Spies in Palestine by James Srodes

Author:James Srodes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619028722
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2016-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sarah Takes Command

January–March 1917

Sarah, ca. spring 1917

As the war staggered into the new year of 1917, Sarah’s sense of isolation brought the added strain of unexpected criticism about the spy band’s activities from her neighbors and even from within her own family.

It was bad enough that Absalom and Josef Lishansky had disappeared into the desert, and the silence was ominous. There was no way of knowing their fate, and an added vexation was the fact that Alexander and Rivka had also vanished into a world of wealthy friends in New York. Another brother, Shmuel, had migrated to America before the war as well. The remaining brother, Zvi, became more active in the spy group’s activities in the area around Zichron Ya’akov, but he also began to complain that he should take command and that Sarah should step aside. Absalom’s cousin Naaman Belkind had come north to Athlit to work more directly, but he was young and prone to the same reckless enthusiasm as Absalom. Nor did he stay for long because he was needed at the winery at Rishon-le-Zion.

So Sarah relied upon herself. This transformation of Sarah Aaronsohn became complete, and she more than any of the men in her life truly became, as some later called her, the Flame of Israel. Aaron had gathered the first dozens of spies (mostly Gideonites), and Sarah now set out to recruit new sources of intelligence. The original Gideonite band had operated under the guise of fighting the locust infestations of the two past years in largely rural areas. Now Sarah singled out men and women whose occupations gave them special vantage points to report on specific Turkish regiments, the supply depots that supported them, and the state of the rapidly deteriorating network of railroads and bridges by which Djamal’s army would maneuver if he mounted another attack on the British.

Accompanied only by the family’s loyal Arab driver Abu Farid, Sarah took the carriage and went first to an important railroad junction at Afula, thirty miles east of Athlit. She sought out a Jewish physician, Dr. Moshe Neiman, who had been drafted into the Turkish Army as a medical officer. Neiman had started out as the pharmacist in the tiny clinic in Zichron Ya’akov many years earlier, and he had remained a friend of the Aaronsohn family. He remembered Sarah as a young girl and was taken aback by the assertive woman who now tried to recruit him into the spy group. He at first tried to delay by saying he wanted to talk to Aaron, but Sarah asserted that she now was in charge of the spy group and she challenged him to take the same risks. It was his duty to inspect all new Turkish and German troops arriving to strengthen the battle lines around Beersheba. He also treated the wounded who were brought back. He had heard the Turks boast of the looting they had inflicted on the Jewish settlements and he had suffered the scorn of the German

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