Jerusalem Saga
The fifth Saga
The fifth Saga
This story, set during the British Mandate, is told by Gidon van Arnhem, a Dutch-born Palestinian officer in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in World War II.
Recruited by the British SOE commando unit, Operation Market Garden took him to Arnhem, his hometown, where he fought alongside the 2nd Parachute Battalion at Arnhem Bridge. Knowing that the British forces holding part of the bridge would surrender to the Nazi 2nd SS Panzer Corps, he decided to jump into the Rhine River rather than be captured by the SS and continued the fight against the Dutch collaborationists on his own in the forests of Emmen.
After the war, he helped create underground corridors to rescue Jewish survivors of persecution in Europe who were still in refugee camps, unable to return to their countries, suffering attacks and pogroms after trying to recover property stolen by the local population during the Holocaust in areas formerly occupied by the Nazis, and with no country to receive them.
Back in Palestine, he coordinated the attack on the King David Hotel, headquarters of the British command, in retaliation for the anti-Jewish operations carried out by the British occupation forces during the Black Sabbath.
With the 2nd Parachute Battalion stationed in Palestine, and with the same commander with whom he fought the Nazis at Arnhem Bridge, he wonders how many of his former British comrades at Arnhem Bridge are now his enemies in British Mandate Palestine.
When the UN voted to partition the British Mandate, the Jewish Palestinians, after 2,000 years of forced exile, declared an independent state under the ancient name of Israel, but the Arabs rejected partition, did not create Arab Palestine, and invaded the newly created Jewish country.
When Arab militias invaded the Mandate in January 1948, promising to massacre the Palestinian Jews even before the British withdrew from Palestine, the British army made no attempt to stop them.
With no army, no weapons to defend itself, while Arab militias isolated and attacked Jewish settlements and towns, Gidon joined the American and Diaspora Jewish community in the effort to procure weapons to arm an army capable of defending the new country, joining the unequal struggle against six invading regular Arab armies during the War of Independence.