by Alan Gold
Yossi looked at a sheet of paper, a long list of countries divided into columns. The first was the name of the country then a second, thinner, column was headed ‘Yes’ and the another column, equally thin, was headed ‘No’. A third column was headed ‘Abstain’. He was ready with his pen.
‘First is going to be Argentina; there’s so many fucking Nazis there that they’ll probably vote “no”. Australia will say “yes”, then Belgium . . . that’s going to be a “yes”. But as to Bolivia and Brazil, you can bet they’ll be a “no”. Byelorussia, God knows. Canada will be positive, I’m sure, but Chile, China, Colombia . . .’
‘Yossi,’ said Judit, ‘How about we let Trygve Lie go through the list. He’s Secretary General of the United Nations, not you, so don’t try to do his job for him.’
They all burst out laughing, including Yossi.
Judit knew that the simple voting of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ belied the complexity of the undertaking and the process ahead. Even if the UN voted for partition, there would have to be an agreement on an economic union between the two states, and then a seemingly endless series of commissions and advisory groups and inspections. Then the General Assembly of the United Nations would have to vote in twelve months on the recommendation to give independence to the two new nations. For their part, the Jewish leadership had agreed to accept the findings of the UN and the borders the General Assembly agreed upon. But the Arab people had not. If the vote was for partition, then the moment it was declared, the Arabs would prepare for war. And so as she sat, listened and looked over the map, Judit knew that the battle against the British would become a war against the Arabs. And she was the only one in the room who knew for certain which way the ambassador from the Soviet Union would vote.
Her reality was that she and her fellow Russians were instructed to use the national excitement and the mayhem that would erupt onto the streets the moment the vote was taken as a time to seek out the twenty remaining targets on the list that Anastasia Bistrzhitska had given them. They were to become collateral damage in the attacks that the Arab forces would undoubtedly launch.
Two hours later, immediately after partition had been voted for, and when the cheering and backslapping, ‘Mazeltovs!’ and ‘L’chaims’ had quietened down, the celebration was replaced by explosions of gunfire. They began in the distance at first, just one or two sporadic events separated by minutes, but they grew closer and closer, and increasingly rapid until they were a staccato orchestrated throughout the Arab areas of Jerusalem.
Though the sounds of rifles and pistol shots were far from uncommon in Jerusalem these days, the volume and aggression of the shouts and screams and anger that erupted, as word spread to cafés and mosques, was far beyond the usual.
The role of the Irgun and Lehi that night was not strategic attacks on British targets but rather defence of Jewish homes and people as the city fell into chaos. Judit looked down to the hands of Ashira beside her, holding a short-barrelled Sten gun. Gripping tight to the stock, Ashira’s hands were steady as stone. Tonight Ashira felt she would be firing bullets at Arabs and this felt much more natural to her than the British who had been her targets until now. Because now, only now, could she exercise restitution against the race who had raped her in the desert . . .
Judit slipped from the group alone and into the streets of Jerusalem. When she was clear of the building, and confident that she wasn’t being followed, she snaked from street to street into an area she knew well.
Her target for assassination was Professor Emile Durace, head of the Department of Political Studies at Jerusalem University; by all accounts an eloquent, incisive speaker and highly influential man.
Though not an orthodox Jew, having migrated to Palestine from Paris where his family were scions of the secular movement, his philosophy for the creation of the State of Israel was based in right-wing Zionism. His father, also an academic, had been an early supporter of the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, who had witnessed the degradation of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army officer wrongly imprisoned for treason when it was obviously a show trial. Like his father, Professor Durace was a militant Zionist, and this made him Judit’s target.
It took her half an hour on foot to reach the street where the professor lived with his wife and three children. She saw lights blazing in a number of the rooms of his house. She studied the pattern of lights in the house and could see that the family had been keenly listening to the radio announcement, as was much of the city. Durace and his wife, Colette, along with their two daughters and son, were downstairs drinking champagne and celebrating.
Hidden by the shadows of trees and bushes at the bottom of the garden, Judit drew out the sniper rifle that she’d concealed in her long overcoat and moved into a position where the front room of the house was clearly visible. Through the scope, she could see the ageing professor and his wife, sitting at a table. From moment to moment, his head was obscured as his children moved into and out of her field of view, but because of the way in which the family was relaxing, she knew that she had a good amount of time to frame the target for the kill.
Judit studied the geography of the room through the telescopic sights. French paintings on the wall, Menorah candlestick on a chimney breast, photographs of the family group in the foreground of the Eiffel Tower. Judit moved the scope slowly over the different people in the room.
The professor seemed grandfatherly with his tufts of unruly white hair above his ears and his beaming, exultant face as they lived and relived the moment of success in the UN vote. His wife, Colette, must have been a beauty in her early years, and was still a handsome woman, with salt-and-pepper hair and eyes that were luminous, even through the rifle scope. The eldest of the children, a young woman about Judit’s age, was stunningly attractive, with raven hair and deep-set seductive black eyes. Judit couldn’t see the rest of her body, but she seemed to be tall and slender. In Paris she might have been a model for one of the fashion houses but Judit thought that in tomorrow’s Israel she’d more likely be an engineer or driving a tractor on a kibbutz. For a brief moment, Judit pondered the extraordinary nature of the place in which she lived.
She studied the younger children, both of whom had faces that were interesting, arresting, and full of lively character. It was a lovely, warm, close family group.
Regret descended on her. All of her training in Moscow had taught her to be removed from her target; to consider them as nothing more than a step towards a grand vision to the benefit of everyone. She had once been an alienated Jewish child and the daughter of a violent and aggressive father. And now she was an instrument of the communist state. It was a role she had accepted. It had given her solace, a place and power.
But now Judit looked through the rifle scope, through the windows, to a family bathed in warm light and felt regret . . . in the years she’d been in Palestine, Judit had been a willing assassin for the cause. But now, suddenly confronted by the reality of destroying a family at the moment of its triumph, in order to prevent nothing more than a political possibility, she hesitated.
And in that hesitation she became the family’s other daughter – a sister to the young man and the two beautiful young women seated at the table. The professor and his wife could have been – should have been – her father and mother. She should have been in this family, talking about politics and philosophy, history and religion, listened to, respected, admired and loved. This should have been the family in which she had grown and been nurtured.
Judit saw in that house everything she would never have. Tears began to well up in her eyes, clouding her vision. Years of hiding secrets, of frustration and of pent-up anger, of lying to Shalman, the man she truly loved, and missing her daughter Vered, who was growing up without a mother, absent for whole days at a time. Judit breathed deeply, trying to steady her emotions. She blinked away a tear as if trying to blink away years of a childhood filled with fear. Her mind floundered and stumbled but her body remained committed, her han
ds mechanical. She held her breath, fixed the cross-hairs on Professor Durace’s head, and slowly squeezed the trigger.
She heard the shattering of the window but for once she did not look at the scene to check her work. Tears cascaded down her cheeks at the awful reality of what she’d done. Who she was suddenly struck her in her guts. So much killing, so many lies, so manifold the deceptions. She felt as though she was drowning in a pool of quicksand. She could barely breathe.
Instead of waiting and observing to be sure of the kill, Judit immediately turned on her heel and ran before the screams of the family inside the house reached her ears. She walked quickly away from the garden into the street, buttoning up her overcoat to conceal the weapon.
Judit’s rapid escape, however, didn’t go unnoticed. The eyes of Ashira watched her retreat up the road and then into the main street where men and women had, until the shooting started, been dancing and singing at the recent news.
Ashira had followed Judit when she’d left the meeting. She hoped to accompany her, to learn from her, to be near the woman she so admired in a world so dominated by men. But what she saw had shattered her confidence and she found her hands shaking with nervousness once more.
But what in God’s name had Judit just done? Why had she fired a bullet into that house, a Jewish house? No, it couldn’t be a Jewish house. Surely! Yet on the post at the front door, quite clearly displayed for all in the street to see, was a large mezuzah, the box that carried part of the Jewish prayer, the identity of a house where Jews lived.
The village of Ras Abu Yussuf
First week of December 1947
Shalman stood in front of the crowd of Arab men gathered in the centre of the small village and felt his hands shake. The sun was not hot, the air had a crisp edge, yet he sweated. Many of the men knew him, some even seemed to like him from his time spent in the village with Mustafa, but most were attuned to the direction the political wind was blowing and they looked upon him now as the enemy. But he had been brought to the village as a guest of Mustafa and, for now, they watched him coldly but respectfully.
Just a few short days ago Shalman had been home alone with baby Vered in their small apartment in Jerusalem. With the child asleep in the other room he had sat alone and listened to the radio, as all the peoples of Palestine did that day, as the votes from the United Nations were announced over the radio. But where others had gathered in hotels and restaurants and on street corners, in groups and crowds, Shalman sat alone and in silence.
He had suddenly felt his life was lived on quicksand. Where once his footing had been on solid earth, it was now insecure. Faith in the cause and the fight of Lehi, revenge for his father’s disappearance, haunted by the stories of those who had fled Europe and had nowhere else to go but into a land under oppression and beset by enemies – these were the things that had made his world clear and solid. Falling in love with Judit had only cemented that footing further . . . until now.
Now, he had sat by the radio, listening to the count of countries and their votes, and wondered where was his wife? Other families were together on such a momentous night for the nation, but where was she on this night? What cause did she serve? How many lives would she take? And Shalman thought again, as he had so often, of the Arab boy on the airfield runway . . .
Shalman turned to Mustafa standing beside him and whispered, ‘I think this was a mistake.’
‘Probably,’ said Mustafa with a shrug.
The village headman was speaking to the group but his words were clearly for Shalman, saying nothing that the crowd didn’t already know – that Arabic radio from Cairo, Amman and Damascus was calling for Arab unity in the face of United States and Zionist aggression; that the armies of the Arabs were ready to invade Palestine and push the Jews into the sea so that all of the Middle East remained under the shield of Islam.
The headman was no firebrand, but spoke in calm, deliberate tones and Shalman could see the genuine worry that creased his brow. The village was close to Jerusalem and should war come, would be clearly boxed between Arab and Jewish armies.
As the headman finished speaking, Shalman was about to rise, but he stopped as Mustafa’s father, Awad, got to his feet and ascended to the platform. For such a mild and gentle man, his voice was surprisingly strong.
‘This is our home, as it was home to my parents, their parents, and those generations who came before us. It is small and it is poor, but it is ours. There have always been occupiers, before the British it was the Ottoman Turk; before the Turk, many others. And then the Jews arrived in large numbers, and today our land is still our land, but our neighbours have changed once more.
‘I know that many of you hate the Jews, but perhaps that is because you don’t know them. My son Mustafa brought home a young man, badly injured and perhaps about to die. A man born a Jew. But the Koran demanded that we give him comfort and, by the grace of Allah, he recovered and prospered.
‘Allah is great and merciful. So when this young Jew stands before you to say what he has to say, I ask you to listen to his words. Because more than any other Jew, he has proven himself to be a man of good faith. He made a promise to my Mustafa that he would help him in his education, and he has been true to that promise. He is a man of trust.’
Awad nodded to Shalman that it was his time and he turned and stepped forward to face the congregation of Muslims. He cleared his throat, hoping that he wouldn’t sound too nervous, hoping that his knowledge of idiomatic Arabic would prevent him from making a linguistic mistake.
‘I come here in peace. I come here on my own. Nobody has asked or told me to come. I am here because much is being said about what’s happening in Palestine. Some of it is true, but much of it is false and causing trouble between our two people, between Muslims and Jews . . .’
In truth, Shalman had not prepared what he was going to say. There was no plan, just a need to speak. A conscience within that compelled him.
‘This should not be a question of blame. There’s enough blame for everyone. Too much blood has been spilt already. But if war comes there will be much more. Too many tears and too much suffering.
‘The land is to be divided, a homeland for each of our peoples. The Jews have not had a home in two thousand years. This . . .’ he said, pointing downwards, ‘is the homeland of Abraham, forefather of both our peoples. It is where Moses and Aaron stood. It is where the armies of Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, were sent to spread the light of Islam. It is a home rooted in the past, but belonging to the present. Our present. When the United Nations votes to create Israel next door, then your people too will finally have a home that is not controlled by an overlord from far away, but governed for yourselves.
‘But there are those who would tell us to hate. We are both the children of Abraham and if we listen to those voices the hatred will become louder and louder until nobody can think clearly.
‘I’ve come here today to ask you to shut your ears to those who will drive you to destruction. If your village of Ras Abu Yussef, and a hundred villages like it, will shut their ears to the hysteria that surrounds them, if you’ll see the opportunity for both of our peoples to live side by side and share the wonders of this land, then there’s hope that there will be no more bloodshed.
‘The United Nations will send people to inspect the land, to see how we live together, to decide how the land should be divided. And when they do there will be those on both sides who push for violence and killing and chaos. Why? Because each side will try to prove they are entitled to all the land. This is the case for both of us, Jews and Arabs. The madmen on both sides will try to prevail.
‘But if we don’t participate, if we don’t listen to the voices of hatred, if we don’t take up arms, then there can be peace upon us all . . .’
They were all the words he had. There was nothing left for Shalman to say. He looked at the audience. Some were listening, others were showing signs of growing anger, still others were drifting away and walking back t
o their homes. It was what he thought would happen, but he had to take the risk.
Later, when everyone had dispersed, Shalman sat on the ground under an olive tree with Mustafa.
‘Well, at least they didn’t stone you.’ Mustafa’s desert-dry humour carried not even a hint of a joke.
‘Do you think they were listening?’
Mustafa gave his trademark shrug. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I know so little of your people. All I hear is the anger and rhetoric and hatred. But that’s not here. It’s not in you or Awad.’
‘We’re a tribal people. Family binds and defines us – brothers and cousins. The things that make us angry are personal, not political.’ Mustafa stopped and reached up to pull a leaf from a low branch, seeming to take time to ponder what he might say next.
‘A boy was at a British airfield begging petrol from the soldiers. His name was Munir. There was an attack by the Jews, an explosion, a bomb, and the boy burned alive. This was in the mind of the village when you spoke . . . Not war, not the United Nations. They were thinking of a boy who should not be dead. And now they are angry because that boy was a cousin to one of the men who was listening to what you were saying, Shalman. You were talking about the United Nations; we were thinking about one of our cousins; everyone hates the Jews because his murder has come home to our village.’
The words cut Shalman like a surgeon’s blade.
‘I know you fight the British, Shalman. Did you know about this?’
Shalman lifted his gaze to meet Mustafa’s. ‘No,’ he lied.
Ten miles away from the village, Shalman’s daughter was being minded by a young student who lived in the apartment block three doors away. The girl’s arrival had enabled Judit to go to a meeting in a house a twenty-minute walk away.
Judit hadn’t been to the house before; it was a safe house, probably owned by a Russian who harboured empathy for the motherland, and who had taken his family out to a meal in a good restaurant, paid for by Anastasia Bistrzhitska.
