owned a pricey, pedigree horse. And when the boy desired a mule, money materialized for this as well. But nothing when it came to education. Reuven did not think that it was up to him to pay for his son’s education, especially since there was a chance that the PICA would. The matter of house repairs and the school episode may have had something in common: Paicovich was not prepared to lay out money for what others could obtain from the PICA free of charge.
The PICA’s impatience with Paicovich reflected its annoyance with Mes’ha as a whole. In 1930, the residents of Mes’ha filled out a questionnaire presented to them by John Hope-Simpson, who was exploring the feasibility of colonization following the unfavorable report on Zionist settlement produced by the British Shaw Commission on the Palestinian Disturbances of 1929. Based on the questionnaire, the village had thirty farming families at the time and a total debt of Palestine £7,000. They employed forty harat families and another thirty-five temporary workers. None of the hired hands was Jewish.87 At the time, the PICA leaned toward a rescue plan devised for the colonies by the Yavne’el “progressives”: intensive farming, smaller units to boost productivity, mechanization (a tractor and a combine), the seed cycle, modern amelioration and fertilization, and improving livestock with superior strains. The entire plan meshed with the problem of Jewish labor. Smaller units and mechanization were meant to reduce manpower and give preference to skilled, trained labor. Yavne’el adopted the program with the PICA’s support. Mes’ha rejected it. One of the voluble opponents to modernization was Paicovich. In Mes’ha’s dispute with the management of the Galilee Farmers Federation, Paicovich charged: “You (the federation) and PICA must change your attitude toward us.”88 In other words, the fault lay not with Mes’ha’s methods but with the attitude of official bodies.
The dispute grew sharper in the summer of 1931, with Mes’ha rejecting every suggestion to change its lifestyle and let the harats go. The PICA imposed sanctions. Spurning a request from Mes’ha’s farmers to help them obtain outside work, it explained: “Even if we had funds for employment at Kefar Tavor—we would not use them in view of the farmers’ negative position on every suggestion to improve the situation and upgrade agriculture. They object to the seed cycle and to any change in working methods—things that already exist at most of their sister colonies in Lower Galilee.” The conclusion was: “So long as the farmers do not change their views on these questions—they can expect no help from us.”89
The colony’s Z. Eshbol complained: “Because of Arab labor, Mes’ha has fallen from grace in the eyes of [PICA] officials and the federation.” In the spirit of Paicovich’s earlier demand, he called for understanding and caution in officialdom’s attitude toward Mes’ha.90 But while Mes’ha refused to “reform,” the PICA refused to extend assistance.
In 1932, a sunken well at Yavne’el fortuitously yielded abundant water, changing the prospects of the Lower Galilee farm and carrying everyone along in a wave of optimism. The discovery seemed to justify the methods of the modernists after the fact. Craving water on their land too, the residents of Mes’ha did not bother to consult the PICA and dug a well at their own expense. The PICA deemed the unplanned excavation a waste of money. Still, there was no denying that it was a novel local initiative. What’s more, with the PICA’s help, a group of Mes’ha’s farmers got together to purchase a jointly owned tractor.
Following sterile attempts and sterile investments by the PICA, finally, in 1932, Mes’ha’s homes and farmyards were supplied with running water. An entire saga can be written about the water problem, informed by Mes’ha’s bungling in making its demands and the PICA’s in meeting them; the former suffered from articulation problems, the latter from technical incompetence. The efforts to install a functioning system went back to 1926 and were a resounding failure, which was virtually imitated in 1932. Given the day-to-day hardships endured by the settlers, one can sympathize with their bitterness and suspicion of the PICA, although this hardly excuses their passivity or inability to organize for the common good.91
The early 1930s were full of improvements at Mes’ha. In 1933, electricity came to the village. As usual, there were grumblers who refused to contribute to the required funding, but, in retrospect, all welcomed it.92 In addition, the opening of the Kadouri Agricultural School in 1934 made it necessary to pave a road to Tiberias and Afula.
Following Yavne’el’s success, Mes’ha seemed to accept the new farming arrangements. For its part, the PICA helped in the acquisition of a tractor and planned for a combine as well. Paicovich had no part in the tractor’s purchase. He continued to toil alongside his harat.93
Paicovich’s conservatism may have been one of the reasons that, one by one, his sons quit the farm. Zvi settled in Netanya and even Eliav, the only farmer among them, gave up agriculture and moved to the city. Allon’s explanation was that they could not obtain holdings at Mes’ha. This is inconsistent with the fact that there were about a dozen abandoned farms at Mes’ha, and the colony was desperate to increase its dwindling population. Besides, Paicovich’s holding alone was certainly large enough to support two families, albeit based on the new cultivation methods. The trouble was that he was set in his ways and refused to hear of change. In the stifling atmosphere of a gloomy home and backward farm, the brothers chose to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
Their departure was a blow to Paicovich. He had envisioned an entire neighborhood populated by an extended Paicovich clan. Now, here he was at the start of the 1930s, in a house with only his youngest son, Allon.94
The young Allon was left with a dour father who cast a giant shadow and was the fount of kindness and correction, love and frost, closeness and remoteness, a man for whom any show of affection was a sign of weakness. The mature Allon wrote little of this time, but, reading between the lines, one senses a wistfulness. When the boy hurt himself falling from a galloping horse, he received no embrace or sympathy; instead, he was told to get right back on (without the saddle that had torn) and take himself to the pharmacy. Allon tried to put off the ride to the next day. Reuven wouldn’t have it. Remarked the adult Allon: “He loved me, I knew that, but in his reactions he was always reticent and Spartan.”95 The fact that Allon was the child of his old age took some of the edge off his relentlessness. Moreover, he grew increasingly conscious that Yigal alone, of all his sons, was still on the farm—his last hope. He blamed himself for the boys’ departures, pinning it on his own restrictiveness. Yet he did not spare Yigal; the boy could be sure of a hiding if he neglected farm duties or schoolwork.96 Allon’s awe of his father was mixed with a constant desire to please him, to acquit himself with flying colors in the tests he set him.
Figure 3. Allon as a child in Me’sha. Photographer unknown. The Davar Collection. Courtesy of the Lavon Institute for the Study of the Labor Movement, Tel Aviv.
Growing up in his father’s shadow, Allon was filled with admiration for al-Insari’s unflinching stance in the clashes with Arab neighbors that made up the rhythm of life. The brushes with robbers sparked no particular animosity. On the contrary: just as there were Arabs who stole, there were Arab harats who shared the family farmyard. One account tells of Allon being nursed by a harat’s wife. In time, his natural playmates were the harat’s children. During summer vacation, he would spend two weeks with a family of Arab friends at Kafr Ein Mahl, near Nazareth, basking in all the pampering and attention he lacked at home.97 Scaling the Tabor with his father, the two would sidetrack to a Bedouin tent and a warm welcome from neighbors with whom they had exchanged blows. The frontier code of conduct valued valor, daring, resolve.
Young Allon’s world was circumscribed by Mes’ha’s narrow horizon and anti-intellectual society. Education was not a consideration in the PICA’s selection of settlers, and frontier society, by its very nature, values physical attributes over “spiritual” qualities. Allon painted Paicovich as a cultured frontiersman
