“Zionist History Book Of The Month” for September 2020
By: Moshe Phillips
Ya’acov Meridor begins his memoir of the nearly three year period of his life he spent in a British prison camp and elsewhere in East Africa with hundreds of other young Zionists with the words “I was arrested at 3AM on the 13th of February, 1945.”
His book is titled Long Is The Road To Freedom and was first published in a U.S. edition forty years later. Meridor died 25 years ago this summer and his remarkable book is worth recalling as is his amazing life.
But more than the tale and the man we should take the time to consider the overwhelming sacrifices that the women and men who comprised Israel’s founding generation took upon themselves and be inspired to do more for the Jewish People.
Meridor was just 19 when he led over two dozen other young members of the Jabotinsky movement against the British blockade that was in place stopping European Jews from entering the Land of Israel. Once in Israel, he joined the Irgun underground army, as did hundreds of other recent immigrants. He rose quickly and became a part of the underground’s leadership.
The summer of 1940 left the Irgun reeling. The Nazis launched their North Africa Campaign in June and Ze’ev Jabotinsky died in August.
In May 1941 Meridor agreed to accompany the commander of the Irgun, David Raziel, on a British army conceived commando sabotage mission to Iraq aimed at destroying a high value target, an aviation fuel depot near Baghdad. The operation was during the pro-Nazi Rashid Ali al-Gaylani coup that had led to what is remembered as the Anglo-Iraqi War. Raziel was killed in action. Subsequently, Meridor became the Irgun’s commander after he returned home.
When Menachem Begin arrived in the British Mandate in 1943 Meridor handed over his command to him. Meridor, however, did not leave the Irgun and continued as a member of its high command.
In 1945 Meridor was captured by the British, at the time he was second-in-command of the Irgun. Begin depended on Meridor so thoroughly that he relates in his memoir The Revolt that when he learned of Meridor’s arrest he “thought the blow (to the Irgun) would be fatal.”
It is seldom remembered today that the British Mandate authorities sent over 430 Jews to prison camps in East Africa in an attempt to disable the Zionist revolt against them.
Meridor was one of the highest ranking prisoners and as such he personally led five escapes from the camps and spent 18 months at large.
His imprisonment and escape make up the bulk of Long Is The Road To Freedom and Meridor’s exploits rival –and at times surpass– those dramatized in the World War Two epic 1963 film The Great Escape.
On January 14, 1947, Meridor and future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir escaped prison through a 200 foot long tunnel they had dug by hand. Later, they hid in an oil truck’s tank for three days as it was driven over the Djibouti border Eventually, Meridor made his way to France and it was there that he was granted political asylum.
Meridor arrived in Tel Aviv on a flight with other exiled top Irgun leaders. It was the first passenger flight to land in the new State of Israel.
He was at the center of the tragedy of the Altalena episode when Jewish forces attacked Irgun soldiers without provocation and killed many.
After Israel’s independence, Meridor turned to politics and alongside Begin founded the original Herut party. He won a seat in six out of the first 10 Knesset elections and eventually served as Israel’s Minister of Economics and Inter-Ministry Coordination when Begin was prime minister and most fittingly held the post under Shamir as well. He died in 1995 at the age of 81.
Yitshaq Ben-Ami, a leading Irgun member and the father of the founder of J Street, Jeremy Ben Ami, wrote about Meridor in his Irgun memoir Years of Wrath, Days of Glory. “Meridor was undoubtedly one of the most courageous men we ever had…” stated Ben-Ami.
Moshe Phillips is national director of Herut North America’s U.S. division; Herut is an international movement for Zionist pride and education and is dedicated to the ideals of pre-World War Two Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Herut’s website is www.herutna.org
