his purity. It cast doubt on the received account ofthe origins ofthe Palestinian David N. Myers refugee problem, according to which Pal- estinian Arabs fled their homes of their VICTORY AND SORROW own volition or at the behest of Arab leaders. Instead, Yizhar painted a vivid portrait ofexpulsion. His story provoked 1J KHIRBEI KHIZEH of Ziklag, which appeared in 1958. The a storm in the newspapers and journals li By S. Yi.h". novel depicted in exhaustive detail the of the nascent state of Israel, with some ii Translated by Nicholas de Lange activities and the emotions of a group of critics lauding the writer's honesty and ij and Yaacob Dweck young Israeli soldiers engaged in a week- courage, and others denouncing his :l (lbit Editions,134 pp., $16.95) long battle in 1948. The decidedly unhe- work as imbalanced and even treason- roic account ofthe soldiers leads one to ous. The historian Anita Shapira has HE sHoRT HISToRY of He' wonder whether Yizhar really belongs to carefully chronicled its immediate re- brew as a modern language the Palmach Generation. As the literary ception and its subsequent appearances has yielded, over the course of scholar Dan Miron has observed, he was in Israeli public culture-for example, little more than a century, an born five to ten years before other mem- as a required text in Israeli schools in impressively long list of literary bers of this generation, and he did not 1964, and as a television movie in 1978. masters-the early twentieth-century share in the euphoric spirit of triumph She shows that the original boldness of Brenner and Bialik; the mid-century and redemption that accompanied the I(hirbet Khizefr was somewhat lost in the Nobel laureate Agnon; and the renowned fewish victory in 1948. controversies over the story's historical contemporaries Amichai, Oz, Yehoshua, Nowhere is this lack of euphoria, this veracity and political suitability-debates and Grossman. Much less known outside unexpected dourness of historical vision, that reflected the complicated evolution Israel, but certainly one of the most signif- clearer than in a novella that Yzhar wrote of Israeli public memory of 1948. icant figures in the Hebrew literary canon, in1949, a year after the war in which he Both the novella's literary merits and is Yizhar Smilansky, who wrote under the participated as an intelligence officer. I(hir- the lingering effects of its call for self- transposed pen name S. Yizhar, and died bet Khizeh was published along with a reckoning have prompted the small fe- in Israel two years ago. Stylistically, Yi- much briefer short story, "Ha-Shavuil' rusalem publishing house Ibis Editions to zhar was a quiet revolutionary, expanding or "The Prisoneri'which tells of an army add Khirbet l(hizeh to its fine list of titles, the register ofliterary Hebrew through unit's capture and mistreatment of an in- mainly books translated from Hebrew a modern style that attended to the ca- nocent Arab shepherd; butitwas Khirbet and Arabic. Although a few of Yizhar's dences and the phrasings of the Bible. I(hizeh that became a cause c6ldbre in Is- other writings (but not yet his huge mas- r)7ith a sharp eye for physical description, rael. Thousands ofcopies were sold, and terpiece) have been translated, I(hirbet Yizhar artfully lavished words upon the reviews and discussions of the novella Khizeh appears in English here for the landscape of his land. He slowly unfolded swirled in the Israeli press for months, first time, and it is long overdue. The its forbidding beauty in Faulknerian even years. \iflhat stood at the center of rendering from the Hebrew by Nicholas sentences that morphed into stream-of- this remarkable work-and what pro- de Lange and Yaacob Dweck is graceful consciousness paragraphs, whose hyp- voked so much controversy in its day- and fluid, with but a few minor infelici- notic rhythm was periodically jolted by was Yizhar's portrayal of an Israeli army ties. Their important translation will en- sharp ruptures in the plot. And themat- unit called upon to stake out, occupy, and able Yizhar to gain the readership outside ically he was a stealthy provocateur, al- then expel the residents of a fictional Pal- of Israel that his work so richly deserves. ternately planting bravado and self-doubt, estinian Arab town called I(hirbet I(hizeh, insouciance and moral indignation, in which had been vanquished in the war. ET KHTZEH opens with the his protagonists-ambivalent characters Yizhar's typically languid pacing, whereby lection of the narrator that who both upheld and undermined the the unit is beset by boredom and puer- happened a long time ago, Zionist narrative ofnoble struggle for the ile squabbles as it aimlessly wanders the but it has haunted me ever since....How ancient fewish homeland. countryside awaiting orders, is undone by easy it had beenj' he marvels, "to be se- This iconoclastic side notwithstand- the brutality and indifference of the Is- duced, to be knowingly led astray and ing, Yizhar came to be known by many raeli soldiers as they expel the Arab resi- join the great general mass of liarsl' It contemporaries and critics as the quint- dents from the village. is not evident at this point-in fact, it is essential writer of his generation-the Yizhar's story challenged, to put it not evident until the end-what the exact so-called Palmach Generation (named mildly, the sense of virtue that accom- source of the narrator's psychic discom- after the Haganah strike force that played panied the carefully cultivated Zionist fort is. But a significant clue is given soon a leading role in the fewish fight for Pal- image of a new fewish man, the legend- enough, when the narrator avers that one estine in 1948). A good part ofthis repu- ary sabra. No longer content to be a pas- way he could begin to unravel his story tation is owed to the summa summarum sive victim of history like his Diaspora is by mentioning the 'bperational order" of Yizhar's literary career, a sprawl- fewish cousins, this new few was vir- that guided his unit on "a clear splendid ing 1,100-page novel about the war of ile, armed, and prepared to fight for his winter morningi'The unit was operating 1948 called Yeme Ziklag, or The Days land-but always, it was said, according just after military hostilities between the to an exacting ethical code, the vaunted Jewish and Arab sides in the war of 7948 David N. Ivlyers is a professor of lewish his- principle of "purity of arms" that was a had concluded. This was a period ofon- tory at UCLA. His new book, BzrwteN /zw doctrine of the new Israeli army. Strik- going instability, when Israeli forces were tNo An,q.s: Tne, Losr Votce op Srtrottt ing an extraordinary balance between in- attempting to pacify hostile Arab villages R.qwroowtcz, will be published in thefall timacy and detachment, I(hirbet Khizeh and towns as well as to stem the tide of by Brandeis University Press. rattled this myth of the noble sabra and "infiltrationj' when thousands of Pales-

44 Ocrosna zz, zooS True New Rr,puntrc tinian Arabs sought to steal back across tle but "the ruthless long waitingJ' It is haunting is how easily they conjure up the border from neighboring Arab coun- in this realm of suspension and dread images of forced population removal tries, mostly to return to their homes and that the narrator of l(hirbet l(hizeh re- from the recent and not-so-recent past- reconnect with relatives, but in a small veals his inner conflicts-at once willing images that are deeply imprinted in few- number of cases to engage in terrorist to go along with the small chatter, sadis- ish memory, as well as in our contempo- activity. In this fragile environment, the tic pranks, and anti-Arab racism ofhis rary consclousness. narrator reports that an initial order was comrades and at the same time attempt- In contemplating the actions of his given to his unit to "assemble the inhab- ing to preserve a modicum of conscience unit, the narrator happens onto the most itants ofthe area extending from point and decency. tragic irony of the conflict between Jews X (see attached map) to point Y (see For much of the story, he goes along and Arabs over Palestine: the fact that same map)-load them onto transports, and gets along-as, for example, when the histories of the two peoples were and convey them across our lines; blow the unit is shaken out of its torpor upon eerily parallel in many ways, perhaps no up the stone houses, and burn the huts; receipt of the order to move into I(hirbet more so than at the very moment when detain the youths and the suspects, and I(hizeh. The soldiers unleash volley after the )ews decisively left behind exile and clear the area of 'hostile forcesl " With a volley of machine-gun fire intended to the Palestinians decisively entered it. trace of the withering irony that will char- flush out any living being left in the vil- This sudden realization shakes the nar- acterize his stance of omniscient but par- lage. Four Arab men manage to flee in rator to the core: alyzing passivity throughout, the narrator the opposite direction, inducing a weird takes aim at the claims of Zionist chiv- titillation among the )ewish soldiers. I had never been in the Diaspora-I said alry: the order would no doubt be car- "'We were getting excited," the narrator to myself-I had never known what it ried out, he remarks, with'tourtesy and reports. "The thrill ofthe hunt that lurks was like .,. but people had spoken to with a restraint born of true culture"- inside every man had taken firm hold me, told me, taught me, and repeatedly indeed, as a reflection of "the fewish soul, of usi' Firing ceaselessly at the fugitives, recited to me, from every direction, in the great Jewish souli' the soldiers manage to miss their targets books and newspapers, everl'where: The fictional order received by the nar- with impressive though unintended in- exile. They had played on all my nerves. rator's unit calls to mind the notorious competence. Finally the narrator, who Our nation's protest to the world; exile! Tokhnit Dalet, or Plan D, of the Haganah, had been silent throughout the barrage, It had entered me, apparendy with my the pre-state military unit. Formulated screws up the courage to utter a few hu- mother's milk.'W{hat, in fact, had we in early March 1948, the plan signaled a manizing words before trailing off: "Let perpetrated here today? shift from a defensive strategy to an of- them be-you wont hit them an1'way.... fensive one, as the )ewish forces strug- It's pointless. Too badl' Convulsed by "tremors running gled to gain control over Palestine during His occasional pangs of conscience through mei' the narrator prepares to the waning months of the British Man- stand in stark contrast to the condescen- confront his commander one more time. date. Among its central features was the sion and outright revulsion of his com- He manages to stammer that "this is a granting of discretion to commanders rades toward'Ayrabs" (de Lange and filthy warl' Moishe blurts in response: on the ground to decide what to do with Dweck's ingenious translation for the "Immigrants of ours will come to this conquered Arab villages. They were af- derogatory Hebrew term arabush), who I(hirbet what's-its-name, you hear me, forded the option, according to the plan, are cast as uniformly primitive, cowardly, and they'll take this land and work it and of "the destruction ofvillages (setting fire, and barely capable of human speech. On it'll be beautiful here!" This retort pushes blowing up, and planting mines)" or, in a subsequent occasion, after scores ofvil- the narrator to the edge ofmadness as he the case ofresistance, "destruction ofthe lagers have been rounded up, the com- strains to absorb the image of the seam- armed force and expulsion of the popula- mander of the unit, Moishe, issues a less passage of one group into the homes tion beyond the country's bordersi' direct order to expel them and then raze of another without so much as a word The precise intent of Plan D has been the village. The narrator again screws up ofprotest from his fellow soldiers. The much disputed. Was it a mandate for the his courage to speak: "Do we really have novella reaches its emotional crescendo systematic and wholesale transfer of the to expel them? What more can these in a howl that must have taken away the Arab population of Palestine, or a much people do? Who can they hurt?" After breath ofits Israeli readers: more localized and improvisatory order? several minutes of exchange with his fel- )Tithout frontally engaging this question, low soldiers, he is told to shut up-and My guts cried out. Colonizers, they Khirbet Khizeh does succeed in captur- he dutifully complies. shouted. Lies, my guts shouted. I(hir- 'Writing ing the mentality of soldiers called upon just four years after the end of bet l(hizeh is not ours. The Spandau to "clear away"-or perhaps more faith- the Holocaust, Yzhar is unsparing in ex- gun never gave us any rights. Oh, my fully to Yizhar's letaher to "cleanse"-a posing the narrator's impotence, as well guts screamed. What hadnt they told us single village. Yizhar brilliantly cap- as the utter indifference of the other sol- about refugees. Everything, everything tures the feelings-and consequences- diers as they push along and load up the was for the refugees, their welfare, their of ennui as the Israeli army unit sits in remaining villagers for deportation, ig- rescue ... our refugees, naturally. Those wait for the final directive to enter l(hir- noring their cries for help. The soldiers' we were driving out-that was a totally bet I(hizeh, Boredom, in such a setting, callous disregard, even at the sight of different matter.'Wait. Two thousand is a corrosive force, allowing for rage, a sickly newborn, works together with years of exile. The whole story. )ews vengeance, and pettiness to escape the the narrator's paralysis to create a feel- being killed. Europe.'We were the bounds of social and military conven- ing of profound hopelessness, a sort of masters now. tion. Yizhar is at his writerly best in cap- Israeli No Erif, as if there were no sense turing it. 'War was his recurrent theme, in attempting to escape the moral mo- The narrator's grave qualms about the 'What but his finest literary moments come in rass. makes the scenes of depor- fews' budding experiment with power- describing not the searing heat of bat- tation in Khirbet l(hizeh all the more that they had become, in the lacerating

Tnt Nzw Rzpusrrc Ocrosza zz, zooS 45 "like words of Proverbs, a servant who all, Israeli society in the wake of the known in Arabic.) It is to observe that the comes to reign"-are especially poignant war placed great value on conformism tradition of criticism issuing from prom- in that they never reach the ears of an- as the new state sought to secure eco- inent Hebrew writers toward the estab- other soul. Returning again to the theme nomic and military stability, ever fearful lishment most often emerges from within of moral paralysis and its companion, si- ofa "second round" offighting from the the establishment itself. lent complicity, Yizhar has his narrator Arab side. Yizhar was unwilling to fol- At the same time, it is undeniable that cry out only to himself. This famous and low in the path of most of his country- the bounds of the establishment change futile scream, this act of moral eviscera- men in ignoring or justifying the plight over time. There was a three-decade- tion and the attendant disappearance of ofthe Palestinians. Lecturing to a group long period during which the narrative any shred of agency, paves the way for of Zionist youth after the war, he spoke of self-induced Arab flight went largely the story's final sentence. Evoking a line candidly about a great deception perpe- unchallenged in Israel. Then, in the from Genesis in which God promises to trated by Zionist leaders: "They planted 1980s, the "New Historians" began to descend to undertake a moral reckon- deep in the heart of everyone that there call into question this pillar (and a num- ing of Sodom and Gomorrah, the nar- is place for two peoples in this country- ber of others) of Israeli collective mem- rator observes the calmness that has that one does not need to push the other ory. Benny Morris, in a series of works fallen over the valley in which I(hirbet outl' And yet now he continued, they beginning with The Birth of the Palestin- I(hizeh was located and concludes that tell us that "there is no room for Arabs ian Refugee Problem (7987), relied on a at some "God point would come forth in this country. They are not trustwor- massive trove of new archival sources to and descend to roam the valley, and see thy, they can be a fifth column during document the extent of forced removal whether all was according to the cry that wartime. This country is indeed only for by fewish forces of Palestinian Arabs had reached himl' /ews, since the few has no other place in in 1948. A great deal of controversy at- the world other than this country." Al- tended Morris and his fellow revision- Tt wes rne though he did not consistently advo- ist historians in the 1990s. Over time, I young Gersh cate the cause of the Palestinians or the though, their work has begun to shift the I Franz Rosenz refugees throughout his life, Yizhar re- terms of public debate from outright de- brew language in its modern secular guise mained attuned to the moral and polit- nial of forced expulsions to a widening still contained an "apocalyptic thorn." ical blemishes of the Zionistmovement. admission that they took place. The biblical echo of l(hirbet Khizeh's In 1990 he spoke oflsrael's occupation The New Historians were far from the final sentence is a kind of apocalyptic of the West Bank and Gaza at a memo- first ones to point to Israel's role in the thorn, serving to warn against the belief rial for Martin Buber: "The Palestinian exodus of Palestinian refugees. A long that /ews operating under the Zionist flag question is not an Arab question, but en- line of Palestinian scholars, including can seize control of their own historical tirely a fewish question.... It is a question Arif al-Arif and Valid I(halidi, have fate, and thereby liberate themselves, with for the Jews and a question for Judaism. traced the contours and effects of the moral impunity. The contingencies of And instead of continuing to run away Nakba for decades. And in 1959, the history-or the judgment of an inscruta- from it, one must stop and turn to face Iraqi-born Israeli scholar Rony Gabbay ble God-can easily produce another del- it, turn and look at it directlyi' published a six-hundred-page study of uge, transforming apparent winners into It has often been noted that Hebrew the Arab refugee problem called A Po- losers and the just into the unjust. literature has assumed, in the words of litical Study of the Arab-Jewish Con- This is Yizhar what seems to be sug, Todd Hasak-Lowy, a'tritical and oppo- Jlict, in which he documented a "radical gesting, and it is most surprising that sitional stance vis-ir-vis the (political) change"-from a defensive to an offen- he does so. I say surprising because in establishmentl'Yzhar was a perfect rep- sive posture-on the part of /ewish forces his own society Yizhar was not at all a resentative of this tendency. So, too, was toward the Arab population of Palestine marginal man. He was born in 1916 into the youngA.B. Yehoshua, writing twenty in the spring of 1948. He also determined the heart and soul of the Zionist settle- years after Khirbet Khizeh, in a seminal that "in some cases, reluctant Arabs were ment project in Palestine, in Rehovot, to short story called "Mul ha-yehrotl' or forced to flee into Arab countryl' a well-known family of stalwart Zionists. "Facing the Forestj'in which the fewish Even before Gabbay-indeed, in the His great-uncle Moshe Smilansky was protagonist silently assents to the de- midst of the war itself and in its im- one of the leaders of the first wave of struction of a forest by an Arab whose mediate aftermath-there was open Zionist settlers in Palestine and a prom- destroyed village once stood in its place. discussion ofexpulsions, and ofthe repa- inent personality in the Yishuv. Yizhar, This dissenting current has been con- triation ofArab refugees, in Israeli politi- for his part, never surrendered his fam- tinued by Israeli writers today, notably cal parties, newspapers, and government ily's Zionist commitments. He fought including Oz and Grossman. W'hat is circles. In 1950, the young journalist in the 1948 war, and David Ben-Gurion, striking is that all these figures, from Yi- Uri Avnery wrote a wartime memoir, the towering political figure of the era, zhar to the present, are undeniably part Ha-tsad ha-sheni shel ha-matbeh, or The was his friend. He served for seventeen of the political and cultural establishment Other Side of the Coin, that discussed the years as a member of the l(nesset, a six- of Israel, serving as official or unofficial kind of cruelty, indifference, and vio- term parliamentarian from Mapai, Ben- representatives of the state, especially lence by Israeli soldiers toward innocent Gurion's mainstream Labor Zionist party, when abroad. This is not to say, of course, Palestinian Arabs that Yizhar depicted which dominated political life for the that the robust Israeli public square cen- in l(hirbet Khizeh. Even earlier, in late state's first three decades. sors out all radical or transgressive voices JuJy 1948, Meir Ya'ari, one of the leaders How, then, to make sense of Yizhar's in its midst. (To give but one small exam- of the leftist Mapam party, published in act of literary dissidence, his fierce in- ple: there is, amid the cacophony of the the party newspaper Al ha-mishmar a dependence in exposing the moral Israeli press, a Hebrew-language journal set of remarks that he had delivered ear- numbness and psychological opacity called Sedek devoted to the Nakba, as lier that summer expressing incredulity of the soldiers in l(hirbet l(hizeh? After the Palestinian'tatastrophe" of 1948 is at his comrades' mixture of glee and de- 46 Ocrosr,R 22, 2oo8 Tne, Nnw Rr,pustrc nial. They deluded themselves into the assumption that mentioning the Pales- belief that "we didn't expel fthe Arabs]. tinian refugee problem necessarily calls They ran away of their own accord. In into question the right of the state of Is- any event, our borders are narrow.'Why rael to exist still serves as a major de- shouldn't we inherit the land after they terrent to serious engagement by many dispossessed themselves? Why shouldnt Israelis-and by many of Israel's friends we cleanse the terrain and grab this un- abroad. Alan Dershowitz's The Case for expected opportunity?" Two days later, Israel, a canonical source for Israel's ad- another party member wrote in the vocates in this country, rehearses the ar- same paper that "the vast majority of gument that panic and exhortations from the villagers did not collaborate with their leaders were the chief reasons for the invaders fthe Arab armies], and we the flight of Palestinians. In his chapter should accept these residents back into "Did Israel Create the Arab Refugee Prob- our state as citizens with full rightsl' lem?'l Dershowitz offers only the vague Such sentiments, both regarding acts statement that "the military actions of of expulsion and the advisability of some the Haganah certainly contributed to form of repatriation for Palestinian refu- the flighti' and follows the old script by gees, were not unique to Al ha-mishmar, noting only one instance ofviolent ac- but appeared in other publications ofthe tion by lewish forces against Palestinian israeli left. A rare voice of concern was Arabs: the massacre by )ewish forces at heard even in the more centrist Mapai Deir Yassin on April 9,1948. party of Ben-Gurion. Benny Morris has Such obfuscation is of no value to the recorded a Mapai party discussion from cause oftruth or the cause ofpeace. Ac- June 1948 in which a number of members cept the truth from whoever says it, the demanded to know if expulsions were in rabbis taught. The pressing question is fact taking place, as had been widely ru- not whether raising the refugee ques- mored. One of them, Shmuel Yavnieli, tion undermines the state of Israel. It expressed his opinion that )ews who had is, rather, whether Israel can avoid con- suffered persecution were now acting like fronting it any longer. This is not to say "servants who reignl' that the refugee question is the sole matter on which resolution of the Pal- rl-t PR ESENCE or such agitation estinian conflict hinges. It is also not to I over". the behavior of Jewish forces say that Israel bears sole responsibil- I suggests that Israelis knew about, ity for resolving the long-standing ref- discussed, and felt remorse over ex- ugee problem: the Palestinians' own pulsions already in 1948. It also places leaders and the neighboring Arab states Yizhar's l(hirbet l(hizeft in a broader his- have had a major hand in perpetuating torical context. To be sure, his was not it. (Nor, for that matter, is it to say that a normative voice in Israeli society. But the oft-deferred claims of the Jews who Yizhar did dwell at the center ofhis soci- were forced from Arab lands and suf- ety, and the position ofthe narrator in his fered massive property losses after 1948 story, caught between the indifference of can be justified any longer, though one his fellow soldiers and his own disgust must add that the two instances are not at the acts of expulsions of his unit, re- quite symmetrical.) flected that ofhundreds, ifnot thousands, It is to say only-though this is say- of Israeli combatants. It was Yizhar's ing a lot-that the deep wound of the particular achievement to address this Nakba must finally be exposed to the predicament with poignancy, introspec- light of day, and in some way be healed, tion, and an honesty that few have ever if there is to be any hope for progress matched. Pushing the bounds ofaccept- and peace between lews and Arabs in able discourse, Yizhar proceeded to a the land known as Israel and Palestine. place of profound self-revelation without The return of Palestinian refugees to reaching the point of self-abnegation. their old homes in the current state of Almost sixty years after the publica- Israel is an impossibility for many rea- tion of Khirbet l(hizeh,Israeli writers sons. But that should not obviate the and intellectuals continue the tradition essential step of acknowledging Isra- of "connected criticism" (the term is Mi- el's role in the dispossession of Palestin- chael'Walzer's) so distinctly personified ian Arabs in 1948. S. Yizhar-as Israeli by Yizhar. For the most part, they focus a writer as ever there was-began this on the burdensome political and moral essential work of self-reckoning with costs of the occupation that was a con- I(hirbet Khizeh in 1949. While many sequence of the Six Day War in 1967 . By have set out on the path that he opened contrast, 1948 remains an extraordinarily a half-century ago, none has ever pene- charged subject, even after the trailblaz- trated as deeply into the Israeli soul, ex- ing work of the New Historians. The posing both its darkness and its light. o

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