When Yigal Allon, born Paicovich, reached bar mitzvah age, he, like all the boys at Kefar Tavor/Mes’ha, was called up to the Torah. Yet the ritual merited no mention in his memoirs. Instead, he recorded the test of courage his father put him to that day. Yosef Reuven Paicovich—known by all as Reuven—summoned the boy to the silo and said, “By putting on phylacteries you still do not satisfyallthe main commandments; today, you are a man and, from now on, you will have your own weapon.”¹ With these words, he handed the boy a semi-automatic Browning....

Allon’s first meaningful introduction to the world beyond the horizon was at the Kadoorie Agricultural School. He entered Kadoorie as a child of Mes’ha and emerged from it determined to leave his native village.

Once Reuven Paicovich realized that his youngest son was not to benefit from a Mikveh Israel education out of the PICA’s pocket, he began to nurse a fresh hope: Yigal would attend the newly built school next door to Mes’ha, on lands adjoining the Paicovich holding at Um-J’abal—meaning Kadoorie. The public storm surrounding its founding was typical of the Jewish Yishuv at the time, when...

Allon’s posthumous papers contained a draft for the opening of an autobiography beginning with his move to Ginossar: “The heavy truck pulled up at a … junction, one of the roads leading to the settlement of Migdal. The genial driver from Kibbutz Kefar Giladi parted from me with a warmth underlined by wishes for full integration into the kibbutz…. I hefted my heavy knapsack onto my back and crossed the road on foot towards the young kibbutz. I crossed the Rubicon, and did not look back.”¹

Yigal’s crossing of the Rubicon meant forsaking his father’s world for that of his...

In April 1936 a new era opened in the history of Palestine. Concurrent with modern Jewish settlement in the country, the dispute between Jews and Arabs over possession of the land became a life-and-death struggle. The brief chronology of Zionist settlement was interspersed with the eruption of riots that earned the lukewarm designation of “Disturbances.” Until 1936, these could be explained away with a variety of reasons that veiled the root cause: a clash between two peoples over one piece of land. In the wake of the Disturbances of 1936 (as the Jews called them; the Arabs called them the...

The years 1941–43 were the most dramatic the Yishuv had ever known. Twice in that brief period the Yishuv faced the threat of destruction, which was averted only by the upheavals of war. The real fear that gripped those at the top, who saw themselves as responsible for the Yishuv’s safety and security, trickled down to the broader public. Yet life went on, plying an everyday course as if Rommel’s victories in the western desert did not pose an existential threat. Political squabbles continued as if the foe were not knocking on the door of Palestine.

Mapai, the pivotal...

Allon was not reckoned among the Palmah’s founders. According to Galili, the Palmah was the brainchild of several senior Haganah figures in the turbulent spring of 1940 after France fell to Germany. The swift surrender of the Low Countries and France was alarming: it looked as if nothing could stand in Germany’s way. There was a real and present danger—and it was on the doorstop. The idea of recruiting a standing force had been bandied about by the Haganah and voiced by Golomb¹ since the period of the field companies. It now received new validity.

The faith in an...

In the five years between Allon’s return to the Palmah’s headquarters and the outbreak of the War of Independence, his leadership qualities solidified and earned recognition. He started out as one of several young, native military leaders who became prominent in the Haganah and field companies and then in the Palmah. He ended the period as the indisputable leader of the young born and bred in Eretz Israel.

Allon’s fit with the “new” Palmah, after its boosting by youth movementhakhsharot, was far from self-evident. In fact, it was rather surprising. Allon had not grown up in a youth movement;...

On 29 November 1947, as the Sabbath made way for Sunday, the Yishuv was glued to the radio. The UN General Assembly was voting on the recommendations of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), and the vote was being broadcast live. The UNSCOP had proposed partitioning Palestine into two new states, one Jewish, one Arab, allotting the Jews a more generous area than previous commissions. The UNSCOP allocated the Jewish state the Eastern Galilee and most of the valleys, the coastal plain from Haifa Bay to north of Ashdod, and most of the Negev. It included the city...

The lull in the fighting on 11 June went down in history as “the First Truce.” The lull, it was decided in advance, would last only four weeks, and it got off to a bad start. On the first night, Colonel Mickey Stone, who was wrapped in a blanket, stepped outside the fence of the camp in Abu Ghosh and was shot by a sentry by mistake. Stone was accepted by Ben-Gurion as a military authority; at the same time, Stone’s heart and head were open to the desires and creative thinking of Israel’s young.¹ With his demise, the man...

After the Second Truce went into effect, the country succumbed to weariness. Partially, this was due to the summer heat, partially to war fatigue after more than six months of battles. Ben-Gurion tried to maintain the public sense of emergency and failed: most people believed that the war was over.¹ The High Command thought the military manpower inadequate but was hard put to find reserves. The idea of conscripting civilians to construct fortifications was shelved for fear of incurring public wrath. Even the government’s alertness dropped. Yet the sigh of relief uttered at the cease-fire was, in fact, premature: the...

After learning that Operation Uvdah had succeeded, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary: “Has the time come for the Northern Triangle [the populated Arab area of Samaria]? Much will be decided by the Rhodes talks.”¹ Negotiations were in progress with Jordan’s King Abdullah. Since the end of November the two sides had agreed to a “a sincere and full cease-fire” and were discussing an armistice agreement. Ben-Gurion believed that Israel had achieved as much as possible in the given political conditions. At times, he feared that it had overstretched itself, that it might evoke the anger of the Western powers, which...

On 22 August 1952, Yitzhak Sadeh passed away. Yigal Allon was in England, completing two years of study in London and Oxford. On the “old man’s” last day, Israel Galili phoned Allon with the news that Sadeh’s end was near.¹ Allon did not make it to the funeral. About two weeks later, the front page ofMaarivfeatured a picture of him disembarking at the port of Haifa with Ruth and their son, Yiftah. The caption read: “Major General Allon returns from Oxford.”² About two weeks after that, Palmahniks and Palmah supporters were to gather at Kibbutz Givat Brenner to...