My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

For Zionism had no illusions now: it realized that the brutal civil war of 1936–39 was only the beginning. The Jewish national movement was getting ready for a new round of violence. No one knew when, no one knew under what circumstances, but no one doubted that the conflict would erupt again, and viciously. The trauma of the summer of 1936 was burned deep in the heart and the lesson was learned. Zionism would never be what it was before Chaim Pashigoda, Eliezer Bisozky, Chaim Kornfeld, Victor Koopermintz, Yitzhak Frenkel, Yehuda Siman-Tov, David Shambadal, and Zelig Levinson were murdered in Jaffa on the morning of April 19, 1936. And yet the newly redefined Zionism was in need of a symbol and a shrine. As it redefined and transformed itself, it needed a new epicenter.