by Sandy Tolan
Kadish also provided me with the first name of Dr. Ziegfried Lehman, who was recalled only by his last name in Spiro Munayyer's account of the Ben Shemen story ("Fall of Lydda," p. 85). Interestingly, the Kimche brothers note (Clash of Destinies, p. 74) that Ben Shemen was not simply a peaceful settlement before the outbreak of the war; it was used as a training site for the Haganah.
The battle plans for "mobility and fire" employed by Dayan were described to me by Alon Kadish, who said that Dayan had heard about the tactic of overwhelming force from an American tank commander during a trip to the United States. This plan and the account of Dayan's trip to the United States were confirmed in an interview with Yohanan Peltz, who was for part of 1948 Dayan's second in command.
Newspaper accounts of the attack on Lydda corroborate and in some cases expand on the description by Gefen; details are in the July 11 and July 12 editions of the New York Herald Tribune, the Chicago Sun Times, and the New York Times. Additional details are described by Yoav Gelber in Palestine 1948 on p. 159 and by Benny Morris in his 1986 article in the Middle East Journal, "Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and Ramla in 1948," pp. 82-109, and in his 1948 and After, pp. 1-4. The attack was part of Operation Dani, one side of what Kadish described as a "pincer movement" hitting Ramla and Lydda (including the airport) from two sides, cutting it off from Arab Legion positions to the east. The direction of Dayan's convoy was described by Kadish in the 2004 interview and in Clash of Destinies, pp. 227-28.
The next morning, July 12, an incident occurred that would help shape events of the coming forty-eight hours. Israeli army units had entered Lydda after Dayan's Battalion Eighty-nine (conversation with Kadish, June 2004). Most of the civilian population of Ramla and Lydda remained, and shooting had died down in both towns. Just before noon, three Arab Legion armored cars appeared along the border between Ben Shemen and Lydda (A Soldier with the Arabs, pp. 161-62). Apparently they were there on a scouting mission. But the Israelis, and Arabs of Lydda, thought the cars were the advance guard of a counterattack. Fighters in Lydda began sniping from the buildings (1948 and After, p. 1). One eyewitness I interviewed recalls someone from Lydda throwing a hand grenade, wrhich he believes killed several Israeli soldiers. It was, everyone thought for a moment, the beginnings of an uprising, but it didn't last long. "Soon it became apparent that the armoured cars were unsupported," Glubb would write in Soldier with the Arabs, p. 161. The trucks and their soldiers were "obliged to withdraw."
Israeli troops opened fire. Eyewitnesses I interviewed who claim to have been inside a mosque at the time recall indiscriminate machine-gun fire (interview with Abu Mohammad Saleh Tartir, Amari refugee camp, T3ecember 2003). When the shooting stopped, about 250 people were dead, including many unarmed men in the Dahmash mosque. Four of the dead and about twenty of the wounded were Israelis. Morris, on p. 1 of 1948 and After, referred to what happened in Lydda as a "slaughter"; Gelber, the Israeli historian, called it a "massacre" and "probably the bloodiest throughout the war" (Palestine 1948, p. 162); numerous Palestinian sources also call it a massacre and focus on the deaths at the mosque, which may have exceeded eighty.
According to Firdaws Taji, word of the killings in Lydda spread quickly to Ramla, prompting discussions of surrender and flight.
The actions of Dr. Rasem Khairi are described by Firdaws Taji. The aerial bombing of Ramla on July 9 and 10 is described by Firdaws and corroborated by Morris in his review of military archives in "Operation Dani," Middle East Journal P- 86. One communique referred to the "great value in continuing the bombing," as it was, in Morris's words, "designed to induce civilian panic and flight," which Gefen, in his interview with me in June 2004, reported seeing from his convoy: "Soon after, every path leading to the east . . . people walking, children, women, people with bundles. . . ."
Firdaws Taji, in an interview, described leaflets dropped from the air by Israeli planes, as did Busailah in the Arab Studies Quarterly article, p. 133, and Morris in the Middle East Journal p. 76.
The condition of the towns of Ramla and Lydda were described by Firdaws Taji and in interviews with current and former Arab citizens of Lydda (now the Israeli city of Lod), including Adla Salim Rehan at the Amari refugee camp in Ramallah and Mohammad Saleh Tartir of the Lydda Society at Amari. Khanom Khairi described Sheikh Mustafa's emergency trip to secure bullets in Transjordan.
The state of the defenders of Ramla is described by Taji and Reja'e Busailah (Arab Studies Quarterly, pp. 127-35). Writing more broadly about the Palestinian Arabs during 1948, the Kimche brothers stated:
The local Arabs, who had only the haziest of notions concerning the strength of the Jews, knew even less about the nature of their own forces. . . . No one told the Palestinian Arabs in their villages—until it was too late—that the Arab countries were not fulfilling all they had promised and that many of the weapons they had sent were old, decrepit and useless. (Clash of Destinies, pp. 81-82)
Sheikh Mustafa's desire to keep Ramla residents from fleeing is described by Firdaws Taji Khairi, who recalls a series of meetings on the elegant patio of her father-in-law-to-be. The chaos of people going back and forth between Ramla and Lydda is described by Taji and by Busailah. Busailah also reports the urgent telegrams and the promises of a "flood of gold" and is a source for the surrender talk and the Bedouins' departure. Glubb writes about the departure of the Arab Legion in Soldier with the Arabs, as does Abu Nowar in The Jordanian-Israeli War, p. 206.
The account of Sheikh Mustafa sending his son to Kibbutz Na'an is also from Khanom Khairi. Alon Kadish told me his understanding was that some of the "notables" of the town were actually trying to leave when intercepted by Israeli troops and taken to the kibbutz to sign the surrender documents. The surrender terms and signature were taken from a copy of the original document in Hebrew and translated by Israeli journalist Ian Dietz. Copies of the surrender were provided by Yonatan Tubali, city manager of Ramla, and by Hava Enoch, the archivist at Kibbutz Na'an.
Galili B's quote on Ben-Gurion's orders to "evacuate Ramla" come from his handwritten note, which is deposited in the Na'an archives. Kadish, whose book was published by the Israel Defense Forces, confirms that the populations of Lydda and Ramla were expelled. David Kimche, former Israeli intelligence officer and coauthor of Clash of Destinies, wrote that "Lydda fell on July 11th and its Arab population of 30,000 either fled or were herded on to the road to Ramallah. The next day, Ramla also surrendered, and its Arab population suffered the same fate. Both towns were sacked by the victorious Israelis." The Israeli historian Gelber, in Palestine 1948, writes that "Yigal Alon [commander of the Palmach, or Israeli army] had ordered that all males of military age be detailed as prisoners-of-war and the rest be deported across the lines." Morris, in 1948 and After, p. 2, and "Operation Dani" (Arab Studies Quarterly, p. 91), cites Israeli military communiques issued from Dani headquarters, including the order by Rabin. A similar order, Morris writes, was issued shortly afterward. For a detailed discussion of the July 1998 expulsions from al-Ramla and Lydda, with extensive citation from Israeli military and civilian archives, see Morris's The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, pp. 423-436.
Firdaws Taji's recollections of soldiers yelling, "Go to Abdullah," are echoed in perhaps a dozen interviews I have done with 1948 Arab residents of al-Ramla and Lydda, many of whom now live in the Amari refugee camp in Ramallah; Reja's Busailah also mentions this in the Arab Studies Quarterly article, p. 140.
Shitrit's arrival in the al-Ramla/Lydda area is mentioned in Tom Segev's 1949: The First Israelis, pp. 26-27; Morris's article in Middle East Journal, pp. 92-93; and Gelber's Palestine 1948, p. 161.
Rabin recalled the meeting with Ben Gurion in his memoirs. Although this portion was censored in its Hebrew version, the translator, Peretz Kidron, later published the memoirs in English and leaked the quote to the Neiv York Times. (See the New York Times, October 23, 1979.) Gelber, in Palestine 1948, p. 162, challenges Rabin's interpretation, arguing
that "Ben-Gurion's habit was not 'waving' his orders but formulating them clearly and expressing them verbally or in writing . . . Ben-Gurion might have waved his hand to get rid of a fly."
Yigal Allon's strategy for using the expelled populations of Ramla and Lydda to clog the roads and prevent the Arab Legion from retaking the towns is outlined in the Palmach 67 (July 1948): 7-8 (in Hebrew, reference provided by Alon Kadish, coauthor of The Conquest of Lydda).
The newspaper quotes from Currivan and others are from the July 12 and July 13 editions of the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times. The recollections of men who boarded the buses come from Michail Fanous, in an interview in Ramla, who heard the story from his father, and from Mohammad Taji, also of Ramla.
The heat of mid-July 1948 in the central plain of Israel/Palestine is mentioned by Glubb on p. 162 of A Soldier with the Arabs and by Busailah in his Arab Studies Quarterly report, p. 142. Evidence that thousands had already left al-Ramla and Lydda by July 14 comes from numerous interviews with eyewitnesses, including Mohammad Taji, Firdaws Taji, Abu Mohammad Saleh Tartir in the Amari refugee camp, 1998 interviews with the Reverend Audeh Rantisi, and Busailah, p. 140.
The items the Khairis and others of al-Ramla left behind come from numerous interviews with family members and other former and current residents of Ramla and Lydda and years of observation and visits with Palestinians in the West Bank, Lebanon, Gaza, and Jordan.
Numerous interviews I have done over the years, including with the late Reverend Audeh Rantisi of Lydda, describe the confiscation of rings and other gold jewelry by Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of the towns. Morris, in the Middle East Journal article, pp. 97-98, reports, "In general, the refugees were sent on their way unmolested," but adds that in July 1948, Israeli cabinet minister Aharon Cohen alleged that Israeli troops "at the checkpoints on the way out of Lydda had been 'ordered' to 'take from the expelled Arabs every watch, piece of jewelry or money . . . so that arriving completely destitute, they would become a burden on the Arab Legion.' " The extent to which this happened is not clear, but it is consistent with interviews and other written accounts.
The account of the Taji and Khairi families' flight and the landscape they crossed comes from Firdaws Taji and is echoed by numerous other interviews, including those with Mohammad Taji, Abu Mohammad Saleh Tartir, and Rantisi. A similar account is given by Busailah, p. 141.
The "donkey road" reference is from an interview with Khamis Salem Habash of al-Ramla, the details of whose journey during the same period are consistent with Firdaws Taji's. The description of cactus and Christ's thorn near al-Ramla during this period comes from various sources, including Israeli landscape architect Ya'acov Golan. The actual distance the group traveled is unclear, though it is certain the people of Ramla did not journey as far as Busailah and the others from Lydda.
The figure of thirty thousand refugees and the terrain they crossed come from estimates by Glubb (A Soldier with the Arabs, p. 162) and from Ben-Gurion's diaty of July 15, 1948 (quoted in Segev's 1949, p. 27). Morris (Middle East Journal, p. 83) and Kadish (interview with me, June 2004) estimate that there were between fifty thousand and sixty thousand Arabs in the two towns of Lydda and Ramla in July 1948, including refugees who had arrived from Jaffa and nearby villages. ("Maybe thirty-four thousand [in Ramla and Lydda combined] without refugees," Kadish told me. "So you're talking about fifty-five to sixty thousand people.") Postwar Israeli figures for the Arab populations of both towns are fewer than five thousand; hence it appears Ben-Gurion and Glubb's figure of thirty thousand refugees is reasonable, if not conservative.
Ben-Gurion's "demanding bread" quote comes from 1949, p. 27.
Ramallah's past as a Christian hill town is understood through numerous interviews and documents, including an interview with Nicola Akkel in Ramallah and Palestinian scholar Naseer Aruri in Boston.
That tens of thousands of refugees were in Ramallah in mid-July is verified by U.S. government cables, including one dated August 12, 1948, and sent from the American consulate in Jerusalem to the State Department in Washington. That the refugees were already thinking of return is documented in dozens of interviews with refugees in camps in the West Bank and elsewhere, including in Ramallah. Morris, in his Middle East Journal article, p. 98, included the account of Shmarya Guttman, an officer in the Palmach and a resident of Kibbutz Na'an, who described the walk of the refugees:
A multitude of inhabitants walked one after another. . . . We tried to make things as easy as possible for them. Occasionally you encountered a piercing look from one of the youngsters walking in the stream of the column, and the look said: "We have not yet surrendered. We shall return to fight you."
Chapter 5
This chapter is grounded primarily in two kinds of sources: original documents from archives, and interviews with Bulgarian Jewish immigrants to Israel in 1948 and those in Bulgaria who remember the preparations for the journey. I interviewed more than fifty people for this chapter and examined documents at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) archives in Queens, New York; at the Bulgarian National Library and the Jewish section of the Bulgarian National Archives, both in Sofia; and at the Central Zionist Archives and JDC archives in Jerusalem.
The description of the railway station comes from interviews in Bulgaria with Virginia Eshkenazi, the widow of Moshe's brother, Jacques; from several interviews with Bulgarian Jews in Israel, including Moshe Melamed, who at twelve years old was in the railway station on the same day for the same journey described herein, and has a photographic memory; and from Moshe Mossek, another Bulgarian Jew who traveled to Israel at about the same time in 1948 and who read this chapter and verified the accuracy of the description of the emigration process.
The description of Solia and Moshe comes from old family photos and from Dalia, who assured me that her mother always wore a hat for such occasions; that Solia's hair would "absolutely" have been worn loose over her shoulders and never tied back; and that her father would have undoubtedly held the family's identity papers. Dalia's parents told her about the straw basket they kept her in and that she slept for nearly the entire journey.
Dalia, by the way, was born "Daizy" and would not change her name until age eleven. In Bulgaria, her father was known as Mois and her mother as Solia (and occasionally by the diminutive "Solche").
The story of how Moshe and Solia met, including Moshe's bold prediction of marriage, comes from Eshkenazi family oral history, as told to Dalia by her parents.
The description of the lines and emigration forms is extrapolated from Boyka Vassileva's The Jews in Bulgaria, summarized and large portions translated from the Bulgarian by journalist Polia Alexandrova. These descriptions were further verified by Moshe Mossek. The figure of 3,694 Bulgarian Jews comes from the ship's seventy-four-page manifest for the Pan York, the ship that the Eshkenazis and other Bulgarians were soon to board, housed at the Family Research Department of the Central Zionist Archives.
The Bulgarian Jews' unique history in Europe is documented throughout the text and source notes for chapter 3.
The date of the Pan York's trip is verified in "General Letter No. 1102" from Fred Baker in the JDC's offices in Sofia to the European headquarters in Paris and from the JDC archives in Jerusalem and is corroborated by Melamed.
Boris's death in 1943 (on August 28, at 4:22 P.M.) is described by Stephane Groueff in Crown of Thorns, p. 372. Groueff and others describe it as "mysterious": Boris died of a heart attack just two weeks after a meeting with Hitler that went poorly, and the timing prompted speculation that Boris had been poisoned. However, Frederick Chary, author of The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, is skeptical. "After his return from the fiihrer's headquarters," Chary points out, "the king went for a week's holiday to Cham Koria, his retreat in the Rila mountains; on one day he climbed Mousalla—the highest peak in the Balkans" (p. 159).
The early history of Zionism in Bulgaria comes from Vladimir Paounovski's article in Etudes balkan
iques, 1997, No. 1-2, titled "The World Zionist Organization and the Zionists in Bulgaria According to Newly Discovered Documents." Paounovski, who is also the director of the Jewish Museum in Sofia, wrote of the discovery of nine letters and two telegrams written in German that explore relations between Bulgarian Zionists and their counterparts in the World Zionist Organization. Herzl's Orient Express quote comes from his diary of June 17, 1896, and can be found in The Diaries of Theodor Herzl (Lowenthal, ed.), p. 142. Herzl's "bandy legs" quote comes from The Jewish State.
It has often been said that Herzl became a Zionist because of the anti-Semitic trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew in Paris. Herzl himself wrote that his belief in the necessity of a separate homeland for the Jews came from his experience as the Paris correspondent for the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, covering the so-called Dreyfus affair (Lowenthal, Herzl's Diaries, p. xviii). Shlomo Avineri, in The Making of Modern Zionism, writes (pp. 92-93) that "the Dreyfus Affair was correctly understood by Herzl as only the dramatic expression of a much more fundamental malaise."
