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February 6, 2009
Memories of Nahalal
A home to politicians, spies and tree smugglers.
RHONDA SPIVAK
As the holiday of Tu b'Shevat approaches, I have been thinking about my recent visit to Israel's tranquil Moshav Nahalal, in the heart of the Yizrael Valley. There, to my surprise, I uncovered a treasured story of how date palm tree saplings were covertly smuggled from Iraq to Israel in 1955.
To begin with, my visit to Nahalal was very special because my son and I made the trip there with a friend, Dan Sion, who is the grandson of the legendary general Moshe Dayan and the son of Yael Dayan, a former Labor Knesset member. Sion's great-grandfather, Shmuel Dayan, was one of the founding members of Nahalal in 1921 – he was a Zionist activist during the British Mandate of Palestine and was elected to the first three Knessets, from 1949-1955.
On Nahalal, we saw the farm that was Shmuel Dayan's, where Sion's cousins still live today. It was the modest beginnings of the only family in Israel to have three generations in the Knessest.
The farm houses in Nahalal are all built in a circle and, as we drove through the moshav, I could easily identify the Dayan farm because the trees around it were the tallest and the most stately.
In his memoirs, Shmuel Dayan described Nahalal's landscape when he first arrived: "The valley was desolate. Swamps stretched far and wide," he wrote. "The one fruit-bearing tree found in any abundance was the olive. Near Nahalal, two clumps of such trees rose above springs which had been covered with earth in the course of time."
Today, of course, there were many palm trees in the area and lush vegetation.
Nearby Shmuel Dayan's farm, my son happened to notice a sign pointing to the Avidov farm. On that farm there was what appeared to be a cowshed. But we soon learned that this shed had housed the "Sliq" of Nahalal – an underground secret weapons cache that was used by the Jewish Haganah (the predecessor to today's Israel Defence Forces) against the British during the years 1943-1947. Had the Sliq been uncovered by the British, the property owner, Yanni Avidov, would have been hanged.
As my son began to explore the Sliq, we met 60-something-year-old Ofer Avidov, who was eager to tell us the story of how his grandfather had masterminded and carried out a secret operation to smuggle 75,000 of the finest species of date palm trees from Iraq into Israel.
"It was 1955, and Israel didn't have any [diplomatic or trade] relations with any Arab country, so there was a real problem figuring out a way to get the trees here," he said.
"The saplings made their way from Iraq to the Suez Canal, and the Egyptians were told that the saplings were destined for Italy. So they were let through and then, instead of going to Italy, they stopped on the route north at Haifa's port. Men were waiting to unload them into Israel," said Avidov.
"When the boat entered the Haifa port, my grandfather was on deck," added Avidov, whose eyes sparkled as he retold the story. As he spoke, I was struck by how his physical appearance resembled the black and white photo of his grandfather that was on display nearby.
"Before the smuggling operation in 1955, there were no date palm trees to speak of anywhere in this area," Avidov said.
In fact, in his lifetime, Yanni Avidov hadn't just smuggled trees. He was a Mossad emissary for the Second Aliyah and played a major role in clandestine operations to bring Jews from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, North Africa and other countries to Israel.
"The smuggling of the date palm saplings was the culmination of a very daring journey my grandfather made to Iraq and Iran," said Avidov. "The varied species of dates that he smuggled here were essential to reviving our ancient date growing tradition [in eretz Yisrael]."
The story Avidov told us was a sweet one – one to be savored and retold during Tu b'Shevat.
Rhonda Spivak is a Winnipeg writer and the editor of Winnipeg's Jewish Post and News.
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