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Summary
Chapter Six
Bradshaw tries to come up with a solution for the dire situation in Palestine at 10 Downing Street in London. The Palestinian Arabs will not negotiate with the Jewish people, and the British have never dealt with terrorists like the Maccabees before. More Mossad ships are making it to Palestine, and the British cannot outmaneuver organizations like the Yishuv and the Palmach. The situation is making the British look bad with allies, especially the Americans. Bradshaw will turn it over to the UN if Haven-Hurst cannot get control of the situation.
Sutherland lives happily in Safed, Palestine now. He lives in a quiet house surrounded by roses, and he becomes friends with Kitty who often visits along with Karen and other Gan Dafna children. Caldwell comes to see Sutherland on the behalf of Haven-Hurst and tells Sutherland to leave Palestine. Sutherland is in danger, and the British do not want to look bad if something happens to him. Sutherland knows the Maccabees pose a threat to him, but he does not leave.
Fourteen-year-old Ben Solomon was part of a raid on a police station during which two officers were killed. Now, he is transported back to Jerusalem with Caldwell after his visit with Sutherland. Caldwell has a hatred for Jewish people. He makes his driver stop in an Arab village so that he can throw Ben out of the car. The boy is brutally murdered. Caldwell doesn’t know it, but one of the Maccabees sees Caldwell abandon Ben Solomon.
Meanwhile, Haven-Hurst hears from Bradshaw and is furious. After five years fighting Jewish people, Bradshaw wants to turn the situation over to the UN. Haven-Hurst drafts a list of violent and extreme suggestions to deal with the Jewish settlements and sends it to Bradshaw. When Bradshaw receives it, he is horrified and turns the situation over to the UN. A group of objective countries will consider the situation.
Chapter Seven
The children of Gan Dafna ramp up their military training and begin running weapons to other villages. Kitty refuses a post in Tel Aviv, partly because Karen is settled in Gan Dafna, and partly because she doesn’t want to answer for the arms running in Gan Dafna. Kitty is still not at ease living among Jewish people.
A celebration is held at Gan Dafna in honor of a Jewish holy day. Everyone from neighboring villages come and Karen leads the parade. Then she dances the part of Ruth in a performance. The sight of Karen dancing makes Kitty worry she’s lost Karen to Palestine forever. That night, Kitty learns that Karen’s father has been found.
Chapter Eight
Kitty and Karen go shopping in Tel Aviv. Karen is thrilled to see a city built by and filled with Jewish people. Kitty insists on buying Karen new clothes even though Karen is not comfortable with it. Karen knows that Kitty likes Ari and Kitty tells her that Ari does not need Kitty. The next day, they go to the ballet and Karen loves it. The night of the ballet, Karen tells Kitty she loves her like a mother.
Kitty tells Karen about her father, and they go to see him. He was tortured during the war, and he felt responsible for the death of Karen’s mother and bothers. Johann has had a mental break under the pressure of their deaths and is now in an asylum. Karen is crushed by his condition. She asks Kitty to never leave her.
Chapter Nine
When Dov finds out about Karen’s ordeal, he finally feels emotion. He is shattered for Karen. He recognizes that Kitty wants to bring Karen to America and does not want to stand in the way. He decides to join Maccabees and leaves Gan Dafna. Karen is distraught by his absence, and Kitty finally asks Ari to get Dov back to Gan Dafna. Ari refuses, saying Dov has made a decision every Jewish person has to make. Dov is driven by intensity and the need for revenge, and he has found his place with the Maccabees.
Sutherland warns Kitty she can’t keep her head in the sand much longer. It will soon be impossible to be neutral in the middle of a war. When Sutherland, Kitty, Karen, and Ari later have dinner together, it is decided that Kitty and Ari will take the next day and go to the Sea of Galilee together.
Analysis
The British thus far have broken promises and maintain a belligerent presence in Palestine, but in these chapters, the deep-seated hatred for Jewish people of some high-ranking members of the British military is exposed. Caldwell has already shown himself to be agonistic toward the Jewish people in Book 1, Chapter Nineteen when he suggests to Sutherland that the detainees at the Caraolos camp in Cyprus be punished into submission. Now, a much darker side of Caldwell is unmasked. His hatred of Jewish people runs so deep that he hates Sutherland just because he sympathizes with the Jewish people. While Caldwell is transporting young Ben Solomon to Jerusalem, Caldwell regrets that Hitler did not achieve his goal of getting rid of all Jewish people in Europe. He was pleased by what he saw at the Bergen-Belson concentration camp while Sutherland was deeply distraught. By sharing these thoughts, Uris draws an equivalency between the British and the German in their actions toward Jewish people. These dark thoughts are ominous, but it is still shocking when Caldwell barks out his order to let Ben Solomon out of the car. The driver and guard in the car with Caldwell and Solomon are British military and also hostile toward Jewish people. Still, they are astonished by the order. The men mount a half-hearted opposition but ultimately follow the orders that amount to indirect murder.
Meanwhile, Haven-Hurst’s pride is damaged when he reads Bradshaw’s letter. He writes his report while he is angry, and thus uninhibited, so his true feelings about Jewish people come through. He champions a kind of cruelty toward them that is again equivalent to what the Germans perpetrated during World War II. While Bradshaw refuses to carry out the disturbing plan, these two scenes featuring Caldwell and Haven-Hurst back-to-back serve to illustrate that their dark tendencies are representative of a wide swath of the British military. Other actions by the British so far in the novel could be characterized as incompetent and rooted in their own political interests, but with these scenes, Uris portrays the British as not just oppressive but also nefarious.
Kitty becomes a relied upon friend in Gan Dafna, although she still feels like an outsider. She watches in distress as Karen seems more and more connected to Palestine. She also curiously watches a relationship grow in fits and starts between Dov and Karen. Dov loves Karen but also fears contaminating her with his bitterness, so he stops himself from getting too close to her. Kitty views both Palestine and Dov as competition for Karen and obstacles in the way of getting her to America. These feelings reveal that although Kitty is selfless in much of her work and devotion to Karen, she at the core her motivations are still selfish. She has decided that Karen will be better off in America, regardless of Karen’s feelings about it, so that is her goal. Kitty, like Taha, feels inferior around Jewish people and is the most comfortable around the British Sutherland and American Harriet Saltzman. This feeling is most actively fueled by the coldness of Jordana. Everyone else is kind to Kitty, but she cannot get away from the fact that she is not one of them, a feeling which Jordana knows and exploits. If Kitty could step outside her own selfish feelings for a moment, she may realize that her feelings of inferiority are ironic. This is just the way that Jewish people of the diaspora all over the world have felt for hundreds of years. Only in Jewish Palestine, a place Jews call home, are the Jewish people the ones who form the dominant culture.
Karen and Kitty’s trip to Tel Aviv includes a few revelations about their relationship. The two have grown very close since they have known each other, but they do not see eye to eye on everything. Kitty initially refuses to haggle with an Arab merchant from whom she buys new pots and pans. Karen is troubled by this and insists that they maintain the cultural traditions of the city. Even during what is supposed to be a carefree day of shopping, Kitty cannot escape the deep connection Karen has to Palestine. Karen is comfortable in Tel Aviv. She speaks Hebrew and looks as though she belongs there, which annoys Kitty. With the trip to the ballet, Kitty is determined to keep Karen close to this kind of culture, the kind of culture that also exists in America. She hopes to lure Karen to America with promises of living a life like the one they enjoy during their two-day respite of shopping and ballet in the city. After Karen learns of her father’s condition and Dov leaves Gan Dafna, Kitty is torn. She feels some relief that two of the obstacles standing in the way of bringing Karen to America are gone. But she feels guilt over this, signaling that Kitty is moving past her more selfish motivations. Kitty nevertheless girds herself for the task of convincing Karen to leave her beloved Palestine, leaving open the question of whether or not Kitty will ultimately act selfishly or in Karen’s best interests.
