In Search of Abu Sitta Sword.UriDavis - Left Curve

In Search of the Abu Sitta Sword (published in Left Curve no. 32, 2008)
An Easter Tale or a Passover Haggadah –
An Eclectic Journal of a Convoluted Journey
In Search of a Sword belonging to a 1948 Palestinian Refugee
Beginning with a Kibbutz Passover
It all began with an invitation to a kibbutz Seder.
In 2005 I was invited by the Nativ family to celebrate
the Seder with them (on Saturday, 23rd Salman
of April), in their
kibbutz, Nir Yitzhaq.
Havah Nativ extended the invitation to me through
her daughter Shelly Nativ, a civil rights activist. It was
many years since I had last been invited to a kibbutz
family home and the first time in some forty years that I
was to attend a kibbutz Seder. I accepted the invitation
not only as a family friend but also as a critical anthropologist.
Another motivation was a profound curiosity
to revisit the region where, forty years earlier, I had performed
the national service I did in lieu of military conscription
(in kibbutz Erez, by the northern tip of the
Gaza Strip).
Being a critical anthropologist I did some homework
before embarking upon my trip assisted by expertise, the
Google search engine and my friend Salman Abu Sitta,
author of Atlas of Palestine 1948 (IPS, 2004) and foremost
authority on the Palestinian nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”).
From my friend Salman Abu Sitta I have learnt that
kibbutz Nir Yitzhaq was built in 1946 but was then
called Nirim in Hebrew and Dangur in Arabic (after the
Iraqi or Egyptian Arab-Jewish family who first bought
the land). The son of its mukhtar, who had since left the
kibbutz, was an Arabic-speaking Intelligence Officer by
the name of Benni Meitiv (Motilov). This person had
orchestrated the ethnic cleansing by the PALMACH (pelugot
mahatz, Hebrew acronym for “Storm Troops”), the
pre-1948 Labour Zionist controlled militia integrated
into the Israeli army after the establishment of the State
in 1948) of the whole region from Rafah to Gaza.
During the nakba (in December 1948) the PAL-
MACH conquered this area and ethnically cleansed it
of its indigenous population. In the process one of its
battalions (gedud, number 89) was responsible for the
biggest massacre in the history of the 1948-49 war—al-
Dawayma (See Atlas of Palestine 1948: Nakba Register).
At the end of the day all settlements around Nir Yitzhaq
were established on the land of Arab Qilai, i.e. inhabitants
of Khan Younis, and Arab Ksar (Najamat), the lat-
36
Uri Davis
A Story Anchored in Friendship and Solidarity and a Call for Help
ter of which had been friendly to the Jews.
In the spring-summer of 1949 a group of Nir
Yitzhaq (then still Nirim) settlers established a new kibbutz
on the Abu Sitta land (Ma’in Abu Sitta) and gave it
the original name, Nirim. It was then that the old site
was called after the late Yitzhaq Sadeh, Commander of
the PALMACH.
Yitzhaq Sadeh was born Issac Landoberg in Lublin,
Poland, in 1890 and died in kibbutz Giv’at Brenner in
1952. In 1945 he wrote: “I am strong. I am brave. I shall
also be cruel.” He was. Massacres committed by the
PALMACH testify to that (besides the al-Dawayma massacre
it was also responsible for the massacre in Shu’uth
where, among many others, relatives of Nabil Sha’ath,
currently Palestinian Authority Deputy Prime Minister
and Minister of Information, lost their lives).
In 1971-1972 General Officer Commanding
Southern Command Ariel Sharon instigated an ethnic
cleansing of the Gaza Strip at the end of which all the
area on the outskirts of Rafah (Palestinian and Egyptian)
was cleansed of its Arab population. On the 28 th of May
1971, he demolished houses and transferred 350 families
to al-Arish. In March 1972 10,000 people from the
Rafah area were dispossessed to make room for new
Jewish settlements around Nir Yitzhaq. Officers responsible
for these war crimes were Moshe Dayan, Yitzhaq
Pundak (father of Ron Pundak, of the Oslo Accords) and
of course Ariel Sharon.
On the 10 th and the 12 th of March 1972, Haaretz
reported that ICRC (International Committee of the
Red Cross) protested to Chief of Staff David El’azar
demanding explanations. The Arabs complained to the
UN. The BBC reported the event. To their credit,
Hashomer Hatzair (Hebrew for “Young Guard” and the
name of the settlers’ movement of the then MAPAM,
and currently MERETZ political party) kibbutzim
(Hebrew plural of Kibbutz) in the area came together in
kibbutz Nir ‘Oz directly after, together with Mapam
activists to protest. They described the confiscation of
land and expulsion of the population as “morally repugnant
and politically dangerous”.
Using the Google search engine, I was fortunate to

find for this article a map of the State of Israel of suitable
dimensions, i.e., small, which features, of all places
Nir Yitzhaq (see map below, courtesy of
http://geography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=
http://www.m%2Dw.com/cgi%2Dbin/nytmaps.pl%3Fisrael ).
Today Kibbutz Nir Yitzhaq is one of the 31 exclusively
Jewish rural and suburban settlements under the
jurisdiction of the Eshkol
Regional Council, located by
the southern tip of the Gaza
Strip, near the Sufah Crossing
between the Gaza Strip and
so-called Israel proper. (It was
Shelly Nativ who pointed out
to me the message conveyed
by the official logo of the
Eshkol Regional Council [left]
regarding the situation of
Political Zionism in the
region. The logo features a
ploughed field encircled by an
ear of wheat the stem of which mutates into a barbed
wire fence. Rather telling).
The kibbutz is situated rather close to the obnoxious
perimeter fence constructed by the Israeli government,
ostensibly for security reasons; but, in fact, in order to
maintain a stanglehold over the Gaza Strip. The fence
has reduced the Gaza Strip into the biggest concentration
camp in the world, with some 1.5 million people
herded into a space of some 360 square km (the highest
population density worldwide). An electrified fence
peppered by electronic sensors encircles the area, and
the movement of the population is strictly monitored
through a system of gates, controlled by the Israeli
occupation army, of which the Sufah crossing is one.
37
The Gaza Strip perimeter fence at the Sufah Crossing
Courtesy of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Gaza
Gaza Perimeter fence, Courtesy of Alternative Information Center (AIC),
Jerusalem
On May 4 th 2005, Salman Abu Sitta wrote me a
missive that has set me off on my search for his heirloom:
a sword gone missing in the course of the Israeli
invasion of the region in 1947-1948.
Dear Uri,
If you wish to pursue the matter with Benni Motilov you
could ask him to return some of the items stolen from my
father’s house, namely his sword (ancient and valuable), his
WWI medal, my brother’s law degree, my brothers’
Matriculation Certificates, correspondence with Arab leaders
in Trans-Jordan and Egypt, family photographs, Arabic books,
English books including Shakespeare’s Othello and Hamlet.
The PALMACH officer who was with him was Aryeh
Aharoni. He can be contacted at his office which is in Sifriat
Poalim. The telephone number is 03-6163829. He wrote a
book, A Candidate for Treason, Sifriat Poalim Publishing
House, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2000 (Hebrew). He admits taking our
property, pp. 103-104 and poisoning Gaza wells, pp. 109-110.
Best regards,
Salman

Kibbutz Seder
I divide my residence between the Arab town of
Sakhnin in Central Galilee and a community settlement
called Qatzir. On the festive day I departed from Qatzir,
armed with a bouquet of flowers for my hostess, sometime
around 14:30, with a view to arriving “at my earliest
convenience,” as requested by Mrs. Nativ. I mounted
my red VW Beetle and taking the relatively new “Trans-
Israel Highway”, otherwise known as “Cross Israel
Highway” or “Toll Highway No. 6”, I traversed the 250
km to Nir Yitzhaq at a comfortable 80 km per hour in
approximately three hours. The weather being rather
hot in this part of the world at this time of year I decided
to drive barefoot and clad in a vest and shorts, and to
change into more respectable attire as I approached my
destination.
Havah Nativ turned out to be a delightful and most
welcoming hostess. My gift of flowers was well received
and I was promptly made to feel very much at home.
There was an hour or so to go before the kibbutz families
and their guests were expected at the kibbutz dining
hall for the Seder and we whiled away the time, Havah,
her daughter Shelly, her son Nahshon and myself, chatting
comfortably.
The kibbutz dining hall was packed with some 700
diners for the Seder—about 400 kibbutz members and
300 guests. Some of the food on the tables (traditional
East European menu with the obligatory chicken soup
and dumplings) was cooked in the kibbutz kitchen.
Other dishes were bought from a catering company. A
professional singer (Ophirah Gluska) was brought in,
accompanied by two guitar players, to lead the festivities
from the stage. Performances by kibbutz children punctuated
the staged event. The Kibbutz Haggadah (very
much leaner than the traditional version), published in
Israel by Ha-Kibbutz ha-Artzi - ha-Shomer ha-Tza’ir
(15 th edition, 1994) was read aloud from the stage by a
string of kibbutz members, in prearranged succession.
The local version of the Haggadah that was read
aloud on the occasion is the uniform text for all kibbutzim
incorporated in the Ha-Kibbutz ha-Artzi-ha-Shomer
ha-Tza’ir kibbutz federation. It is an irreconcilable
jumble of excerpts from Orthodox Tradition, Pagan
adoration of nature in spring and political Zionist indoctrination
(“This is the 57 th Year of Our Liberation, the
Freedom of Israel in the State of Israel”).
The readers and musicians performed their tasks
dutifully. Gluska did her bit singing the prearranged
repertoire (mostly secular Hebrew Zionist songs) but
when at one time she departed from it and indulged in
one or two songs with reference to God, subdued discontent
rippled through the congregation. The highlight
of the evening was her solo-performance of yet another
string of songs—very Zionistic, glorifying romantic
nature, idyllic meadows and pastoral shepherds. I found
it rather surreal in such a middle class society, so deep
into real estate calculations and so estranged from the
rustic rural life of yore, as is the kibbutz society in kibbutzim
adjacent to the Gaza Strip.
There was only one element in the kibbutz Seder in
Nir Yitzhaq that night with any relevance to the context
underpinning life in this kibbutz and the country as a
whole, namely, the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It was the beautiful rendering by a kibbutz member of
Hava Alberstein’s song, “One Only Kid” (“kid” in the
sense of a young goat, not a child). Alberstein’s song
alludes to various Passover traditions—the song of the
same title that concludes the Seder; the opening question
of the evening—“how is this night different from
all other nights”; and the queries recited by the four
sons, whom we are to instruct on this occasion: the wise,
the wicked, the simple and the one who has not capacity
to inquire. This was the only reference to the fact that a
conflict between a settler colonial state, known as the
“Jewish State” and the indigenous Palestinian Arab
people exists.
“Had Gadia” / Hava Alberstein (an excerpt):
And why are you suddenly singing
Of the one and only kid?
Spring has not yet arrived nor Passover come
And what has changed for you,
What has changed?
I have changed
This year.
Since on all other nights, on all other nights
I had only had four questions
On this night I want to ask another:
How long more will this vicious cycle turn?
Persecutor and persecuted
tormentor and tormented
When will this madness end?
Let us now revert to Salman’s suggestion or request
that I “pursue the matter” with Benni Motilov with a
view to locating some of the items stolen from his
father’s house during the 1948 invasion, including the
treasured sword.
I wondered what the prospects could be. After all,
among 50-year-old citizens of the State of Israel and
over, my name may still register as an icon of anti-
Zionist dissent. Not so among younger generations, who
are often at a loss when asked who Moshe Sharett was,
let alone Uri Davis, but the people I would have to
interview were definitely in their sixties or over. To my
delight, with one or two exceptions, it seemed that my
name did not immediately ring a bell. The reference
group of my interviewees consists of peers in the senior
security establishment of the State of Israel in whose
recollection of the history of the State Anti-Zionist dissent
seems not to have figured. More often than not they
did not associate Dr. Davis, the anthropologist, with Uri
Davis, the anti-Zionist dissident activist. And when they
did, often at my prompting, they turned out to be old
and mellow enough to almost forgive and forget.
My first interview was to be with Lina Meitiv.
38

Lina
I interviewed Lina Meitiv at her home on
September 29, 2005.
I had plenty of time, travelling the 200 odd km from
Sakhnin to Ashqelon to consider a strategic narrative for
this interview. After all, I, a Palestinian Hebrew citizen
of the State of Israel, an academic and a human rights
activist with a long record of anti-Zionist public advocacy,
was about to interview the widow of a senior Israeli
intelligence officer.
In the few rounds of telephone conversations with
Lina Meitiv a few weeks back, to set the date and the
time for the interview, she seemed not to recognize the
name Dr. Davis, nor subsequently the name Uri Davis.
However, she did want to know the purpose of the interview,
and I said that I sought an opportunity to discuss
her husband’s works Hazor’im ba-Midbar (“Those who
Sow in the Desert”) and Sipuro shel Gevul (“The Story of
a Frontier”). She expressed doubt regarding her ability
to assist me and feared I would be wasting my time travelling
all the way from Sakhnin to Ashqelon to interview
her. I assured her I would not be wasting my time—and
she was happy to have me come.
The strategy I had picked seemed to have worked.
First, I asked for the interview on behalf of Salman Abu
Sitta, son of Shaykh Hussein Abu Sitta of Ma’in Abu
Sitta. And second, since Mrs. Meitiv could not be
regarded as a friend, I owed her nothing more than my
formal professional credentials as an academic and a
peace activist committed to reconciliation. In my codex,
when dealing with an apartheid state, international boycott,
divestment and sanctions are to be regarded as educational
measures necessary to effect reconciliation.
A spell of “small talk” and delicate prompting
brought forth some interesting biographical details. Lina
Meitiv, came to Israel in the early 1950s, a young French
woman (presumably Jewish), with a Zionist aliyah group
affiliated to MAPAM; got to meet Benni Meitiv; and
married him. At some point late in their marriage he had
suffered a stroke affecting the “small brain”. The stroke
did not paralyze him but weakened his physical and
mental faculties and towards his death he was so frustrated
with his diminished capacities and his physical and
speech disabilities that he became violent and rather
difficult to handle. Meitiv had passed away a few months
prior to our meeting.
I embarked upon the presentation of my case,
informed by the two strategic decisions mentioned
above. I did not know what to expect. I stuck my neck
out. Lina Meitiv took my presentation at face value
without batting an eyelid.
When I told her that I sought the interview on
Salman Abu Sitta’s behalf to ask where his father’s
ancient and valuable sword and library books were now
deposited she stirred. She knew nothing of the sword,
and she did not recall her husband ever mentioning any
such item. “But”, she said, “Arnon, Avino’am Avni’s son
39
in kibbutz Nirim, is a computer buff. He came across the
Abu Sitta website, made printouts and brought them to
Benni. Benni was overjoyed and made any number of
copies of the website printouts for distribution”.
I asked to see the material. Lina Meitiv had extra
copies and was happy to give me a set. She then went on
to suggest that I should interview the veterans at kibbutz
Nirim. “They are still very lucid”, she said. When I
pointed out that I had some contacts in kibbutz Nir
Yitzhaq, but none in Nirim, she offered to introduce
me to Amnon Dagieli there and then.
“Benni would know nothing of the sword or the
library”, said Dagieli. “He arrived on the scene in 1948.
Ma’in Abu Sitta was conquered in 1947. You should talk
to Aryeh (Stinah) Aharoni, or even better to the commanding
officer of the unit (yehidah) that captured Ma’in
Abu Sitta, General Avraham (Bren) Adan. He is now
retired and lives in Ramat ha-Sharon. Lina has his telephone
number”.
The telephone rang. Lina was engaged in a friendly
conversation, chatting about the forthcoming Jewish
High Holidays and their respective families. “This was
Nahman”, she said when she put the receiver down. “He
and Benni were comrades and friends years back. They
spent long nights by the border of the Gaza Strip waiting
to interview informers” (she used the SHABAK
derogatory term, schtinkerim [meaning “those who
stink”], to refer to the Palestinian Arabs who crossed the
border to inform on their people.). “He (Nahman) rose
to become deputy Director of the SHABAK (“General
Security Service”)”, she added.
Before I took my leave Lina gave me Avraham
Adan’s telephone number and once back in my study in
Sakhnin I made an appointment to interview him on
Wednesday, October 5, 17:00, in Ramat ha-Sharon.
Bren I arrived at retired General Avraham (Bren) Adan’s
residence on time on October 5, 2005—a few minutes
before the appointed hour of 17:00. Avraham Adan was
waiting on the pavement before his home, in shorts, to
make sure I did not miss the house.
There was a vacant parking place right in front of
his house. I parked my red VW Beetle; pulled my frame
out of the seat; picked up my AppleMacintosh iBook;
locked the car and greeted the elderly man who waited
to show me in, his body language bespeaking relaxation
and a quizzically amused look in his eyes. He looked in
jolly good health, a silver mane still adorning much of
his scalp and only minor evidence of balding.
Avraham (Bren) Adan recognized the name, Abu
Sitta, without difficulty. Erroneously referring to
Salman’s father as Abdallah rather than Hussein Abu
Sitta, he acknowledged his leadership of the Arab resistance
in the southern region. He actually had in his possession
two photographs that were removed from Abu
Sitta’s house and were given to him as “souvenirs”

(though he could not recall by whom). On the bottom
margin of one photograph was inscribed in Hebrew in
Adan’s handwriting: “Abdallah and Ibrahim Abu Sitta
commanders of the revolt in the Negev”. The other
photograph had no annotation and was subsequently
identified by Salman Abu Sitta as the photograph of his
step-brother Abdallah.
Abdallah (step brother)
Adan was the commander of the company (pelugah)
which occupied Khirbat Ma’in on May 14, 1948 as part
of the Baraq Operation. They arrived at Khirbat Ma’in
after a week of continuous fighting in the area, in the
course of which Adan’s troops conquered inter alia Brayr
and Hulayqat, on the last day of the Baraq Operation,
after which they returned to base. They were sent there
to back-up an attempt to reinforce and supply the
besieged Kefar Darom.
Upon arrival at Khirbat Ma’in Adan and his men
encountered significant resistance. Fire was showered at
them from close quarters—a range of some 80 meters—
by snipers behind a thick row of sabr cacti. Adan’s unit
overcame the resistance and took up positions on top of
the hill. There they found a structure, a rather modest
house made of mud bricks and a fairly large depot of
weapons next to it. They blew up the house, lock, stock
and barrel.
“If the house was demolished with all its contents
inside”, I asked, “how do you come to have in your possession
photographs that where inside it before its demolition”?
Adan was unable to recall the sequence of events.
He remembered that Aryeh (Stinah) Aharoni, the cultur-
al commissar of the troops at that time, had given him
the photographs but he was not sure how Aharoni came
to have them. He was perplexed by the blind spot that
seemed to emerge at this juncture in the interview, since
he had always assumed Aharoni to have been stationed
elsewhere in the Negev.
Hussein Abu Sitta [father] and Ibrahim [eldest son],
identifying them as the commanders of the revolt in
the Negev (the Hebrew notation erroneously says
“Abdallah and Ibrahim Abu Sitta”)
Apparently there were two structures involved, one
was the mud house on the hilltop, behind the thicket of
sabr cacti, which sheltered the snipers, and which they
blew-up once they overcame the rather stiff resistance.
But lower down there was another much more impressive
structure: a large white house built of stone. It stood
at what Adan referred to as a “star shaped” junction out
of which roads fanned out in a number of directions. He
thought it was this house that could have been Abdallah
Abu Sitta’s residence. Adan and his soldiers never got to
occupy the large “white house.” They stayed on the hilltop
for the duration of the day, and then returned to
base.
The hilltop occupied by Adan’s troops in 1948 is
today the cemetery of kibbutz Nirim.
The story of their involvement in the area is detailed
in Adan’s book, Ad Degel ha-Deyo (The Ink Flag). His
squadron (kitah, pl. kitot) was the first to arrive in Umm
Rashrash, and it was Adan who mounted the Israeli flag
on the staff. Since they had no standard issue flags in
their possession, they improvised and painted the Star of
40

David and the two stripes with ink on a white cloth, and
that served the purpose.
A framed photograph of the occasion with himself
climbing the staff to raise the flag, signifying Israel’s
claim to the place, decorates the wall of Adan’s study.
Once they returned to base and until the area was
reoccupied in December, 1948, by the 8 th division
(ugdah) of Golani, in the course of the Asaf Operation,
there was no presence of Israeli troops in the region of
Khirbat Ma’in. After the December invasion a company
(pelugah) was permanently stationed there.
The 8 th division had three squadrons, two of which
comprised three companies and one just two. Adan was
the commander of one of these squadrons.
In April, 1949, the company stationed in Ma’in Abu
Sitta took over from Nirim (by then Nir Yitzhaq) the
outpost in Dangur, that it had occupied and now vacated
by agreement and kibbutz Nirim moved to Ma’in Abu
Sitta to the large white stone house, presumably the Abu
Sitta home. The house no longer exists.
“I wonder”, I said, “Whether you could extend to
me the kind of assistance Lina Meitive kindly proffered
me?”
Adan shot me a quizzical look.
“It was only because Lina Meitive was good enough
to contact Amnon Dagieli while I was with her that I
managed to get in touch with you. Perhaps you could
call Aryeh Aharoni before I leave to find out how he has
come by the photograph?”
Adan had no problem with the request.
It was the second day of the Jewish New Year (and
Adan’s 79 th birthday) and Aharoni was more likely to be
at home in Kibbutz Beit Alfa than in Tel Aviv, where he
works with the Sifriyat Poalim Publishers. (“Workers
Library”; a publishing house affiliated with the Labour
Party)
It was 17:30 when Adan picked up the telephone to
contact a relative of his in Kibbutz Beit Alfa for Aharoni’s
home number and in less than five minutes he was happily
chatting with his veteran comrade in arms Aryeh
Aharoni. In the course of the conversation the blind spot
in our interview was cleared up: Aharoni was attached to
Adan’s squadron at the time.
Adan introduced me to Aharoni and handed me the
receiver. Aharoni expected to remain at home on vacation
until the end of the month and so I arranged to
interview him there, in Kibbutz Beit Alfa, sometime in
the next two weeks.
I asked Adan to screen the Abu Sitta photographs
before I took my leave so that I could forward the JPG
files to Salman. He was happy to oblige and right away
emailed the files to me. I forwarded the images to
Salman upon returning to my study later the same
evening.
The enclosed attachment represents the first modest
results of my research. I wrote:
“Wonderful, woooooonderful. I am thrilled. Thanks,
41
thanks. I feel my soul rejuvenated. More please. Cannot
wait [...]”, came the almost immediate response.
“La shukra ‘ala al-wajib” (no thanks are due for
doing one’s duty), I wrote back, and meant it.
In response Salman sent the following information:
Dear Uri,
I sent the photos to my brothers. They were thrilled.
The photos were taken in the early forties either in
Jerusalem (likely) or Cairo. The first is my father with his eldest
son who was studying law. The second is of my step-brother
and cousin who was brought up by my father as his son. He was
a leader in the Palestinian National Movement since the Great
Revolt of 1936-1939.
This is what Aharoni said of the attack on our Ma’in Abu
Sitta:
“Khirbeit Ma’in”- There was no one in the battalion who
did not utter this name. This was the place in which Abdallah
Abu Sitta, the organizer and commander of the gangs (sic) in
the Negev resided; the man whose forceful name has spread
fear all around; the name that every Bedouin had uttered in awe
and reverence; the notable family who ruled the entire Negev,
that had contact relations with the neighbouring countries. To
conquer the home of Abu Sitta was indeed a temptation.
We went to the Abu Sitta home and were stunned: In the
middle of the desert - unbelievable richness: luxurious furniture,
many Oriental and European clothes, a radio, a truck, a
beautiful Bedouin sword made of silver, a large important
archive of photos and documents, letters from the Emir Abdalla
[of Trans-Jordan] and Hassan Banna, the leader of the Muslim
Brothers in Egypt; A lawyer’s certificate belonging to a member
of the family, Shakespeare’s “Othello” in English, by the side of
a Kor’an. Our happiness reached its climax when we found the
weapon store although there was not much there - a number of
ammunition boxes, a few guns and two boxes full of Italian
explosive material. We were so happy [...]
History has a long memory. It has a way of coming back.
Thanks again. Waiting for more.
Warmest, Salman
P.S. What does it say in Hebrew at the bottom?
In subsequent email and telephone exchanges it
transpired that whoever annotated the photograph with
the two images had gotten it wrong. The name of
Salman’s father, the person wearing the sword, was
Hussein, not Abdallah.
As noted above, I made arrangements to interview
Aharoni later in the month. Now that I had photographic
evidence of the sword, I was hoping to advance one or
two steps further toward locating the object itself.
Towards the end of the interview with Adan, I
sought permission to ask a personal question. “It’s very
personal”, I said, “You don’t have to answer if it makes
you uncomfortable”.
“Go ahead”, he replied
“Was it all worth it?” I asked, thereby triggering an
extended political discussion. The bottom line of Adan’s
position seems to be that though the state of affairs
obtaining in Israel is not that which he had hoped to see
come into being, to establish a sovereign Jewish state
and maintain its Jewish demographic majority was definitely
a historical necessity. Moreover, preservation of a

Jewish demographic majority justifies today and to eternity
a comprehensive objection to the right of return of
the 1948 Palestine refugees and to their title to property
inside Israel.
When I suggested that the only way to ensure eternal
Jewish demographic majority was by repeating the
1948 ethnic cleansing every so often, he disagreed.
“There are other ways”, he said, “for instance,
exchange of territories”.
Adan is trying to pull out of the Gaza Strip and into
Israel a prime Palestinian collaborator, Musa Muhsin
Abu (or Ibn) Mu’ammar. Lina Meitive referred to this
person as an embodiment of the potential for Arab-
Jewish fraternity.
Stinah (1)
My Finnish family, Daniel and Iris Pajunen (twins,
four years old) and their mother Sirkku joined me in
Palestine on October 10 th for a two week stay. The family
residence was divided, as mine is when alone, between
my rented premises in Sakhnin and Fathi Mahamid’s
house in the community settlement of Qatzir overlooking
the adjacent Arab villages of Ayn al-Sahla and Ar’ara.
The date and the time I concluded with Aharoni for the
interview, October 17, 2005 at 10:30, coincided with our
sojourn in Qatzir. We left Qatzir at about 09:00, travelling
to Beit Alfa through Megiddo junction and Afulah.
In fact we traveled a little further as I left Sirkku and the
twins at the Sakhina recreational park for the duration of
the interview.
At the time of the interview Aharoni was 83 years
old and, like General (retired) Avraham Adan, still completely
lucid and in good health. He is still employed in
editorial capacity with Sifriyat Poalim Publishing House
in Tel Aviv, where he has access to either a kibbutz flat
or accommodation provided by his employer. He normally
divides his residence between Tel Aviv (weekdays)
and Kibbutz Beit Alfa (weekends). This month being rife
with Jewish High Holidays he has a stretch of four consecutive
weeks of vacation.
I was welcomed into the Aharoni home, a rather
modest and ascetic space, nothing like the lush Adan
villa in Ramat ha-Sharon; offered coffee and a tasty crisp
sesame concoction prepared by Rachel Aharoni especially
for my visit. She also stayed with us all through the
meeting.
I introduced my theme as a tiny contribution
towards reconciliation between the 1948 Palestine
refugees and the State of Israel. The introduction went
down well.
Aharoni had no idea where the sword or the library
have ended up. The documents and files of Ma’in Abu
Sitta would have been appropriated by the Intelligence.
Looting of moveable property by Israeli troops in the
1948-49 war was rife, and never properly reported. The
commander of the relevant battalion (no. 8) at the time
was Haim Bar-Lev, now deceased. Battalion 8 Chief of
Intelligence was Yair (Jerry) Boberman. He may have a
clue. Aharoni had Jerry’s address and telephone number
and he was willing to phone and introduce me.
Boberman had considerable respect for Abdallah
Abu Sitta as a formidable enemy. Was he still alive?
What year did he die? He had a vivid recollection of
Abdallah Abu Sitta’s jeep, a white one with a machine
gun mounted on it. The mobile machine gun represented
a nightmare to the Israeli troops, until, in the course
of an attack, it stalled and the occupants of the jeep had
to abandon vehicle, machine gun and all.
According to Boberman Ma’in Abu Sitta (or, to use
his term, Khirbat Abu Sitta) was occupied on the 13 th
of May 1948. On the following day the Egyptian army
attacked Nirim. Boberman took part in the attack on
Ma’in Abu Sitta (as did Aharoni) but when he entered
the Abu Sitta home it was empty, “as far as I recall”, he
said
I challenged the statement. “Stinah described the
house in his memoirs”, I said. “According to Stinah the
Abu Sitta home displayed unbelievable affluence - luxurious
furniture, plenty of Oriental and European clothes,
a radio, a truck, a beautiful Bedouin sword made of silver,
a large important archive of photos and documents,
a lawyer’s certificate of one of the family members,
Shakespeare’s “Othello” in English, near a Kor’an and
more.
“I never saw a sword”, replied Boberman.
I suggested that at this point I hand the receiver to
Aharoni.
“But I think you had the sword in your hand”, says
Aharoni into the mouthpiece.
The telephone receiver was back in my hand.
I urged Boberman for a lead; anything; even a vague
association would do.
“Haim Bar-Lev”, he said, “had a passion for daggers,
knives, bayonets and swords of all sorts”. Apparently
Bar-Lev had refined the skill of throwing daggers at any
surface they could penetrate to a fine art.
“One would assume”, commented Boberman, “that
if the sword fell into our hands it would end up temporarily
or otherwise in the hands of Bar-Lev”. But had
that been the case, continued Boberman, he would know.
Battalion 8 Headquarters was located in Kibbutz
Ze’elim. He and Bar-Lev shared the same barracks. In
fact his room was next to Bar-Lev’s, just a thin wall separated
their respective bunks. Had Bar-Lev come into
possession of the sword, he, Boberman, would surely
have known. Also Stinah (Aharoni) was there at the time.
Maybe, suggested Boberman, I could talk to Bar-Lev’s
son Omer, who is now an advocate, or to his widow,
Tamar—though he doubted if they could help.
The conversation with Boberman ended with my
suggestion that I contact him in early November, when
I was back in Israel from the UK. In the intervening
weeks he may have a flash of insight and be able to point
me to more leads.
42

As I returned the receiver to Aharoni he nodded.
“I wonder why he said that”, he muttered, referring to
Boberman’s statement that when he entered the Abu
Sitta home it was empty. “I wouldn’t put an outright lie
past him. He is very much the Secret Service man who
believes certain matters ought not to be discussed”.
“For all I know”, intervened Aharoni’s wife Rachel,
“the sword may very well be in his possession. In his
very own house perhaps.”
Aharoni came up with some more possibilities for
locating the sword. He suggested I look in the museums
and archives of two kibbutzim, Revivim and Nirim.
My visit was drawing to a close. I steered the conversation
to life in general and a bit of politics. Rachel
emerged as rather more radical than her husband. She
suggested that, with the possible exception of the early
part of the 1948 war, all the other wars Israel had waged
were unnecessary and unjustified. In 1967 she and her
husband were dead against holding onto the territories
occupied in that war and were treated as pariahs by most
members of their Kibbutz (Beit Alfa). They are horrified
at the deterioration of the State of Israel since; disgusted
at the current political leadership; and oblivious to the
fact that it all goes back to the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine of its Palestinian Arab population (including
residents of Ma’in Abu Sitta and Khirbat Beit Ilfa). Or
maybe not—I thought it impolitic to inquire outright.
I told them of my ambition to rewrite the orthodox
Jewish Passover Haggadah, with a view to making of the
traditional genocidal text something more compatible
with secular and humanitarian universal values. In
response Rachel Aharoni gave me a copy of the Ha-
Kibbutz ha-Artzi - ha-Shomer ha-Tza’ir version of the
Haggadah. The collective punishment visited by God on
the people of Egypt are there, uncritically, as are the references
to YAHWEH and the return to Zion, suggesting
a political Zionist colonialist settlers’ umbilical cord linking
Ha-Kibbutz ha-Artzi - ha-Shomer ha-Tza’ir to Gush
Emunim (the settlers movement committed primarily to
the Zionist colonization of the post-1967 occupied territories
and affiliated to the national religious factions of
Israeli politics).
We parted in agreement that Greed was at the root
of all social and political evil.
I subsequently emailed Salman for information on
Beit Alfa, and received the following:
43
Dear Uri,
Here is a tentative reply to your questions and I hope
you can answer mine.
Beit Alfa was built on top of the village that you may
find on page 390 of “the Village Name Index” and page 399
of the “Place Name Index” in The Atlas. Beit Alfa and Heftsi
Bah are two colonies built on the land of Khirbet Beit Ilfa
shown on Sheet IX of Palestine Exploration Fund’s 1871
survey (Khirbet meaning ancient site). It is a place rich with
water. One km to the east there is Ein (`Ain) el Sakhna, and
beyond it, Ein el Asi and Nahr el Asi. Two km to the north
lies Qanat el Jalud (Goliath), Wadi el Jalud.
The colony Beit (Bayt, Beyt) Alfa was built on
November 4, 1922. That is why Khirbet Beit Ilfa (with I not
A) appears only on earlier maps. Heftsi Bah was established
close by two weeks earlier—on 14 th October.
Since the administrative division of village lands was
established, by the British Mandate, it is not possible to
define village lands exactly before then. But in the case of
the above two colonies, they are built smack on Khirbet Beit
Ilfa itself. There is no doubt about it.
In general these colonies, in Marj Ibn Amer, were built
near Beisan on land acquired by the JNF [Jewish National
Fund] during the Mandate. They were triggered off by the
massive sale by the Lebanese Sursock family in the early
1920s. Beit Alfa, Heftsi Bah and Shatta are built on Sursock
land.
Downloading my email on the following day, 18 th
October, I found a message from Rachel Aharoni:
Greetings to you, Uri,
The sword is with Tamar Bar-Lev.
Please confirm receipt of this letter on the
phone by noon.
Rachel and Aryeh.
I phoned them immediately.
After I had left them, Aharoni told me, they phoned
Tamar Bar-Lev; told her of my visit and asked whether
she knew anything about the Abu Sitta sword. According
to Aharoni, Tamar Bar-Lev told them that she always
hated her husband’s collection of daggers, swords and
pistols, and after his death she gave them all away as gifts
to friends and relations. She did remember a large sword
hanging in the living room, but thought she had given
that away too.
They hung up and some thirty minutes later Tamar
Bar-Lev phoned back. The conversation kept nagging at
the back of her mind, she told them, and she decided to
search her late husband’s study again. She suddenly had
a vague memory of putting the sword away on the top
bookshelf. She took a ladder and had a look. The sword
was there!
Aryeh and Rachel Aharoni were to leave for their
vacation in Rumania on the afternoon of the same day,
which explains the urgency in their email.
They were pleased, expressing the hope that the
sword in Tamar’s possession was indeed the one for
which I was looking. Obviously, I was overjoyed and
contacted Tamar Bar-Lev immediately. Yes, she has the
sword; yes, she would be happy to give it me. I said I’d
be at her home at 19:00.
Tamar (1)
The 17 th-18 th of October were Holidays: Feast of
Tabernacles. My Finnish family was in Israel with me
between 10 th-23 rd of October. I had hoped to spend all
of the 18 th of October at home with them. This was not
to be.
By noon of the 18 th of October, the discomfort that
mounted in me since my conversation with Aryeh

Aharoni came to a head: What if Tamar Bar-Lev changes
her mind by evening? What if a member of her family or
any one of her friends in the Israeli security or intelligence
establishment phoned and advised her not to give
the sword away?
We were expecting guests that afternoon. When at
noon I told Sirkku I wanted to travel to collect the
sword earlier than previously agreed with Tamar Bar-
Lev, she was utterly upset. “I won’t manage to tidy the
house on my own before the guests come”, she protested.
“If you go now I ask that you phone and cancel the
visit”.
Now, the standing directive in the Davis-Pajunen
household is that no one was allowed to touch daddy’s
papers other than daddy. If I clear my papers off the dining
table and promise to be back when the guests are
expected, 16:30, I could go. I went.
At 13:45 on the
18 th of October 2005, I
rang the intercom on
the gate of the Bar-Lev
residence at Ramat ha-
Sharon - Neveh Magen.
A rather large and well
tended front garden
leads to a comfortable,
though not extravagant
villa, the kind of house
occupied by the Adans
(who are neighbours),
though they, unlike the
Bar-Levs, have no intercom
or security lock on
the front gate. I pressed
the bell of the intercom.
“This is Uri
Davis”, I said when
Tamar Bar-Lev replied,
“I came early, I couldn’t
wait”.
I could hear her chuckle on the intercom, and I was
invited in.
A welcoming, pleasant, vivacious woman, who at 79
is still extremely beautiful, showed me in. She had just
returned home after driving her grandchildren back to
their parents’. “I hate the security lock”, she said.
“Security insisted upon it when Haim became Chief-of-
Staff, and it has remained since”.
I was offered tea and small talk at the kitchen table.
I stayed in the kitchen while Tamar Bar-Lev went inside
the house and fetched the sword. I wanted the transaction
documented.
“Do you want me to give you a receipt for the
sword”? I asked.
“Oh, no”, said she, “I am happy to give it to you. I
hope it does make a contribution towards reconciliation,
as you said”, saying what I had already heard through
Aryeh Aharoni. Some of the weapons collection, she
said, she gave away as Bar-Mitzvah presents. I could not
help wondering why, feeling as she did, she thought that
was a good idea. I asked to see where she had found the
sword.
Tamar Bar-Lev took me to her late husband’s study,
now her own, and pointed to the bookshelves on the
wall. “There, on the top shelf, between itself and the
ceiling”, she said, pointing. “I needed a ladder and then
felt for it with my hand along the top surface of the
shelf”.
Still, I wanted the transaction documented and suggested
a commemorative photograph. Tamar Bar-Lev
hesitated.
“Please”, I said as engagingly as I know how. And,
still hesitant, she went along with me.
“It’s embarrassing”, she said. “My neighbours are
rather particular about
being disturbed
between 14:00 and
16:00 in the afternoon.
Still, there is this new
neighbour that I helped
when she moved in.
Maybe she wouldn’t
mind”.
We went out. The
sword was left on the
kitchen table. At the
back of my mind was
the thought: would it
still be there when we
returned?
The new neighbour
did not answer the
door. However, as we
crossed the road going
back we heard music
from another neighbour’s
house.
“Oh, good”, said Tamar, “There’s definitely someone
up there”. The neighbour was only too happy to oblige,
and the three of us marched back into the kitchen. The
sword was still there.
“I remember that sword”, said the neighbour. “It
was hanging in the living room when […]”. We all went
out into the front garden. The neighbour took some
photographs and left.
Exchanging farewell greetings I too took my leave
and clutching the sword in my hand returned to my car
with Tamar Bar-Lev waving me off.
It was well past 16:00 when I hit the road back to
Qatzir. I was confident, however, that having been told
by Sirkku why I was not there when they arrived, the
guests would surely be eager to see the sword, and my
arrival with the trophy would be a fair compensation for
my late-coming.
Photograph of Tamar Bar-Lev, widow of the Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, handing Dr Uri
Davis the sword given to her late husband by Shaykh ‘Awda Abu Mu’ammar on the occasion
of his visit to the ‘Azazma tribe, 18 April 1971 (taken at the Bar-Lev front garden in
Ramat ha-Sharon, 18.10.2005)
44

I was determined, however, not to keep the sword in
my possession but to deliver it as soon as possible to the
custody of my friend and lawyer advocate Tawfiq Jabarin
in Umm al-Fahm. I phoned Tawfiq as soon as I got to
the motorway and asked to see him at his earliest convenience.
It being Ramadan, and with his family committed
to Iftar socializing, he suggested that I come the
following day. I asked to see him that night. He asked
what was the urgency. I said I needed to deposit an item
in his custody. He asked what was the item. I said it was
a sword.
“Salman Abu Sitta’s sword!” exclaimed Tawfiq.
“Yes”, I said.
“You are amazing (‘ajib)”, said Tawfiq. “Come to my
place after I return home from the Iftar with my family.
Shall we say ten o’clock?”
I made a brief detour to Baqa al-Gharbiyya. I
thought my friend and colleague Maamun Daqqa, with
whom I had shared the unfolding of the Ma’in Abu Sitta
- Nir Yitzhaq - Nirim story, deserved a glimpse of the
sword before it went into Tawfiq’s safe keeping.
By the time I arrived in Qatzir it must have been
18:00. Our guests were there eagerly waiting to hear the
story. I took photographs of the sword inside the living
room of Fathi Mahamid’s house. As soon as the guests
left I took off to Tawfiq in Umm al-Fahm, a mere 15
minutes drive away.
Basically, my primary concern that day was to make
sure that I get hold of the sword and that I still have it
when I arrive at Tawfiq Jabarin’s place. Obviously I was
not inclined to prolong my stay at Tamar Bar-Lev’s residence
unnecessarily in order to scrutinize the sword
there and then. Similarly, before entering Baqa al-
Gharbiyya I phoned Maamun and asked him to wait
for me outside his house. I did not wish to be delayed
beyond the few minutes reuired to show Maamun the
sword and letting him hold it in his hands. In Qatzir,
the presence of the guests was not conducive to looking
closely at the sword. In short, the first opportunity to
have a thoroughly good look at the sword was in
Tawfiq’s living room, some ten hours after first laying
eyes on it.
As soon as I crossed the threshold I handed the
sword to him. Tawfiq took it and began scrutinizing the
object carefully. It was he who discerned the discreet
Hebrew inscription on the sheath: le-rav aluf bar lev leregel
biqurkha be-shevet ‘azazma me-et ha-sheikh ‘awda ibn
mu’ammar, kaf gimel be-nisan tav shin lamed alef. (To
Chief-of-Staff Bar Lev, on the occasion of your visit to
the ‘Azazma tribe, from Shaykh ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar,
18 April 1971).
Tawfiq also thought that the sheath was not the
original sheath; that the original sheath was set with gold
and precious stones.
I sent Salman the digital image above as an email
attachment, and arranged to get in touch when I got to
London at the end of October. We talked at length.
45
Salman confirmed that the sword looked like his father’s
sword.
There was only one way to determine whether or
not the sword with the Hebrew inscription was Shaykh
Hussein Abu Sitta’s long lost weapon: to interview ‘Awda
Ibn Mu’ammar.
‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar has been a prime collaborator
with the Israeli army in the Negev. It is not inconceivable
that the Abu Sitta sword fell into his hands in the
course of the ethnic cleansing of Ma’in Abu Sitta, and
that subsequently it was given to Chief-of-Staff Bar-Lev
with the Hebrew inscription added. Not that the testimony
of ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar could be regarded as reliable.
Testimonies of collaborators hardly ever are. Still,
that’s all I had to go on.
Stinah (2)
Aryeh Aharoni called me again on the 6 th of
November 2005, at 09:00.
I told him about the Hebrew inscription on the
sheath of the sword that Tamar Bar-Lev had given me.
He wasn’t sure, he said in response, his memory of the
occasion is uncertain, but somehow since I landed on his
doorstep the subject has been on his mind. Now he
seems to remember, he said, that the sword was given to
Kibbutz Revivim after the bitter battle of Bir ‘Asluj, in
recognition of its contribution to the battle. The
Kibbutz had lost 15 men there. It could very well be,
said Aharoni, that the sword is still deposited in Kibbutz
Revivim museum or archive. He suggested that I talk to
yet another veteran in Kibbutz Nirim. I said I would
phone Amnon Dagieli.
Amnon
The following day (7 th November 2005) I phoned
Amnon Dagieli. I relayed the conversation with Aharoni
above, and, resorting to political Zionist language, asked
whether he could refer me to one of the 1948 war
(Milhemet TASHAH) veterans in Kibbutz Revivim. The
person Aharoni knew, Yehudah Chubinsky (Dror, nicknamed
Chubah), had passed away a year before. Maybe I
could locate another person of the same generation who
was still coherent. Dagieli apologized, but he was not
able to assist me on this one.
To Kibbutz Revivim, established in 1943, is attributed
the fact that the Negev came under the control of
the Israeli army and was eventually annexed to the State
of Israel. It withstood the Egyptian military attack and
thus made a significant contribution to the success of
political Zionist colonialism in the South.
Kibbutz Revivim was the home of the daughter of
Israel’s fourth Prime Minister, Golda Meir (who succeeded
Ben Gurion, Sharett and Eshkol), and the Golda
Meir Cultural Centre and Archives are located there. It
boasts a theater that serves the area with films, concerts
and plays and three libraries: a reference library, a
Hebrew library and a well stocked English library.

I phoned the Secretariat of Kibbutz Revivim and
was referred to the person in charge of their Cultural
Center, a certain Rafi Amidan. Amidan suggested I contact
Ya’aqov (Yanqaleh) Shemesh, a 1948 veteran and
senior member of Revivim.
It so happened that I had the 7 th -9 th of November
earmarked for some fieldwork in the Negev, with AL-
BEIT, Association for the Defence of Human Rights in
Israel, an NGO of which I am Chairperson, involved
with the unrecognized village of al-Hura, where the
main body of the al-Uqbi tribe reside in appalling conditions.
Upon arrival at al-Hura I phoned Rafi Amidan, was
advised to phone the person responsible for the reconstructed
1948 Revivim Outpost, and duly did so leaving
a message. Dinah Yas’ur, the person in charge of the
facility, phoned back the following day. I asked for an
interview with Yanqaleh Shemesh. Dinah said she would
do her best and did. Shemesh agreed to meet me the
very same day, Tuesday 8 th November, at 15:00.
Yanqaleh
I arrived at Yanqaleh’s home in Kibbutz Revivim and
knocked on his door at the appointed time. Yanqaleh
Shemesh turned out to be a spry 79 years old, in seeming
good health and of lucid mind. He was at leisure to
give me the round of the Revivim Outpost, including the
reconstructed “fortress” and the caves underneath that
served as secret armament caches (sliqim) for Revivim
and the Haganah forces and subsequently the Israeli
army.
Yanqaleh suggested that we first tour the outpost.
We embarked in my battered Volkswagen, I at the wheel
and Shemesh in the back seat, and made our way to the
entrance gate set in the perimeter fence of the outpost.
Zionist narratives relevant to Revivim are readily
available, and I do not propose to document Yanqaleh
Shemesh’s treatises as we sauntered around the place. As
we entered the gate and walked towards the outpost I
introduced the object of my visit:
“I have come to Revivim in search of a sword”, I
said.
“Oh”, said Shemesh immediately, “but the sword is
no longer here. It was stolen”.
“Is it Shaykh Hussein Abu Sitta’s sword we’re talking
about?” I interjected, barely able to suppress my
eagerness.
“Oh, no”, replied Shemesh, “This was the sword of
Shaykh Sa’id Ibn Sa’id, Head Shaykh of the ‘Azazma
Tribe and Shaykh ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar’s uncle. It is said
that Shaykh ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar crossed the border
into Egypt and killed his uncle to avenge the Mukhtar of
Revivim Aryeh Yehieli, killed in an ambush around 1949.
Shaykh ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar’s allegiance was with the
State of Israel, whereas his uncle’s was with Egypt. Aryeh
Yehieli and ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar were blood brothers.
Having killed his uncle, ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar took his
sword and gave it as a trophy to Kibbutz Revivim. The
sword was probably given to Dan Hulati and deposited
in the Kibbutz Commemoration Room of which he was
in charge at the time. And then one day it disappeared.
It was stolen”.
“What did the sword look like”, I asked.
“Oh”, said Shemesh, “it was a fabulous sword, some
one and a half meters long, decorated with precious
stones imbedded in what was probably a silver sheath”.
I would not be at all surprised if the sword given by
Shaykh Abu Mu’ammar to Israeli Chief-of-Staff Bar-Lev
was Shaykh Sa’id Ibn Sa’id’s sword, stolen from the
Kibbutz Revivim Commemoration Room, its precious
stones removed and now safely deposited in the custody
of my solicitor advocate Tawfiq Jabarin.
We went into the tourist restaurant at the entrance
to the reconstructed outpost. There Shemesh
approached Oded Gurfinkel, who had the keys to the
underground caves, including the “small cave”, where an
armament exhibition of weapons used by the Zionist and
Israeli forces in the 1948-49 war was on display. The
“small cave” was usually out of bounds to outside visitors,
like me, being regarded as unsafe (bits of rock keep
dropping from its ceiling) but apparently my escort
could not be refused.
As I took my leave of Yanqaleh Shemesh something
crossed his mind. “Do you know who might know something
about the Abu Sitta sword?” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Sasson Bar-Zvi in Beersheba”, he spat out.
“Might you perhaps have an address?” I asked.
“2 Asaf Simhoni Street – unless he has moved”, he
replied.
“May I mention your name when I phone him?” I
wished to know.
“I’d rather you didn’t”, he said and then thought
better of it, “Definitely not. We fell out a few years
back”.
Tamar (2)
It transpired that the fieldwork I had planned to
complete in three days in fact took much longer and
included, besides al-Hura, the city of Lydda.
At 13:00 on the 9 th of November Tamar Bar-Lev
called me and what she told me left me stunned. On the
day after I took the sword off her she got a call from
Meir Amit former Chief of the Israeli MOSSAD (1963-
1968). He called to ask about ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar’s
sword. When she told him she had given the sword to
Uri Davis the day before he became “terribly angry”.
Tamar Bar-Lev had the decency not to ask me to return
the sword, but the request was implied. I had no intention
of obliging.
I was right not to have delayed my trip to Ramat ha-
Sharon to collect the sword that day, and to have insisted
on documenting the transaction. It seems that either my
telephone lines or Tamar Bar-Lev’s or both were tapped
46

(presumably for different reasons), and that one or other
of Israel’s “Security Agencies” decided to act upon the
information tapped—which is patently illegal. And I
wonder how Tamar Bar-Lev feels about it all.
Sasson
On the 10 th of November 2005, I phoned Sasson
Bar Zvi at the unfortunate hour of 15:00. The household
was obviously taking their afternoon siesta and it was a
slightly disgruntled Mrs. Bar-Zvi’s who answered the
phone. I apologized for disturbing her afternoon nap.
She asked for the purpose of the call. I said I had hoped
to be able to talk to her husband.
“He is asleep”, she said.
“No, I am not”, a grumpy Sasson Bar-Zvi came on
the line. “Who is it?” (The line must have been connected
to two instruments and he must have picked up the
other telephone). I apologized again; introduced myself;
and introduced the subject.
“I know nothing about that sword”, he said. “I did
not serve in the Western Negev. As far as I know, the
Abu Sitta sword was in the hands of Benni Meitiv”. But
Beni Meitiv was dead. Back to square one.
Shaykh ‘Awda
I had arranged an interview with Shaykh ‘Awda Ibn
Mu’ammar in Shuqayb al-Salam for the morning of the
14 th of January 2006. His son Amer mediated and agreed
that I come as early as 8:30. I therefore arranged to sleep
over at al-Hura at the home of one of Nuri’s brothers,
Shaykh Sa’id al-Uqbi. Amer was away that day, but he
had arranged that I be met by his brother Musa.
I parked my car at the back of Shaykh ‘Awda’s imposing
house and was ushered in by Musa, dressed in a black
robe. The house looked like it was built when Shaykh
‘Awda was well endowed. It now looked shabby, indicating
a decline in the fortune of its residents.
Shaykh ‘Awda received me dressed in a white robe
lined in gold and adorned with a gold collar. He must be
over 90 and is hard of hearing. His son Musa had to
repeat whatever was said very loudly indeed.
I was seated beside Shaykh ‘Awda. Bitter coffee was
served. I then introduced myself, giving the relevant
details: the date and place of my birth, my dual citizenship,
my education. I gave my profession as “Orientalist
(mustashriq); my discipline as anthropology (“A branch
of the Social Sciences” I explained in response to Musa’s
question) with an interest in swords. That got Shaykh
‘Awda interested.
“I am interested particularly in three swords”,
I said. “One sword I take a special interest in is Shaykh
Sa’id Ibn Sa’id’s sword, that was stolen from the
Commemoration Room of Kibbutz Revivim. The second
—Shaykh Hussein Abu Sitta’s sword—stolen from
his home at Ma’in Abu Sitta, and the third is the sword
you had yourself presented to Chief-of-Staff Haim Bar-
Lev on the occasion of his visit to the ‘Azazma Tribe in
1971”.
47
Shaykh ‘Awda could add little to what I had already
learnt from Yanqaleh Shemesh at Kibbutz Revivim
regarding the sword of Sa’id Ibn Sa’id (Shaykh ‘Awda’s
khal, i.e., his maternal uncle). He did however amend the
story regarding his own role in it. It was not he who
took the sword to Kibbutz Revivim, nor was it brought
there after he had killed his uncle. During the Battle of
the ‘Asluj Police Station, in which Aryeh Yehieli was
killed, a zealous young fighter, out of enthusiasm to “kill
the Jews”, grabbed Said Ibn Sa’id’s sword and rushed
with it into the fray. He was killed instantly and the
sword was carried off as a trophy to Kibbutz Revivim.
Did he cross the border to Egypt and kill his khal? “This
was later”, he said curtly, and closed the subject with an
abrupt movement of the hand.
As to Shaykh Hussein Abu Sitta’s sword, Shaykh
‘Awda referred me to relatives of Shaykh Sulayman al-
Sani’ of the Tarabin Tribe (now forcibly settled next to
Geva’ot Bar, referred to by Shaykh ‘Awda as Mishmar
ha-Negev). According to Shaykh ‘Awda three Negev
Bedouin notables joined their fate with the Jews’, two
of whom are dead and himself. These are Shaykh
Sulayman al-Sani’ of the Tabarin Tribe in the West,
Shaykh Sulayman Huzayyil in the North and himself in
the South. For information on Ma’in Abu Sitta I need to
see the relatives of Shaykh Sulayman al-Sani’, particularly
Shaykh Mahmud al-Sani’, the son of his brother
Abdallah. The sword he had presented Bar-Lev with he
had purchased in Gaza and had it smuggled into Israel.
He then treated me to a heap of Zionist platitudes.
He was, of course, for a two-state solution, and against
extremists “on both sides”. Israel had the right to exist
on its own territory. Everybody sold lands to the Jews,
he claimed. He was committed to peace and lived with
the Jews in their kibbutzim (kubaniyya). For this he had
his life threatened by Arab “extremists”. His khal Sa’id
Ibn Sa’id sided with the Thuwwar (rebels).
Before taking my leave I made sure Shaykh ‘Awda
had a fair idea about my politics, and little doubt of my
support of the Palestinian Right of Return.
Shaykh Mahmud
December 2005 to March 2006 I spent away from
Israel on private and public business: birthdays, funerals,
lectures, law-suits and more. I did not get around to
interviewing Shaykh Mahmud Abdallah al-Sani, therefore,
until the middle of March 2006.
Shaykh Mahmud Abdallah al-Sani’s community,
Ashirat Tarabin al-Sani’, has been transferred for the
second or the third time now. They were first transferred
from their tribal lands in the Western Negev in
the Shalala region and relocated east of Beersheba in the
wake of the 1948-49 war. Their vast and fertile lands
were then handed over to the kibbutzim and moshavim
of the Eshkol and Merhavim Regional Councils and to
Ofaqim development town (built on the site of Amara).
As Moshav Omer progressively became the favorite resi-

dential area for Beersheba’s Jewish middle and uppermiddle
class, so it found the proximity of the Tarabin al-
Sani’s shanty town increasingly intolerable. Rather than
revise its apartheid foundation and incorporate the
Tarabin al-Sani’ into the municipality’s jurisdiction and
offer it the advantages of the advanced infra-structure of
Omer, the authorities resolved to remove the aesthetic
sore by relocating Tarabin al-Sani’ yet again. This time
the transfer was to the vicinity of Geva’ot Bar, a nascent
community (again for Jews only)—but only recently
established, on or adjacent to the lands of the al-Uqbi
tribe (al-‘Araqib), and not yet as attractive to the
Beersheba middle and upper-middle class as Omer.
I arrived at Tarabin al-Sani’ towards 17:00 and was
directed to the corrugated tin compound of Shaykh
Mahmud. He had been given advance notice of my
approach by a swift hoard of his and his neighbours’
children and grandchildren. So, by the time I had parked
my red VW Beetle next to the compound, he was outside,
dressed in a white galabiyya, greeting me with a
broad smile, imbedded in a full white beard. An elderly
man, four years my senior (born 1939) very much a part
of the Bedouin collaborator network (comprising, inter
alia, of those who identify Benni Meitive, Sasson Bar-Zvi
and Shaykh ‘Awda Ibn Mu’ammar as wonderful people)
that has caused so much damage to its own people and
beyond.
He had not seen Hussein Abu Sitta’s sword, and as
far as he was aware it did not pass through the hands of
any member of his family. But Nissim Kazzaz of Moshav
Omer, inter alia former Military Governor of the Khan
Younis District in the occupied Gaza Strip, might have
it. Like the late Haim Bar-Lev, Kazzaz had a famous collection
of swords and daggers at home. Shaykh Mahmud
saw the collection with his own eyes at Kazzaz’s home in
Omer. Maybe the Hussein Abu Sitta sword formed a
part of the collection.
Having ordered coffee to be served, and it being
close to sunset, Shaykh Mahmud begged permission to
take his leave and go to the mosque for evening prayer
(maghrib). During his absence I got Nissim Kazzaz’s telephone
number in Omer through the Bezeq telephone
directory enquiries.
Nissim (1)
By 18:00 I was on the telephone to Nissim Kazzaz,
properly introducing myself as an anthropologist
researching the 1948 history of the Nir Yitzhaq - Ma’in
Abu Sitta region. He asked me what specifically did I
want, and I said I was particularly interested in a cultural
artifact of the area, notably the Salman Abu Sitta sword.
I explained that I was directed to him and his collection
of swords in the course of a series of interviews conducted
in search of the Abu Sitta sword. I gave him a
rough outline of the series of interviews I had already
conducted, but did not mention Shaykh Mahmud as my
immediate reference. I then asked whether he would
allow me have a look at his sword collection and maybe
take photographs.
Nissim Kazzaz was uncooperative, even hostile. He
claimed to have disposed of the collection among friends,
including Bedouin friends; and said that he had only one
sword remaining in his home. And no, I could not see
the sword. He had no interest and no time for such
things. Full stop.
Shaykh Mahmud returned from the mosque and I
took my leave heading for al-Hura, where I was offered
hospitality by the people of the al-Urbi tribe who were
expelled from their lands in the Araqib, also adjacent to
the newly established Geva’ot Bar settlement.
I had barely arrived at my destination when the
phone rang. It was Nissim Kazzaz.
Nissim (2)
At 19:30 Nissim Kazzaz phoned of his own volition
—now much more conciliatory. I wondered what
changed his attitude in the span of an hour and a half. It
could be that his curiosity had gotten the better of him,
or he might have inquired with his contacts who this Dr.
Davis might be, and decided to give it a second go.
Kazzaz asked me again who I was and what specifically
did I want, and I repeated the above adding a reference
to the Universities of Durham and Exeter. It took
Kazzaz time to distinguish the place name Ma’in Abu
Sitta from the name Mu’in Abu Sitta. Eventually he got
it. He had known the Khan Yunis Abu Sittas of course,
in his capacity as Military Governor of the District. He
knew an Abu Sitta who was a foreign minister in
Morocco (Muhammad Abu Sitta, leader of the Istiqlal
politicl party), but he knew no Abu Sitta from Ma’in
Abu Sitta.
Kazzaz heard me through and then said that he had
in fact given away his collection. However, he had kept
two swords. I asked whether he would allow me to take
photographs of them. He said he would not, and asked
how would I recognize the sword I was after. I said that
in order to affect identification I would have to consult
my references again and come back with specific marks.
“Do that”, he said, “and I’ll do my best to help you”.
In the context of the exchange above I mentioned that
retired General Avraham Adan, nicknamed Bren, was
good enough to scan the photograph of Hussein Abu
Sitta wearing the sword in question. As far as Kazzaz
was concerned that was a good start, and we had agreed
I would send him the Adan material by email. He gave
me his email, reasserting his willingness to assist. I sent
him Adan’s photographs the following day.
Coda
I am indebted to Salman Abu Sitta for introducing
me to the journey chronicled above, and I am saddened
that he has not been able to follow the route himself.
Alas, Salman and his fellow Palestine refugees of 1948
will have to wait until such a time as the Israeli apartheid
48

legislation is revoked and replaced with a democratic
constitution. Until this reform is undertaken in our
beloved Palestine, as it was in South Africa, the absent
subject of this story, Salman Abu Sitta and his approximately
five million fe llow 1948 Palestine refugees are
legally barred from approaching this most revealing
path. Today they are classified as “absentees” under
Israel’s Absentees’ Property Law of 1950.
Until such a time, they are barred from meeting the
rainbow of people who have come my way—engaging in
the telephone research and face-to-face encounters that
have so enriched my individual and professional experience.
Together we have been negotiating the setbacks,
tensing up at the prospects of a breakthrough, coming to
terms with the disappointments, feeling the shock of
outrage and aching in situ at so much unnecessary cruelty.
Colonial greed and political Zionist apartheid in
Israel have resulted in so much unnecessary cruelty to an
indigenous people—the Palestinian Arab people.
This journal is offered as a contribution towards
Salman Abu Sitta’s return together with all of the 1948
Palestine refugees and their repossession of the titles to
their properties inside the State of Israel. I can think of
no better way of commemorating my tribal festival of
Passover 2006 than to proffer this narrative as a gift to
Salman, hoping that it may even be published.
And I can think of no better way of concluding this narrative
than to beg that anyone with any information that
could possibly lead to Shaykh Hussein Abu Sitta’s sword
and books, kindly contact me at uridavis@actcom.co.il
Acknowledgements
Special thanks are due to Salman Abu Sitta for providing
me with information on 1948 histories, geographies
and biographies; to Revital Sella for the superb
editing of the draft manuscript; and to Shelly Nativ for
proofreading and initial editing of the first drafts, and
for her most helpful and perceptive comments
. Additional thanks are due to all the persons mentioned
in this narrative who extended to me their goodwill
and allocated much of their time to talking to me.
Needless to say that this journey would not have otherwise
taken the turns here recorded. Also needless to say
that I have only myself to blame for any errors that may
have occurred in the course of this narrative.
49
About the Author
Dr. Uri Davis is an anthropologist born in Jerusalem
in 1943. He has been at the forefront of the defence of
human rights, notably Palestinian rights, since 1965 and
has pioneered critical research on Zionism and Israel
since the mid-1970s. He has published extensively in
these fields, including Israel: An Apartheid State (Zed
Books, London 1987 & 1990; abridged edition, MRN,
Laudium, 2001); Citizenship and the State: Comparative
Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine,
Syria and Lebanon (Ithaca Press, Reading, 1997);
Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and
Applications (co-ed) (Syracuse University Press, 2000) and
most recently Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle
Within (Zed Books, London, 2003)..
Dr. Davis is a member of the Middle East Regional
Committee of the international journal Citizenship
Studies; Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of
Arab & Islamic Studies (IAIS), University of Exeter and
Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Middle
Eastern & Islamic Studies (IMEIS), University of
Durham; Chairperson of AL-BEIT: Association for the
Defence of Human Rights in Israel and MAIAP:
Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine; founding
member and Senior Director for Legal and Political
Affairs, Mosaic Communities: Multinational Housing
Cooperative in Israel: and Observer-Member of the
Palestine National Council (PNC).
Correction:
In the “Contributors” page of the print version of
this journal, we stated that, “Uri Davis is an Israeli
anthropologist.” On seeing this entry, Dr. Davis sent us an
email in which he wrote:
“I am NOT an ‘Israeli anthropologist.’
I am an anthropologist, citizen of the alleged constitutional
monarchy of the United Kingdom and the apartheid
State of Israel.
Should you require slightly a shorter label: I am a
Palestinian-Hebrew anthropologist of dual Israeli and UK
citizenship.”
We apologize for the error. - (Ed.)