With Turkey's entry into the war (Tishrei 5675), nationals of enemy states — nearly all the Jews among them — faced internment or deportation. Turkey offered Ottoman citizenship, and AZR registered, but without a tarbush:
"A tarbush, it is true, I did not buy; it was hard for me to set upon my head that red cap with the black tail. But I said to myself that one could be an Ottoman even without that ornament…" AZR, "From the Recent Past," ch. 1, from "Collected Writings" (5695/1935); Project Ben-Yehuda.
The Turkish authorities in Jaffa — Hassan Bek and Baha ad-Din, "two beasts of prey" — instituted a reign of terror: floggings, hangings, and plunder. And then came the harshest decree of all:
"Zionism is treason against the Empire… and therefore anyone found in possession of a Zionist stamp (marka) shall surely be put to death." Ibid. (the wording of the Turkish decree). AZR stresses: "These things are no legend, but deeds that took place."
In its wake: searches in Tel Aviv (the neighborhood under siege from 9:00 to 15:00), the removal of the Hebrew street signs, the expulsion of the gymnasium principal Dr. Mossinson, and the deportation of Ben-Zvi. The Zionist flag was hidden away "as though it were a piece of artillery."
Against the background of famine, locusts, and the collapse of the currency, the Jews of Jaffa showed a remarkable capacity for organization: the "Mikhlat" company for importing wheat, bakeries and soup kitchens. At the head of the activists stood R. Avraham Lev (aged 70), of whom it was said, "R. Avraham Lev (Heart) is all heart."
The order came on the eve of the festival:
"A few days before the festival of Passover 5677 came the order to exile the inhabitants of Jaffa." Ibid., ch. 2 ("The Jaffa Exile").
AZR grasps at once the meaning of the decree, and accuses Djemal Pasha of an intent to exterminate:
"The transfer of populations — and above all of the old, the children, and the women — from place to place: this is a transfer from life to death." Ibid.
"Djemal Pasha was faithful to his method. He desired the destruction of the inhabitants, and exile is a fine weapon of destruction." Ibid.
In the face of the cruelty — mutual responsibility: "a feeling of brotherly love beat in the hearts of the Galileans… they hastened to come with wagons to carry the exiles to Samaria and to the Galilee," and the Jews of the Diaspora sent funds. AZR spent about a month and a half in Hadera (three families in two rooms), and from there was expelled once more, to Sejera and to Safed. On the way he saw the Sea of Galilee for the first time, and lamented the desolation: "Many were the nations that strove to lay waste our land, but its latest rulers outdid them all."
At the end of Tishrei 5678, in Petah Tikva, three decrees fell at once — exile, suspicion of espionage, and desertion from the army. The Pasha incited the Arabs and the Bedouin:
"Beware of these people. The dust on their shoes is deadly poison. We gave them fine vineyards, fertile fields — and they are spies, delivering us into the hands of our enemies." Ibid., ch. 3 ("The Third Exile"), the Pasha's words at Ramleh.
AZR chose to go out at the head of the exiles — his third exile: "From Jaffa, from Hadera, and now from Petah Tikva…". After a harrowing train journey (a carriage uncoupled at Tulkarm, sparks that set clothes alight, a boat by night across the Sea of Galilee), he reached Tiberias — and there, guilty of nothing, was arrested and imprisoned in the Saraya:
AZR witnessed the torture of Tsvi Nisanov (a member of HaShomer) and the flogging of prisoner after prisoner. In the common cell were "some of the best of our brethren, of the public activists and of the laborers who work the soil of our fathers… all of them counted as criminals":
"They told me that the day before there had been in this room some hundred and twenty prisoners — all the notables of the community." Ibid.
"A man is like a rag: if they wish, they fling him here; if they wish, they fling him there… and you, son of man — shut your mouth and endure." Ibid.
AZR and his companion were released ("Go to your homes"), but others, sent to Nazareth and to Damascus, were cruelly tortured; "of the exiles, forty-two men died in Damascus."
During that same period of exile, in the midst of "the days of the conflagration of the World War," AZR was invited to spend a Sabbath in Degania, "the first communist colony in the Land of Israel." The description is among the most beautiful in his writing:
"Within the sea of blood all around stands Degania like a lonely, quiet island, upon which a group of young men and women perform the labor of peace with hoe and plow… to build the soul of our land." AZR, "One Sabbath in Degania," from "Collected Writings"; Project Ben-Yehuda.
He sees in the young people's labor the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy ("the wolf shall dwell with the lamb") — "the military wolf… subdued before the majestic glory of tranquil, creative labor." And the young people of Degania, led by Yosef Bussel and in the spirit of A. D. Gordon, "with self-sacrifice cared… for the deportees." The visit is sealed by his return: "On 14 Tishrei 5679 came the tidings that the armies of England had set foot upon the soil of the Galilee… and immediately after Sukkot I returned to Jaffa."
Amid the suffering — tidings of redemption. AZR, who had seen famine, torture, and even the suicides of "delicate souls" among the despairing young, writes of the moment when everything turned:
"We rejoiced only when we learned that our brethren, the inhabitants of Judea, had at last been redeemed, and when we heard the declaration of the government of England concerning the restoration of the Land of Israel to the people of Israel. All that we have suffered and shall yet suffer is as nothing beside the great light of the redemption." AZR, "From the Recent Past," ch. 4 ("In Tiberias and in Sejera"). The reference is to the Balfour Declaration (November 1917).
The chapter closes with a blessing for the teachers of the Galilee, who went on teaching amid the famine and the decrees: "Blessed be you unto the Lord, teachers of Israel!"