Yigal Allon, Native Son. Anita Shapira
their homes. The living conditions did not improve: the farm’s flourishing did not translate down to the individual level. Spot checks by the health fund doctor still resulted in alarming sanitation reports. The daily per capita budget stood at 37 mil. Dirt in the kitchen and dining hall made visitors cringe, as did the overcrowding. As for the levels of cleanliness and services in the laundry, the dairy, the showers, and the toilets—the less said the better.99 Family living quarters were still unbearable. In vain did the doctor issue warnings about epidemics. Ginossar’s members were preoccupied with other things.100 The most important of these, with the exception perhaps of building a new children’s house, was the farm’s expansion. In 1943 a group of parents in Tel Aviv organized to help Ginossar by paving a road to the kibbutz—in members’ eyes, a wasteful luxury. The plan was to raise some P£400 from parents “of means” with the contractor doing the work providing the remainder as a loan.101 It is not clear if the plan was executed. The idea, however, expressed both parental anxiety at Ginossar’s isolation and confidence in the permanence of the settlement site.
In October 1942, the PICA’s director, a man named Gottlieb, arrived from France, and a new exchange of letters began with Ginossar.102 This time, other personalities also entered the picture, such as Henrietta Szold, Norman Bentwich, and Hans Beit, the latter two being directors of Aliyat Ha-Noar (Youth Aliya), which brought refugee youth to Palestine. An attempt was made to enable the kevutzah to remain where it was while assuaging the PICA’s injured pride. At the end of 1946, a formula materialized—Ginossar was to publish a public apology. Thereafter, the talks revolved around the sum of compensation due the PICA for ten years of Ginossar’s unlawful use of the lands.103 Eventually, the sum of P£6,000, was agreed on, to be paid out in installments. On 22 December 1947 the daily press carried 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