The communication and supply problem, however, was not Ari’s main worry. The fear of a massacre was. He could not guess how long it would be until the “armed might” myth of Gan Dafna would be exploded.
By shaking down his entire command, Ari was able to come up with a dozen Spanish rifles of late 1880 vintage, twenty-three homemade Sten guns, and an obsolete Hungarian antitank weapon with five rounds of ammunition.
Zev Gilboa and twenty Palmach reinforcements were ordered to deliver the new equipment. Zev’s patrol were to be human pack mules. The antitank gun had to be dismantled and carried in pieces. The patrol moved out under cover of dark, and through one entire night they climbed up the sheer west slope of the mountain.
At one critical point they passed within a few feet of Abu Yesha’s boundary, through a three-hundred-yard draw which had to be negotiated by crawling a few inches at a time. They could see, hear, and smell Kassi’s irregulars.
The sight of Gan Dafna was a saddening one. Many of the buildings showed artillery hits, and the lovely center green had been, chopped to pieces. The statue of Dafna had been 492
knocked from its pedestal. Yet the morale of the children was amazingly high, and the security system was completely effective. Zev was amused by the sight of little Dr. Lieberman coming out to greet the patrol with a pistol strapped to his waist. Sighs of relief greeted the coming of the twenty Palmach reinforcements.
Kassi continued the* bombardment for ten more days. The mountain guns knocked down the buildings one by one. Gan Dafna drew its first casualties when a shell exploded near the entrance of a shelter and killed two children.
But Kawukji wanted action. Kassi tried two or three halfhearted probes. Each time his men were ambushed and killed, for Zev had extended Gan Dafna defenses to the very gates of Fort Esther. Palmach boys and girls hid out near both the fort and Abu Yesha to watch-every Arab move.
Meanwhile, a courier came to Ari from Haganah headquarters in Tel Aviv. Ari called his settlement commanders together at once. A high decision had been made in Tel Aviv regarding the children in border settlements. It was recommended that all children be moved into the Sharon-Tel Aviv area close to the sea where the situation was not so critical and where every home, kibbutz, and moshav was ready to receive them. One could read between the lines: the situation had become so bad that the Haganah was obviously thinking of eventual evacuation of the children by sea to save them from massacre if the Arabs broke through.
It was not an order; each kibbutz and moshav had to make the decision for itself. On the one hand, the farmers would fight more fiercely with their children close by. On the other hand, massacre was a horrible specter to contemplate.
The evacuation of the children was a doubly painful thing for these pioneers, for it became symbolic of further retreat. Most of them had fled from former horror to come to this place and their farms were the last line of retreat. Beyond Palestine there was no hope.
Each settlement made its decision. Some of the older and longer-established places simply refused to let their children go. Others vowed they would all stand and die together: they did not want their children to know the meaning of retreat. Others in the mountains already isolated and undergoing hardships managed to bring children out for removal.
Gan Dafna was everyone’s responsibility.
Ari’s spies reported that Kawukji was bringing unbearable pressure on Mohammed Kassi to make an assault on Gan Dafna. Food was getting low in the village and fuel was all but gone. The water tank had sprung several leaks from near hits. The hardship of bunker life was wearing down the community, although there were no complaints.
493
The commanders in the Huleh Valley agreed that the younger children had to be taken out of Gan Dafna. The question was-how! A truce would involve a double danger: first, Kassi would never recognize it; second, it would be a costly show of weakness to the Arab commander. If Ari tried a convoy through the roads or an outright attack on Abu Yesha he would have to pull out and mass his entire Huleh strength—then he could be only half certain of success. It was not merely a matter of winning or losing a battle. To lose would lead to the death of the children.-
As so many times before, Ari was called upon to evolve a desperation measure to counter crushing odds. And because there was no choice, again he conceived a fantastic plan, this one more daring than anything he had ever tried in his life.
After organizing the details of his scheme, Ari left David to mobilize a task force and he set out for Gan Dafna. The climb up the mountainside was painful every inch of the way. His leg throbbed constantly and collapsed several times during the night. He was able, to compensate for the handicap by - his intimate knowledge of the route, for he had climbed it a dozen times as a boy. He reached Gan Dafna at dawn and immediately called a meeting of the section heads at the command post bunker. Zev, Jordana, Dr. Lieberman, and Kitty Fremont were among them.
“There are two hundred and fifty children here under the age of twelve,” Ari said without introduction or preface. “They will be evacuated tomorrow night.”
He looked at the dozen surprised faces.
“A task force is now assembling at Yad El moshav,” he continued. “Tonight, four hundred men from every settlement in the Huleh will be led up the west face of the mountain by David Ben Ami. If everything goes according to plan and they are not discovered they should be here by daybreak tomorrow. Two hundred and fifty of the men will each carry a child down the mountain tomorrow night. The balance, a hundred and fifty men, will act as a guard force. I may add that the guard force will be carrying all the heavy automatic weapons in the Huleh Valley.”
Ari’s listeners in the bunker stared at him as though he were insane. There was no sound or movement for a full minute.
Finally Zev Gilboa stood up. “Ari, perhaps I did not understand you. You actually plan to carry two hundred and fifty children down the mountain at night?”
“That is correct.”
“It is a treacherous trip for man by himself in daylight,” 494
Dr. Lieberman said. “Carrying a child down at night-some of them are certain to fall.”
“That is a risk that has to be taken.”
“But Ari,” Zev said, “they must pass so close to Abu Yesha. It is certain that Kassi’s men will detect them.”
“We will take every precaution to see that they are not detected.”
Everyone began to protest at once.
“Quiet!” Ari snapped. “This is not a forum. You people here are not to speak of this to anyone. I want no panic. Now, get out of here, all of you. I have a lot of work to do.”
The shelling from Fort Esther was particularly heavy during the day. Ari worked with each section head in turn to complete the smallest details of the evacuation and to work out a minute-by-minute timetable.
Each of those dozen people who knew of the scheme went around with hearts heavy with apprehension. A thousand things could go wrong. Someone could slip and cause a panic … the Arab dogs in Abu Yesha would hear them or Smell them and bark … Kassi would discover the move and attack all the settlements in the Huleh realizing they were without their heavy weapons …
Yet they knew that there was little else that Ari could do. In a week or ten days Gan Dafna would reach a desperation level anyhow.
As evening approached, David Ben Ami, with the task force in Yad El, sent out a coded blinker message that he would be on the way with the darkness.