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Updated: May 27, 2025
On my way back to Zicron-Jacob, I passed through the town of Sheff'amr, where I got a foretaste of the conditions I was to find at home. A Turkish soldier, sauntering along the street, helped himself to fruit from the basket of an old vender, and went on without offering to pay a farthing.
This Bedouin was the grandson of the Sheikh Hilou, a holy man of the region upon whose grave the Arabs are accustomed to make their prayers. But we villagers of Zicron-Jacob had never submitted to Fewzi Bey in any way; our young men were organized and armed, and after a few encounters he let us alone.
The soldier sketched the situation in a few words, whereupon the officer, turning to the old man, said impressively, "If a soldier of the Sultan should choose to heap filth on your head, it is for you to kiss his hand in gratitude." When I finally reached Zicron-Jacob, I found rather a sad state of affairs. Military law had been declared.
Thirty-five years ago, the impulse which has since been organized as the Zionist Movement led my parents to leave their homes in Roumania and emigrate to Palestine, where they joined a number of other Jewish pioneers in founding Zicron-Jacob a little village lying just south of Mount Carmel, in that fertile coastal region close to the ancient Plains of Armageddon.
We parted with a profusion of Eastern compliments, and that evening I started back to Zicron-Jacob. The failure of my attempt to leave the country only sharpened my desire to make another trial. The danger of the enterprise tended to reconcile me to deserting my family and comrades and seeking safety for myself.
Through the influence of my brother at the Agricultural Experiment Station, I got permission from the mouchtar to leave Zicron-Jacob, and about the middle of January, 1915, I set out for Jerusalem. To Western minds, the idea of the Holy City serving as a base for modern military operations must be full of incongruities.
Whenever the Turkish authorities wished, the horrors of the Armenian massacres would live again in Zicron-Jacob, and we should be powerless to raise a hand to protect ourselves. As we came limping home through the streets of our village, I caught sight of my own Smith & Wesson revolver in the hands of a mere boy of fifteen the son of a well-known Arab outlaw.
Zicron-Jacob was a little town of one hundred and thirty "fires" so we call it when, in 1910, on the advice of my elder brother, who was head of the Jewish Experiment Station at Athlit, an ancient town of the Crusaders, I left for America to enter the service of the United States in the Department of Agriculture.
He sprang from his chair, began walking up and down the room; then with a great dramatic gesture he exclaimed, "Justice shall be rendered!" and assured me that a commission of army officers would be sent at once to start an investigation. I returned to Zicron-Jacob with high hopes.
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