O Jerusalem! Read online

  O Jerusalem!

  Larry Collins &

  Dominique Lapierre

  Published in collaboration with Renaissance Literary & Talent

  Post Office Box 17379 Beverly Hills, CA 90209

  renaissancemgmt.net

  Originally published in the United States by Simon & Schuster

  Maps by Rafael Palacios

  Original Copyright © 1972 Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre

  Copyright eBook edition © 2015 Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre

  ISBN: 978-1-938402-57-9

  The right of Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  JERUSALEM: "A TIME TO MOURN AND A TIME TO DANCE"

  1. DECISION AT FLUSHING MEADOW

  2. "AT LAST WE ARE A FREE PEOPLE."

  3. "PAPA HAS RETURNED."

  4. TWO PASSENGERS TO PRAGUE

  5. TWO PEOPLES, TWO ARMIES

  6. "WE WILL STRANGLE JERUSALEM."

  PART TWO

  JERUSALEM: A HOUSE AGAINST ITSELF

  7. "ARE WE NOT NEIGHBORS . . . ?"

  8. THE SANTA CLAUS OF THE HAGANAH

  9. JOURNEY TO ABSURDITY

  10. "BAB EL WAD ON THE ROAD TO THE CITY"

  11. GOLDA MEIR'S TWENTY-FIVE "STEPHANS"

  12. "SALVATION COMES FROM THE SKY."

  13. "WE SHALL BECOME AS HARD AS STONE."

  14. A FLASH OF WHITE LIGHT

  15. AN UNLIKELY LAWRENCE

  16. THE HABERDASHER FROM KANSAS CITY

  17. THE CONVOY WILL NOT ARRIVE

  PART THREE

  JERUSALEM: A CITY BESIEGED

  18. A HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF HELL

  19. "HANG ON TO JERUSALEM WITH YOUR TEETH."

  20. SIX WORDS ON A BUMPER

  21. "ONE OF THE ARABS WE KILLED LAST NIGHT"

  22. THE PEACE OF DEIR YASSIN

  23. "Shalom, MY DEAR . . ."

  24. "ATTACK AND ATTACK AND ATTACK."

  25. A MESSAGE FROM GLUBB PASHA

  26. "WE SHALL COME BACK."

  27. "THROW STONES AND DIE."

  28. BY JUST ONE VOTE

  29. THE LAST SUPPER

  30. THE FIFTH DAY OF IYAR

  PART FOUR

  JERUSALEM: A CITY DIVIDED

  31. "THESE SHALL STAND."

  32. "THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MONTH OF THE YEAR"

  33. "GO SAVE JERUSALEM."

  34. "A LAMENT FOR A GENERATION"

  35. "YOSEF HAS SAVED JERUSALEM!"

  36. "TAKE LATRUN."

  37. TICKET TO A PROMISED LAND

  38. "EXECUTE YOUR TASK AT ALL COSTS."

  39. THE WHEATFIELDS OF LATRUN

  40. ". . . REMEMBER ME ONLY IN HAPPINESS."

  41. "GOOD NIGHT AND GOODBYE FROM JERUSALEM"

  42. "WE'LL OPEN A NEW ROAD."

  43. "THE ARAB PEOPLE WILL NEVER FORGIVE US."

  44. A TOAST TO THE LIVING

  45. THE THIRTY-DAY PAUSE

  46. THE FLAWED TRUMPET

  EPILOGUE

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER NOTES

  How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

  If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand

  forget her cunning.

  If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the

  roof of my mouth;

  if I prefer not Jerusalem above my highest joys.

  The song of the exiled children of Israel,

  sung by the waters of Babylon

  Psalm 137

  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

  Jesus contemplating Jerusalem

  from the Mount of Olives

  Matthew 23:37

  O Jerusalem, the choice of Allah of all his lands! In it are the chosen of his servants. From it the earth was stretched forth and from it shall it be rolled up like a scroll.

  The dew which descends upon Jerusalem is a remedy from every sickness because it is from the gardens of Paradise.

  The Hadith, the sayings

  of the Prophet Mohammed

  INTRODUCTION

  MY LITERARY COLLABORATION with Larry Collins produced two worldwide bestsellers, read by millions of people around the globe: Is Paris Burning?, the step-by-step account of a fateful week in August 1944 when Hitler had vowed to unleash hell on the French capital; and... Or I'll Dress You in Mourning, the history of the Spanish Civil War as seen through the youthful and passionate eyes of a young peasant's son destined to become Spain's most famous matador, El Cordobés.

  Just as my partner and I began our search for a new book to write, I accepted an invitation to give a lecture in Tel Aviv on Paris' miraculous survival in the fading months of WWII. Having never had the chance to see Jerusalem, I decided to jump in a taxi for a quick tour of the holy city before catching my plane back to Paris. Who could have guessed that that cab ride would last three years?

  On the narrow road that winds its way from Tel Aviv through the hills of Judea, I suddenly saw dozens of burned-out trucks scattered by the roadside. Some of them were decorated with flowers, others boasted inscriptions in Hebrew and commemorative plaques. I questioned my driver about these tortured carcasses that lined the road to Jerusalem. His reaction was almost one of outrage: had I never heard of the tragedy that had unfolded here in the spring of 1948? He stopped his taxi beside the debris of one of the trucks and, in a trembling voice full of respect, began his tale.

  Spring 1948. Just a few weeks before the birth of the state of Israel, Jerusalem found itself surrounded by armed Arab-Palestinian partisans led by the charismatic Abdel Kader el-Husseini. More than a hundred thousand Jewish inhabitants were trapped in the holy city with neither food nor water and were on the verge of surrender. In order to prevent a disaster, the then-leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, requisitioned all the trucks and utility vehicles he could lay his hands on in order to get water and supplies to the desperate population. During the night of March 23, 1948, a convoy of more than three hundred trucks, driven by immigrants recently arrived from Europe, set off toward Jerusalem.

  Having been warned by his scouts, el-Husseini unleashed his partisans, who fell on the convoy like a wave of locusts, burning the trucks, killing the drivers, and looting the precious supplies. Fire, blood, and hate ruled that night. Not one single ounce of food or a drop of water leaked through to Jerusalem. The graveyard of carcasses that had lined the road to Jerusalem since that fateful night became silent witnesses keeping alive the memories of those terrible days when the State of Israel almost disappeared even before it was born.

  The tragic tale of this convoy inflamed my imagination: this was the story that Larry and I had to tell in our next book. I could picture the men and women gripping the steering wheels of their trucks as all hell broke loose around them. Most had probably just e
scaped Hitler's death camps, and struggled across a war-torn Europe to embark on a clandestine ship to the Promised Land - only to die here on a windy, desolate road while trying to save their starving brethren in Jerusalem. Then there suddenly appeared in front of my eyes the Queen of all cities rising majestically in all her splendor in the distance, as if spread on a lunar landscape.

  What a sight! My taxi driver also gave me the magnificent gift of driving directly to the top of the Mount of Olives. Sprawled out before us was the collection of domes, minarets, bell towers, and terraces interlaced in a maze of alleyways and secret passages that comprised the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, capital of Abraham, David, and Solomon; home to John, Mary, and Jesus; a conqueror's prize for Godefroy de Bouillon, Saladin, Allenby and his Englishmen, King Abdallah and his legionnaires, and, most recently at that time, Moshe Dayan and his paratroopers.

  I was blessed with luck. I had arrived on a Friday. Their prayers to Allah finished, crowds of men crowned with their distinctive kaffiyehs and women dressed in their braided Palestinian robes were leaving the mosques on the Haram Esplanade. The melodious chants of the muezzins atop their minarets had just ended. In a few moments, the sun would disappear behind the Judean hills that lined the horizon. The gruff call from the Jewish shofars suddenly filled the evening air of the ancient city, announcing the beginning of the Shabbat. A few moments later, precisely at dusk, the Christian churches took their turn and celebrated gloriously with a cacophony of bells the holy hour of the Angelus. It was there, in all the multifaceted Glory of God, that I was meeting Jerusalem for the first time. I couldn't help but think of all the sacrifices that had been imposed in the name of God on this city throughout its turbulent history.

  Our new book would have to tell the story of what was but one page in that long history, a page on which the tragedy of the convoy was but a footnote. The story covered twenty years, and included the partition of Palestine into two distinct states, the departure of the British, the birth of the state of Israel, and the start of a conflict between Arabs and Jews that would never cease to rage.

  I ran to a telephone and called Larry in America. He was so excited by the idea that he jumped on the first plane to join me in Jerusalem.

  We were aware that our research would be long, difficult, and complex due to all the passion and hate that poisoned this region of the world. We would need to dig deep, to find the facts and the historical truths on all sides in order to write a book on such an explosive subject.

  This daunting challenge began in a rather unusual setting. Just after the Six Day War, Israelis Miles and Guita Sherover hosted the cream of Israel's elite in their luxurious Jerusalem residence. Their dinner parties, known for exquisite Chinese cuisine, attracted prominent political figures, business tycoons, military and religious leaders, important foreign dignitaries, eminent representatives of the artistic and literary intelligentsia. It was always an honor-and a lot of fun-to be invited to the Sherovers' for dinner. It was there that we met Vivian Herzog, who, back in 1948, was the chief of staff of the famous 7th Brigade, which had been ordered by Ben-Gurion to open the road to Jerusalem; Ezer Weizman, who, piloting Israel's first fighter plane, strafed the Egyptian armored column that was charging toward Tel Aviv; Moshe Dayan, fresh off his conquest of the Old City of Jerusalem with his paratroopers and who, back in 1948, had conquered the Palestinian cities of Lydda and Ramleh.

  The archeologist Yigael Yadin, a specialist on the Dead Sea manuscripts, was also a regular at the Sherovers'. Twenty years earlier, as a young officer in the Haganah (the Jewish secret army in Palestine), Yadin had received the order from Ben-Gurion to prevent the fall of Jerusalem. He told us how, during a dramatic argument, he refused to obey the old leader who was ordering him to use all his forces to save Jerusalem when at that very moment the Egyptians were on Tel Aviv's doorstep and the Syrians were pouring into Israel from the north. "I was born in Jerusalem!" he had screamed at Ben-Gurion. "My wife is in Jerusalem. My father and mother are there. I have even more ties to that city than you do. But, tonight, we need all our strength to deal with menaces that are even greater than those that threaten Jerusalem!" Upon hearing these words, the old leader dug his head into his shoulders. "He sank even deeper into his chair, looked at me straight in the eyes, and methodically and unequivocally repeated his order: 'You will prevent the fall of Jerusalem,' "Yadin said.

  Another of the Sherovers' regulars was a chubby, middle-aged gentleman whose blue eyes sparkled with intelligence. Even though his name was unknown to most Israelis, Ehud Avriel was one of Israel's founding fathers. He had just returned from a long trip in Africa, where he had established vital links between his country and the African continent. Prime Minister Golda Meir had just appointed him ambassador to Rome-an official mission that actually was a front for the secret reactivation of the clandestine immigration networks from Europe to Israel. The fact that the prime minister had chosen Avriel for such a daunting task was no accident. This shy and quiet man had been the mastermind and organizer of two key operations that helped create the state of Israel: the massive clandestine immigration of the European Jews and the acquisition of the first weapons that helped save the country.

  Larry and I were immediately drawn to this discreet man. He invited us to share in the austere hospitality of Neoth Mordechai, his kibbutz in Galilee where, back in 1938, his own adventure as a young immigrant to Palestine had started. This community of apple growers and sandal makers, surrounded by eucalyptus trees and overshadowed by ever-present Syrian guns, had been home to this unflinching warrior of Israel for more than thirty-five years. Avriel and his wife, Hannah, a robust Viennese woman and mother to his three children, had helped create the kibbutz. On a dark night in 1938, under the nose of the British police, they had built its first barracks. Then, with the help of twenty or thirty other European immigrants and a couple of donkeys, they had drained the surrounding marshes, which were infested with snakes and mosquitoes.

  Avriel's phenomenal memory, his love for details, and his natural story-telling talent so enchanted Larry and me that our interviews with him went on for days and nights.

  Thanks to the inspiring actor he chose for the role of David Ben-Gurion, film director Elie Chouraqui was able to re-create the desperate and unflinching fire to save Jerusalem that burned in the heart of Israel's founding father.

  The old man was obviously going to be one of the key subjects of our research. No historian, journalist, or author had ever interviewed him in depth about the days, weeks, and months during which the fate of the nation he had created rested on his fragile shoulders.

  In September 1967, Ben-Gurion is no longer the prime minister of Israel. He has retired to Sde Boker, a kibbutz on the edge of the Negev desert. A firm believer in our project, Ehud Avriel succeeds in getting us an interview with him. It is an exceptional favor because the old leader no longer receives anyone. Our meeting was to last three hours. It would go on for three weeks. Three weeks during which we would manage to reconstruct in the most elaborate details the thoughts and decisions of Ben-Gurion during the vital weeks of the fall and winter of 1947 and the spring of 1948, when Israel was confronted with extermination.

  As we arrive in Sde Boker, we find Ben-Gurion occupied with a most unusual task. He's shearing a sheep. Israel's founding father, like everyone else in the community, has to pay his rent to the administration of the kibbutz where he has chosen to live the last years of his life away from the eyes and the noises of the outside world. The presence of Ehud Avriel favors an immediate contact between us. Ben-Gurion drops his shears and his sheep, and signals us to follow him. We enter a small room sparsely furnished with a few chairs. Behind a simple wooden desk, there is a bookshelf. Protected by a glass panel, the three shelves contain a treasure, fifty or so notebooks, meticulously organized, in which Ben-Gurion has consigned day by day-almost hour by hour-his thoughts, his reflections, the list of his actions over the entire period we were interested in. The analysis of the
priceless treasure of this Ali Baba cavern, combined with the prolific memory of this extraordinary man, would give us firsthand insight into the personality, actions, and role of one of the key figures on this colossal page of modern world history that we had chosen to explore and explain.

  With a glee that he does not attempt to conceal, Ben-Gurion plunges into our interview sessions, which rapidly become unforgettable, overwhelming, and fascinating trips into the very marrow of History itself. We travel through time and revisit his childhood in Poland; his discovery of Zionism while listening through the wooden doors of his home; his first visit to Jerusalem; his almost messianic desire to create a Jewish state; his first speech written on toilet paper the night of Palestine's partition; his obsession with finding the weapons so vital for survival; his decision, against the advice of most of his closest advisers and in spite of the objections of the United States, to declare the birth of Israel; his decision to risk a disaster to save Jerusalem ...

  We fill notebook after notebook, trying to keep up with the flow of information that our questions unleash. If the slightest doubt arises, the old man gets up to pull out a relevant document and read through his notes, or simply thinks in silence before answering. From time to time, a member of the kibbutz enters the room with a tray of sandwiches, bowls of yogurt, and glasses of fresh orange juice. We are feasting in the halls of History itself.

  This is just the beginning. A few days later, Ehud Avriel drives us in his small green Fiat to a modest house in a working-class neighborhood of West Jerusalem. The two large American cars packed with burly policemen and bristling with antennas that are silently guarding the otherwise unassuming street are the only ostensible signs that someone important resides here. Golda Meir is Israel's prime minister. She carries her seventy years very well. She invites us into a kitchen lined with a collection of shining pans and casseroles.