The Gates of Zion Read Online Free PDF Page B

Moshe’s gaze briefly touched that of the young woman.
    Why had he given them hope? her eyes seemed to say. They were shadowed with resignation and accusation. Then she quickly looked away.
    “Are any of you men fishermen?” Moshe demanded. “We need a crew topside at once.”
    Three thin remnants of what had once been strapping young seamen stood and picked their way to Moshe’s side.
    None of the three looked the part of Mediterranean fishermen. From their worn street shoes to their long black coats and baggy vests hanging on shrunken frames, the men told the story of European Jews sneaking in the back door of Palestine. They would be spotted at once if the Ave Maria were stopped.
    Moshe scanned the group for caps and coats that might pass the inspection of a British naval officer.
    Several of the refugees wore caps that resembled those of Greek fishermen. Close enough. Moshe snatched them from the heads of their startled owners, then tore through the compartments beneath their seats in search of slickers and boots. He found one oil-soaked cable-knit sweater and a torn wool coat. He took off his own coat and handed it to one of the three who was most nearly his size.
    “Put this stuff on,” he instructed them. “And keep your shoes out of sight. It wouldn’t take a detective to see that you are not shod for the deck of a sardine trawler. Stand behind the nets or something, eh?”
    The motley crew followed him up the steps and took their stations— one in the wheelhouse with Ehud, the other two mending nets that littered the decks.
    Moshe stood near the hatch, nursing a cold cup of coffee: the picture, he hoped, of nonchalance. It was his hope that the Ave Maria would be thought to be just leaving the harbor rather than returning from a long voyage.
    As the small craft bobbed through the swells, the British gunboat dashed through them like a terrier after a rat.
    The ominous drone of the gunboat’s engines rose and fell with the winds and seemed to growl the warning: Run, run, run . But there was no running. There was only the shred of hope that by some miracle the gunboat would pass by them without seeing. God of Abraham, Moshe prayed, remember us.
    If that miracle did not happen, the next would be if the British let them pass as sardine fishermen heading out for the morning’s catch.
    Remember how these, Your children, have suffered.
    Moshe thought of the cages that lined the decks of the British deportation boats: cages for apprehended immigrants on their way to the detention camps of Cyprus. More barbed wire. More imprisonment for children, some of whom had never drawn a free breath.
    “We don’t dare go over our monthly quota of Jews,” a British colonel had explained to Moshe over a beer at the King David Hotel.
    “Why don’t they just go back to where they came from? Stop stirrin’
    up the Arabs.”
    In the eight years he had spent smuggling Jews out of Nazi-dominated Europe, Moshe had never come closer to giving himself away. With steely eyes and a fixed grin, Moshe had answered, “Back to the ovens of Auschwitz, eh?”
    The colonel had laughed uneasily, self-conscious under Moshe’s glare. “You know what I mean. Man, you’re a native here. Surely you see immigration means nothin’ but trouble. We’ll have another Holocaust on our hands, and this time it’ll be the Arabs doin’ the dirty business, won’t it now?”
    Yes, thought Moshe, under the passive eyes of the British Mandatory Government in Palestine, the Arabs can do what they wish. Not only were Jews prohibited entry into the country, but the Sabra, the native Jewish Palestinians, were forbidden to carry anything even vaguely resembling a weapon. A Jew could be stopped and searched at will by British soldiers and arrested for having a pair of scissors on his person. An Arab, on the other hand, could openly sell a rifle in the marketplace.
    The British predict a bloody massacre of Jews by the Arab world if the Partition Resolution