Read The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine for Free Online

company commander convinced Allon that they could hold out through the night. As it turned out the Egyptian forces retreated by morning, and it was an important, albeit costly, victory. My father nearly lost both of his eyes as a result of grenades blowing up near his head, and for the rest of his life he had shrapnel embedded in the back of his head. My mother still has the helmet that saved his life, resting now in his study.
    I remember learning about this particular battle in my sixth grade history class. By then my father was a professor teaching Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University. I sat and listened with a mixture of awe and discomfort as we learned that he commanded the legendary Company B which, as the poet Abba Kovner wrote, “distinguished itself beyond any other… turned weakness into courage,” pushed the Egyptian army back, and opened a crucial intersection that connected between the central and southern parts of what was to become the state of Israel.

My father as a young officer.
     
    The awe I felt was partly a result of having never heard the story placed in a larger context. I had heard bits and pieces about this battle from my father when we would drive south and pass by the region where the battle took place. On Independence Day, we used to take trips with friends, many of whom participated in the War of Independence, and during lunch everyone sat together and the dads would tell stories of the war. People always asked that my father tell the story of that particular battle, and he always agreed. But I was already at that age: though my father was a hero, he was still my father, and I couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed when he told stories in the company of my peers.
    During the war my mother and older brother Yoav lived in Jerusalem with my mother’s parents. Being the wife of an officer, my mother was offered a house in Katamon, a Palestinian neighborhood whose inhabitants were forced to flee as a result of the war. The homes of the Palestinians, spacious and beautiful, were all seized by the Israeli army and given to Israeli families. My mother recalls how the contents of these homes, which belonged to well-to-do families, were taken by looters.
    “I knew the Palestinian families as a child growing up in Jerusalem,” she said. “On Saturdays I would walk through the neighborhood and see the families sitting on their balconies. There was usually a lemon tree in the front and a garden with fruit trees in the back.”
    She refused to take another family’s home. “That I should take the home of a family that may be living in a refugee camp? The home of another mother? Canyou imagine how much they must miss their home?” She told me this story many times as a child, insisting that I hear her message. “I refused, and we all stayed living with Savta Sima, which was not easy for any of us. And to see the Israelis driving away with loot, beautiful rugs and furniture. I was ashamed for them; I don’t know how they could do it.”
    By refusing the house in Katamon, she gave up an opportunity to have a beautiful, spacious home for her family in a choice neighborhood in Jerusalem, and at no expense. It wasn’t until many years later that my father’s military paycheck could afford them a comfortable house, and even then it came at some sacrifice and with help from my grandmother Sima. I wish I could recall the first time my mother told me this story, but I can’t. I only know that I’ve known it for as long as I can remember myself.

     
    After the war ended, my father was asked to remain in the army as an officer. He was sent back to England, this time to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. By then, Nurit had been born, and the four of them spent one year in England. When my father came back from England, he was assigned to a team of officers, all graduates of the Royal Military Academy, who established the Israeli army’s Senior Staff College. In 1954, he was part of the