Immediately after the pardon the British Colonial Office issued a White Paper, or declaration of policy, limiting Jewish immigration to “economic absorption.” It was then that Winston Churchill became instrumental in taking over half the
mandate and creating Trans-Jordan from it. For the Yishuv it was the end of an era.
The bubble of British benevolence burst. The Yishuv Central and the Zion Settlement Society called a secret meeting in Tel Aviv which fifty of the leading members of the Yishuv attended.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann flew in from London to attend. Barak was there and Akiva, still in a state of bereavement, was there. Itzak Ben Zvi was there. A stocky, short, bushy-browed young leader in the second Aliyah named David Ben Gurion was there. Many felt that this fiery, Bible-quoting Zionist was destined to lead the Yishuv.
Avidan, a bald, block-like man of the Third Aliyah, was there. Avidan had come to Palestine after a momentous war record in the Russian Army. He was second in reputation as a fighter only to the martyr Trumpledor, and it was said he was destined to lead Jewish defense.
The meeting was called to order by Barak Ben Canaan. The cellar room was grim and tense as he spoke. A great crisis had fallen. Barak recalled the personal misfortune that all of them had suffered for being born Jews. Now, in the one place they sought freedom from persecution, a pogrom had occurred.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann led a group that argued that the British were the recognized authority and had to be dealt with legally and openly. Defense was a British responsibility.
Another group, ultra-pacifists, felt it would only invite trouble from the Arabs to arm the Jews.
At the other extreme, there were the activists led by Akiva, who demanded nothing less than swift and ruthless retribution. They argued that British protection and well meaning was an illusion; the British acted only in self-interest. Haggling, guilt documents, and the like would never take the place of a gun in an Arab’s mind.
The debate raged far into the night, never exhausting that endless capacity of Jews to argue. The British were damned and the British were praised. The pacifists begged caution while the activists called Palestine the “Twice Promised Land” -once to the Jews and once to the Arabs.
Between the two extremes in thinking, Ben Gurion, Ben Canaan, Avidan, and many of the others suggested a realistic middle course. While they recognized need to arm themselves, they wanted to further the Jewish position by legal means.
These men, on behalf of the Yishuv, decided to arm themselves quietly and train a militia in secret. This armed force would be used for one purpose and one purpose alone-defense. While this force existed, the official agencies of the Yishuv were to disclaim all knowledge of it publicly and privately co-operate with its growth. With this silent arm, the Jews would have an unseen partner in restraining the Arabs and in negotiating with the British.
Avidan, the fighter, was voted to head this new secret organization.
They called it Haganah, the Army of Self-Defense.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Third Aliyah penetrated the newly purchased Jezreel, the Sharon Valley, and Samaria and into the hills of Judea and the Galilee and even south toward the desert, and called the earth back from its long-naked slumber. They brought in heavy machinery and introduced intensive agriculture through crop rotation and fertilization and irrigation. In addition to the grape, citrus, and olive export crops they raised grain and vegetables, and fruits and flax and poultry and dairy herds.
They experimented with anything and everything to find new crops and increased the yield of the old ones.
They penetrated to the Dead Sea. They went after alkaline land which had not produced a living thing for forty thousand years and they brought it back and made it produce.
They dug fishponds and farmed fish as a crop.
By the mid-1920s over fifty thousand Jews in a hundred colonies worked better than a half million dunams of redeemed land. Most of them wore the blue of the kibbutz.
A million trees were planted. In ten-twenty-thirty years the trees would fight off soil erosion. Tree planting became an obsession of the Yishuv. They left a trail of budding forests behind them wherever they went.
Many of the new kibbutzim and other settlements adopted the name of the Biblical site they occupied. Many new names sprang up over the ancient land and they had the sound of music. Ben Shemen, Son of Oil; and Dagania, the Cornflower on the Sea of Galilee; and Ein Ganim, the Fountain of the Gardens; and Kfar Yehezkiel, the Village of the Prophet Ezekiel; and Merhavia, which means the Wide Spaces of God; and Tel Yosef, the Hill of Joseph. There was Ayelet Hashahar, the Morning Star, which stood at the entrance to Barak’s beloved Huleh Valley. There was Gesher, the Bridge; and Givat Hashlosha, the Hill of the Three; and there were more and more being built every month.
The kibbutz movement, that unique child of necessity, be-came the key to all settlement. The kibbutzim could absorb vast numbers of new arrivals.
Yet not everyone could adapt to life on a kibbutz. Many women who fought for their independence didn’t like it once they had it. Others objected to the lack of privacy and others to the children’s houses. Although the entire Yishuv subscribed to the idea of national land and the conquest of self-labor, the main reason some could not stand kibbutz life was the lack of personal identification with a piece of land one could call one’s own. A splinter group broke off from the kibbutz movement. It was called the moshav movement. In a moshav each man had his own piece of land to work and his own house instead of the communal arrangement. As on the kibbutz all the civic functions were centrally run and all the heavy machinery was owned by the entire moshav. Certain base crops were farmed by the entire community and there was a central agency which did all the marketing and purchasing.
The main difference was the measure of individual freedom and the fact that a man’s family was in his own house and he ran his own farm in the way he saw fit. The first moshav was in the Jezreel Valley and was named after its Biblical site, Nahalal, the Heritage. The Nahalal pioneers faced the toughest swamp and did a miraculous job of redemption.
The drawback of the moshav movement in the over-all scheme was the working for personal profit and the inability of the moshav to absorb the numbers of new arrivals the kibbutz could; but both movements flourished and grew.
As the Yishuv grew, so did the complexities of the community. Barak Ben Canaan, a respected elder citizen, was never at rest. Zionism had a bulky machinery and there were a dozen different political philosophies inside the Yishuv. The dealings with the Arabs became more delicate after the riots and the dealings with the British became more confusing after their sudden departure from the Balfour Declaration and the articles of mandate. Barak’s wise council was sought in every quarter. Although there were no more outbreaks against the Jews, the atmosphere was one of uneasy calm. Every day there was a new story of an ambush, a sniping, or a theft. The tirades from the Moslem pulpit never ended. There was always tension in the air, for the sinister Mufti, Haj Amin el Husseini, lurked in the shadows.
One day in 1924 Barak returned to Tel Aviv after a particularly difficult week at the Yishuv Central in Jerusalem. He was always happy to come home to his three-room flat on Hayarkon Street overlooking the Mediterranean. This time he was delighted and surprised to see his old friend, Kammal,
the muktar of Abu Yesha awaiting him.
“For many years I have been meditating to try to solve the perplexing riddle of how to help my people. It grieves me to say this but there are no greater exploiters than the Arab effendis. They do not want things better for the fellaheen … it may endanger their own pleasures.”
Barak listened intently. This was a tremendous confession on the part of an Arab and one so enlightened as Kammal.