THE ZIONISTS––CHAPTER 3
by hilda terry

My mother’s family, fleeing the pogroms in Poland, got here 2 weeks
before a big man was shot––but a BEEEG man. (Abraham Lincoln). When the
youngest aunt got married, there was a farewell party for her and her
husband, leaving right after the wedding to join the Zionist Pioneers. My
knowledge starts with their letters to the family.

The need for a safe haven to which persecuted Jews could flee was always
acute. The Zionists were organizing to do something about it. The Holy Land
was then described by everyone (even Arab writers) as; “a poor Ottoman
province–– sand swept desert, barren rock, etc..” Malarial infested marshes
had so decimated the sparse, semi-nomadic population that, for the first
time in ages, religious Jews clinging to the past, supported by charities
abroad, were a majority among the survivors in Jerusalem.

The Zionists saw a land without people as a gift from God for a people
with no land. There WERE a few Arabs, mostly rootless Bedouin for whom the
only industry other than camel breeding, was raiding each other’s caravans
for each others’ camels. For the Zionists, the Bedouins, still living as
their ancestors had, was a timeless family reunion filled with nostalgia.
How could they not love them?

It was more or less mutual. In the harsh struggle for life, Arab hatred
took a back seat to the real need for each others’ help. When Israel became
a state, the Bedouin were included in the law of citizenship. Not required
to serve in the IDF, many volunteer. They fight for Israel. Sometimes they die.

Back then, Arab treatment for malaria was application of a burning hot
iron to the spleen. It provided distraction with a bigger pain. Some beat
malaria by dying from the burns. Before quinine, the malaria infested
off-shore marshlands were known to be deadly, but Jews who carried pillows
ofsand from “Y’rooshalyim” to be buried with, that their heads should rest
eternally on the soil of the homeland, were eager to go die where the whole
body should rest. With no money for boat fare, it was closer than America––
reachable on foot. They knew it was deadly, but as fast as they died, new
zionists came to pick up the work. You still see photos of pioneers, hacking
away at rocks to create gravel in which to plant trees.

When my father, fleeing Russia’s pogroms, came in 1904, letters from the
pioneers were still describing the work of getting rid of the stagnant water
in which the mosquitos bred. They were breaking huge boulders into smaller
rocks anyway. They used these also to cover the marshes (for drainage) until
the water was completely buried. By the time I was old enough to want to
write to them myself, they were all gone. Records show families died by the
thousands, but they did defeat the mosquito.

Finding waste to rot for top soil was a major problem, but In mixing
mulch with sand over the underground water, they created such fertile
littlegardens against the barren wilderness, Arabs coming later were sure the
Zionists had taken the best land.

Actually, for religious reasons, the Arabs would only sell the worst
landto Jews––and rarely for less than $1,000 an acre. That, too, is on record. I
once listened to my grandfather, arguing with the rabbi: ”If it’s desert you
want, for what you’re paying there for one lousy acre, you can buy AAALL of
Areezony.“ In 1901, as the land became livable, the Jewish National
Fund stepped up to the bat, raising the money to buy the large tracts from
the elite. The large land owners applied much of the sudden wealth to fixing
their fields, improving the yield for Palestine’s tenant farmers. The effect
of this influx of capital had a “fructifying” (their word) effect on the
depressed economy of the whole country.

Flushed with the discovery of all this money in the family, even the
anti-social Arabs waxed friendly for a period. King Abdullah, in his letter
thanking the Jews for helping the Arabs get their land back, (80% of
Palestine), was especially looking forward to what the cousins would be able
to accomplish together. Speaking for most of his enthusiastic subjects, he
wrote; “Neither one of us can do it alone.”

But outside Arabs got jealous, finding fault with the effect of
independence on the peasants whose sudden affluence rendered them vulnerable
to the evils of civilization. The King of Jordan and all who held his lack
of animosity were assassinated and the Zionists were castigated as racists.

As if a refuge for the most racially persecuted people in the history
of the world could be anything else.