Yigal Allon, Native Son. Anita Shapira
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was Katznelson indifferent to Allon.86 Ever on the lookout for excellent youth with human and movement potential, Katznelson saw in Allon the qualities that caught his eye. He was intelligent, open, curious, thirsty for knowledge, handsome, and engaging. On seminar Saturdays and sometimes Friday nights, participants would get together socially and relate a life experience. Allon told of his path from Mes’ha to the kevutzah, and then of Ginossar’s wrangles with the PICA. He spoke simply, in plain language, to the point, both pleasingly and modestly. The fair youth, describing with resolve and self-confidence Ginossar’s land-grab, left a lasting impression on listeners as one of the seminar’s high points.87 Kibbutz activists had first noticed Allon at the KMC; in Rehovot, he came to the attention of Mapai’s leadership and young intellectual elite.
Amid all of these exciting events, Allon continued to apply himself to Ginossar’s affairs. One of the main tasks on the agenda was the speedy release of its imprisoned members. To begin, this meant reaching an accommodation with Ju’ar abu-Shusha by means of the traditional Arab sulha. A public sulha had been held in March 1940, a couple of months after the devastating sentence. The conditions were worked out, that is, gifts were awarded the families of the slain and other sheiks and notables involved, a black tent was put up at the site of the killing, and an offering was prepared with all of the trimmings—a festive meal of mutton cuts in bowls of rice. The ceremony was attended by envoys from both sides, by the regional governor, military and police officers, and ordinary dignitaries. When the guests assembled, the victim’s relatives stood and shook hands with Ginossar’s representatives, including with Allon, Ginossar’s mukhtar. They then placed a knotted kaffiyeh into their hands to symbolize the peace sealed between the sides. The bereaved family did not appear gratified by the procedures and had no stomach for the fare. Not so, the governor. In a valiant display of civic duty and unhampered by the absence of cutlery, he reached for the food to the glee of the gathered guests, their appetite in no way dampened. It was the first peace treaty concluded between a Jewish settlement and its Arab neighbors since the Arab Rebellion.88
In January 1941, Allon initiated a joint appeal from abu-Shusha and Ginossar to the military authorities asking that the prisoners be pardoned since calm had been restored between the parties.89 In May 1941, five of the prisoners were released, and in August 1941, the remaining five were released in a general pardon declared for prisoners of the Disturbances.90
On 9 February 1940, the Ginossar newsletter carried greetings from Absalom Zoref to Yigal and Ruth Allon on the birth of their daughter, Nurit. “Sorrow shared is sorrow halved,” Zoref wrote, jokingly alluding to the infant’s gender and attesting to the prevalent attitude to sexual equality. The child was lovely and her parents rejoiced. She was late to develop, but in a society of young, new parents, the warning signs went unnoticed. Only when she was two did the parents take her to a specialist, who diagnosed her as retarded. Their denial was typical of parents dealt so harsh a blow. She is so pretty! She sings so nicely, she says a few words! She repeats words over and over again, she repeats movements. The medical field at that time did not distinguish between the various forms of mental or emotional retardation and certainly had no solutions to offer. Nor could anyone tell the young parents whether the problem was genetic. For years, Ruth and Yigal Allon thus refrained from having any more children.
The severity of Nurit’s problems gradually became clearer. In these years, Allon was away a lot on security work and steadily achieving success. But he did visit a great deal and his letters are filled with deep concern for the child, his love for her, and his sense of helplessness. “I am so jealous when I see a child that says ‘Father,’” he confessed to one of the women at Ginossar.91 Nurit’s shadow stalked him through his most glorious triumphs, embittered his and Ruth’s life, and agonized them both. In public, Allon was the young success with the open smile; he was good-tempered and calm. But this image hid his wretchedness, heartbreak, and sense of impotence in the face of fate. There were two Yigals: the Palmah commander radiating youth, good looks, success, and sabra mischievousness; and Nurit’s father, hanging between despair and hope, between various treatments and different doctors, and finding no consolation. Allon’s ability to don a mask, to dissemble, developed in the wake of Nurit’s plight. His cheerful face did not mirror his heart, and it became his mask in times of both joy and sadness, so much so that it was difficult to get his real measure.
In this same period, 1941, Allon brought his father to live at Ginossar.92 The kibbutz circumstances had changed much in the preceding year as a result of its physical expansion, the advent of the tractor, and Ginossar’s admittance to the KM movement and concomitant financial aid. Helping parents now became feasible and Allon was among the first, if not the first, to bring his father to Ginossar.93 The old Paicovich had returned to Mes’ha in an attempt to recoup the farm that Allon had so thoroughly dismantled. But age and loneliness were against him. When he fell ill, his daughter, Deborah, took him home to live with her in Haifa. He was not fond of city life, however. When Allon suggested that he come live with him at Ginossar, he was pleased, although he wanted to make sure that Allon considered Ginossar his home and would not leave it: his heart would not stand yet another rupture, as both Mahanayim and Mes’ha had been.94 Yigal and Ruth Allon accorded Reuven half the shack at their disposal and they moved into a tent, an improvement as far as they were concerned over bi-family living quarters.95
As far as is known, Reuven did not complain about the living conditions at Ginossar. Nevertheless, it was a hard life: he was an old man living in a small hot shack without a toilet or other minimal conveniences and eating a diet that was sparse and inferior. Paicovich was not accepted as a regular member of the kibbutz but as a member’s parent. No one was interested in his advice or opinions. Lonely and unneeded, he wandered about the yard, grumbling in anger at the neglect. Toward the end of his life, he who had been a patriarch and a farm owner was expendable, necessary to no one. Allon showed him respect and treated him sensitively, but he was gone most of the time and old Paicovich had to make his own way through the maze of kibbutz society, which was young, foreign, and impatient. And he lacked the talent for it. His relations with his daughter-in-law were hardly warm: only an angel could win Paicovich’s heart, and Allon’s wife, the purloiner of his son, would likely have failed even if she had been an angel. It was Ruth who bore most of the burden of caring for him and quite naturally most of the resentment.
There was a dripping water tap next to the small shack and Reuven planted a eucalyptus seedling near it. The tree flourished and, one holiday, the kindergarten teacher brought her small charges to pick twigs for wreaths. Catching sight of them through the window, Reuven was enraged. He picked up a stick and went after the teacher and her wards, flailing about in all directions. Absalom Zoref, who was friendly with Paicovich and was sometimes summoned from work in emergencies to calm the old man down, was now sent for. “Mr. Paicovich, what happened?” he asked when he arrived at the shack. Paicovich had meanwhile cooled off somewhat, and for an answer he gave the tragic story of his life: he had had a dream, he said, to build at Mes’ha a village of Paicoviches. And, look, all his sons had left it and wandered far away. In the end, he had hoped that Allon would come build the farm. But this dream too was dashed, for Allon went to a kibbutz. This eucalyptus, he said, is a monument to his life’s dream, and monuments should be left alone.96
Whether or not Allon acknowledged the calamity he had brought down on his father and the misery he had sentenced him to is a moot question. To the extent that Paicovich could show warmth, their relations remained warm and close. With his other sons, he refused to keep in touch, barely agreeing to spend the Passover seder with them in the year that Allon was out of the country. The sons contributed to Paicovich’s upkeep on the kibbutz, though this remained unknown to him lest he balk.97
In early 1942, there was a sense of relative prosperity at Ginossar. The jujubes were uprooted by a powerful tractor and the newly exposed 500 dunams of arable land were plowed. The work began on the day that the second batch of prisoners was released. Within a few months time, Ginossar’s cultivated area doubled. Now, since the authorities encouraged intensive agriculture, Ginossar applied for a government loan to install irrigation. It received P£2,000 and in 1942 it erected a water plant.98 The PICA was flummoxed. Every fact the members created on the ground