Ginossar’s apology for having settled land “intended for other settlers” without permission from and in disobedience to the PICA. “We hereby express our regret for our past actions and also ask for the PICA’s pardon for [things] we publicized that later turned out to be inaccurate.”104 The PICA book was closed. It is not clear if Ginossar in fact made the payments. The compensation was presumably forgotten in the upheavals of the War of Independence. Ginossar’s young were vindicated, their stubbornness and impertinence had held out against a bureaucratic, legalistic, and stodgy institution. Not only did they emerge with Ginossar in their possession; they even managed to mold Yishuv public opinion in their favor. The PICA came to be seen as a failing settlement agency, obtuse about the demands of the national good.
The epilogue was still to come. In 1952, Yigal and Ruth Allon, who were in England, were invited to the home of Baron James de Rothschild. Allon, basking in the glory of the War of Independence, took the opportunity to lay before the baron both Paicovich’s and Ginossar’s complaints about the PICA’s officials. The Palestine officials, it emerges from the documentation, did not act independently; the baron had been well aware of what had been going on even if he had not been directly involved in the details. Nevertheless, both the host and his guests found it convenient to regard the officials as the root of all evil. Following the conversation, the PICA modified its attitude to Ginossar.105
In November 1941, the poetess and future paratrooper to occupied Hungary, Hannah Szenes, spent some time at Ginossar and wrote down her impressions:
I see in the society a number of advanced people among whom I’m sure I could find interest and friendships; although the society as a whole is not spirited enough I still have the impression of a good society. More precisely: [it is] a society made up of many good individuals but devoid of a social voice. This lack is expressed in all common areas from the reading room to the general assembly … a considerable number of members are certainly missing a clear collective awareness, their ties to the kibbutz [are] love of place, a simple social bond. They feel good here, factors that can sometimes hold a person at a place better than any awareness, but they are not promoting or developing society life sufficiently or in the desired direction.106
Hannah Szenes seems to have hit the nail on the head. Her assessment was true not only of most of Ginossar’s members, but perhaps of most of the youth who went to kibbutzim in those days. It was certainly true of Allon. Ginossar was the first stage in his education, assimilation, and internalization until the movement that adopted him became an integral part of his personality. It was a process that began in the years of his apprenticeship at Ginossar.
From the end of 1941 onward, Allon’s work at Ginossar dwindled more and more. On 9 February 1942, Ginossar advised the district officer in Tiberias that Yigal Paicovich had ceased to serve as mukhtar due to an illness warranting a lengthy hospitalization.107 Allon was having problems with his shoulder as a result of a run-in with a cow while riding a motorcycle on Haganah duty.108 The unromantic encounter had occurred in May 1939, leaving his shoulder dislocated. The illness referred to in the letter, however, seems to have been of a conspiratorial nature, for only in June 1943 did he undergo the necessary surgery.109 From February 1942 onward he was busy with ventures best kept under wraps at the time. From this stage onward Ginossar occupied an important place in his and his family’s life but his absences outstripped his presence there. His vitality was given to security affairs.
Chapter 4
The Start of Security Work
In April 1936 a new era opened in the history of Palestine. Concurrent with modern Jewish settlement in the country, the dispute between Jews and Arabs over possession of the land became a life-and-death struggle. The brief chronology of Zionist settlement was interspersed with the eruption of riots that earned the lukewarm designation of “Disturbances.” Until 1936, these could be explained away with a variety of reasons that veiled the root cause: a clash between two peoples over one piece of land. In the wake of the Disturbances of 1936 (as the Jews called them; the Arabs called them the Arab Rebellion), the conflict’s national character could no longer be ignored. As in previous outbursts, this time too events began with rioting in Jaffa and the killing of Jewish passers-by. But the political coloring soon became clear in the establishment of the Arab Higher Committee and a general Arab strike. The strike was aimed at forcing the government of Palestine to change its pro-Zionist policy, especially to halt the large immigration that, since 1932, had doubled the country’s Jewish population. The strike lasted for half a year and, this time, the British did not back down. Ultimately, the rulers of Arab states had to step in to extricate their Palestinian brethren from the situation. They asked the strikers to end the strike and enable His Majesty’s government to dispatch a royal commission to Palestine to investigate the problem thoroughly. The Peel Commission, named for its chairman, had wide-ranging powers and concluded that the Mandate had failed because its working assumption—that the two peoples could coexist—had proved false. It recommended that Palestine be partitioned into two new independent states—one Jewish, one Arab—to satisfy the national aspirations of the two peoples. The Jews accepted the solution amid mixed feelings, unleashing a controversy that was to last for years: supporters favored creating a Jewish state immediately, even if only in part of the country; opponents refused to yield an inch of the land, even if it meant risking the lot. The Arabs rejected the recommendations outright and resumed the rioting, which in 1938 took on the dimensions of a revolt. At the time, the Arabs inhabited the country’s hilly spine and the British, like the Jews, were careful not to stray into areas under their control. Order was not restored until 1939 and then only by the British bearing down with ruthless military force.
The period of the Arab Rebellion, to a large extent, overlapped with the formative years of Allon’s generation. Just as the dream of socialism had blazed in the founding generation and the (1905 or 1917) Russian Revolution had been that generation’s defining, existential, and intellectual experience, the physical contest over the land filled the same role for the generation born and bred in Palestine’s Yishuv. This generation did not dwell on politics, strategy, or long-term thinking. It faced an immediate challenge that required neither explanation nor justification: to defend the life, property, and honor of Jews in Palestine.
The Arab uprising took the Yishuv by surprise and wreaked havoc although, ostensibly, the writing had been on the wall. One indication of growing Arab extremism in the country had been Sheikh Iz a-Din al-Kassam’s terrorist group operating in the Jezreel Valley and Galilee in the early 1930s; it finally fell in a battle termed by Ben-Gurion “the Arabs’ Tel Hai”—a reference to the legendary, heroic stand of Jewish defenders against Arab attackers at the country’s northern tip. In 1935 the Arab press rattled with news of an attempt by Haganah to smuggle in arms. Britain’s Parliament thwarted efforts by High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope to set up a legislative council in Palestine. The Jews grew stronger and the Arab population more frustrated. Added to this were the political tensions in the Middle East due to the Italo-Ethiopian war in the autumn of 1935, which exposed the underbelly of the British lion. And yet, when the eruption came, the Yishuv was not prepared for it—not emotionally or organizationally or militarily.
The Yishuv was informed by the key ethos and concept of upbuilding: the Yishuv as a whole and the Labor movement in particular saw themselves as the builders of the country. The right to the land was won by working it; ultimately the land would belong to those who “redeemed” it from the wastes, who transformed a wilderness into a living home. In the Yishuv’s self-image, its key mission was peace, bringing progress and prosperity to all of the inhabitants. This “defensive ethos” rested on the belief that the land could be acquired by peaceful means. It was closely related to the other two ethoses of upbuilding and making the desert bloom, and all that they entailed.
To go from this dream to the Arab Rebellion was a rude awakening. The Yishuv believed that its life was at stake. It had to learn how to fight, and at once. Hereafter, the emphasis shifted to
