When he was fifteen he took it upon himself to try a daring feat that spread his fame throughout the Yishuv. Joab walked from Sdot Yam with a donkey to Bagdad. There he stole some of the precious Iraqi date-palm saplings and smuggled them into Palestine. The saplings were sent to Shoshanna kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee and were instrumental in opening an entire new export crop for the Yishuv.
Ari’s job was easy for young Joab. He walked to Damascus to Beirut to Tyre and returned to Ha Mishmar within three weeks. His information confirmed everything they already knew and further located Vichy strength nearly to a man.
Free French Forces moved quietly into Palestine, to the Galilee, and deployed for the invasion.
Ari’s fifty men were bolstered by a special hand-picked group of forty Australians, experts in mines, automatic weapons, and explosives.
This ninety-man force was split into three units of thirty each. Each unit was given a special assignment to cross into Lebanon and Syria ahead of the invasion, advance and hold key roads and bridges against a counterattack until the main body could reach them.
Ari’s force had the most dangerous of the missions. He was to lead his thirty men right up along the Lebanese coast, penetrate close to a Vichy garrison, and keep them from getting to half a dozen vital mountain bridges, which could halt the Free French advance. Ari took Joab, Zev, and David with him. He had sixteen more Jews and ten Australians.
His unit moved out twenty-four hours before the invasion and sped up the coast with beautiful ease, for they knew every inch of the way. They passed the six crucial bridges one by one.
They stopped three miles from the Vichy garrison of Fort Henried and in a mountain pass mined the roads, set in their machine guns, and waited for the invasion to reach them.
As so often happens in a large-scale battle, an error was made. How, why, who made it is not so important after it occurs. The eastern arm of the invasion crossed from Trans-Jordan into Syria twelve hours ahead of H-Hour. As they moved toward Damascus they tipped off the entire operation.
For Ari it meant he would have to hold his mountain pass for twelve hours plus the additional three or four hours it would take for the main body to reach him.
Within a few hours after the error was made the Vichyites had massed two battalions with tanks and artillery at Fort Henried and started down the coastal road to blow up the mountain bridges.
As soon as Ari saw them coming he realized something had gone wrong. Quickly he dispatched David and Zev back to Palestine to bring help.
The Vichy troops marched blindly into the pass and were pulverized by explosions and crossfire from both sides of the hill. They fell back, reassembled, and sent artillery fire into the pass.
Six unbelievable hours passed before David and Zev came back with a battalion of Free French troops.
All the bridges were intact. There was no break-through. The pass was littered with over four hundred dead Vichyites who had tried to break Ari’s position.
Five men of Ari’s force were alive when help arrived. Ari Ben Canaan himself was at death’s door. His back was filled with shrapnel, two bullets were lodged in his body, and his leg and nose were broken.
The Free French went on to complete the invasion of Syria.
For Ari Ben Canaan the war was over. He was taken back to Palestine for a long slow recovery. The British promoted him to major and he was decorated for his stand at the mountain pass.
Ari had played his role for Allied victory. So had the Yishuv.
Members of the Yishuv were in suicide squads that helped capture Tobruk and Bardia. Later a battalion of Palestinians was at the epic defense of Tobruk.
They fought in Italy and in Greece and in Crete and in the Lowlands. They numbered thousands in the Royal Air Force. They ran the “death” patrol along the Mediterranean coast. The home guard kept the Arabs under control within Palestine. They fought in the desert in the captures of Sidi Barrani, Sollum, and Fort Capuzzo.
Jewish suicide units were picked for their valor in the campaigns in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Three thousand of the Yishuv joined the Free Forces of Czechoslovakia, Holland, France-and even Poland. A suicide force of Jews went out to destroy the oil refinery at Tripoli. Every member perished. Jews were used by the British for special spying missions. German Jews were dressed in German uniforms and worked right in Rommel’s headquarters. Jews guarded the Mosul oil fields against continued Arab attempts to disrupt production.
When the British needed spies in the Balkans they turned to the Jews and trained them as parachutists. They reasoned that any Jew would be protected by the rest of the Jews in the country where he was dropped. Several were parachuted -few returned. One girl, Hanna Senesh, from Joab Yarkoni’s kibbutz was dropped into Hungary and captured. She became a martyr by refusing to her death to break under the cruelest Nazi torture.
The Yishuv covered itself with glory. Just as in World War I the British glorified the Arab revolt-so they tried to hide the efforts of the Yishuv in World War II. No country gave with so much vitality to the war. But the British Government did not want the Jews to use this as a bargaining point for their homeland aspirations later on. Whitehall and Chatham House kept the Yishuv’s war effort one of the best secrets of the war.
Rommel never reached Alexandria-they never broke the defenses of Stalingrad.
As the tide turned in favor of the British the Arabs no longer looked for the Germans to liberate them. Quickly they “declared war” on Germany. The main purpose behind the Arab declarations of war was to gain a vote at the peace conferences and block the Zionists who had no vote but only the blood of their sons to show for their efforts.
Despite the Yishuv’s magnificent record the British did not revoke the White Paper. Despite the Arab treachery and the fact that they did not raise a finger for victory they did not revoke it. Even with the ghastly news of the murder of six million Jews the British would not allow the survivors in.
The Haganah grew restless. Its ranks were filled with experienced soldiers. But it was the Maccabees who called off the truce! A series of terror bombings shook Palestine from end to end and again sent the British into their Taggart forts. The Maccabees, now numbering in the thousands, blew up one British installation after another.
General Haven-Hurst went after the Maccabees. With surprising swiftness he snared and deported several hundred Maccabee leaders to the Sudan. But Akiva’s avenging warriors were not deterred.
Haven-Hurst ordered newly captured Maccabees to be lashed. The Maccabees retorted by catching British soldiers and whipping them in public.
Maccabees were hanged. British soldiers were caught and hanged. A dozen Maccabee bullets and grenades found their mark on a dozen of the more outspoken anti-Jewish officers.
Violent and sordid murders were perpetrated by the Arabs in answer to the Maccabees. The Holy Land reeled under the terror.
Haj Amin el Husseini was placed on the list of war criminals by the Yugoslav government. He had made himself spiritual head of the Yugoslav Moslems who had fought for the German Army. He was placed under arrest in France. The British, however, wanted El Husseini alive and ready to stir up trouble when they needed him, so they helped him escape to Egypt where he was welcomed as a Moslem hero. In Palestine his nephew Jemal seized control of the Arab community.
A new phase of history was bringing the United States into focus as the new power in the Middle East. In addition, since most of the European Jewish communities had been wiped out, by mere process of elimination Jews and others in the United States became the world leaders of the Zionist movement.