The Repeat of the Playbook

By Steve Rodan

May 14, 1948: David Ben-Gurion declared the first Jewish state in nearly 2,000 years. On that day, hundreds of Jews were massacred or captured by Arab mobs a short drive from Jerusalem, abandoned by the Zionist leadership that sent them and promised to protect them.

The siege and fall of Gush Etzion marked the continuation of the Zionist policy of selecting who shall live or die. That policy, which remained throughout World War II, plagued the new State of Israel and established a pecking order in which communities were deemed as not worth saving. Their residents would be left to starve or die.

Ben-Gurion and his colleagues never announced this policy. Instead, they repeated the line given during the world war -- there was no money for rescue.

"There are three things that must be done, and all that involve money," Ben-Gurion said. "And there is no money.." [1]

The land of Gush Etzion was bought by the Jews as early as 1924. Within a few years, the communities were abandoned -- some after the 1929 Arab massacre in nearby Hebron, others when the Arab Revolt erupted in 1936.

In 1943, the Jews tried again. This time, the land was settled with the approval of the Jewish Agency and Zionist leadership. Kfar Etzion was the first, property bought; the sellers consisted of German clergy. In 1945, Masuot Yitzhak, northwest of Kfar Etzion, was settled. The community was named after Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog in commemoration of his efforts to save Jews during World War II. Both came under the auspices of Mizrahi, the religious foster child of the Zionist movement.

In 1947, the last full year of British rule, Mizrahi established Ein Tzurim. At the same time, the secular Hashomer Hatzair set up Revadim. Agriculture was the major occupation -- members grew apples, peaches, apricots, grapes and olives.

On the wrong side of the tracks

By then, the Zionist leadership had agreed to partition the British mandate of Palestine. Under the plan, approved by the United Nations on Nov. 29, 1947, the Jews would be allocated 55 percent of the territory. The Arabs would get the rest. Gush Etzion was located in the Arab enclave. Jerusalem would be internationalized.

But the Jews, some of them Holocaust survivors, were not informed that the Zionist leadership had abandoned them. Had they been told so, most of them would have easily left the Gush for Jerusalem or safer ground. Instead, Ben-Gurion maintained the fiction that the settlers were vital to the forthcoming state and should remain put.

The day after the UN vote, the Arabs launched their offensive. The first major target was Gush Etzion, which didn't number more than 2,000 Jews and blocked by Arab towns and villages. The main obstacle Bethlehem, which contained the regional headquarters of the British police and military.

The actions of the Zionist leadership stunned the Gush and its Mizrahi patron. On Dec. 6, the leadership could not afford to send more than a platoon -- or 30 fighters -- from the Haganah. When the security situation failed to improve, the Jewish Agency ordered the evacuation of children and mothers to Jerusalem on Jan. 5, 1948. Nine days later, the Arabs launched their first major attack on the Gush and the Jews sustained heavy casualties.

The Arabs came by the thousands to massacre and destroy the Jewish enclave. The Haganah, the praetorian force of David Ben-Gurion and his Histadrut, recruited 35 members to bring weapons and reinforcements from Har Tuv and up the mountain to the Gush. All the Haganah fighters were massacred near the Arab village of Tsurif, five kilometers from the Gush.

The Gush settlers and their representatives in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv pleaded with Ben-Gurion and agency treasurer Eliezer Kaplan for guns, ammunition and reinforcements. The Zionist leaders responded by sending meat, chocolate and clothes -- but nothing for combat. Their refrain was they had no money.

"That there is no money, I know," Moshe Shapira, head of Hapoel Hamizrahi, replied. "There are necessary things that must be arranged even if there is no money. Today, I met with people from Kfar Etzion. To keep there women and children in this condition -- this cannot be."

Actually, there was money pouring in from the United States. The funds, however, weren't allocated to Gush Etzion, rather communities aligned to the ruling Mapai Party of Ben-Gurion. By mid-February, Gush Etzion did not appear anywhere in the Jewish Agency's Settlement Department budget.

The reason: The Zionist leadership had already written off the mountainous enclave. Kaplan said the Gush didn't need civilian funding because the entire sector had turned into a war zone. He proposed that husbands be evacuated to Jerusalem to feed their families. By this time, more than 150 women and children were starving in a Roman Catholic seminary because the Jewish Agency saw no need to care for them.

"The discussion of this question by the [Zionist] institutions make it clear how much there is no recognition or correct attitude to the entire problem of Kfar Etzion," a report from the Gush to "Our Comrades in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv," read. [2]

Still, there was pressure on Ben-Gurion to save the Jews. On Feb. 7, the first plane landed in a makeshift air strip in the Gush. Two weeks later, the Haganah broke through Arab lines and brought supplies and 50 people to sustain Kibbutz Revadim, the community aligned with Mapai.

But the measures were tiny and half-hearted. The turboprop that landed in the Gush brought scant supplies, particularly newspapers and mail, rather than guns and ammunition. Despite air reconnaissance, convoys were constantly ambushed -- mostly because of the help the British military, weeks away from its final withdrawal, was providing the Arabs.

The last effort to break the siege on the Gush was on March 27. The Haganah organized a convoy of 33 vehicles, many of them armored, from Jerusalem. This time, the supplies included machine guns, mortars, rifles and ammunition. Accompanying the convoy was a company of Haganah fighters -- 136 in all .

In broad daylight

The Haganah ordered the convoy to begin its journey in broad daylight -- around 9 a.m. The Arabs calmly watched as the trucks were loaded and sent on their way. The British, consulted on virtually every Haganah operation, were preparing an attack. The Haganah air reconnaissance plane came under Arab and British fire.

The Arab preparations were known to the Haganah commander and he wanted to suspend the operation. He was vetoed by his superiors. The convoy was needed to secure the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, and this was the only free day to deploy elsewhere.

In the late afternoon, on the way back from the Gush, the Arabs and British were ready. The convoy encountered withering fire and thousands of Arabs, some of them members of the British police. Formally, the British refused to stop the attack, claiming the Haganah operation was not coordinated with mandate authorities.

The Haganah sustained at least 14 dead and 40 injured. A large amount of weapons was lost. Many of the armored vehicles were destroyed or captured and given by the British to the Arabs.

For the next few weeks, the Arabs and British planned the final assault on the Gush. Ben-Gurion, who even after the British withdrawal consulted with London, did nothing. Indeed, there is no record of a discussion in the Zionist leadership during the entire six months of the siege.

On May 4, 10 days before the British withdrawal from Palestine, the Arab Legion attacked the Gush. The legion was not a group of weekend warriors. This was a force trained, equipped and financed by London. Just to make sure the legion did not fail, the Arab force was supported by British main battle tanks. A mob of thousands followed in the hope of blood and booty.

The British finished off Gush Etzion as their last act in Palestine. On May 12, the Arab Legion, guided by British officers, opened with a massive barrage of artillery. The 200 Jewish fighters left were no match for the many thousands coming to destroy them. When the Jews ran out of ammunition, they surrendered to the legion. The Arab officers threw them to the hungry mob where they were massacred. At least 151 were killed.

On May 14, Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel. Some 90 minutes away, all of the Jewish communities in Gush Etzion were destroyed. The Arab Legion took the remaining survivors prisoner and brought them to Jordan, now the main base of operations against the new Jewish state. They remained prisoners in Jordan for nine months. [3]

By this time, Ben-Gurion had abandoned Jerusalem to the Arabs. The Zionist leadership had agreed that the city, with a clear Jewish majority, would not be part of the State of Israel. The Haganah was ordered to stop any attempt to save the Jews in the Old City.

With the Arabs in control of the Gush and the southern entrance of Jerusalem, the besieged city should have been an easy conquest. At one point, a petition was organized by leading members of Mizrahi to surrender to the United Nations.

But Jerusalem was not Gush Etzion. There were tens of thousands of Jews -- many of them yeshiva students -- ready to fight. It was a case of miracle after miracle. And within weeks, Ben-Gurion realized that Jerusalem would remain Jewish with or without his help.

Notes

1. Jewish Agency Executive meeting of Nov. 30, 1947. Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem

2. Was Gush Etzion Abandoned During the Siege of1948?" Shilo Gal. Page 109. Rimonim, 2007

3. Letters from the War. Gush Etzion Heritage Center. https://www.etzion-bloc.org.il/GUSH-ETZION-HERITAGE-CENTER

Below: guard duty at a Gush outpost during the siege. [Historical archives of Gush Etzion.]

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