Leon Uris Read Online Free PDF Page A

from isolation and constant marauding. Baron Edmond de Rothschild sent experts from his French farms, but they failed because of an ill-conceived attempt to transplant a European type of peasantry.
    In 1884 Sarah and Samuel had a son, one of the first Jewish children born in that part of the Galilee since ancient times. From the moment of his birth, Gideon Asch was to become the future.
    After the turn of the century, on the heels of terrible and massive Russian and Polish pogroms, a new breed of Jews began finding their way to Palestine. They came out of the ghettos in organized groups, intensely bound to the ideal that only through personal sacrifice and Jewish labor could Palestine be redeemed.
    Absentee Arab landowners were only too happy to dump useless acreage on them for outrageous prices. In the Valley of Jezreel, in the Galilee, on the Plains of Sharon, in the Valley of Ayalon, and on that ancient coastal route of the Via Maris dozens of collective Jewish settlements called kibbutzim took on the chore, and the sweet voice of springtime was once again heard in Palestine. The desolate, desperate land, whose fields had been raped, feudalized, and abandoned by Ottoman and Arab, were now being brought back to life. Festering malarial swamp, unmerciful rock, desert, and denuded earth gave way to carpets of green, and the energy of building was heard and millions of trees grew where none had grown for centuries. A blossoming of culture and progress erupted from Jerusalem. North of the ancient port of Jaffa a new Jewish city sprang out of the sand dunes: Tel Aviv, the Hill of Spring.
    Their cleavage from the past brought on all kinds of changes for the Jews. An entire new social concept emerged from the kibbutz, where one came as close to complete communal living as could be humanly conceived. One of these changes was the concept that the Jews be able to defend themselves. In the beginning a small corps of Jewish horsemen roamed from settlement to settlement, putting down trouble. These were the watchmen, the Shomer. They took on the language, knew the habits, and often looked like Arabs themselves.
    By 1900, when Gideon Asch was sixteen, he had become caught up in the new Jewish idealism and was among the Shomer protecting kibbutzim and other types of settlements in the Galilee.
    Gideon first impressed the Bedouin by his ability as a horseman and enhanced his reputation by regularly beating the Bedouin champions in races and competitions.
    He left the relative comforts of Rosh Pinna to live on the move. In the early years of the new century, Gideon commanded a roving unit of a dozen Shomer who went out with the pioneers as they established settlements, often in remote and isolated places and often in the midst of hostile Arab and Bedouin populations. The Shomer were there on that first crucial night to beat off the inevitable Arab attack and Gideon stayed on to establish defenses. He moved fearlessly among the Arabs in an attempt to befriend them. When one settlement was secure, he moved to the next.
    Although he was in an adversary position, the respect grew between Gideon and the Arabs, particularly the Bedouin. He saw them as a continuation of the People of the Book. Often as he rode alone through the Galilee, it was three thousand years ago and he might have been one of Solomon’s captains coming upon a Canaanite village. Sensing that he had no fear of them, many Arabs developed a strange loyalty toward him. Whether in a muktar’s village home or in the tent of a sheik, the blue-eyed horseman was entirely at home.
    Gideon knew many Arab women. Of course this was dangerous for him, but he was young and reckless and, above all, entirely discreet. While no Arab man ever knew or suspected, Gideon had a fairly large contingent of well-wishers among the women all over the Galilee.
    How could such a thing happen? Well, it is a known truth that jails were built for men, and few Arab villages of any size did not have two or