Tel Hai

Battle of Tel Hai
Part of The Arab–Israeli conflict and Franco-Syrian War
The Lion of Judah, Joseph Trumpeldor's memorial in Tel Hai
Date March 1, 1920 Location Tel Hai, in disputed former Ottoman territory (present-day Israel) Result Arab victory
Belligerents
Zionist militias (forerunners of the IDF)	Arab village militias, participating in the Arab Kingdom of Syria's revolt against the imposition of the French Mandate of Syria
Commanders and leaders
Joseph Trumpeldor  †	Kamal Al Hussein
Strength
Dozens	Hundreds
Casualties and losses
Eight killed, including Trumpeldor	unknown

Tel Hai (Hebrew: תֵּל חַי‎‎, meaning "Hill of Life" in Hebrew; Talha in Arabic) is the modern name of a settlement in northern Israel, the site of an early battle in the Arab–Israeli conflict, and of a noted monument, tourist attraction, and a college. It is part of kibbutz Kfar Giladi.

The battle of 1 March 1920, which gave Tel Hai its long-enduring fame, was significant far beyond the small number of fighters involved on either side - mainly due to its influence on Zionist culture, both inspiring an enduring heroic story and profoundly influencing Zionist military and political strategies over several decades.

In retrospect, it can be regarded as the first military engagement between what was to become Israel and what was to become Syria, though at the time itself combatants on either side did not regard it in such terms.

History

See also: Joseph Trumpeldor#Tel Hai

Background

Tel Hai had been intermittently inhabited since 1905 and was permanently settled as a border outpost in 1918 following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. The area was subsequently subject to intermittent border adjustments among the British and the French. In 1919, the British relinquished the northern section of Upper Galilee containing Tel Hai, Metula, Hamrah, and Kfar Giladi to the French jurisdiction.

The Zionist movement was greatly displeased with this, since it would have left the sources of the Jordan River outside the borders of British Mandatory Palestine, where the Jewish National Home envisaged in the Balfour Declaration was to be established. Therefore, the few isolated settlements in this territory assumed a strategic value from the Zionist point of view. Still, there was a fierce debate among Zionist factions and leaders, some of whom advocated letting Tel Hai and the other outposts hang on at all costs, while others regarded their situation as untenable and advocated withdrawing them.

Arabs in this area at this time were not primarily involved in opposition to Zionism but in strongly opposing the imposition of the French Mandate of Syria, which they regarded as betrayal of the promises made during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule. By present-day definitions some of these villagers would be defined as Syrians, some as Lebanese and some as Palestinians. These definitions did not yet exist, however; the people concerned had been until shortly before part of a single political unit, the Ottoman Empire, and wanted to be part of the newly proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria rather than live under French rule.

The Zionist pioneers in Tel Hai, headed by Joseph Trumpeldor were in fact neutral in this conflict - they wanted the area to be neither Arab-ruled nor French-ruled, but restored to British rule which they hoped would eventually lead to its becoming part of the future Jewish state (which indeed ultimately happened). However, as being newcomers to the area recently arrived from Europe, they were evidently suspected by the local Arabs of being pro-French, which ultimately led to armed clash.

The battle

The one-armed Trumpedor had served as an officer in the Russian Army during the Russian-Japanese War of 1905 - one of the very few Russian Jews to gain a commission under the Tzar - and had a commanded a Jewish auxiliary unit fighting with the British Army in the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War. As such, he was about the most experienced military man which the Zionist movement could send to command the threatened outpost.

In skirmishes prior to the main battle, two members of the Tel Hai community were killed. They are commonly counted among the eight casualties of the Tel Hai battle.

On March 1, 1920, several hundred Shiites from Jabal Amil in southern Lebanon attacked Tel Hai. They demanded to search Tel Hai, and while the Jews attempted to maintain neutrality, they signalled for reinforcements from the kibbutz Kfar Giladi. Joseph Trumpeldor and ten men attempted to drive the Shiites and roving village militias away.

In mainstream Zionist historiography, the Arabs' demand to search Tel Hai on suspicion that there were French soldiers inside was generally regarded as a cynical ruse, with the prior intention of gaining possession and killing the Zionist pioneers or driving them away from the area. Whether or not premeditated on the Arab side, an armed confrontation did break out, in which six of the Tel-Hai defenders were killed and the survivors found their position intenable and had no choice but to withdraw - whereupon the place was burned.

The direct incident which started the confrontation is commonly mentioned as the Arabs grabbing a gun out of the hands of a woman member of the Tel-Hai community. The sight of an armed woman was clearly at odds with the cultural codes of the local villages, who might have found it insulting.

Trumpeldor's last words

Trumpeldor was severely wounded and died after several hours. He is credited with having said before dying "No matter, it is good to die for our country" ("אין דבר, טוב למות בעד ארצנו") words which in Zionist and Israeli collective memory remain closely associated with the names "Trumpeldor" and "Tel Hai".

In the 1970s and 1980s, revisionist Israeli historians claimed that Trumpeldor's last words were in fact a pungent curse in Russian, his mother tongue. This led to a prolonged controversy, which was never definitely settled. In fact, as Trumpeldor lay dying for several hours, he had time enough to say both.

The words attributed to Trumpeldor are clearly a variant of the well known saying "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" ("It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country"), derived from the Odes of the Roman poet Horace - lines with which Trumpeldor, like other educated Europeans of the time, must have been familiar. However, in the curriculum of Hebrew-languague schools in Mandate Palestine and later Israel, the Latin antecedanats were hardly ever mentioned and the saying attributed to Trumpeldor's original authoriship.

Post-1920 history

The border finally agreed between the British and the French included in Mandatory Palestine a conpicuous "panhandle" or "finger" jutting northwards and including the whole course of the Jordan River. This addressed most of the Zionist aspirations, though not quite all of them, as two of the Jordan's tributaries - the Banias and Hatbani - remained in what would become Syria and Lebanon, (which would become part of the background for the Six Day war forty years later). It was thus possible for Tel Hai to be resettled in 1921, though it did not become a viable independent community and in 1926 it was absorbed into the kibbutz of Kfar Giladi. Zionists felt vindicated, and the doctrine that creating "facts on the ground" would eventually determine the border became an enduring and influential part of Zionist thinking.

A national monument in Upper Galilee, Israel commemorates the deaths of eight Jews, six men and two women, among them the one-armed, Russian-Jewish independence fighter Joseph Trumpeldor, in an engagement on 1 March 1920, with Bedouin who had been attacking settlements in the area. The resolute actions of Trumpeldor and his colleagues against a much larger attacking force inspired the Jews of Jerusalem. The memorial is best known for an emblematic statue of a defiant lion representing Trumpeldor and his comrades. The city of Kiryat Shemona, literally Town of the Eight was named after them.

See also

• Riots in Palestine of 1920
• Sykes-Picot Agreement
• Tel-Hai Academic College

External links

• Tel Hai Academic College
• Tel-Hai Industrial Park
• Detailed account of the battle in Hebrew

References

• Wasserstein, Bernard (1991). The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917-1929. Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-17574-1
• Zerubavel, Yael (1991). The Politics of Interpretation: Tel Hai in Israeli Collective Memory, AJS (Association for Jewish Studies) Review 16 (1991): 133-160.