On the Ottoman side, Mohammed V, titular head of all the Moslems, sent out hysterical calls for the entire Moslem
world to rise against the British in a “holy war.” His appeals were met with silence.
The British concluded that the only way to get Arab allies was to buy them. British gold was consequently spread about liberally as bait to hook support. The bait was snapped at. The position of sherif of Mecca was a semi-independent job within the Ottoman rule. The sherif was officially “Keeper of the Holy Places of Medina and Mecca.” The job was inherited and held for a lifetime by those in the direct line of descent from Mohammed.
The sherif of Mecca was indeed a little man in the Arab world. Further, he was the arch enemy of Ibn Saud. When the British approached him he saw the opportunity to seize power over the entire Arab world if Mohammed V and the Ottomans should fall. So the sherif of Mecca went over to the British, at the price of several hundred thousands of pounds sterling. The sherif had a son named Faisal who was a rarity among Arab leaders, a man who had a social conscience and vision. He agreed to assist his father in getting Arab tribes to “rebel” against the Ottomans.
The Yishuv in Palestine did not have to be bribed or coddled or bought. The Jews were solidly behind the British. When the war broke out they placed themselves in great peril as avowed friends of the enemies of the Ottomans.
In a swift move, Jemal Pasha the Turk took command of the Palestine province and clamped a reign of terror on the Jewish community.
Barak Ben Canaan had only six hours’ warning to flee Palestine. Both he and his brother Akiva were on the extermination rolls of the Turkish police. The Zionist Settlement Society had been forced to close its offices and most Jewish activity had stopped.
“How soon, darling?” Sarah asked.
“We must be gone by daybreak. You are only to pack one small handbag. We must leave everything behind.”
Sarah slumped against the wall and rubbed her hand over her belly. She was six months pregnant and could feel the life in her body as she had never felt it in any of the previous pregnancies… . Five miscarriages, she thought. …
“I can’t go,” she said. “I can’t go.”
Barak turned and faced her. His eyes narrowed and his red beard seemed to blaze in the candlelight. “Come now, Sarah … we have not time for that.”
She spun around. “Barak … oh, Barak”-and she ran into his arms-“I’ll lose this child too … I can’t, I can’t … I can’t.”
He sighed deeply. “You must come with me. God knows what will happen if the Turks get you.”
“I will not lose this baby.”
Barak packed his handbag slowly and shut it.
“Get up to Shoshanna right away,” he said. “Ruth will take care of you … stay away from her blessed cows …“He kissed his wife’s cheek gently, and she stood on her tiptoes and clung to him.
“Shalom, Sarah. I love you.” He turned and walked out quickly.
Sarah made the perilous journey from Tel Aviv to Shoshanna by donkey cart and there, with Ruth, awaited the birth of her child.
Akiva and Barak fled to Cairo where they met their old friend Joseph Trumpledor, the one-armed fighter. Trumpledor was busy forming a unit of Palestinian Jews to fight in the British Army.
Trumpledor’s unit, the Jewish Mule Corps, joined the Anzacs in a mammoth operation. Barak and Akiva were there as the British landed at Gallipoli and vainly attempted to open the Dardanelles and march on Constantinople from the south. In the retreat and debacle that followed the landing, Akiva was wounded in the chest.
The Jewish Mule Corps was disbanded after the Gallipoli disaster. Akiva and Barak continued on to England where Zev Jabotinsky, an ardent Zionist, was busy forming a larger Jewish fighting unit, the 38th, 39th, and 40th Royal Fusiliers, comprising a brigade known as the Judeans.
Akiva had not fully recovered from his wounds and was sent to the United States to lecture in the cause of the Jewish homeland under the sponsorship of the American Zionists, whose leader was Justice Brandeis of the Supreme Court.
When it was discovered that Barak Ben Canaan was among the Fusiliers he was pulled from the ranks at once. Dr. Weizmann, the world spokesman for Zionism, reckoned that Barak was too important a figure to carry a rifle.
Barak entered the Zionists’ negotiation team in time to hear about a further British disaster in the Middle East. General Maude had launched an attack on the eastern flank of the Ottoman Empire. Using Mesopotamia as a jumping-off point, he planned to come down on Palestine from the north. The route of conquest was to be the Tigris-Euphrates Valley into Bagdad, and then he would wheel and strike for the sea. Maude’s legion pressed forward with ease as long as the opposition was Arab troops. The campaign was termed “brilliant.” Then, at Kut, the British ran into a Turkish division and their forces were beaten to the ground.
The British were reeling! The Ottomans sat on the edge of the Suez Canal and the Germans had torn the Russian first-line army to shreds. British efforts to stir up an Arab revolt against the Ottomans had fallen flat.
Then came the final blow! The Arabs suspected that a secret British-French agreement was in the wind to carve up and subjugate the Arab world.
Dr. Weizmann and the Zionists felt the time was ripe to score a point for the Jewish homeland. England desperately needed sympathy and help. In Germany, Jews were fighting for their fatherland as they were in Austria. In order for the Zionists to gain the support of the Jews of the rest of the world, especially those in America, a dramatic decision was needed.
As the negotiations between the Zionists and the British were brought to a close, Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Minister, wrote a letter to Lord Rothschild with the revelation:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.
Thus was born the Balfour Declaration, the Magna Charta of the Jewish people!
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Jemal Pasha’s police found Sarah Ben Canaan at the Shoshanna kibbutz just two weeks before her baby was due. Till then, Ruth and the members of the kibbutz had guarded her carefully and seen to it that she had rest and comfort to protect the baby.
The Turkish police were not so considerate. Sarah was dragged from her cottage in the middle of the night, locked in a covered van, and driven over a bumpy, muddy road to the black basalt rock police station in Tiberias.
She was grilled without respite for twenty-four solid hours.
Where is your husband? … how did he make his escape? … how are you communicating with him? … you are smuggling out information and we know it … you are spying for the British. Come now, your husband wrote these papers in behalf of the British, you cannot deny it … what Jews in Palestine do you contact? …
Sarah answered the questions directly and without being ruffled. She admitted that Barak had fled because of his British sympathies, for it was no secret. She insisted she had
remained only to deliver her child. She made no further admissions to their charges. At the end of twenty-four hours Sarah Ben Canaan was the calmest person in the inspector’s office.
They began to make threats, and still Sarah remained calm and direct. At last she was grabbed and pulled into a forbidding-looking room with thick basalt walls and no windows. One small light burned over a wooden table. She was stretched out on her back, pinned down by five policemen, and her shoes were removed. The bottoms of her feet were lashed with thick branches. As they beat the soles of her feet they repeated the questions. Her answers were the same.
Spy! How do you get information out to Barak Ben Canaan? Speak! You are in touch with other British agents … who are they?
The pain was excruciating. Sarah stopped speaking altogether. She clenched her teeth and the sweat poured from her. Her courage fed the Turks’ anger. The whip ripped open the soles of her feet and blood spurted out.