intervened and the school trip in early 1936 was apparently the only one of its kind. Arab riots soon broke out, upturning everything. Zemach had meant to lead the trip, and the students were to be the guests of Egypt’s Department of Agriculture. But after learning of the student rebellion, Zemach announced that he would not be accompanying them. Nevertheless, he made sure to tell the council that it was responsible for the students’ behavior and it was to make sure that they not disgrace the Yishuv.29
In April 1936, the Arab Rebellion erupted. (It was known in the Yishuv as the 1936–39 Disturbances.) It set into motion a new era, eventful and fateful for the Jewish Yishuv, which had known demographic growth, economic boom, and steady reinforcement since 1932. All of these developments had been viewed by the Arabs with dismay. While they too enjoyed prosperity, it could not compensate for their apprehension that the land was slipping away from them, changing virtually overnight from an Arab to a European country. The Rebellion was aimed at halting the process, at preventing the Jews from becoming the dominant factor in Palestine.
Tension was thick. Life at Kadoorie went on, but the environs seethed. The pupils felt left out of the action: the school was protected by British police, and despite its relative isolation it was not in any danger. The boys were asked to keep to themselves and avoid unnecessary sparring with Arabs. This was the local translation of the Yishuv policy of restraint, adopted in the face of the Arab revolt and terror. Jews were to demand British protection rather than embark on vengeance or retaliation. In practical terms, this meant holing up within Jewish settlements, never straying beyond the fence. Fields and barns were torched, trees cut down, years of toil lost—with no reaction. There were reasons for this policy: the Yishuv leadership hoped that this time—unlike the course they had chosen in 1929—the British would be unable to portray the unrest as a clash of two peoples; it was eminently clear that the blame lay with the Arabs and their resort to violence. The British government would have to defend the Yishuv from attack and, perhaps, even issue it the necessary means of defense. The hope was that the Yishuv would be allowed to set up a legal, Jewish defensive force, supervised and financed by the British. None of these considerations of high policy made it any easier for the boys of Kadoorie. They itched to be let loose for daring, heroic, patriotic exploits.
At the start of May 1936, a few weeks into the riots, Kefar Tavor’s water facility was set alight about 150 meters from Kadoorie’s fence. The arson was committed at night when the pupils were dead to the world, hearing nothing. The two resident policemen did not allow the pupils to be woken in order to extinguish the fire, either because—as they said—they did not want the tracks of the perpetrators blurred or because the firefighters would make excellent targets in the light of the flames. In the morning, the boys rose to a sooty pump, a broken motor, and a burned-down building. Here was an exploit indeed right under their noses—and they had literally been caught napping. Great was their shame, which was made worse by the rejoicing of Arabs released from custody after the scouts failed to discover anything.30
One summer day, a-Zbekh shepherds were spotted leading their flocks up Kefar Tavor’s fields next to Kadoorie. The fields were Paicovich’s, at Um-Jabal. Allon and a few of the boys and laborers ran to grab hoes to chase off the trespassers. The shepherds started to retreat, then stopped, raising instead the Arab alarm, the Faza’a. Bedouin flocked to the scene and soon outnumbered the contigent from Kadoorie. But the boys stood their ground. They conducted an orderly battle of retreat and even managed to wound seriously two of the Arabs; they themselves incurred no injuries. Meanwhile, the action had been discerned at Kadoorie. Led by Zemach, the teachers took two of the rifles on the premises and set out as reinforcements. Allon described the fight as a battle he had headed, organized, and directed. This leadership role is not remembered by other participants. In any case, it seems that Yigal called out to the teachers to fire in the air to miss, for fear of escalation. He had absorbed Mes’ha’s long-standing code: caution lest blood be spilled, yet resolve to give as good as one got.31
But this was not yet the end. A-Zbekh Arabs complained to the authorities of aggression and the police descended on Kadoorie to detain the pupils involved.32 They, including Allon, were carted off to jail in Tiberias. The adventure did them no harm and certainly added to their peer prestige. Allon was proud to have carried on the family tradition: both his father and brothers had been “privileged” to imprisonment and captivity under the Turks.33 The whole episode took only a few days. The boys were released on bail paid by their parents.
Like almost everything else in that period, the trial of Kadoorie’s youngsters turned into a national brouhaha. The JA-PD engaged the Haganah’s hotshot attorney, Aharon Hoter-Yishai, and paid his legal fees of Palestinian £8.34 Hoter-Yishai listened to the youngsters and told them what to say in court. After talking with them for half an hour, he chose Allon to act as the key witness. This appears to be the earliest evidence about the sort of impression Allon made on strangers. Hoter-Yishai chose a lad he judged to be above the rest: handsome, credible, articulate, naturally shrewd, and with a good grasp of the situation. If the brawl did not distinguish Allon from the others, his court appearance crowned him spokesman and ringleader.35 In the courtroom, Allon claimed self-defense against trespassers and physical assailants. This version, buttressed by the personality of Hoter-Yishai, who overawed the prosecutor, was accepted by the British judge and the boys got off scot-free.36
In the summer of 1936 Kadoorie was shut for security reasons and the students were sent home. The truth was that the boys were not eager to stay to defend the school when their parents’ farms were in danger. Studies apparently resumed in December and on 24 March 1937, Kadoorie’s first graduating class completed its studies. Allon was nineteen.
Many of the pupils had joined the defense forces during the school’s closure. Sini served as a ghaffir (a temporary police guard) at the village of Kefar Javetz, under a British sergeant. Brandsteter and Allon were guards in the bloc of Tiberias and the Lower Galilee, under Nahum Shadmi (Kramer) of the colony of Melahamiya. The duties seemed to be the same at every location: guard duty by day and defense patrols by night. “Since we have arrived, there have not yet been any shots”—Sini grumbled in his letter to his parents—“let’s hope this will change or I’ll die of boredom.”37 By his lights, the situation did not improve even though the ghaffirs at Kefar Javetz served as “a mobile squad to danger spots,” that is, they were the spearhead of the defense forces. “As for my spirits, one should not hope for any improvement before one decent attack because I am being consumed by idleness,” Sini continued to carp two weeks later.38
Allon didn’t complain. As ever, Mes’ha offered stirring pursuits of Arab marauders. The chase was the same as it had always been except that now Yigal proudly boasted a guard’s headgear (the kolpak—a tall fur hat), his possession of live ammunition was legal, and killing was permitted. At night, he and his friends would head for Mes’ha’s fields to douse fires, putting themselves at risk from sniper shots from Arab gangs.39 On these escapades he did not appear exceptional.
At this stage in their young lives, the boys regarded the fights, chases, gunshots, and danger much as though they were aspects of a thrilling game. Their parents may have worried about them, but they themselves had not yet experienced loss, and the danger was intoxicating, a boost of alertness and a burst of adrenalin. Only youths untried in the pangs of war could write to his parents as Sini did.
The glory of defense service aside, agricultural settlement retained its rank as the crowning achievement of practical Zionism in Eretz Israel. Out of twenty-two graduates of Kadoorie’s first graduating class, seventeen aimed to be farmers. The others chose either to study further—mainly agriculture, abroad—or to enter public service.40 Many of them regarded higher studies as near treason.41 In those few months between the resumption of studies and the end of the first graduating class, when the young men talked about plans for the future, one of the ideas touted was the establishment of a fifty-unit farm. As graduates of a government school, they hoped to be in line for assistance: to obtain a holding,
