Meir was in charge of communications in the area. The settlers kept in contact through cell-phones and radio. A van made hourly rounds around Hevron and up to the settlement city of Kiriat Arba and back. Even though surrounded by seventy-thousand Arabs, Meir didn’t carry a gun. Did a man carry a gun in his own house? Hevron had been the home of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. The first piece of land he had purchased in the Holy Land was in Hevron, recorded in the Bible for all the world to see. Hevron was the first capital of David’s kingship. Jews had lived there for three-thousand years until the Massacre of 1929 wiped out the Jewish population. Now Jews were returning and rebuilding. For Meir, it wasn’t a matter of politics. It wasn’t even a matter of history. Hevron was simply his. He felt it in his bones, in his blood, in the air he breathed. It was like all of the Land of Israel – a part of his body, as integral to him as his heart. When reporters came to ask questions, he had nothing elaborate to say. The Arabs? He didn’t hate them. They were people. G-d had created them too. But when they wanted to kill him; when they wanted to injure his wife and his children and tell him he couldn’t live in his very own land; yes, he wasn’t embarrassed to say that he hated that.
Today was Meir’s day off, a day to work on his garden and on the upkeep of the yishuv – the caravans, the plumbing, the water tanks and emergency generator – something always had to be fixed. The tiny patch of garden, two-meters square, was Meir’s great joy. He had planted it with shoshanot. Beautiful red and yellow roses. From skinny twigs, they had grown and blossomed atop the barren hillside, turning the words of the Prophet to reality; “And they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them. They shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no longer be plucked up out of the land which I have given them, says the Lord, thy G-d.”
Was there a better reason in the world to sing, Meir thought, and he sang. He sang songs of Carlebach. He sang songs of Zion. He sang of the redemption and of the return to the land. He gazed at his five healthy rose bushes and the big round flowers that grinned like happy faces in the sun. The soldier in the guard tower heard Meir singing and smiled. Meir’s pregnant wife, Sarah, smiled in the caravan doorway. For her, living in Shoshana wasn’t easy. It was a hard life, sometimes a scary life, but it was worth it to hear Meir sing.
The young couple were eating breakfast and listening to the radio news, when the soldier in the tower yelled out, “Meir!” In a second, the alert settler was standing outside, poised for action.
“Your roses,” the soldier said with a frown.
Meir glanced at his garden. A jackass stood in the small patch, his front legs squashing two tulip bulbs. His mouth opened wide and he chomped a rose off of its stem. Meir watched the beautiful flower disappear down the animal’s throat. “HEE HAW,” the beast brayed. Meir yelled out and ran toward the jackass. The creature gave a small hop, then stood, unmoving, indifferent, prehistorically dumb.
“He only ate one bush,” the soldier said, walking over.
Meir stared at the naked bush in anguish. The jackass licked its lips. It was big as jackasses go, with an escort of flies, a flea-bitten hide, and a noticeable stink.
“The roses will grow back,” Meir’s wife said, hoping to calm him.
“Sorry I didn’t see him sooner,” the soldier said.
“It’s good it wasn’t a terrorist,” remarked Johnny, the American settler from his caravan doorway. He was forever finding fault with the army security in the area.
Meir still hadn’t spoken. “What are you going to do?” his wife asked.
“I say let’s kill it,” Johnny said.
Like many American settlers, Johnny opted for the instant solution. He was a product of microwave ovens and disposable dishes. Meir wasn’t as rash. Though he wasn’t a Torah scholar, Meir reasoned that before any punitive action could be taken, he had to deliver a warning. Johnny, for all of his well-meant idealism, had been influenced by too many cowboy movies.