In 2007 I was asked to write an updated concluding chapter for the seventh edition of Meir Har-Zion's diaries. Not everyone gets to meet a legend.
As soon as we met, Meir said, "The dream I had in my youth of building a remote farm in the Land of Israel has become a reality. Shoshana Ranch is a successful cattle farm. When I look back, it seems like I did the impossible. The success is great, beyond what I could have imagined in those hard days at the beginning."
He meant the beginning after he decided to become rehabilitated. After he chose life. After the Khirbet al-Rahwa mission of September 1956 in which he was critically wounded, he underwent an emergency tracheotomy. He was the commander of a young company in Arik Sharon's Unit 101 that avenged Jordanian acts of terror and murder.
The limitations of his severe wound did not prevent him from taking his wife, Ruthie, and setting up an isolated ranch near Kochav Hayarden, north of Beit Shean. Their four children were born there, and against all odds he raised an outstanding herd of cattle. His speech, limited to a single vocal cord after his wound, was difficult. His voice was soft and his words were determined. Even the stroke he suffered did not prevent him from serving soft drinks and dried fruit with his own hand. The conversation was supposedly about taking a rocky hilltop and transforming it into a blooming garden. About starting a herd from nothing. A successful cattle farm. A good herd -- maybe the best in Israel. Learning all the time: how much they need to eat, what makes them produce the most milk. Actually, there were things it was important for him to pass on: "A herd is a declaration -- we are here. On our land. The Arabs know it. In the years of struggle leading up to independence, before the state was founded, they sent their herds to the kibbutz fields. That was how we fought, with the herds. ... We have forgotten the main issue, or it has been forgotten for us. Land. Without land we have no existence."
He spoke of the weakness of the people and the weakness of the leadership. About the fear of losing soldiers in battle that has overshadowed the need to defend the people and the land. He talked about the feeling of privilege and belonging. About feeling cut off from the sense of justice of the Zionist cause. "If you understood the story of the herd," he said in our last meeting, "you understood everything."
"Victory comes from determination. Belief. Holding your ground, your land, holding to your goal. Those who get tired, who don't insist, lose. The Jewish people need to be determined and know that they are right. I don't have anything else to say."
One clear winter day, on my way to see the stunning anemones blooming in southern Israel, I stopped at the Hetz Shachor (Black Arrow) memorial, which commemorates the paratroopers' battles and casualties from 1953 to 1956. One of the 11 stones is carved with the story of the al-Rahwa action. Go there. Salute the best Jewish warrior since Bar Kokhba. Don't cry for him. Study him and follow in his footsteps.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו