The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine Read Online Free PDF Page A

journey to Eretz Yisrael , the Land of Israel.”
    They stopped in Turkey for a year in a temporary Zionist camp called Mesila Hadasha , where Jews could work while they waited for the British authorities to issue them permits to enter Palestine. From there they traveled by boat to Eretz Yisrael, or Palestina , as the Jewish immigrants called Palestine. On the boat from Constantinople to Palestine, Sara and Eliezer met Baruch Ifland, a young Jewish man on his way to start a life in England. Eliezer convinced Baruch to come with them to Palestine and, when they arrived, Baruch married Sara. Together they worked to fulfill the vision of the Zionist labor movement—Jewish people from all walks of life flocking to Eretz Yisrael to work and rebuild the Jewish homeland.
    Sara and Baruch had two children, my father Matti and his younger brother Dov, who was fondly called Dubik. Dubik became a farmer. He had six children, and he was everyone’s beloved uncle. Sadly, he was 42 when he died of a heart attack.
    Eliezer became one of the founders of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, an institution that turned the Hebrew language, dormant for nearly 2,000 years, into a modern spoken language. He died of cancer when I was three. Baruch passed away in his sleep during Passover, 1962, when I was nearly six months old.
    When I was four, my family moved to Motza, and Sara moved into the apartment we had vacated on the upper floor on 18 Rashba Street, just upstairs from Savta Sima.
    The relationship between the two grandmothers would make a great script for a BBC sitcom. “She doesn’t speak real Russian. She speaks the same Russian our servants spoke,” Sima would say with disdain, referring to Sara’s colloquial version of the language. Sarah would jab, “She couldn’t cook or even boil an egg to save her life,” which was also true. They were two accomplished women who, in their own way, contributed to creating a homeland for their people in the Land of Israel. They represent two aspects of the Zionist pioneers: One, an educated Jewish woman with a strong sense of social hierarchy who made it in early twentieth century Europe, and then lent her talents and education to the Zionist enterprise. The other, a working class woman whose world, the world of the Jewish shtetl, had come to an end and who ended up participating in the Zionist project as a laborer and as a mother, which in those days, in the height of socialism, was as noble a position as one could hold. The value and importance of protecting the rights of workers and women and minorities was passed down to me through these two women and their life stories.
    As a child, I preferred Savta Sara. As an adult, I learned to appreciate Savta Sima, and I found it puzzling that my mother, who is such a pleasant woman, had a stern mother while my father, who was stern and often severe, had a warm and loving mother.

     
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    1 Savta means “grandmother” and Saba means “grandfather” in Hebrew.

Chapter 2:
My Father Was Matti Peled
     
    I am my parents’ fourth child and by the time I was born in December of 1961, my father was 38 years old. He was 5’11”, with broad shoulders, serious eyes, and— ever since I knew him—silver hair combed back from a wide forehead.
    As an adult, my father made his mark on Israeli history. First as a young officer, who distinguished himself in battle as a fearless, committed, and levelheaded leader of men during Israel’s War of Independence. Then as a career officer who dedicated himself to building a well-organized fighting force for the young state of Israel. But probably most notably as one of the generals of the Six-Day War of 1967, when the Israeli army captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula.
    My father later became a professor of Arabic language and literature, a groundbreaking member of Israel’s parliament, and a peace activist decades ahead of his time. But whatever hat