Home Land

David sat on the ground, leaning his back against a rock, he was resting at a hill on the outskirts the town of Lydda, the battle for the town was over, the Resistance was no match for them, and was quickly crushed, a curfew was imposed on the town, and now they were waiting for orders outlining there next move, as he sat there he started reflecting, how did he end up here, he used to live with his family in Germany, things started turning to the worst in 1933, he was ten then when Hitler came to power, and announced his dream, a Germany for the Germans, a Europe free of Jewish people, but the day his life changed forever was in 1938, kristallnacht the Nazi party called it, a night of violence against Jewish people in Germany, organized by the Nazi government, his father was killed, there business ransacked, there home burned and his elder brother arrested, his brother was latter released, under the condition that they leave Germany immediately, they left, with what little left of their possessions, they decided to go to Palastina, the promised land, eventually they made it, travelling secretly by boat, eluding the English checks, as the English were trying to restrict the Jewish immigration to Palastina. In Palastina he joined the Haganah, one of the Jewish military groups, were he got his military training, initially there task was to protect Jewish settlements and to fight against the Arab rebels, first cooperating with the English, latter fighting against the English as well, in order to drive them out of Palastina, then the big one came, the all out war between the Arabs and Jews in Palastina, the war that any one was descent wits could have predicted, and foreseen it's inevitability.

Others of his battalion were laying around relaxing, it has been an exhausting few days, operation Danny they called, an operation aimed and creating territorial continuity between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, under Jewish control, under the control of the newly announced state of Israel, his brigade, Kiryati, was one of the two brigades conducting the operation, in the distance he saw a jeep coming, when it arrived someone came down and asked for the commander, he was led to him, he must be carrying a message, maybe orders outlining there next task, a few minutes latter the commander ordered the groups to gather, they all gathered and stood in a tidy military formation or straight rows and columns, they were informed of their next task, to help with the evacuation of Lydda from its Arab residents, forty thousand of them, some murmuring was heard between the lines, but the commander firmly ordered them to be ready to move in half an hour, and they dispersed to get ready. David knew the commander personally, he was a good friend of him, as everybody was walking away, he headed forward towards Yosi, the commander, he asked if he could have a talk with him, are you sure about this, he asked him, Yosi replied this order came directly from Yitzhak Rabin and the prime minister David Ben-Gurion, what if people refuse to leave, then threaten them, tell them that they can either leave or die, tell them they will be massacred like in Dayr Yasin, what if threats don't work, then we shoot some to make it clear we are serious, the orders is to force them to leave, and we will execute the order. As they marched towards the town, the evacuation operation had already began, a column of residents marching out had formed, the first to be evacuated, in the distance they heard sporadic shooting, was it someone who refused to leave and was shoot, he wondered, as they got closer to the marching residents, he could see their faces, most of them looked scared, very scared, some women and kinds were crying, but a few others were angry and shouted curses at them, curses in Arabic that he could not understand, he was a bit unsettled, but he gathered him self, he can't allow empathy for them effect him, not if he wants to see his dream become reality, his dream of an Israel Israeli, for the Jewish people, free of Arabs.