The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner
Authors: Yehuda Avner
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In truth it was not the Arabs, but thirst, that was our principal foe that day. I was on the water-carrying detail with Leopold Mahler (Jock McAdam had gone off to the Red Cross as an ambulance driver).With the mountainside cisterns contaminated, the nearest water was in an abandoned orchard a mile away. To get to it we had to run a sniper’s gauntlet – sprint up a steep zigzag path to the crest of the mountain, and then down to the orchard on the other side. There, in the shade of the trees, was a well, its water grubby but cool. We hauled it back in jerry cans, two to a man. The only way to drink it was through a handkerchief, so as not to swallow the bugs.
Under the noon sun the detail was punishing. Each jerry can seemed to weigh a ton and, dragging them, we stumbled over rocks and tripped through thickets of dry thistles, our half-naked bodies tormented by flies and mosquitoes. Try as he might, Leopold Mahler found it difficult to maintain the pace. He stopped frequently to catch his breath, drink, and put a wet cloth on his blistered hands as he painfully lugged his load, his violin case strapped into the knapsack on his back. Early in the afternoon, as we still were making our way back, a sniper’s bullet whistled past Mahler’s face and sliced clean through a tree branch just above his head. With a brittle crack, the branch struck his violin case so sharply it forced him to his knees. He looked up at me, dazed. “My violin,” he gulped. “It’s shattered. I’m finished.”
I grabbed him by the shoulders and exhorted him to pull himself together. But he brushed me off, raised himself awkwardly onto a rock, unstrapped the knapsack, and very gently pulled out his wooden violin case. It was cracked. Cautiously, he opened the lid and lifted out the instrument, turning it this way and that, sliding his eyes very slowly over every inch of it. It looked to me as exquisite and delicate as a butterfly. He cradled the violin under his chin and, with closed eyes, meticulously tuned each string. Delicately, he replaced the instrument, returned the case to his knapsack and strapped it onto his back. While so doing he said in an exhausted voice, “My violin is perfect. If I don’t survive, give it to the Philharmonic. And do me another favor, too. Tell God in your daily prayers, if there is a God, to save my soul, if we have souls,” and he laughed, a thin and bitter laugh.
“That’s daft talk,” I said, helping him to pick up his load and, together, we stumbled back to the diggers on the mountainside. There, the medic, a retired x -ray technician, checked Mahler over and diagnosed dehydration and fatigue. Elisha Linder filled us in on the latest batch of rumors to come his way from a nearby emplacement: the Arabs were plundering downtown Jerusalem; a coordinated Arab offensive was under way; the British were siding with the Arabs; Ben-Gurion had put off the declaration of independence; Begin was rallying for a showdown against him.
As proof of the Irgun leader’s intentions, Linder showed us an editorial in Begin’s underground news-sheet, Herut, passed on to him by one of the diggers. It read:
If, on Shabbat, the message goes out: “The Jewish State is hereby established,” the whole people, the youth, will rally and fight shoulder to shoulder for our country and people. But if on that day a declaration of shameful surrender is issued, if the leadership succumbs to the tactics of the enemy and Jewish independence is destroyed before it comes to life – we shall rebel.
Groused Linder, “We have to find out what Begin’s up to. We’re totally blind up here,” and he instructed Mahler to rest up and then hitch a ride into town any way he could, and find out what was actually going on. “Come back with hard news,” he commanded.
Daylight was fading fast. Far to the west, the sun’s last rays were receding behind the hilltops of Judea, heralding the Sabbath. Grimy, exhausted diggers assembled in
In truth it was not the Arabs, but thirst, that was our principal foe that day. I was on the water-carrying detail with Leopold Mahler (Jock McAdam had gone off to the Red Cross as an ambulance driver).With the mountainside cisterns contaminated, the nearest water was in an abandoned orchard a mile away. To get to it we had to run a sniper’s gauntlet – sprint up a steep zigzag path to the crest of the mountain, and then down to the orchard on the other side. There, in the shade of the trees, was a well, its water grubby but cool. We hauled it back in jerry cans, two to a man. The only way to drink it was through a handkerchief, so as not to swallow the bugs.
Under the noon sun the detail was punishing. Each jerry can seemed to weigh a ton and, dragging them, we stumbled over rocks and tripped through thickets of dry thistles, our half-naked bodies tormented by flies and mosquitoes. Try as he might, Leopold Mahler found it difficult to maintain the pace. He stopped frequently to catch his breath, drink, and put a wet cloth on his blistered hands as he painfully lugged his load, his violin case strapped into the knapsack on his back. Early in the afternoon, as we still were making our way back, a sniper’s bullet whistled past Mahler’s face and sliced clean through a tree branch just above his head. With a brittle crack, the branch struck his violin case so sharply it forced him to his knees. He looked up at me, dazed. “My violin,” he gulped. “It’s shattered. I’m finished.”
I grabbed him by the shoulders and exhorted him to pull himself together. But he brushed me off, raised himself awkwardly onto a rock, unstrapped the knapsack, and very gently pulled out his wooden violin case. It was cracked. Cautiously, he opened the lid and lifted out the instrument, turning it this way and that, sliding his eyes very slowly over every inch of it. It looked to me as exquisite and delicate as a butterfly. He cradled the violin under his chin and, with closed eyes, meticulously tuned each string. Delicately, he replaced the instrument, returned the case to his knapsack and strapped it onto his back. While so doing he said in an exhausted voice, “My violin is perfect. If I don’t survive, give it to the Philharmonic. And do me another favor, too. Tell God in your daily prayers, if there is a God, to save my soul, if we have souls,” and he laughed, a thin and bitter laugh.
“That’s daft talk,” I said, helping him to pick up his load and, together, we stumbled back to the diggers on the mountainside. There, the medic, a retired x -ray technician, checked Mahler over and diagnosed dehydration and fatigue. Elisha Linder filled us in on the latest batch of rumors to come his way from a nearby emplacement: the Arabs were plundering downtown Jerusalem; a coordinated Arab offensive was under way; the British were siding with the Arabs; Ben-Gurion had put off the declaration of independence; Begin was rallying for a showdown against him.
As proof of the Irgun leader’s intentions, Linder showed us an editorial in Begin’s underground news-sheet, Herut, passed on to him by one of the diggers. It read:
If, on Shabbat, the message goes out: “The Jewish State is hereby established,” the whole people, the youth, will rally and fight shoulder to shoulder for our country and people. But if on that day a declaration of shameful surrender is issued, if the leadership succumbs to the tactics of the enemy and Jewish independence is destroyed before it comes to life – we shall rebel.
Groused Linder, “We have to find out what Begin’s up to. We’re totally blind up here,” and he instructed Mahler to rest up and then hitch a ride into town any way he could, and find out what was actually going on. “Come back with hard news,” he commanded.
Daylight was fading fast. Far to the west, the sun’s last rays were receding behind the hilltops of Judea, heralding the Sabbath. Grimy, exhausted diggers assembled in
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