Collins Larry - O Jerusalem!

O Jerusalem!

Larry Collins &
Dominique Lapierre

Published in collaboration with Renaissance Literary & Talent

Post Office Box 17379 Beverly Hills, CA 90209

renaissancemgmt.net

Originally published in the United States by Simon & Schuster

Maps by Rafael Palacios

Original Copyright 1972 Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre

Copyright eBook edition 2015 Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre

ISBN: 978-1-938402-57-9

The right of Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee , O Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth;
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my highest joys .

The song of the exiled children of Israel,
sung by the waters of BabylonPsalm 137

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

Jesus contemplating Jerusalem
from the Mount of OlivesMatthew 23:37

O Jerusalem, the choice of Allah of all his lands! In it are the chosen of his servants. From it the earth was stretched forth and from it shall it be rolled up like a scroll.
The dew which descends upon Jerusalem is a remedy from every sickness because it is from the gardens of Paradise .

The Hadith, the sayings
of the Prophet Mohammed INTRODUCTION

M Y LITERARY COLLABORATION with Larry Collins produced two worldwide bestsellers, read by millions of people around the globe: Is Paris Burning? , the step-by-step account of a fateful week in August 1944 when Hitler had vowed to unleash hell on the French capital; and... Or I'll Dress You in Mourning , the history of the Spanish Civil War as seen through the youthful and passionate eyes of a young peasant's son destined to become Spain's most famous matador, El Cordobs.

Just as my partner and I began our search for a new book to write, I accepted an invitation to give a lecture in Tel Aviv on Paris' miraculous survival in the fading months of WWII. Having never had the chance to see Jerusalem, I decided to jump in a taxi for a quick tour of the holy city before catching my plane back to Paris. Who could have guessed that that cab ride would last three years?

On the narrow road that winds its way from Tel Aviv through the hills of Judea, I suddenly saw dozens of burned-out trucks scattered by the roadside. Some of them were decorated with flowers, others boasted inscriptions in Hebrew and commemorative plaques. I questioned my driver about these tortured carcasses that lined the road to Jerusalem. His reaction was almost one of outrage: had I never heard of the tragedy that had unfolded here in the spring of 1948? He stopped his taxi beside the debris of one of the trucks and, in a trembling voice full of respect, began his tale.

Spring 1948. Just a few weeks before the birth of the state of Israel, Jerusalem found itself surrounded by armed Arab-Palestinian partisans led by the charismatic Abdel Kader el-Husseini. More than a hundred thousand Jewish inhabitants were trapped in the holy city with neither food nor water and were on the verge of surrender. In order to prevent a disaster, the then-leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, requisitioned all the trucks and utility vehicles he could lay his hands on in order to get water and supplies to the desperate population. During the night of March 23, 1948, a convoy of more than three hundred trucks, driven by immigrants recently arrived from Europe, set off toward Jerusalem.

Having been warned by his scouts, el-Husseini unleashed his partisans, who fell on the convoy like a wave of locusts, burning the trucks, killing the drivers, and looting the precious supplies. Fire, blood, and hate ruled that night. Not one single ounce of food or a drop of water leaked through to Jerusalem. The graveyard of carcasses that had lined the road to Jerusalem since that fateful night became silent witnesses keeping alive the memories of those terrible days when the State of Israel almost disappeared even before it was born.

The tragic tale of this convoy inflamed my imagination: this was the story that Larry and I had to tell in our next book. I could picture the men and women gripping the steering wheels of their trucks as all hell broke loose around them. Most had probably just escaped Hitler's death camps, and struggled across a war-torn Europe to embark on a clandestine ship to the Promised Land - only to die here on a windy, desolate road while trying to save their starving brethren in Jerusalem. Then there suddenly appeared in front of my eyes the Queen of all cities rising majestically in all her splendor in the distance, as if spread on a lunar landscape.

What a sight! My taxi driver also gave me the magnificent gift of driving directly to the top of the Mount of Olives. Sprawled out before us was the collection of domes, minarets, bell towers, and terraces interlaced in a maze of alleyways and secret passages that comprised the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, capital of Abraham, David, and Solomon; home to John, Mary, and Jesus; a conqueror's prize for Godefroy de Bouillon, Saladin, Allenby and his Englishmen, King Abdallah and his legionnaires, and, most recently at that time, Moshe Dayan and his paratroopers.

I was blessed with luck. I had arrived on a Friday. Their prayers to Allah finished, crowds of men crowned with their distinctive kaffiyehs and women dressed in their braided Palestinian robes were leaving the mosques on the Haram Esplanade. The melodious chants of the muezzins atop their minarets had just ended. In a few moments, the sun would disappear behind the Judean hills that lined the horizon. The gruff call from the Jewish shofars suddenly filled the evening air of the ancient city, announcing the beginning of the Shabbat. A few moments later, precisely at dusk, the Christian churches took their turn and celebrated gloriously with a cacophony of bells the holy hour of the Angelus. It was there, in all the multifaceted Glory of God, that I was meeting Jerusalem for the first time. I couldn't help but think of all the sacrifices that had been imposed in the name of God on this city throughout its turbulent history.

Our new book would have to tell the story of what was but one page in that long history, a page on which the tragedy of the convoy was but a footnote. The story covered twenty years, and included the partition of Palestine into two distinct states, the departure of the British, the birth of the state of Israel, and the start of a conflict between Arabs and Jews that would never cease to rage.

I ran to a telephone and called Larry in America. He was so excited by the idea that he jumped on the first plane to join me in Jerusalem.

We were aware that our research would be long, difficult, and complex due to all the passion and hate that poisoned this region of the world. We would need to dig deep, to find the facts and the historical truths on all sides in order to write a book on such an explosive subject.

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