

weighing 20 kilos. She remembers thefeeling of togetherness, the pain at seeingfriends killed and, most of all, the absoluteconviction that the Jews would win the war.

“We didn’t hate the Arabs; we had noanimosity toward them, but they attacked usso we had to fight….They said they weregoing to drive us into the sea. The wholefighting was really to save our lives.”

IKE Hannah Eshel, Uri Barzel hadan intensely personal relationshipwith the MK 20. When fighting

broke out in late 1947, he was studyingArabic language and literature at the Hebrew

Uri Barzel (right) with two fellow soldiers, 1948 Uri Barzel, 2008

University in Jerusalem. He was immedi-ately called up, sent to the communicationscourse and then assigned to Jerusalem as partof a unit of 32 communications specialists.Every night, Uri would go out with adifferent unit as they battled for each hunkof territory in nearby villages, or sections ofWest Jerusalem still held by Arab fighters.By the time of the first truce in June 1948,20 of the 32 communications specialists hadbeen killed, and Uri explains why.

“It’s always a tremendous amount oftension…. You know people are going to beshooting, you know that you’re going to bein the thick of it and the commanders at thattime were in the front….There was no suchthing as a commander saying, ‘hey you,lead.’ He would run ahead and everyonewould follow and I would be with him[carrying the MK 20]….I remember asituation where we were walking on a hill,opposite Katamon [an area in south Jerusa-lem]. At that time it was held by the Arabs,and they were shooting at us and I could see,like in a movie, a puff of dust coming infront of me and behind me as I was runningfrom one rock to the next to hide andwondering, what the hell do they haveagainst me that they want to kill me.”

HE only weapon Uri carried was aBeretta pistol—to kill himself if hewas captured. “They didn’t catch

me and I didn’t kill myself,” he says drily.Eventually he was wounded—accidentally,by explosives set off by his own unit—and

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C O N G R E S S M O N T H L Y12

spent months recuperating. After the war heswitched his studies to medicine, trained inthe U.S. as an endocrinologist, and eventu-ally became a professor at Albert EinsteinCollege of Medicine in the Bronx.

“I will be buried in Nitzanim”

N June 2008, Yitzhak Pundak will be95. He is a stocky man, very compact,with a great head of white hair. His

bluntness, his self-assurance are tangible, likea second person sitting next to him on thesofa.

When I ask about his family, he says, “Iam from Poland,” speaking in accented butexpressive English. “I arrived to Israel in1933. Chalutz [pioneer]. With my wife, notmy family. My family the Nazis killed. Wearrived here without any family and had tomake a living. We had to start working inagriculture, construction.”

But also in 1933, Pundak joined theunderground Haganah. “They trained us inschools at night. First of all with a pistol ofwood. Then with a pistol.” By 1936, he wasalready a commander and in 1937 he left his

job to work full-time for the Haganah.“In 1947 I was nominated by Ben-

Gurion as a battalion commander [of the53rd battalion]; this was the Givati brigadein the south. I fought in 45 battles. I lost145 soldiers in the war, 220 wounded. Ibecame a brigade commander in August,1948. We were not soldiers, we were parti-sans, and only this kind of soldier couldwin the war. If we would have a brigade[organized along conventional lines] withoutweapons and without tanks, then we wouldhave lost the war.”

Manpower was the army’s biggestproblem—but also its biggest asset. “I builtup a unit of 450 boys from the poorest partof Tel Aviv. A boy comes, he wants to join.How old are you? More than 18? Becauseless than 18, I couldn’t take him in;, so he’smore than 18. No papers, no checkup, nomedical checkup.”

CAN see how Yitzhak Pundak’soutspokenness would endear him tohis soldiers, but rub higher-ups the

wrong way. One of those higher-ups wasHaim Laskov, a chief of staff. When

Pundak returned from anoverseas assignment in the late1950s, Laskov said he couldremain in the army only if heagreed to a reduction in rank.

the military for a new career with theMinistry of Labor.

In the end he is as honest about hisfailures as about his successes. “We lost twobattles and both of them are with me untiltoday. My wife, who died, is buried inNitzanim, in the cemetery near 33 soldierswho were killed in the battle. When I willdie my grave will be there. To show you thatwe lost the battle.”

WO days later, another Haganahveteran, Amnon Inbar, takes me inhis cluttered red Suzuki on a tour

of the Negev. We visit Ashdod, where hisbattalion—the 54th—stopped the Egyp-tians 20 miles from Tel Aviv, and Negba,another battle site. And we visit Nitzanim.Of 20-odd settlements in the south, this wasone of a very few that the Egyptiansmanaged to conquer; one other, YadMordechai, was abandoned by its defenders.

On this warm, dusty day in earlyFebruary, Nitzanim is an oasis; we baskin the shade of its pine trees, their needlesrising and falling gently in the breeze.In June 1948, the defenders of kibbutzNitzanim had exhausted their ammuni-tion, and when battalion headquartersdid not answer their desperate calls forreinforcements, they surrendered to savethe lives of some 100 survivors, who weretaken prisoner and released a year later.

School kids aretrooping through thegrounds for a historylesson as we walk outfrom the shade of thetrees and down to aseries of oversizedblack marble sculp-tures. They com-memorate the valor ofone of the femalesoldiers who diedhere. Yitzhak Pundakpersonally took onthe responsibility ofraising $200,000 forthis memorial.Yitzhak Pundak, 2008Yitzhak Pundak,1948

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Why and how they won

HE Israeli War of Independencehad unimagined consequences.For one, the fighting left Israel in

control of considerably more territory than itwould have had if the Arabs had acceptedthe UN’s 1947 partition plan. For another,the exodus of hundreds of thousands ofArab refugees during the war created a thusfar insoluble problem.

There is still a dispute over the extent towhich Israel was responsible for pushing outsome of the Arab refugees in 1948. It isgenerally accepted now that Moshe Dayan’sforces expelled the Arab populations ofRamle and Lydda, two strategic towns nearthe Lod airport. Afterward, Ben-Guriongave explicit orders not to disturb Arabresidents in conquered areas, though hereand there a commander may have pushedArabs to leave, especially when troops cameunder attack from local residents.

I mention those reports to Moussa Yarkoni.“I was in Jerusalem,” he says. “I know whathappened there. I conquered and enteredArab neighborhoods. And a large part ofthem [the Arab residents] ran away. Ranaway—but not all. Ten percent stayed. Theirleaders, whose who were in charge, said:‘Leave your homes. The Jews will kill you.’Whoever remained got food. They got water.We did no harm to them. That’s how it was.”

Yitzhak Pundak says, “I can tell you forsure that in my area, a frontline of 45kilometers [in the south], where I was from1945 to 1947 as commander of the Haganah,the Arab leaders—the muktarim—knew mevery well and I knew them. I went from onevillage to the other telling them to stay on,that nothing is going to happen to them.We can live together. But they run away.”

Historians may say the outcome of theIndependence War was in doubt: those whofought in it had no such doubts. To a per-son, the veterans told me they knew that theJews would win the war. In 1948 therallying slogan was two words in Hebrew:ein breira—there is no alternative. Eitherwe win or we are dead.

If this sounds familiar to Americans, it’sbecause we can hear in it an echo ofFranklin’s oft-quoted statement at theContinental Congress, just before signingthe Declaration of Independence. Everyoneknew what the penalty was for traitors whodefied the English king, but it was Franklinwho captured it in a pithy sentence: “Wemust, indeed, all hang together, or mostassuredly we shall all hang separately.”

In explaining their victory, over and overthese veterans talked to me about motivatzia—not a difficult Hebrew word to understand.But motivation against tanks, planes, andartillery can only carry you so far. In contrastwith their Arab foes, what the Jews had in1948 was the demonstrated ability to worktogether, putting aside personal, family, orethnic rivalries. Almost from its beginning,the yishuv had been a collective enterprise.Only a small minority of residents were kib-butzniks, but the ethos of the kibbutz—thewillingness to subordinate oneself to the com-mon good—was a central value of the society.

VEN before independence, thatsociety, small as it was—600,000Jews in 1948—had created much of

the apparatus of a modern state: schools,universities, hospitals, capable civil adminis-trators, defense and police forces. Itsmembers possessed scientific, technical, andmanagement skills that were clearly superiorto those of its Arab neighbors.

With substantial help from supportersabroad, especially from America, the newstate was able to organize and equip its forcesin a way that its foes could not match. Thefruits of that organization can be seen inIsrael’s success in procuring the planes, tanks,and weapons that began flowing into thecountry after May 14, as well as in itsmelding separate organizations—Haganah,Palmach, Irgun—into a unified army with acentral command. That would be aformidable task at any time, but Israelmanaged it in the midst of a war.

In their book, O Jerusalem, authors LarryCollins and Dominique Lapierre quote SirJohn Glubb, commander of the Arab

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ISTORIANS MAY SAY THE OUT-COME OF THE INDEPENDENCE

WAR WAS IN DOUBT: THOSE WHO

FOUGHT IN IT HAD NO SUCH

DOUBTS. TO A PERSON, THE

VETERANS TOLD ME THEY KNEW

THAT THE JEWS WOULD WIN THE

WAR. IN 1948 THE RALLYING

SLOGAN WAS TWO WORDS INHEBREW: EIN BREIRA—THERE ISNO ALTERNATIVE. EITHER WE

WIN OR WE ARE DEAD.

H

. . . HAT THE JEWS HAD IN1948 WAS THE DEMONSTRATED

ABILITY TO WORK TOGETHER,PUTTING ASIDE PERSONAL, FAMILY,OR ETHNIC RIVALRIES. ALMOST

FROM ITS BEGINNING, THE YISHUV

HAD BEEN A COLLECTIVE ENTER-PRISE. . . . THE ETHOS OF THE

KIBBUTZ—THE WILLINGNESS TO

SUBORDINATE ONESELF TO THE

COMMON GOOD—WAS A CENTRAL

VALUE OF THE SOCIETY.

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C O N G R E S S M O N T H L Y14

Legion, on this very point. The reason theArabs were, in the end, no match for the Jewswas because “you had a modern Europeanpopulation opposed to a much morenumerous local population which waswithout technical knowledge and modernskills, and which was uncontrollably excitableand emotional.” The Arabs, Glubb said, “wereforever splitting into little groups. No onewould take orders from anyone else and thenwhen something went wrong, somebody hadto be a traitor because that was the onlypossible explanation.”

Finally, in Ben-Gurion the Jews had aleader with a single-minded goal—state-hood—and the will to pursue it whatever thecost. His instructions to his commanders—attack, attack, attack—set the tone for theconquest of the entire Galilee and theexpulsion of the Egyptians from the Negev,among many other victories.

Ben-Gurion’s doctrine still resonates.Michael Oren says the lesson of the war “isstill valid today, that Israel’s existence stillhangs in the balance and that ultimately wecan’t rely on anyone other than ourselves. Ithink that was the lesson. I think nothinghas changed. You don’t want to fight onyour territory, you want to bring the war tothe enemy’s territory.”

Nevertheless, even a giant like Ben-Gurion makes mistakes, both strategic andtactical, and those mistakes cost many lives.In attacking Latrun not once but repeatedly,he overruled commanders like Yigal Yadin,who warned that they had neither thetrained forces nor the firepower to accom-plish such a mission.

The road to Latrun

N a mild Shabbat afternoon inmid-February, the highwayheading southeast from Tel Aviv is

as empty as any in Israel. And here, just pastthe few farms and buildings of the village ofBin Nun, we turn off onto a dirt road, littlemore than a farm track really, that leads to astone monument on which are engraved thenames of victims of the first attack on Latrun.

Shraga Ben-Zvi, my guide on theexcursion to Latrun, is an ex-army officerwho also happens to be my cousin. Todaywe have the monument at Bin Nun toourselves: the dirt road is too narrow toaccommodate tour buses and, apparently,too out of the way to interest anyone else.

EHIND the monument, we walk 50yards through tangled brush andyellow-brown grass to a viewpoint

where we can see the deserted stretch of roadcutting across the Ayalon valley to a junctionfour kilometers away. Halfway up the hill,rising behind the junction is the mishmeret,the police fortress built by the British atLatrun, and above it, much farther away, thehigher, steeper hills that ring Jerusalem.

It’s hard to believe that, 60 years ago,soldiers tramped across these fields and upthe slopes of Latrun, to be mowed down bythe artillery of the Legion. Many of thosewho died in the first attack were Holocaustsurvivors who only days before had steppedoff the ship that carried them to Israel fromthe displaced persons camps in Europe.They had no training; almost none of themspoke Hebrew.

Captured in the ’67 war, Latrun today isthe site of a museum dedicated to the shiryon,the armored corps of the IDF. On the facadeof the old police station, a rectangular,reddish brown building, you can still seescars left by bullets and shells; the holesmake it look as if random chunks of stonehave been hollowed out from the otherwiseflat exterior.

Inside the museum, a computer databaseenables the visitor to access a biography ofeach of the thousands of armored corpssoldiers who died in Israel’s wars. Outside isan exhibit of tanks, more than 200 of thembaking in the sun, and in the shade beyondthe tanks, is a wall engraved with theirnames. It’s a very long wall.

EFREM SIGEL’s award-winning articles andshort stories have appeared in numerous publi-cations. His second novel, The Disappearance,is due next February from The Permanent Press.

O

BT’S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT, 60

YEARS AGO, SOLDIERS TRAMPED

. . . UP THE SLOPES OF LATRUN,TO BE MOWED DOWN BY THE

ARTILLERY OF THE LEGION.MANY OF THOSE WHO DIED INTHE FIRST ATTACK WERE HOLO-CAUST SURVIVORS WHO ONLY DAYS

BEFORE HAD STEPPED OFF THE

SHIP THAT CARRIED THEM TO

ISRAEL FROM THE DISPLACED PER-SONS CAMPS IN EUROPE. THEY

HAD NO TRAINING; ALMOST NONE

OF THEM SPOKE HEBREW.

ICHAEL OREN SAYS THE

LESSON OF THE WAR “IS STILL

VALID TODAY, THAT ISRAEL’SEXISTENCE STILL HANGS IN THE

BALANCE AND THAT ULTIMATELY

WE CAN’T RELY ON ANYONE OTHER

THAN OURSELVES. . . . I THINK

NOTHING HAS CHANGED.”

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They Fought for the Dream:American Volunteers in 1948

Efrem Sigel

or every one of the nearly 1,500 Americans and Canadians who volunteered to fight for Israelin the 1948 War of Independence or who served on the Aliya Bet ships transporting refugeesfrom Europe, there was a moment of decision. For Paul Kaminetzky (now Paul Kaye), that

moment came early in 1947 after he got a phone call from a stranger asking, “Do you want to helpyour people?” At their clandestine meeting in Manhattan the next day, Paul was asked to join the crewof a ship that would pick up refugees in Europe and bring them to Palestine—despite the danger offines and imprisonment for violating the British blockade. “Let’s go,” he said.

Paul, a U.S. Navy veteran, was thirdengineering officer on the SS Tradewinds(renamed the Hatikva) which sailed fromBaltimore, picked up 1,450 refugees—andwas seized by the British. After beinginterned in Cyprus and then in Atlit, nearHaifa, Paul escaped and returned to the U.S.Soon he was volunteering to take anothership across. This one, the Pan York, pickedup 2,800 Holocaust survivors and sailedwithout difficulty into the waters of thenewly-proclaimed State of Israel.

The Americans and Canadians were partof the 3,500 foreigners called Machal, aHebrew acronym for mitnadvei chutz

l’aretz—volunteers from abroad. Paul wasone of a dozen American and Canadianvolunteers whom I interviewed. When I askhim why he said yes, he says, “We have to gowith the dream,”—the dream of a Jewishstate.

“Nobody could take this away from us”

OR Si Spiegelman, whose familyescaped from German-occupiedBelgium in 1941, the moment came

in 1947 or 1948 during a visit from an auntfrom Antwerp. When she told how a Bel-gian neighbor had betrayed the rest of the

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Paul Kaye (Paul Kaminetzky), on the Hatikva, 1947. Paul Kaye, 2008 Si Spiegelman,Tel Radra Outpost, 1948.

HE AMERICANS AND CANADI-ANS WERE PART OF THE 3,500FOREIGNERS CALLED MACHAL,A HEBREW ACRONYM FOR MIT-NADVEI CHUTZ L’ARETZ—VOLUN-TEERS FROM ABROAD.

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Ralph Lowensteinwith his Machal exhibit, 2008

Ralph Lowenstein, tent campnear Nahariya, 1948

family to the Germans—they were taken tothe death camps and gassed—Si says, “Iwas filled with rage.” He volunteeredthrough an organization called Land andLabor for Palestine, and was stationed inthe Galilee with a unit guarding a hill calledTel Radra. “There was a spirit that I can’tdescribe,” Si remembers. “We knew this[land] was ours and that nobody couldtake this away from us.”

OR Ralph Lowenstein, another 18-year- old, who was completing hisfirst year at Columbia University at

the time, signing up for a student exchangeprogram between Britain and the U.S. wasa way to get to Europe, and from there toIsrael. After a month in Britain, he arrivedin Paris, located the Israeli embassy (he firstwent by mistake to a kosher butcher, but acustomer straightened him out and gavehim the correct address) and enlisted. Soonhe was a half-track driver in the 79thbattalion of the Seventh Brigade, whichfought all over the Galilee. This must be adream, Ralph remembers thinking on hisfirst night of combat, as bullets from Arabgunmen whistled around the half-track.“It only takes a minute or two to realize it’snot.”

F

AOMI KANTEY (née Levin), hadfinished nurse’s training in theU.S. Navy when she left for

Palestine in late 1947. “I got there knowingthat when the British left, there was going tobe a conflagration,” she recalls. She alreadyhad family ties to the land: her sister was on akibbutz; her brother-in-law was studying atthe Technion. Naomi worked first in ahospital in Haifa and then on the Carmeland later in Jaffa and Ramle, tending to thewounded. One of those wounded in thefighting in Ramle and Lydda in July 1948was Leon Kantey, a South African volunteerwho commanded a tank under MosheDayan. After Leon was discharged, they metthrough friends and were married in Tel Avivin April 1949.

When I ask Naomi why she volunteered,she says, “I was a member of a Zionist youthmovement, my parents were socialist-Zionist—so it was natural.” Moreover, shesays, speaking of all the volunteers, “we wereterribly affected by what happened inEurope to the Jews.”

Another nurse, Hilde Goldberg, volun-teered with her husband Max. Hilde is aDutch Jew who escaped from Holland afterthe German invasion and worked with theunderground in Belgium. After the war shemet Max, a Swiss doctor, at a DP camp inBergen-Belsen. Hilde was directing thechild-care center and Max, who had come tovolunteer, began to check up on the children“more and more,” she remembers with alaugh. They married, moved to Switzerlandand had a child, but when the Haganah

Lou Laurie, 1948 (right).

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“It was 1776”

Ralph had grown up in an observant andZionist family in the small town of Danville,VA. When the State of Israel was proclaimed,he recognized that this was a uniqueopportunity to fight in a Jewish war ofindependence. “It was 1776 in this coun-try,” he tells me. After the war he went on toa career in journalism and academia. Inrecent years, he’s been the moving forcebehind the Museum Project, an exhibit atHillel House in Gainesville, Florida, wherehe was dean of the journalism school. Theexhibit chronicles the Americans andCanadians who volunteered in 1948.

A Canadian volunteer, Lou Laurie,fought in the 72nd battalion of the SeventhBrigade, commanded by a fellow Canadian,Ben Dunkelman. He had two moments ofdecision: one when he signed up in QuebecCity, and the second when his ship, the PanYork, stopped to pick up refugees nearMarseilles. When he saw the camp and thepeople who had survived the Holocaust, “Iknew I had to do it as a Jew,” he says.

“A war the Jews had to win”

NOTHER Canadian volunteer, Joe Warner, spent a sleepless night athome in Toronto after the Novem-

ber 29, 1947 UN vote in favor of partition.“This was a war the Jews had to win,” heremembers feeling. A recruiter for the Haganahsigned him up. His motivation: the convictionthat if the Jews lost the war “it would be verybad for every Jew everywhere in the world.”

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mother—were distraught. But Rudy’s mindwas made up. “He didn’t ask us: he told us,”Tobie recalls.

During his months in Israel, Rudy shotdown four Egyptian planes; one of his fellowpilots was Ezer Weizman. After graduatingfrom Harvard in 1950, he returned to Israelfor two years as flight commander at theRamat David air base. Later he would get agraduate engineering degree and work forRockwell for 25 years in southern California.

“Rudy was a hero,” says Mitchell Flint,who became a lifelong friend. “Not only didRudy serve in ’48, but he came back andtrained the early pilots. He really was astalwart for Israel.”

He was, by all accounts, a quiet hero.“Probably the most humble man I’d everknown,” is how his younger son, Mark,describes him. “Even as a kid growing up,my dad was not a fighter pilot to me; he wasvery much the baseball coach.”

Rudy died in 2000. Of the three children,Mark feels his father’s influence the moststrongly. He says, “When I go to synagoguetoday, I’m doing something that he wouldwant me to do. And when I take my children,I think he would be very proud that Judaismis not going to die in our family.”

“How can you not go?”

HERE were several dozen non-Jewsamong the American volunteers;one of them is Augustine (Duke)

Labaczewski, a seaman for 50 years. When aJewish boyhood friend volunteered for theAliya Bet ships in 1947, Duke joined him.

asked them to come to Israel as medicalvolunteers, “of course we said yes.” At Mt.Gilboa near Afula, Hilde ran the ER in aconverted agricultural school, while Maxtended the wounded on the front lines.They came to the U.S. in 1950.

“He was Jewish, he had to go”

HE nascent Israeli air force badlyneeded trained pilots in 1948, andMitchell Flint and Rudy Auguarten

were among dozens of foreigners whoshowed up to help. Mitchell, who laterbecame a lawyer in Los Angeles, had been aNavy pilot in World War II and wasstudying at UCLA in 1948 when the warbroke out. “Because I was a pilot and Jewishand especially because of the Holocaust, Idecided to volunteer,” he says.

Rudy Augarten grew up in Philadelphiain an observant family. As a pilot in WorldWar II, he shot down two German planes,was himself shot down over France, foundshelter with a French farmer, was capturedby the Germans and escaped. After makinghis way back to Allied lines he resumedflying. In 1948 he was a junior at Harvardwhen he decided to volunteer.

His sister, Tobie Specht, recalls the daythat he informed his family. “He wasdetermined to go to Israel to fly….He wasJewish, he had to go.” Given the long periodduring which he’d been missing in action inWorld War II, Rudy’s parents—especially his

They sailed together on the SS Tradewinds,and after the ship’s crew and passengers wereinterned, Duke found a way to remain inIsrael; he trained with the Palmach andfought near Tiberias.

“When you see six million are killed, howcan you not go?” he says.

LL the American volunteers ranthe risk of legal penalties for theirdecision to fight in the Indepen-

dence War. Despite President Truman’simmediate recognition of the new State ofIsrael, the State Department remainedstrongly pro-Arab. Passports of those leavingthe country were stamped, “Not valid for travelfor the purpose of serving in a foreign army.”

The Justice Department did prosecutethree men—Al Schwimmer, HankGreenspun and Charlie Winters—forsmuggling arms to the new state.Schwimmer and Greenspun were fined andlost their civil rights, according to RalphLowenstein’s Museum Project, but onlyWinters, a Christian, actually went to jail.His crime: selling three surplus B-17bombers to Israel. Winters died in 1984 andto honor his wish to be buried in Israel, hisremains were later transferred to the Chris-tian Alliance Church cemetery in Jerusalem’sGerman Colony.

Twenty-nine Americans and 11 Canadi-ans died in the Independence War. Unlikethe Israelis fighting for their homes andfamilies, they gave their lives for a dream—adream that they helped bring to fruition.Their stories, and those of their comradeswho returned, are little noticed or celebrated.Theirs is a generation that is fast disappear-ing; today only a few hundred are still alive.And yet, across the span of the decades, whatthey did and why seems to grow moreimportant year by year.

EFREM SIGEL’S author’s identification is onpage 12.

A nearly complete roster of the volunteers andtheir accomplishments, including those whoperished, can be found at the web site of theMuseum Project: http://www.israelvets.comJoe Warner, 1948 Joe Warner, 2007

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