Exodus

by Leon Uris

We have no friends except our own people, remember that.”

The Egyptian Chief of Staff selling secrets to the Germans; Cairo all decked out to welcome Rommel as their liberator; the Iraqis going to the Germans; the Syrians going to the Germans; the Mufti of Jerusalem a Nazi agent.

I don’t misjudge people very often. I can’t afford to. I like Americans. Americans have consciences.

“I’m saying no American Jew would trade places with a Negro or a Mexican or an Indian for that matter.” “And I’m saying you don’t have to lynch a man to rip his insides out. Oh sure, the American Jews have it good, but just enough of your thinking and enough of two thousand years of being a scapegoat has rubbed off on them.

First there had been wild talk and then printed accusations and insinuations. Then came a boycott of Jewish business and professional people, then the public humiliations: beatings and beard pullings.

Reading the Bible was like reading Hans Christian Andersen himself!

At night Karen asked herself the same question that every Jew had asked of himself since the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed and the Jews were dispersed to the four corners of the earth as eternal drifters two thousand years before.

As Jews, each man had to find his own answer to the relationship between himself and the world around him. Dr. Clement clung to the ideals of assimilation up to the very end. Although Mendel Landau was a humble man he had thought out the problem, too, but had come to an entirely different conclusion.

At the end of World War I, Britain and France competed for influence in the Middle East. When the British got the Palestine mandate, Bradshaw had been one of those, with Winston Churchill, who had pushed for the creation of an Arab state out of half the mandate. The state they were instrumental in forming was Trans-Jordan.

Britain’s interests lay with the Arabs. The Arabs’ ten million square miles were rich in oil and included a vital canal.

We’ve had the hell knocked out of us for two thousand years. This is one fight we’re going to win.”

if the Exodus were permitted to sail for Palestine it would be considered an affront to every Arab.

Jews first settled in Russia in the Crimea area as far back as the first century. The Khazars who ruled in that area were so taken with Judaism that they adopted it as their own religion. The Khazars’ kingdom was, in fact, a Jewish state. By the tenth century the Russians in the north had ascended to power and they swept down on the Khazars, dispersed them to oblivion, and began a sordid record against the Jews.

And so was born the antisemitic Khazar theory.

It was one thing to speak of rebuilding the House of Jacob from a cellar in the Pale—it was another to face the realities of the hardships and the complete disintegration that had befallen Palestine.

Jew hating is an incurable disease. Under certain democratic conditions it may not flourish well. Under other conditions the germ may even appear to die, but it never does die even in most ideal climate.

Ain't that the fucking truth.

anti-Semitism could never be eradicated. So long as one Jew lived—there would be someone to hate him.

Herzl reasoned that only if the Jews established themselves again as a nation would all Jews of all lands finally exist as free men.

The Basle convention called for a return of Jews to their ancient historic homeland, for only through the establishment of a Jewish state could all Jews of all lands achieve freedom. They called the movement Zionism.

Chaos in the Middle East. Zionism! Arab nationalism! The Ottoman’s decline and the British ascent! All these elements stewing in a huge caldron were bound to boil over.

The failure of the 1905 revolution was a signal for new pogroms. These were so fearful that the entire civilized world stood aghast. Leo Tolstoy was so moved that he wrote a blistering condemnation of the Czar, his Minister of the Interior Count Plehve, and of the Black Hundreds whose specialty was murdering Jews.

On this land the first all-Jewish city in two thousand years was built. They called it the Hill of Spring: Tel Aviv.

Faisal moved on to Bagdad where the British accorded him better treatment. They rewarded their faithful servant by creating a new state out of the Mesopotamian Province. They called the country Iraq and proclaimed Faisal king. Faisal had a brother named Abdullah who had to be rewarded too. The British, without authorization from the League of Nations, formed another “country” from part of the Palestine mandate and named Abdullah its king. This country they called Trans-Jordan.

To counter the progress of the Jews, the effendis harped on the ignorance, fears, and religious fanaticism of the fellaheen. They pounded the theme that the Jews were invaders from the West out to steal their fellaheen’s lands—even though the effendis had themselves sold this land. They maintained tension so that the fellaheen would not come into too close contact with the new ideas.

“For the last time, Akiva ... don’t do this thing. You will only give our enemies an opportunity to point their fingers at us and increase their lies.” “Aha!” Akiva cried. “Now we have come to the guts of the matter! Jews must play the games by the rules. Jews cannot be wrong! Jews must beg and appeal! Jews must turn their cheeks!”

“Ghetto Jew Barak. That is what you are and that is what the Yishuv Central is. Well, let me tell you something else, dear brother. Here is one Jew who may be wrong but intends to live. So let us be wrong in the eyes of the whole damned world.”

Arabs had built their town on ruins, some Roman, some Crusader. The Arabs were experts in building on other people’s civilizations and had, in fact, constructed only one wholly new city in all of Palestine in a thousand years.