Free My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit Page A

Heifetz is Heifetz, but he is also Jascha, one of us. One who rose from the misery and despair of the Jewish past and the Jewish present and has distilled his genius from them. One who has escaped the hopelessness of Eastern Europe and chosen America. So when this brilliant cousin chooses to acknowledge his fellow young Jews who are escaping what he escaped in a very different way and in a very differentplace, even the toughest among the Labor Brigade comrades are beside themselves. They feel that a biblical-like spectacle is about to happen.
    There are thousands and thousands of them now, packing the makeshift seats of hard, gray boulders. And when Heifetz arrives at last, I watch both the maestro and his ecstatic audience. Both the violinist and the pioneers are as old as the century. Both the violinist and the pioneers will become the century’s icons. They tell the century’s Jewish tale. And when the young men and women of Harod stand up and clap and cheer, the Vilna boy, who cannot start playing until they quiet down, is truly touched. Although he is a cold, perfectionist performer, he is overwhelmed. And between the young man standing on the improvised stage and the young masses standing in the improvised amphitheater, there is suddenly an intimate dialogue. The two great forces, the two sorts of creative energies that erupted dramatically out of modern Jewish distress and that represent the two great choices of the Jewish people in the twentieth century, face each other. In the quarry of the Valley of Harod, one bows to the other.
    But as Heifetz stretches his arm to pull the bow across the strings, I think of all that is to happen in the valley.
    In three years’ time, the firstborns of Ein Harod will crouch for days in the first cement-built dairy, hiding from the gunfire of Arab neighbors.
    In nine years’ time, the Arab villagers of Shatta will be forced to leave their homes by the railway station, and a new kibbutz will take their place.
    In ten years’ time—to the day—the valley’s fields will be set on fire by Arabs who suddenly realize how far the Jews have come. Watching the burning fields, the firstborns of Ein Harod will harden their hearts.
    In twelve years’ time, in Ein Harod, the first elite Anglo-Jewish commando unit will be founded. The unit will raid Arab villages at night, killing some of their civilian inhabitants.
    A few months later, a landmark Jewish sergeants’ course will be launched in Ein Harod. The course will lay the very first foundation for Israel’s future army.
    In twenty years’ time, Ein Harod—and the forces it gave birth to—will have real military might. In twenty-two years, that military might will attack the villages of Nuris, Zarin, and Komay. It will drive all Palestinian inhabitants out of the valley.
    As Heifetz plays and his music reverberates in the hushed quarry, I wonder at the incredible feat of Ein Harod. I think of the incredible resilience of the naked as they faced a naked fate in a naked land. I think of the astonishing determination of the orphans to make a motherland for themselves—come hell or high water. I think of that great fire in the belly, a fire without which the valley could not have been cultivated, the land could not have been conquered, the State of the Jews could not have been founded. But I know that the fire will blaze out of control. It will burn the valley’s Palestinians and it will consume itself, too. Its smoldering remains will eventually turn Ein Harod’s exclamation point into a question mark.
    I close the Heifetz file in Ein Harod’s dilapidated archives and go out into the early evening air. I have supper with my dear elderly relatives. I wander the paths of the deteriorating kibbutz. Over the last thirty years, it has lost its way. The economic base of Ein Harod collapsed and its social fabric frayed. Most of the young have left; most of the elderly are aging in despair. The collective dining room is empty, the