By late morning, the British soldiers and police officers were sweating in the sun. The kibbutzniks glared at them and muttered about what ought to be done next. Shayndel wondered why they hadn’t at least moved the children out of the line of fire.
As the hours passed and the standoff continued, a sense of dread crept through the crowd. Even the Palmach leaders—now sitting on camp chairs on their hill—started to look uneasy. It felt like the quiet before a storm.
But instead of a storm, they heard someone singing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me.” All heads turned as a teenage boy in a dusty school uniform appeared—seemingly out of thin air. “Hello, comrades!” he called.
The Palmachniks surrounded him. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Haifa. The news about the siege of Beit Oren is all over town,” he said. “When I heard what was going on, I ditched school and got a ride on a truck headed south. I jumped off, climbed up the hill, and slipped through the fence near the barns. But where are all the others? I figured there would be a big crowd by now. The schools are going to be empty, and the unions are sending busloads.
“Soon, there’ll be so many of us here that those assholes won’t be able to tell who’s a refugee, who’s a kibbutznik, and who’s from town.”
Shayndel watched the way his message erased the tension that had darkened their faces just a few moments before and wondered if the British had noticed the sudden rash of smiles and whispers of anticipation.
Within the half hour, thirty or forty students—girls as well as boys—emerged from within the kibbutz and joined the ranks lining the fence. Some arrived by foot, hiking the mountain, but most of them had crammed into cars and trucks that dropped them off in the woods nearby.
A factory crew in coveralls turned up and strolled through the compound as though they were on a coffee break, slapping kibbutzniks on the back and shouting greetings as even more of their comrades arrived from the city. Each new group was met with a louder and bolder welcome. When a shift of hospital nurses in white uniforms materialized like a mirage, they were met with a burst of applause.
At one o’clock, Shayndel counted at least five hundred demonstrators, and more kept coming. The young men yelled through the fence at the soldiers and made rude hand gestures, daring them to try something. A group of students played soccer with the kibbutz children. Some of the men carried a table into the shade, where they played cards, passed a bottle, and argued.
“They won’t do anything to us now,” said a man wearing greasy overalls.
“Don’t kid yourself. They’re capable of anything,” said a fellow who had taken off his jacket and tie and rolled up his sleeves. He shuffled the cards and said, “Look what they’ve done to our people, to these very immigrants—the tear gas and beatings on boats within sight of Eretz Yisrael. And then locking them up in a concentration camp? Don’t talk to me about the British.”
“Still, they don’t want an incident here. There are too many civilians, too many women and children.”
“You give them too much credit.”
“Not at all. This is politics, pure and simple. They don’t want to antagonize the Americans. They need the Yanks to help them rebuild London.”
Tedi and Leonie could not follow the rapid-fire Hebrew, but Shayndel and Zorah listened intently.
“What do you think?” Zorah asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Shayndel. “But if there was going to be a battle, I think it would have happened hours ago.”
“I still think we should take the children inside,” said Zorah.
Shayndel was about to agree with her when a busload of students and workers pulled up right to the front gate, singing “The Internationale” at the top of their lungs. They tumbled out of the door and arranged themselves in a line facing the English soldiers in a spectacular display of arrogance and courage.
“For now,” Shayndel said, “I think we are safe.”
The showdown ended quietly and without fanfare in the middle of the afternoon. Soldiers climbed back into their trucks and vans and pulled away, with the officers in their car right behind them. Their departure was met with a roar of catcalls and insults so loud, a flock of startled birds added their own screech of “good riddance” as they drove off.
As soon as the last vehicle disappeared around the bend, the gates were pushed open, and everyone rushed out into the dusty clearing, stamping their feet to reclaim the ground, cheering, “Victory!” Shouting, “The Jewish people live!”
The men shook each other’s hands, hugged, slapped each other on the back and pinched each other’s cheeks. The girls kissed and laughed. Hats were thrown into the air. It was D-day, New Year’s Eve, and the coming of the Messiah.
Someone started to sing, “A new day is dawning, come brothers, join the circle.” Raucous, almost tuneless, the song swept everyone into a circle and no one was permitted to stand apart. Tedi and Leonie dragged Zorah into the giddy vortex, and Jacob pulled Esther, who danced her first hora, laughing and crying and kicking as high as anyone.
Shayndel threw her head back and looked up at the sky as she was carried along by strong arms on either side. Her heart beat time in Hebrew, I am here. I am here.
They danced until they were dizzy and sang until their throats hurt, and they did not stop until the Palmachniks started waving and pointing toward the gate, where a line of empty trucks and buses was pulling up.
“Time to go back,” they called, “before it gets dark.”
Some of the students walked past the vehicles, their arms around each other’s shoulders. “We’ll hike it,” they cried, drunk with success and unwilling to let go of the moment. Others crammed into the vehicles, eager to return home and brag about how they had faced down the British Empire. From the windows they shouted, “Shalom, good luck, B’hatzlacha.”
Among the last people waving them