My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (17 page)

By 1925 the doctor turned teacher realized that a rising wave of anti-Semitism would prevent him from maintaining his Kovna children’s home. There was no place to go but Palestine. First Lehmann intended to rebuild his unique institution on the very spot on which the Ein Harod white tent camp had been pitched in the Harod Valley in the late summer of 1921. But after learning that the swarms of Anopheles mosquitoes in the marshes might endanger the lives of his students, Einstein’s protégé changed course. On a rainy winter day, Lehmann arrived with his wife and a dozen Kovna orphans at the courtyard built by Israel Belkind for the Kishinev orphans some twenty years earlier.

Where others had failed, Lehmann succeeded. In 1927 there were only fifteen students in Lehmann’s youth village; in 1931 there were two hundred twenty; in 1946, some six hundred students. The village’s ten dunams of cultivated land grew to over five hundred dunams. There was a fine cowshed now, a large sheep pen, a horse stable, an orange grove, a vegetable garden, wheat fields, chicken coops, apiaries, a vineyard. On the gentle slope descending from the courtyard of Kiryat Sefer to the ruins of the Atid factory, long red-roofed dormitories were built. A school was founded, a swimming pool dug, sports fields constructed. Flower gardens were planted along footpaths. The bright living quarters that Lehmann insisted upon for the children gave the school an air of familial warmth. Within ten years, the German-Jewish humanist succeeded in developing in the Lydda Valley one of Zionism’s most endearing enterprises.

Lehmann’s village was unique. For a reasonably long period of time it fulfilled the utopian values of its founder. The Berlin doctor, who was supported by Berlin’s liberal Jews, was no narrow-minded Zionist. Though he dedicated his life to the salvation of homeless Jewish children, he viewed his humanitarian mission in a broad historical context. He realized that the life of the Jewish people had become unbearable. He acknowledged that the displacement and detachment they experienced
threatened the Jews physically, mentally, and spiritually. But Lehmann believed that in the twentieth century, displacement and detachment were not solely a Jewish malady. He saw that a sense of rootlessness was also threatening contemporary Western civilization. Lehmann wanted Zionism to suggest a cure both for the modern Jewish people and for modern man; he wanted it to fulfill an urgent national task in a manner that would benefit all of humanity. He wanted Zionism to be a settlement movement that was not tainted by colonialism, a national movement that was not scarred by chauvinism, a progressive movement that was not distorted by urban alienation. He believed that Zionism must not establish a closed-off, condescending colony in Palestine that ignored its surroundings and native neighbors; it must not be an Occidental frontier fortress commanding the Orient. On the contrary, Lehmann believed that Zionism must plant the Jews in their ancient homeland in an organic fashion. It must respect the Orient and become a bridge between East and West. Though he never said so explicitly, Lehmann saw his Lydda Valley youth village as an example of what Zionism should be: a salvation project giving home to the homeless, providing roots to the uprooted, and restoring meaning to life. Lehmann’s Ben Shemen would offer harmony to the children and to the era that had lost all harmony.

Dr. Lehmann believed that Zionism would prevail only if it was integrated into the Middle East. In July 1927, the young doctor rushed to the traumatized Arab city of Lydda to attend to the survivors of a devastating earthquake that demolished much of the old town and killed scores of its residents. In the 1930s, because of the profound impact his work had had on the community during the disaster, Lehmann made friends among Lydda’s gentry and among the dignitaries of the neighboring Arab villages of Haditha, Dahariya, Gimzu, Daniyal, Deir Tarif, and Bayt Nabala. He saw to it that the villagers walking to and from Lydda in the scorching summer heat would enjoy cool water and refreshing shade at a specially designed welcome fountain that he built for them at the gate of the Zionist youth village. Lehmann instructed the youth village clinic to give medical assistance to Palestinians seeking it. He insisted that the students of Ben Shemen be taught to respect their
neighbors and their neighbors’ culture. Almost every weekend the youth of Ben Shemen went on trips to the villages. They also frequently visited Lydda, its market, its schools. Arab musicians and dancers were invited to participate in the youth village’s festivals. An Orient fair was held, at which Arab rural civilization was studied, displayed, and celebrated.

When the Hollywood-produced film
Land
was shot in Lehmann’s youth village just after World War II, the scenes it captured portrayed a humanist utopia. In black-and-white frames, the director, Helmar Lerski, and his cinematographers registered an unreal reality. Here were boys and girls who had barely escaped Germany living in a progressive, democratic educational establishment, a kind of convalescent home for the uprooted youth of an uprooted people in the land of the Bible. Here were young Hebrew shepherds herding sheep on the craggy, ancient hills between Haditha and Dahariya. Here were young weavers spinning yarn on spindles as if they were French or German villagers who had been living on the land for generations. Here was a community of orphans living a Euro-Palestinian village culture that is in peace with the land it had just descended upon. On the eve of the Sabbath, the children, wearing white shirts, gathered around white-cloth-covered tables to light candles. Although they had no parents, they had faith. Some played Bach, some sang hymns, some told Jewish legends and tales from Tolstoy. But everyone in the halls of Ben Shemen, from age eight to eighteen, took part in an exceptional ritual of secular youngsters reaching for the holy in the Holy Land.

Lydda suspected nothing. Lydda did not imagine what was about to happen. For forty-four years, it watched Zionism enter the valley: first the Atid factory, then the Kiryat Sefer school, then the olive forest, the artisan colony, the tiny workers’ village, the experimental farm, and the strange youth village headed by the eccentric German doctor who was so friendly to the people of Lydda and gave medical treatment to those in need.

The city of Lydda had two mosques and a large cathedral called St. George. But though by Christian tradition, Lydda was the city of Saint George, the people of Lydda did not see that Zionism would turn into a
modern-day dragon. They did not see that while Dr. Lehmann preached peace, others taught war. While Dr. Lehmann took his students to the neighboring Palestinian villages, Shmaryahu Gutman took them to Masada. While the youth village taught humanism and brotherhood, the pine forest behind it hosted military courses training Ben Shemen’s youth to throw grenades, assemble submachine guns, and fire antitank PIAT shells. The people of Lydda did not see that the Zionism that came into the valley to give hope to a nation of orphans has become a movement of cruel resolve, determined to take the land by force.

In the forty-four years that Lydda watched Zionism approach, Lydda prospered. From 1922 to 1947, the population more than doubled, from eight thousand to nineteen thousand. The leap forward was not only quantitative but qualitative. Modernization was everywhere. After the devastation caused by the 1927 earthquake, many of the old clay dwellings were replaced by new solid stone houses. By the Great Mosque and the cathedral, a commercial center and a new mosque were built. On the west side of town a new modern quarter of ruler-straight streets appeared. Lydda was a central junction of Palestine’s railway system, and the train company’s executives resided in the new English-style garden suburb, which was the city’s pride. There was electricity on some streets, running water in some houses. Two state schools and one Anglican school educated the boys and girls of Lydda separately. Two clinics, five doctors, and two pharmacies guaranteed decent medical service. The mortality rate was down to twelve out of a thousand, while the fertility rate was drastically up. A genuine social revolution had taken place in Lydda in the first half of the twentieth century.

Lydda’s economy did well, too. The British Mandate, the indirect impact of Zionism, and a prime location enabled it to gallop ahead. Situated at the very center of Palestine, Lydda became a main transportation hub in the years of British rule. The train station in the south of town and the international airport in the north offered abundant employment opportunities to its residents. The cross-country roads passing nearby contributed to local commerce. And with its 3,200 dunams of orange groves, Lydda also benefited from the citrus boom. In the old town, hydraulic oil presses replaced manual ones. Three factories manufactured the oil and soap that Atid once produced. The town had a successful tannery and many spinning mills that made kaffiyehs and
abbayahs. The cafés were crowded, and the stores were full of the best modern wares. On Mondays and Thursdays, thousands traveled from near and far to Lydda’s famous cattle market and bazaar. Alongside the wealthy landowning class rose a flourishing commercial middle class that turned Lydda into a lively, prosperous town.

But in 1947 the question of Palestine reaches its moment of truth. In February, His Majesty’s government has had enough of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews and decides to leave the Holy Land and let the United Nations determine its fate. In June, an eleven-member UN inquiry commission arrives in Palestine and while touring the country visits Ben Shemen and the Lydda Valley. In August the committee comes to the conclusion that there is no chance that Jews and Arabs can coexist in Palestine, and therefore suggests dividing the land into two nation-states. In November, the UN General Assembly endorses the partition plan and calls for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state. As the Arab League and the Arabs of Palestine reject Resolution 181, violence flares throughout the country. It is clear that Arab nationalism is about to eradicate Zionism and destroy the Jewish community in Palestine by the use of brutal force. It is clear that the Jews must defend themselves, as no one else will come to their rescue. From December 1947 to May 1948, a cruel civil war between Arabs and Jews rages. After the British leave, the State of Israel is founded on May 14, 1948. The next day, the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon invade and a full-scale war erupts.

In December, a seven-car convoy en route to Ben Shemen is viciously attacked. Thirteen of its Jewish passengers are brutally murdered. In February 1948, some four hundred students of the youth village are evacuated from the Lydda Valley in a sad convoy of buses, escorted by British armored vehicles. Dr. Lehmann is heartbroken. By April, the youth village is a besieged military post. In May, the mayor of Lydda recommends that Ben Shemen surrender, but it refuses. Still, the mayor begs the commander of the Arab Legion not to attack the isolated compound, as it does not threaten Lydda in any way. When Arab fields adjacent to Ben Shemen are set ablaze, some of the youth village graduates who have remained rush to put out the fire. Even as war rages in most
parts of Palestine, both Arabs and Jews regard the Lydda Valley as a zone of restricted warfare.

But on July 4, 1948, Operation Larlar, designed to conquer Lydda, is presented to Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. On July 10–11, the 8th Brigade of the IDF takes the northern parts of the Lydda Valley: the villages of Deir Tarif and Haditha, and the international airport. Simultaneously the elite Yiftach Brigade takes the southern parts of the valley: the villages of Inaba, Gimzu, Daniyal, and Dahariya. Within twenty-four hours of the Israeli Army’s first division-scale offensive, all the villages Dr. Lehmann so loved and taught his students to love are conquered. And as Zionism closes in on the valley of Lydda from the south, east, and north, it now prepares to conquer the city of Lydda itself.

On July 11, two 3rd Regiment platoons advance from the conquered village of Daniyal toward the olive orchards separating Ben Shemen from Lydda. Strong machine gun fire from the outskirts of Lydda halts them. In the meantime, Moshe Dayan’s Regiment 89 arrives in Ben Shemen. By the water fountain Dr. Lehmann built for his Arab neighbors, Dayan forms the regiment into an armored column. One behind the other, they stand at the ready: a giant armored vehicle mounted with a cannon, menacing half-tracks, and machine-gun-equipped jeeps. In the late afternoon the column leaves Ben Shemen and speeds into the city of Lydda, firing at all in its way. In forty-seven minutes of blitz, more than a hundred Arab civilians are shot dead—women, children, old people. Regiment 89 loses nine of its men. In the early evening, the two 3rd Regiment platoons are able to penetrate Lydda. Within hours, their soldiers hold key positions in the city center and confine thousands of civilians in the Great Mosque, the small mosque, and the St. George’s cathedral. By evening, Zionism has taken the city of Lydda.

The next day, two Jordanian armored vehicles enter the conquered city in error, setting off a new wave of violence. The Jordanian army is miles to the east, and the two vehicles have no military significance, but some of the citizens of Lydda mistakenly believe they are the harbingers of liberation. Some of the soldiers of the 3rd Regiment mistakenly believe them to mean that they face the imminent danger of Jordanian assault. By the small mosque, Israeli soldiers are fired upon. Among the
young combatants taking cover in a ditch nearby are some of the Ben Shemen graduates, now in uniform. The brigade commander is a Ben Shemen graduate, too. He gives the order to open fire. The soldiers shoot in every direction. Some throw hand grenades into homes. One fires an antitank PIAT shell into the small mosque. In thirty minutes, at high noon, more than two hundred civilians are killed. Zionism carries out a massacre in the city of Lydda.

When news of the bloodshed reaches the headquarters of Operation Larlar in the conquered Palestinian village of Yazzur, Yigal Allon asks Ben Gurion what to do with the Arabs. Ben Gurion waves his hand: Deport them. Hours after the fall of Lydda, operations officer Yitzhak Rabin issues a written order to the Yiftach Brigade: “The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly, without regard to age.”