Hadam - a story about heroism that was cut off Shlomo Yuval

"Streets are like wrinkles and grooves in a person's face, telling the story of his life. Names are not just landmarks on the map of the city, they are also its calling card, announcing its early days, its personality and its legends." (Shlomo Sheba, "Eir Kama").

As a child who was born and raised on Arlozorov Street in Haifa and strolled for pleasure up Gan Binyamin until he reached "Hagidam" Street, I occupied myself, even as a teenager, with a question that I had a hard time answering: what made the name givers of the streets of Haifa, to name the street after the disability of a hand amputee - "Hagidam" Street, Instead of naming the street after the disabled person himself - Joseph Trumpeldor.

Many years passed and it became clear to me that the name "Hagidam" was a political compromise between those who think that the name of the personality they want to immortalize is written - טRumpeldore, for those who are convinced that writing should be done תRumpeldore.

We will start by taking a stand and join Hasidi The T. And tell the story of Trumpeldor. This man, a member of the Second Aliyah, a member of the "Hashomer" organization, fell with his friends in battle on the 1920th of Adar XNUMX (XNUMX), while he was commanding the defenders of a small settlement in the Galilee, a settlement that everyone knows, Tel-Hai. ninth. He was murdered in a treacherous exercise by Bedouins, who even then did not like settlers in the Land of Israel.

ninth. He was my childhood hero, without me choosing him. He was chosen, and some would say forced upon me, by secular Zionist adults whom I did not know and can be defined asThe settlement's leadershipstand out in them Ben Gurion וBerel Katznelson. The village leadership directed us to remember and not to forget The bravery of the soldiers, members of the guard, who fell in their defense of 3 isolated settlements of the finger of the Galilee: Metula, Kfar Giladi and Tel-Hai.

"It's good to die for our land".

Trumpeldor, Commander Tel Hay, was wounded during the fighting in the courtyard of Tel-Hai, and being wounded, his last words before dying are attributed to him: "It's good to die for our land". This is a statement that shaped my world as a teenager and was an important link in the heroism myth of the settlement, whose leadership worked to establish a Hebrew fighting force that was supposed to work to remove foreign rule from the Land of Israel and establish the State of Israel. This power evolved into "the defense", and out of it grew thePalmach.

7 fighters

7 fighters, including 2 women who died in the campaign bTel Hay, were buried together in a mass grave bKfar Giladi, and over their grave, after 13 years, the roaring lion statue was placed. This statue is a point of pilgrimage for the youth from all over Israel, on the 100th of Adar, the day of their deaths for XNUMX years. A plaque is fixed on the statue, detailing the names of the fallen.

Those who fall in Tel Hai

This day served as a national day of remembrance for the Jewish community in Israel and preceded the day of remembrance for the martyrs of all of Israel's wars, which takes place on the eve of Independence Day.

As a child who was 10 years old when the state was established, I lived the image of the fallen warrior, by playing a role in the memorial ceremonies for the fallen, every year on the XNUMXth of Adar. As a teenager, I was privileged to be the commander of the school's Gdanha company, which stood in memory of the fallen.

The ceremonies continued even in the first decades of the state's existence. We used to lower, to the sound of drums and trumpets, the national flag that was flown in the order - to half-mast, and we recited a special "Yizkor" prayer, composed by Berel Katznelson in memory of those who fell in battle Tel Hay.

When I grew up, I noticed a disturbing political detail: the wording of thewill remember" of Berel Katznelson, moved away from the religious text and incorporated the definition of the fallen as "The people of work and peace". It was part of an effort to appropriate the fighters, and especially you Trumpeldor, To the socialist camp of labor parties of Eastern European origin, even though the hero of Tel-Hai had a personal affinity with his friend Zeev Jabotinsky, against the background of security projects they forged together at the initiative of establishing the Hebrew battalions, as will be told later.

At the school ceremonies, a student sang in a clear voice, words that were engraved in me and that I will never forget:
"In the Galilee, at Tel Hai, Trumpeldor fell.
For our people, for our country, the hero Yosef fell."

And I remembered the words:
"In every place and at every moment remember me,
Because I fought and also fell for my homeland."

The words of the pioneer Abba Khushi

When I grew up, I learned to know that these exciting words were written in exile by a pioneer who is not a poet (and maybe he is), who was later the mayor of Haifa - Abba Khushi, who paid tribute in a poem to the hero commander who became a legend, and specifically mentioned the man's name: Trumpeldor.

Here a dispute was revealed between the members of the labor movement, of which Abba Khushi was the prominent leader in the "red" Haifa, and Jabotinsky's students, admirers Trumpeldor. ninth. He himself was a follower of the pacifist Soviet writer Tolstoy, and by any standards he was a devout communist, a man of peace, until the question of our right to the Land of Israel arose, or then he was a determined professional warrior at the level of a samurai.

The revisionist Zionist faction, led by a trailblazing leader named Zeev Jabotinsky, founded the youth movement more. This is a name in which the name of the Galilean hero was combined: "Joseph Trumpeldor Alliance". The Baytars sing this song with 2 slight corrections in Abba Khushi's words: one correction was in the inscription the name of the hero Trumpeldor inT, i.e. Trumpeldor, to match the initials more; A second amendment was "ideological": according to the Beitarim, the hero Trumpeldor fought and did not fall, as stated in the version of the "poet" Abba Khushi Hampa'inik, a man of the labor movement.

Since they did not reach the equal valley, the people of the left and the right who named the streets of Haifa after people they like, compromised on a neutral word: the tendon. That name is desolate to me. Those who chose to immortalize the Joseph Trumpeldor In the name of his disability, they showed insensitivity to the dignity of the disabled person who had his hand amputated. After all, no one would have imagined that street Moshe Dayan was replaced by "through the blind eye".

Others, the followers of the tradition, preferred to give the street in memory of Trumpeldor the name "Yosef" street, he is Joseph with the striped shirt, an impressive biblical figure of a deputy to the king of Egypt, the son of Jacob and Rachel. The Bible says that Rachel, who was barren for many years, saw in the child the sign of another son: "And you shall call his name Yosef, saying, Yosef, the Lord has added to me another son." The story about the other son, another man who suffered for no injustice, is Benjamin, Save Ami for another occasion.

He died when he was 40

Today, Yosef Street, formerly the Gidam, is known to all Haifaites as the street where the Haifa Theater is located. Most of our young people do not know what they should know about an exemplary figure of a leader and warrior, who lived in the Land of Israel for a few years, until he fell in the battle of Tel Hai. For their sake we will complete the story of the man, who was cut down at the age of 40.

A leader I never stopped asking myself about, how useful he would have been if he had lived twice his years.

Joseph Trumpeldor Born in November 1880 in the Caucasus, to a father who was kidnapped as a child to serve in the Russian army. The boy studied in the room and went on to secular studies. His father taught him to be loyal to Judaism but also to the Tsar and the Russian army. Yosef the boy refused to be admitted to school due to being Jewish and was harmed by the discrimination against the Jews. With the help of his family, he was able to complete professional studies and received a government diploma to work as a dentist.

The young Trumpeldor was influenced by the teaching of Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl, became a Zionist and founded a Zionist circle that existed until he enlisted in the Russian army. Although he advocated pacifist views under the influence of the Russian writer Lev Tolstoy, he decided to enlist so that he would not be accused of Jewish cowardice. During his military service, he encountered anti-Semitic phenomena that strengthened his attachment to Zionism and encouraged him to cultivate ideas about settlement in the Land of Israel.

ninth. He found himself in a war that made him a revered Russian hero. It was the Russo-Japanese War (1901-5), in which the Jewish youth proved himself in combat. He excelled in fortitude, leadership and the strength to withstand difficulties. For his excellence in battles, he was awarded a badge of distinction and a promotion in rank. In 1904 he was seriously injured when a shell crushed his left hand, and his hand was amputated. Despite his disability he returned to serve in his unit. Commander Yosef received another medal of distinction and was appointed commander of a platoon, and despite being Jewish, his soldiers adored him.

Even heroes are captured

But even heroes fall into captivity. In January 1905, the soldiers of Trumpeldor's regiment surrendered and he was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Osaka, Japan. I'll start by saying that the Japanese look brutal, but they weren't in 1905.
During the Japanese captivity, the captives were sorted according to their religion, and Trumpeldor was chosen to be the leader of the Jewish captives. His connections with his Jewish brothers strengthened his passion for Zion. He founded workshops, a school, a library and a theater company. He presented his captors with demands to help preserve the religion: he regulated the baking of unleavened bread, took care of obtaining a Torah scroll, but most importantly, he founded a Zionist association called "The Bnei Zion captives in Japan", An association that had about 120 members. The association published a Zionist weekly in Yiddish and Russian, called "Der Yudisheh Live" (The Jewish Life).

Upon his release in 1906, Trumpeldor was the first Jew to receive officer rank, without converting. The army wanted him to continue his military career, but T. The Gidam concocted a plan to immigrate to Israel and settle the Land of Israel. As part of his program he studied law and successfully graduated in 1912.

8 years left

ninth. He did not know that he was allotted only 8 more years of life, and the nation of Israel was about to lose one of its chosen sons: a tiller of the soil, a builder of Hebrew defensive power and a visionary leader who sees the future.

After completing his studies, Trumpeldor set out with a group of students to try to establish a cooperative colony in the Land of Israel, all of whose members are loyal to the idea of ​​full sharing in work and property. The initiative was to be independent, without the help of the institutions in Israel. The beginning was in Degania A, 15 members moved to the Migdal farm on the Sea of ​​Galilee and managed to exist there for a year and a half, until they disbanded. Trumpeldor returned to Degania and despite being a bitten, his friends praised his diligence and enjoyed his vision and abundance of ideas. In 1913, he was sent to the 11th Zionist Congress and on his way back, he traveled to Russia to recruit young people for the realization of his ideas, both in terms of settlement and in terms of training them to be a protective force for the Jewish community living under Ottoman rule.

When the First World War broke out (1914), Trumpeldor was forced into exile in Egypt, because due to being a Russian subject and former officer, he was considered an enemy of the Ottoman government. In Egypt he met Zeev Jabotinsky who also came to Egypt and offered toTrumpeldor, who has an impressive military past, cooperation in establishing a volunteer battalion for the British army, which will help liberate the Land of Israel from the yoke of the Turks.

Jewish manpower is abundant in Cairo. In camps near Alexandria in Egypt, more than a thousand of the settlement's Jews, who were expelled from the Land of Israel by the Ottomans, or who left voluntarily due to the difficult economic situation in the country during the war, were concentrated at that time.

Unit of mule carriers

Many elements in the Zionist leadership expressed strong opposition to the establishment of the battalion, fearing that the lives of the Jews of the Land of Israel, who were exposed to the harassment of the Turks, would be in danger, but the first Hebrew battalion was finally established, with limitations. They only agreed to establish a "unit of mule carriers". Trumpeldor was appointed as the unit's deputy commander.
ninth. Convinced the leadership that the mere establishment of a Jewish military force, which would assist in the war against the Ottomans, regardless of the scope of the war and the nature of the force, was important enough in the struggle for future British recognition of the Jews' right to a national home in the Land of Israel.

The mule carrier battalion participated as a combat supporter in the bloody fighting against the Turks at Gallipoli, which ended in the defeat of the British-Australian task force, which fought in the Dardanelles sector, the peninsula that led from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. The combat experience and military framework that the Jews gathered from the exile lacked, began to gather.

The uniqueness of the mule driver battalion was that it was the first regular military unit after about 1,800 years, which was composed entirely of Jews, and spoke Hebrew.
Symbolically, the battalions were considered a sign of support for Britain, which received a political reward and some say facilitated activity Dr. Haim Weizman To accept the Balfour Declaration in 1917, about our right to establish a national home for Jews in the Land of Israel. A topic I will expand on separately.

By the end of the war they succeeded Jabotinsky and his deputy Trumpeldor To establish a "real" battalion of fighters, the King's Archery Battalion No. 3, who were partners with the British force under the command of General Allenby who conquered the Land of Israel. They participated in the battles in which the Ottoman forces, reinforced by German brigades, were defeated in the battles near Tel Megiddo, located at the foot of Carmel, in the Jezreel Valley.

Towards the end of the war they remained to Trumpeldor Three more years to live and he is 37 years old, of which he spent two years on another trip to his native Russia in 1917, when he tried to establish a "Jewish army" for the self-defense of the Jews. The idea did not succeed due to the refusal of the parties of his Jewish brothers. Following the revolution in Russia, thousands of young Jews woke up and joined the "Pioneer" movement.

Trumpeldor worked with all his might for the success of this pioneer movement, while putting forward dozens of ideas for realization and was elected to be the chairman of the movement in the Russian-Ukrainian faction. Many of the pioneers immigrated to Israel to build and be built in. Among them was my father - Menachem Hovel.

The emerging pioneers mobilized to realize the vision of Hebrew labor to reduce dependence on Arab labor in agriculture and construction. A last attempt to organize a military force in exile was made by T. in Russia, but only a few volunteered for the regiment when he announced its formation.

In August 1919 T. For the last time to settle in the Land of Israel. He settled in Dagenia. Following partition agreements between France and England on the territories of the country in the north, there remained in the "French" part Metula, Kfar Giladi, Tel Hai and Kibbutz Hamara.

His last mission

Ben Gurion, as the leader of the Yishuv, read to Trumpeldor and asked him to command the defense of the settlements. This was his last mission. In December 1919 he arrived Trumpeldor לTel Hay. The Hamara settlement was abandoned and the Bedouins set fire to what was left. At the beginning of February, Trumpeldor warned the settlers of Kfar Giladi that "the goal of the Arabs is to destroy and destroy the Jewish settlement in the Upper Galilee." The settlements demanded reinforcements and they were sent in droves.

On the 1th of Adar 1920 (March 40, XNUMX) Arabs arrived in Tel Hai and demanded to "check" that there were no French soldiers in the settlement. A fierce battle ensued there and Trumpeldor was wounded and bleeding severely. The defenders of Tel Hai continued to fight until the remaining commander decided to retreat with the wounded and dead to Kfar Giladi. Trumpeldor died on the way. He was XNUMX years old when he died.

For the people of Israel gathering in the Land of Israel, there was the event of the fall of Tel Hai under the command of Trumpeldor, an important event for building the Jewish warrior ethos which until then was considered weak and poor. Jabotinsky's men, from whom the underground grew, sought to appropriate the handsome fighting officer and decorated hero. In today's crude terms, even then an emotional dispute developed between the right and the left.

The people of Kfar Giladi saw fit to emphasize the fact that Trumpeldor Kibbutz settlement man. They have control over the burial place of the Tel-Hai fighters.

sullen and silent

In the 11th of Adar ceremonies held near the mass grave in Kfar Gilead, on which the Roaring Lion statue was placed, fiery speeches were given by the people of the various factions.
The roaring lion listened and remained silent. sullen and silent.