Yigal Allon, Native Son. Anita Shapira
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too suggested that the PICA broaden the settlement for security reasons, undertaking to have the kevutzah removed should conditions change. The PICA mulled over the matter with long letters going back and forth between the Haifa executive and the Paris head office. Hartzfeld’s innocent proposal aside, the PICA’s people knew very well that if they officially recognized the kevutzah on the land, this would mark the start of their concession to settlement there. The PICA wavered.
Ginossar’s members did not. On 4 November 1938, some weeks after negotiations started about extending the site, they began to move the entire outfit from Migdal down to Ginossar. For about a year and a half, part of the kevutzah had lived in two huts at the lower camp, working and guarding the lands on the plain, while mothers, children, pregnant women, and some of the men continued to live in the old camp at Migdal. Communication between the two parts was problematic if not downright dangerous, and the separation was not healthy for internal cohesion. Beyond the very real security and social worries, however, the kevutzah wished to exploit the situation to establish its home at Ginossar. “We have come out well with the PICA”—Sini wrote his parents on an optimistic note—“it seems that after the Tiberias incident they are more inclined to give in to every demand made in the name of security, and there is hope that we will succeed in going down to Ginossar this week in peace. It also looks as though the money question will be resolved with ease and we will settle on our land.”20 But the PICA, it transpired, did not swallow the bait and Ginossar’s members were furious. The PICA dilly-dallied in its response to the Haganah, which was seen as a snub to security personnel, inconceivable insolence, and a quasi-license for independent action.21
The move down to Ginossar was organized as a military operation to the very last detail: it was scheduled for a weekend when the PICA officials in Tiberias could be expected to relax their supervision over the intrepid squatters. The huts were moved in toto by rolling them along pipes. Construction material had been prepared in advance to fortify the enlarged settlement point and secure the dining hall and children’s quarters. Everything was well planned—and then the heavens intervened. Contrary to all forecasts for clement weather and moonlit nights for that Friday in early November, it started to pour without letup. The members got soaked to the bone, the truck got stuck in the mud and had to be extricated by a tractor, and the entire schedule was thrown off kilter. Mustering the heroic effort that became part of the Ginossar saga, the members managed to knock together two extra huts for shelter from the rain, but all hope of completing the move in two days was lost.22
The PICA, of course, was incensed: the impudence of these young people had exceeded all bounds. The Haganah High Command announced that it had no hand in the affair; it had not given the kevutzah permission to do what it had done. Hartzfeld and the Agricultural Center also fumed: they too had not been consulted and had certainly not given their consent. But once the dust settled—or the mud dried—the question again arose of what was to be done about this endearing company of squatters. Ultimately, the PICA limited its reaction to denying members of the kevutzah employment in its local public works. This strapped the group financially but did not endanger its existence.23
“Now, our main difficulty is our relations with the national institutions [namely, the JA and other central Jewish bodies]. The PICA is ostracizing us, Hartzfeld threw our delegate out of his office, Kofer Ha-Yishuv [a body that supported endangered settlements] canceled its promised assistance under pressure from the PICA, and every month we have about P£100 of bonds to pay”24—Sini described the repercussions of having seized the land. The Agricultural Center was truly annoyed. Yet, when the PICA withheld payment owed to the kevutzah for work done, Hartzfeld remonstrated. “It is unthinkable that the PICA executive employs such measures”, he declared.25
The move to Ginossar launched a new chapter in the kevutzah’s life. Financially, the group still relied chiefly on outside jobs, though members tilled a vegetable patch, which was a kind of auxiliary farm, and began to raise animals, building a chicken coop, a cowshed, a sheep pen. They also tried their hands at fishing in the Sea of Galilee. One of the quickest branches to develop was the children’s house, lending members a sense of permanence, of home.
Life at Ginossar’s small farmyard was far from easy. Every three months, Dr. P. Lander of the Histadrut’s Health Fund made the rounds with an eye to preventive medicine. After the doctor inspected hygienic conditions and living quarters, he stated in his report for April 1939 that “the camp is in a terrible anti-sanitary state.” The kitchen, dining room, and their surroundings were full of flies and garbage rolling about nearby. The shower was not yet finished and there was a lot of rubbish near it as well, and as to the toilets—the less said the better. He ended the report thus: “This sort of camp state could be a source of all types of infectious diseases and malaria.”26 The next report, in July 1939, reported a sharp improvement in hygiene, especially in the delicate respects mentioned above.
Yet the basic problem of overcrowding remained. Ginossar had sixty men and forty women at the time, including twenty-two families with twelve small children. All of these people lived in two huts of seven tiny rooms, three tents, and five lean-tos. Families did not have their own rooms or tents, and couples often had to share with a redundant “third”—the notorious “Primus” from the early 1930s when growing aliyah swelled the kibbutzim.
Collective welfare, as a rule, took precedence over individual life. A member had to be prepared to submit to group judgment in all affairs. One member wished to attend his sister’s wedding. Since this entailed a loss of work days, the question was brought before the general assembly; because it did not sanction the trip, the member left the kibbutz.27 The members agreed that every family was to have only one child at first. When a young mother fell pregnant for a second time, the general assembly discussed the option of abortion (which was voted down).28 It did not occur to anyone to protest the public discussion of intimate affairs. In the case of a couple that separated, the woman demanded that the kevutzah oust her ex-partner;29 the question discussed by the assembly was whether her pressure should force the man out. Nobody objected to the group’s right to decide matters of personal status if they affected the character or vitality of the small society. The ambition of members to pursue a specific occupation or further studies was considered a luxury no young kibbutz could afford.30 One of the typical reasons for asking for leave was “parental assistance,” that is, the need to help aging parents who had no financial support apart from a child on a kibbutz. To counter the problem of absence, such members were asked to persuade their parents to come live at the kibbutz.31 Considering the conditions at Ginossar—overcrowding, no minimal sanitary standards, polluted drinking water, endemic fevers32—it was an impossible demand. The person who made it was Allon: “True, parents would have to make an acknowledged effort to adapt to the kevutzah”—he said—“but if their situation is so hard, they can come to the kevutzah and find in it a solution for themselves and for the kevutzah on this question.”33
Dearth was rife. Legumes were the staple diet: bean soup and more bean soup. Meat hardly ever featured on the dining hall table. The food was flat, prepared by a young woman never initiated in the art of cooking by her mother. But given the ordeal of cooking in the heat of the Jordan Valley and in Ginossar’s primitive kitchen, the poor girl who slaved away could hardly be blamed.34 Ginossar’s newsletter from the end of October 1938 tells of a decision by the kibbutz assembly to send a member to help and encourage a sister kevutzah that had just settled at Hulata (to the north). This formal resolution was never put into practice because the warehouse could not supply the slated member with a pair of shoes.35 Only in March 1940 did a radio arrive at Ginossar, and it, a big, shiny Philips, then common in kibbutzim, was allotted a place of honor in the dining hall. The Ginossar newsletter reported the event: “It must have a fixed, permanent place, on some cupboard or special crate in the corner of the dining hall, rather than continue to stand on the piano; this is inconvenient and, what’s more, not good for the piano. It would also be a good idea to make some sort of cover for the radio, of cloth or wood, otherwise the flies in the dining hall—which are not few—will change its shiny color to speckle-bound.”36
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