Mishmar HaYarden (משמר הירדן)―meaning "Guardian of the Jordan"―was a moshava (a rural Jewish settlement of the Old Yishuv). It is situated on the hillside, directly above and west of the Daughters of Jacob Bridge. Amber and I visited on a rainy day in December. A tapestry of sorrow, one of whose threads is represented by the Grabovsky family, ran through what we saw and learned, as you will read.
In 1884, Mordecai Isaac Lubowsky immigrated from Boston and who until then had been living peacefully in Boston, decided to immigrate to the Land of Israel. He bought a large plot of land near the River Jordan from the Abu family―a Jewish family of Algerian extract who came to Palestine in 1817―and established a private farm, named Shoshanat HaYarden ("Lily of the Jordan"). After he realized that he could not maintain the isolated farm, he sold a portion to a group of ten laborers’ families from Galilee communities, led by Moshe David Shuv of Rosh Pina. They settled the land with financial support from Hovevei Zion, and with the help of the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA), the community thrived, expanding, in 1898, to include the moshava of Hevrat Yaka. By 1901 there were twelve families on 7,600 dunams (1,900 acres). The community covered an area on both sides of the Tzfat (Safed) to Damascus road (now Route 91). At the time of the 1922 census, its population was ninety people though, by 1931, this had declined to sixty-five people. Today the remains of the moshava's northern street is preserved in a grove on the northern side of the highway, under the auspices of the Jewish National Fund JNF-KKL.
During the 1930s, the settlement received reinforcements from the Betar movement―the Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 by Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky . During the Arab uprising, the settlement was harassed and lost almost all its Arab labour, with the Betar youth taking their place. In 1938 came the first sorrow involving the Grabovsky family, who I mentioned at the outset. On 26 July, after Arabs had destroyed the water facilities within their community, Chayim Grabovsky and his son, Menachem, drove their wagon down to a spring beside the River Jordan. On the way back, Arabs who were lying in ambush opened fire upon them. Chayim pushed his son off the wagon and shouted to him to hide, while he himself continued to fight, though injured, breaking a rifle belonging to one of his attackers. Other members of the moshava, having heard the shots, arrived to find the son dead and his father mortally wounded. Chayim managed to gasp out the name of one of the murderers before expiring, on the way to hospital in Tiberias, still believing that he had managed to save his son’s life. We will come back to the Grabovsky family once more.
The Arabs attacked again later that year, but the local police Jewish broke the attack. Betar members conducted military training at the moshava but, after this became known to the British, they carried out a raid on 18 November 1939, with Betar members banished until the late 1940s.
But with the coming of the War of Independence, little did the residents of Mishmar HaYarden imagine their fate. After unsuccessfully attacking Israel in the Jordan Valley in the War of Independence, the Syrians moved their efforts to the north, to Mishmar HaYarden which, at that time, comprised twenty-five families. On 6 June 1948, the Syrian army―under Taufiq Bashour―attacked the settlement with infantry, armoured units, artillery and from the air. However the attack was successfully repelled by the defenders’ fire, with artillery support from the newly formed Oded Brigade of the Haganah―responsible for the eastern-Upper Galilee region―stationed at Mahanayim, about five kilometres to the southwest.
On 10 June, the attack was resumed, accompanied by tanks. The Syrians' penetration from the east surprised the defenders, who only discovered their presence at about 01:00. Throughout the night bloody hand-to-hand combat took place between the few defenders and the Syrian forces. Both internal communication and external communication with the headquarters of the 11th Battalion in Rosh Pina was cut off.
Towards the end of the battle, most of the defenders were concentrated in the basement of one of the houses where the headquarters was located. At 11:00 the defenders informed an officer of the Syrian army of their surrender and, by noon, Mishmar HaYarden was captured and destroyed. Fourteen combatants―including members of the moshava, members of the Irgun, and reinforcements from other settlements in the area―fell during the last battle. Thirty-four men and eight women were taken into Syrian captivity. Twelve of them were injured, one dying from his injuries in Syrian captivity; the rest remained prisoners of the Syrians for thirteen months. Nine combatants successfully escaped through the fields and arrived in Rosh Pina.
The Syrians tried to take advantage of their success at Mishmar HaYarden, in order to advance westwards and cut off the "Finger of the Galilee". The Oded Brigade, assisted by reinforcements, succeeded in blocking the Syrian advance, despite fierce fighting which took place despite the ceasefire that went into effect on 11 June.
On July 20th, 1948 an armistice agreement was signed, and through it the remaining prisoners of Mishmar HaYarden were returned to Israel, and the Syrians retreated from the moshava to eastern side of the Jordan. The fallen soldiers were buried in a mass grave in Rosh Pina. The moshava was not rebuilt. Kibbutz Gadot was later built on its land, along with a workers' moshav, originally named Bnei Tzfat, which was later renamed Mishmar HaYarden, in remembrance of the moshava. Today the moshava is thus often referred to as Old Mishmar HaYarden.
One among the fallen was Karmi Grabovsky, the second son of Chayim Grabovsky, who we met already. Karmi was killed before his mother, Rivka’s eyes. She is quoted in a family book, Three Days in Sivan. Rivka was among thos captured by the Syrians.
“Karmi was sitting on a metal drum behind a balcony… the Syrians thought that one of their own people had taken up a position there and they began to move towards him. That was when Karmi let fly with a salvo of shots that brought some of them down. I begged him, ‘Let’s get out of here, they’ll catch you,’ but he insisted, ‘I’m not moving until the reinforcements arrive.’”
The memorial pictured above quotes the opening words of the poem Mishmar HaYarden, written by Naftali Herz Imber―composer of HaTikva―which Israel Zangwill was to translate into English. Imber wrote the poem after his visit to the moshava.
Let the trumpet be blown,
Let the standard be flown!
Now set we our watch. . . .
Our watchword, “The Sword of our Land
and our Lord!”
On Jordan now set we our watch. . . .
The loss and destruction of Mishmar HaYarden is in dispute by historians, seemingly arising from friction between the Irgun and the Haganah over military authority in the region at the time. The Irgun, and descendants of community residents, claim that the arrival of the 23rd unit of the Karmeli Brigade, which was intended to strengthen the defense of the settlement, was stopped by the Oded Brigade of the Haganah, because the moshava identified with the revisionist movement. It is also alleged that Haganah forces stopped Irgun soldiers from arriving to help the moshava. On the other hand, the Oded Brigade claimed that the Karmeli Brigade did not manage to reach the moshava from the western Galilee front in time to reorganize.
Some of the destroyed houses in the moshava are visible today. They form part of a memorial on the location of the northern street of the moshava, on the northern side of route 91. The military police established a base―now deserted and slated for conservation and the construction of a museum of the history of the settlement―on the southern side of the highway.
About half a kilometre to the south of the Mishmar HaYarden memorial is the old cemetery of the moshava, preserved by the descendants. It contains several dozen graves and a large rock which commemorates the first pioneers to settle in Galilee.
After an interesting, yet sad and haunting visit, as we stood in the cemetery, we were blessed with a reminder of G-d's covenant with the world in the form of a rainbow over Mishmar HaYarden.
You can read about more sites nearby in my posts on Ateret Fortress and B'not Ya'acov & customs houses.
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