Chapter Three
Another War, Another Excursion
Remaining in the 1940's

 

Introduction to Israeli militarism

These pages will, I hope, not report in undue length on my time in the biblically reminiscent Land of Israel, in modern Palestine. I am not proud of the part I played in the first of many forcible Palestinian expulsions from their soil, their hard won agricultural produce, their families, their homes. But that period cannot be summarily dismissed from my life, the memories are too pressing. Something needs be recorded. In that context, a caution seems necessary. I have already confessed to being a non-patriotic internationalist; add a specific indifference to Zionist ideals plus a strong tendency toward political iconoclasm to arouse, among Zionists, powerful suspicions. One qualifies for that infamous, disreputable but ingenious description: self-hating Jew, anti-Semitic Semite. It is cut and dried, no half measures, “either you’re with us or against us.”

My arrival was soured by an irritating loss - a bag containing clothing and a treasured volume, The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare, had been stolen from the bus to Athens airport. All I now had was and the Parthenon sleeping-bag and a rucksack filled with unwashed clothing. The folk who met us - a newly-arrived group of volunteers from South Africa - were charming. We were taken to their handsome home on Mount Carmel in Haifa where a welcoming party was on the go, clothes were scrounged for me, my washing pushed into a machine and overnight accommodation provided. This easy-going hospitality was, I found, not a-typical; we Machalnics, volunteers from abroad, were often treated in this manner. Israelis were especially welcoming to those they viewed as foreigners who had come to their aid when called upon. Not being able to speak Hebrew was an useful signal, rather than a disadvantage. Besides, broken English was the unofficial lingua franca in this ex-British mandate.

Refreshed from our recent flight - as well as from that blistering party - we were whisked off to the Machal offices in Tel Aviv. There we learnt of our status as invited foreigners via discreet and not so discreet hints that we were expected to remain permanently in Israel; ostensibly to balance the then anticipated influx of non-Western Jews. We were told of our various military postings and assigned to temporary accommodation in one or other of the swanky beach-front hotels of the city. Once more, I found myself on holiday at army expense. Yet again, I was to be accorded a pupil pilot-like, an Oxbridge undergraduate status: limited responsibility and a great deal of tolerance as an ever playful, gentleman or gentlewoman, an amusingly adventuresome minor miscreant.

Apart from being grossly luxurious, the hotel provided opportunities to learn about Israel and its politics, mostly from experienced fellow machalnics and the always loquacious hotel staff. I was told that ‘Vitamin P’, proteksia, protection from on high, was an essential ingredient for advancement; that, behind the country’s leftist facade, right-wing religious groups dominated policy-making; that the various political factions had their own armed forces; that only the Gish, a contemptuous term for the regular army, could be relied upon to back-up the prime-minister and his cabinet; that economic, political and military support from the United States would guarantee Israel’s success in the war and into the future. All this and more. The familiar sight of the Stars and Stripes flying next to the Hammer and Sickle meant, I was advised, that the then incipient cold war was taking root in the new Israel.

In my daily hikes through this remarkably unattractive city - quite unlike Haifa and, of course, the magnificent old city of Jerusalem - I saw a population preparing for war: young men and women with hand-held machine guns swung from their shoulders, a seemingly armed population; khaki-green vehicles on the streets, ubiquitous military personnel, military notices plastered on walls. All this and more. But, I also found street-stall falafel of an astonishingly delicate flavour, coffee-bars serving Jewish cooking of which I had been wholly unaware. I learnt that many of the cafes were associated with particular political parties, my early and continued favourite being the Palmach restaurant in which one might read left-wing journals from across the world. One might be invited to play chess, and, what initially brought me to the place, listen to the sound of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue or similar. It was home from an home I did not have.

The sybaritic life, daily dips in the sea included, continued for almost two weeks before I was called to a ‘secret’ airfield. This seemed to be the rumour centre of the country. For example, we all knew by way of incontrovertible information that some nineteen of the Israeli Air Force’s recently acquired Czech-made ME 109s, those brilliant World War II Luftwaffe fighter aircraft, had been crashed. Their pilots - either of so-called Anglo-Saxon origin or trained in such countries - could not break the habit of opening when they were meant to close throttle. Their misadventures ranged from minor mishaps to total write-offs. There was also another, perhaps similarly apocryphal tale at the expense of one of the planet’s two major powers at the time, the USA.

Apparently, the story ran, a group of dashing ex-RAF personnel had approached United States Air Force headquarters on the Aleutian Islands with a proposal to produce a war film. This required three US Super Fortresses, that country’s massive long-distance bomber. The Yanks agreed to the loan as, probably, a propaganda coup. Whereupon the Brits flew the fully equipped craft to ‘somewhere in the Middle East’ for sale to Israel. The three giants had, we were told, only just taken off for another airfield. Who dared question such an inventive yarn? Certainly not a dissenter such as I.

There were other stories, not all rumours. We learnt, for instance, of a rare joint Gish/Palmach operation directed against the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a militant right wing group led by Menachim Begin, later to be Prime Minister of the country. The struggle - including a full-scale armed battle - took place on a beach south of Tel Aviv. It had been occasioned by an Irgun attempt to land a ship-load of illegal arms. As a Canadian colleague drawled, “This is not a neat war.” Decidedly not, as some of my experiences confirmed.

Then I was sent, as Navigator/Observer, on a bombing raid to the Gaza area. I do not now recall the type of aircraft, probably a Boston, well known among South Africans as the basis of the SAAF’s 24 Squadron. No sooner had we climbed to our operational height than, as expected, the pilot asked for a specific target bearing. I had been looking carefully about me and, easier than a map-reference pointed to it almost on the horizon. As elementary as that. We proceeded unmolested, dropped our bombs at low level onto an obvious civilian settlement, no military installations in sight. We returned to base, without what would have been redundant specialist navigational guidance. All too, too easy, too relaxed in a swift bomber-plane, a deadly doddle.

It was my first and last operational sortie. Discussing the affair next day in the mess, I learnt that bombing raids of this nature had been rare. So why get people such as I to the country? When they had occurred, there had been no opposition from hostile aircraft; none, it seems, existed. There was nothing but pathetic, sporadic rifle-fire from the ground targets over which the bombers invariably flew low; in order, presumably, the better to ensure accuracy.

In summary: civilian targets without effective resistance, an infrequent exercise. This, a handful of us agreed, is why we appear to have been brought to the new-born Israel. Puzzled, I sought to come to terms with the Israeli Ar Force as I had found it, hardly a vehicle for reducing my disappointing SAAF record. What now, another departure, another goose-chase?

Within a week, I met three South Africans in the Palmach café. They were serving, most unhappily, in the Gish. The principal cause of their dissatisfaction was, they explained, that the warfare in which they had been engaged seemed overwhelmingly to be directed at Palestinian villagers. They were distressed about forcibly expelling unarmed peasants from their homes and lands. They, like me, had heard quite the opposite about the Palmach. We resolved to desert to that force. In those early days of the Israeli state, soldiers were able, often with impunity, to depart one political armed force for another. Indeed, the groups they were joining usually offered, and provided, protection - proteksia - against pursuing Military Police. Some while later, as arranged, I joined them with my gear at their very lax Gish camp. It was, I recall, late afternoon on a Saturday, the Sabbath. A wild night followed.

That unruliness came principally from a colleague for whom I shall use the nom de plume Clyde Centor, a volatile young man who, we later thought, had then been in the grip of mental disorder. He stripped the bed-clothes and persuaded another of us to help him pour mud onto the beds of those who were on week-end leave. He smashed the sanitary ware in two adjoining ablution blocks as he did with sundry camp installations, mostly fire-extinguishers. A destructive, largely one-man, early morning riot; revenge, he claimed, for his nightmares about brutalised Palestinian villagers. Finally, immediately before we left, he threw hand-grenades into the latrine pits. The stench was unbearable, even as an early morning bus took us into the coming dawn.

We, the four of us, were now palmachnics, members of an apparently self-sufficient, left-wing force. The self-discipline was exemplary - even Centor flourished in this mutually confident, re-assuring, self-governing regime of empathetic respect. We four responded from the outset, Clyde changing visibly from a sulking, scowling late teenager to a near-adult of usually cheerful demeanour. Insofar as I could be happily at war, I was.

 

Brushes with militarism

We had come to a group equipped with Jeeps on which two heavy guns were mounted; one at the passenger’s seat and another on a tripod in the rear section. The latter could fire in a full circle, over the driver’s and front gunner’s heads. Our weapons were Czech-manufactured Spandau machine-guns, each stamped with the Nazi eagle and hooked cross, a source of wry, usually spooky jokes among us. The platoon, Plugat Ha’Jeepim, was highly mobile, a rapid response unit modelled on the Long Range Desert Group which had operated behind German lines in World War II. We were powerful marauders, appearing and disappearing unexpectedly at trouble spots; the trouble usually being of our making. In the customarily consultative palmach manner, I was proposed for and agreed to serve as a rear-gunner.

We prepared for our intended desert actions by hard training, as a group, in open-country exercises that toughened us in little over a fortnight. We were fit, very fit and had all become skilled in using the Spandaus as well as the personal knives and timber staves from which we were seldom parted. We had also developed an esprit de corps that unified our in-group relations, the women and men among us who were drawn from left-wing kibbutzim. A united, dedicated, tough bunch, not one with which to take liberties.

These qualities were expressly manifested on our week-end trips to Tel Aviv, where we walked the streets in what we called our ‘desert walk’ - loping strides with knives visible in their sheaths on our hips and staves at our sides. In contrast to the showy badges worn by Gish personnel, ours were inconspicuous, tiny. We made our presence known, not least when one of our comrades scared the life out of a cocky bureaucrat in the Machal premises. He argued, somewhat impatiently, that food parcels from South Africa had not been delivered to the offices. We were otherwise convinced and annoyed by his abstract, dismissive manner. A quivering knife in his desk soon persuaded him. Back-dated parcels appeared, pronto - like in the movies.

Our most favoured opponents were the Military Police, Gish men and women to the core. Our pet sport was to grab their caps as the Palmach bus sped by them. They followed on motor-cycles to the Tel Aviv bus terminus which was grouped about a central water feature. They grappled gingerly with us aware, one imagines, of what we thought to be our formidable reputation. Many found themselves dunked in the none-too-clean water as we ran off, down the busy streets of the inner city. We, proud machalnics, were fulfilling, immaturely to be sure, our assumed special status as displaced Oxbridge undergraduates.

These escapades had prepared us for the strange events that occurred just before we left for lengthy operations in the Negev desert. We were, we found, without the supplementary Jeeps and spares that had been promised to us for this vital sortie. What to do, time was short, suspicions of deliberate, politically inspired skullduggery were high? A quick debate and similarly rapid decision: we would snatch, steal the Jeeps and spares from the darkening streets. It was the evening before the holiest of festivals, Yom Kippur, the day of fasting. Fully armed, we drove through the dark to hi-jack vehicles from bewildered drivers, mostly military but not excluding two United Nations personnel. Our booty was rushed to Palmach garages where tell-tale engine and vehicle numbers were removed and replaced; where all, including the white United Nations Jeeps, were repainted in khaki-green.

Early next morning, under cover of Yom Kippur, we left Tel Aviv in convoy. The anarchist-socialist Proudon’s well-known maxim “property is theft” had been debated, digested, successfully implemented, We celebrated as, in Hollywood fashion, we hurried to battle. Viva the Palmach, Viva direct action, Viva civil disobedience, Viva us.

We arrived in the northern Negev to witness what we considered an anaemic, a static conflict; one which, flushed with our adventures of the previous night, we would change. I am not a military historian, but as far as I am aware, we did just that. Specifically, we captured the city of Beersheva firing, as I boasted ridiculously in a letter to my future wife, “our machine-guns from the hip.” In the event, it was nothing like that. Within sight of the town, we were pinned down in a wadi, a declivity in the ground, by accurate machine-gun fire and, surprisingly, an unconventionally deployed Bofors anti-aircraft gun. I remember my Canadian comrade plunging to earth near me yelling, “This is no place for a nice Jewish boy.” It certainly was not, nice or otherwise. However, in reminding us of this self-evident truth, he had helped dissipate much of our tension.

We took nasty casualties in a nearby minefield where, among others, the pianist Pnina Saltzmann’s younger brother needed urgent blood infusions. Of the same blood group, I was required to crawl through the hidden mines to transfer my blood. A scary procedure that failed to save his young life.

Then slowly, carefully, we crept closer to the opposing gun position. At one point, after what seemed like hours of immobility, I, inexplicably, grabbed a pair of hand-grenades, pulled the safety-pins, got to my feet, hurled them. I was, in that stark moment, an unthinking automaton, too scared to think. The Bofors and machine guns went silent, my companions charged to overrun the opposing outpost. Afterwards, they thanked, congratulated me - a hero at last? My bowels were not persuaded, I shat myself comprehensively in retrospective terror at what I had done. Heroism! There is, I fear, little glory in close-up military skirmishes: only death and pity, horror and shit.

In the now almost deserted Beersheva town, walking with three comrades, I heard anguished screams from a basement. We scrambled down to find a youth threatening two women - a mother and daughter? - with a pistol and ordering another to continue stripping. The entire palmach complement had, the previous night, debated our proposed conduct in the battle rage to come. Unanimously we agreed that butchery, rape and looting were not to be tolerated. Any found engaging in these crimes were immediately to be shot. The senior palmachnic among the four of us drew his pistol and shot the man. I think he died immediately, what was left of his shattered face contorted with agonised amazement. The Arab women stood sobbing, a thoroughly appropriate, therapeutic response which I envied them. We reported the tragic event, submitted detailed statements and heard nothing further. Incident closed, a minor wartime mishap.

Our platoon remained in Beersheva a while longer, sufficiently long to attend a wonderful open-air concert in the town centre. It was, I think, presented by the Israeli Symphony Orchestra whose members had travelled south with Leonard Bernstein to play Mozart and Beethoven under a three-quarter moon. People drifted in from all sides to squat in the desert dust, to listen and watch the also attentive, beautifully silhouetted camel riders on the perimeter of the field. A unique performance on a unique occasion. I cannot now hear the Eroica without that scene coming to mind.

But, beware of my superlatives. When, two or three days after, a group of United Nations Inspectors visited us in the course of their investigations into the antecedents of the Negev conflict, my fellow palmachnics showed that they could dissemble as readily as their Gish counterparts. Among others, I was shown as a casualty of a purportedly vicious Arab attack; a massively bandaged minor cut on my right knee was proffered as evidence of an unwarranted raid. Poppycock, it had occurred during a makeshift soccer match on a stony pitch. In addition I was asked to respond by saying “Rak Ivrit,” only Hebrew, when questioned. A serious case of passive resistance?

 

Patrolling the Negev

Then we left the doubtful comforts of the conquered town for our real mission: roving, sometimes buccaneering raids behind, in this case, Egyptian lines and among Bedouin camps. Our receptions were mixed; preceded by a wary unease among our ‘hosts’ when confronted by our formidably armed Jeeps and ruffianly dishevelled personal appearances. When, for instance, we arrived at a particular, temporary Bedouin settlement - none were permanent - to question the group, we were received with punctilious, formal hospitality; served with freshly ground, strong black coffee, and told nothing. Sugar by the lumps was added to the delicate cups until the stirring-spoons seemed able to stand unsupported in the hot, deliciously flavoured liquid.

The Sheikh made a great play of insisting that I take two cups because my Bedouin-like beard and sunburnt complexion made me a brother. Having learnt nought, absolutely zilch from him or his companions, we left under the escort of three elderly horsemen, who were, by custom, to see us safely off their lands. There were no young men in the group; all were, probably, serving with the nearby Egyptian army.

Another of these supposedly amiable, café klatch visits was far less uneventful, especially from our viewpoint. For the first, and last, time we were accompanied by a Gish officer, a man of pronounced military bearing who had been temporarily seconded to us. Captain Shimon, as I shall call him, had served as a Sergeant-Major in the British Palestine Brigade during the Second World War. He was an army man through and through - a self-assured, smugly authoritarian disciplinarian who knew right from wrong, who did not hesitate in making his strictly orthodox views known to those about him. Clearly, not one of us.

He seemed bemused by the absence of rank and the presence of women in our unit; we were wild, wooly, weird and, despite our chaste in-unit relationships, probably unrelentingly promiscuous. Our camp-fire camaraderie barely held under his wordy criticisms: initial irritation among us turned rapidly to bored tolerance, to impatient indifference, to scarcely suppressed, angry resentment. I sensed that I was a special source of his upset. Having been, as he insisted, an officer in the South African forces, I was criminally negligent in not pressing for adequate discipline here in the Palmach. He and I discussed this repeatedly, to no avail, neither shifted his views.

Pre-dawn, after he had spent four or five days in close company with us, we received an urgent radio call. A Jeep in our sister platoon had struck a mine, three comrades were dead and one of those in a nearby Jeep had been badly wounded. We, in our four Jeeps, were to investigate. We dressed, mounted the vehicles and drove off, stopping only while our two religiously observant colleagues engaged in the customarily lengthy ritual for greeting the dawn. Captain Shimon objected, stating the obvious, we had to hurry. Unflustered the two continued. Already tense - three comrades killed, another lacerated, an early call and now this carping alien - the unease intensified.

On arrival at the Bedouin encampment, we were greeted by the Sheikh, an elderly, tall, gaunt, hook-nosed man of admirable dignity. He seemed only partly to conceal his disdain for us; contempt would, perhaps, be a more precise depiction. Suddenly, unexpectedly, precipitately, Captain Shimon took charge. In terse Arabic, he ordered all out of the tents, the men to line-up to the left, women and children on the right. He commanded the seven gunners of the platoon to train their weapons on the two lines of unarmed people. We did so, how else might we have responded in the face of the Bedouins lined up in front of us? Rapid-fire questions were put to the Sheikh, punctuated by arms waved in the direction of the machine-guns. That supremely composed man remained unmoved, staring into his interrogator’s eyes. The four Jeep drivers were instructed to dig and probe for mines in and around the tents.

We waited in the Negev heat. The tension became pretty well unbearable. Nothing resulted from the digging. Shimon was now besides himself. He stormed in Arabic at the Sheikh and turned to order me to fire. I refused, shouting in my agitation that his was an unlawful command, one may not, in terms of the Geneva Convention and his admired British Military Code, obey such orders. Uninterested in a debate, he instructed me to surrender my weapon: I refused, yelling that I had signed for and was responsible for it. In any event, on what grounds was he commanding me? He reached for the pistol at his side, I pointed my poised Spandau directly at him and, suddenly quiet, whispered that I would shoot. He stopped, nonplussed. I took formal command, ordering him to surrender his pistol and placing him under protective arrest. My colleagues cheered, while the Bedouins, Sheikh included, looked utterly bewildered. After questioning that unshakeable man further, we left for base where I reported by way of a long written statement and a less controlled verbal comment.

The next day, Shimon and I were called on to report formally to the assembled company, a protracted process in which we two and the other members of the platoon were interrogated, cross-examined, questioned and cross-questioned. That evening, I was declared innocent of gross insubordination; commended, indeed, for upholding Palmach principles. Captain Shimon left us, refusing all farewells, for I know not where.

Those four-Jeep journeys took us to distant places; to, for instance Sfad in the Arabian Peninsular, where, we said, even the flies dared not live. We travelled most frequently to the Dead Sea via the magnificent ravines of the eastern Negev. There we would use a short-wave radio to monitor the fruity voices of British officers in Glubb Pasha’s famed Arab Legion, a hostile force. Having identified their plans, we countermanded them in our best mock upper-class English accents. The ruse seemed to work, we made that eerie scenic night trip repeatedly. Other journeys brought us behind the Egyptian lines to the west. There some of my colleagues claimed to have seen trenches filled with fellaheen infantrymen chained to each other. They, apparently, also distrusted and were distrusted by their wartime leaders.

Our most harrowing Negev incident occurred late one moonlit night. We had been directed to an ambush point on, if my memory is correct, the Gaza road, along which a convoy of probably seven Egyptian tanks was reported to be heading toward Beersheva. Armed with explosives, mines and a hand-held, rocket-firing PIAT (in approved military jargon, a Projectile Infantry Anti-tank weapon), we were to halt, disperse or destroy this force.

We - in our four Jeeps - arrived in the early evening, placed two vehicles on either hillock above the roadway, mined the dirt track below, concealed explosives along the roadside and dug ourselves in amid the small bushes next to our camouflaged Jeeps. Apprehensive, to put it mildly, we lay there all night, distractedly admiring the moonlit scenery and seeking to keep ourselves awake by quoting the bard’s Henry V - from which a comrade and I had been reading aloud just days before. “Once more unto the breach dear friends,” and “then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars ... for he today who sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother,” and the like, seemed to give us heart; as did the outrageous, obviously manufactured sexual exploits of which we boasted. Signs of lustful life in the face of death?

No convoy. In the morning, we were advised by radio to leave the mines and explosives in place pending another attempted tank assault. We returned to base in Beersheva to find the town rumbling with stories about an impending cease-fire and eventual call for peace talks.

 

Doldrums, departure, a retrospective glance

There were no further sorties for us. Life in Beersheva became round upon round of formal training broken by frequent trips to Tel Aviv and neighbouring kibbutzim. I stayed a while to work on such a settlement, greatly enjoying the way of life, the ideologically congenial company and, unexpectedly for a city dweller like me, the exacting farm labour. Mostly, though, I travelled to Tel Aviv where my comrades and I met in the Palmach café and walked the desert walk; now in triumph rather than our previously cheeky playfulness. Indeed, self-garlanded, triumphal lordliness seemed the current Israeli mode; one into which we fitted all too thoughtlessly. Military success had tainted us, the vaunted Chayot Ha’Negev, Beasts of the Negev, were back in town - bashed, bruised, battle-scarred but, above all else, victorious.

Tel Aviv meant the Machal offices which, in turn, meant letters and food parcels from home. I strolled up Allenby Street to claim mine and, once on the premises, to be invited to visit a senior bureaucrat. He told me that there had been a change of policy: individuals who had interrupted their studies to come to Israel were now being urged to return, complete those studies to then emigrate to Israel. As far as could then be seen, hostilities had ended; the State now required skilled personnel in all, but especially the professional fields. He hoped I could see my way to an early departure. I did, building a new Israeli state was not an item on my agenda. And, in any event, that list was capped by the fondly passionate letters that had recently passed between Beate, my future wife, and I.

I returned to Beersheva, collected my belongings and, with great sadness, hugged my last hugs with a band of sterling, beloved comrades. I drank, sang, drank and surreptitiously wiped my misty-eyed farewells.

The aircraft I was on stopped overnight to drop-off passengers in Nicosia, Cyprus. I was shaken by the offensive, snidely anti-semitic treatment dished-up to me by three senior British immigration officers. They interrogated me brusquely vis-a-vis my battered passport, focussing in particular on the photograph that illuminated the second page. My explanations that I had been in a war were brushed aside with comments such as, “Oh yes, a Jewish war was it?” Inwardly, I muttered “bugger you” or other silent abuse to the same effect.

So, it was back to that tired order of ‘reality,’ back to off-hand racist prejudice - the contumely of the bigot? I began a process of assessment - where had I been? Not least, had I become a Zionist, a Jewish nationalist? These linked questions did not, I recall, require lengthy, detailed analysis - I was not, had not been and would surely not become either. Neither, of course, did this signify that I was willing to see the Israeli Jews driven into the Mediterranean or, for that matter, the Palestinian Arabs forced across the Jordanian border. It meant a continuation of the humanist goal with which I left home: to help establish a secular, bi-partisan state in which all could participate freely - a task that was less daunting in 1948 than more a half century on.

Zionism held no attraction for me. Now, as then, I understood the ideal in which the movement was/is rooted to be the establishment - for many, the re-establishment - of a Jewish nation in Palestine. My reading suggested that Zionist ideas started in reaction to the persistent persecution of Jews in the Czarist empire, particularly in Russia and Poland. Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), customarily credited as the founding father of Zionism, argued that the sole alternative to continued, historical persecution was/is an independent Jewish state. For me, a dubious, nationalistic assertion. It was Chaim Weizmann (1894-1952) who declared that such a nation-state must be based in Palestine, reputedly the biblical home of the Jews after escaping ancient Egyptian enslavement. Another dubious notion. Since the establishment of Israel (1948), Zionism became the organised ideology of non-Israeli, mainly Western Jews: the Zionist movement became their vehicle for supporting and/or expressing solidarity with the infant state. For many Soviet Jews, the term has come to signify and exemplify their desperate efforts to quit their country for Israel. The notion of a Jewish national state in Palestine is central - a Jewish nation in Palestine!

That anomaly has been explored by many authors; among whom one might mention Isaac Deutscher (1907-1967), Edward Said (1936-2003), Tanya Reinhart and Noam Chomsky. A further rehearsal of their developed, and documented, views seems inappropriate in this individual, personal memoire. Save to stress the obvious: although the Palestinian people were remote from the horrors of the holocaust, it is their established homeland which, following Weizmann, was/is expected to ensure the Zionist alternative to persecution. What was dubious became an unacceptable territorial incursion.

The matter of nationalism - inextricably twined with Zionism - does, however, call for a brief mention. Here, my standpoint is probably most succinctly conveyed by juxtaposing characteristic notions of nationalism with those of internationalism. I take the former to include feelings of group belonging, cohesion which commonly coalesce about cultural, linguistic, historical and frequently racial ties; they tend, in addition to be identified with particular territories. Nationalism of this nature has been a powerful drive in developing the arts and other cultural matters. It has also inspired resistance to imperialist and like attacks on many national groups; specifically on their territories.

There is, though, another form of nationalistic expression; one which glorifies the nation state as “the ideal form of political organisation with an overriding claim on the loyalty of its citizens,” Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (1977). Indeed, my palmachnic comrades used just such arguments to persuade me to remain in Israel, to join a Negev kibbutz This readily assumes the “aggressive, intolerant forms identified with military and trade rivalries, national expansion at the expense of other peoples ...” also the Fontana Dictionary. It has been integral to the authoritarian rule of Fascist, Nazi, Stalinist, colonial and similar regimes. I emphasise: this order of nationalism readily assumes aggressive intolerance, particularly in wartime conditions, it does not necessarily embrace such tendencies initially.

Internationalism posits quite different qualities: the so-called soft, non-aggressive, respectfully tolerant attributes which committed, tough-minded nationalists tend impatiently to decry; characteristics they may well despise. It is rooted in the notion that, differences not withstanding - indeed welcomed - there are common human interests, particularly among the sans culottes of the world. It focusses on the ideals of commonality, fraternity, proclaimed by rebels across the planet, throughout known history. Such ideas animated, among many, many others, the slaves of the Spartacus rebellions, the 13th century peasants who were touched by the visionary monk John Ball, the ‘under-classes’ of the French Revolution - the ‘common people.’

There, I trust with the humility due to this honourable tradition, I stand. On that humane basis, I risk being dismissed as an impractical dreamer, an innocent, wistful, tender-hearted idealist, a supposed self-hater - an outsider looking in.