The Gates of Zion (56 page)

“Which rock did you hide under?” snarled David as they reached the wingtip of the plane.

Hassan bellowed with rage and slammed the gun barrel down hard on David’s shoulder, breaking his collarbone and sending him to his knees. “Insolent!” he shouted. “Insolent Jew! But it is I, Ibrahim Hassan, who is the victor now.” His breathing was labored with fury. He looked toward Ellie and Howard and the Sten gun that lay on the seat of the open cockpit. “Young woman,” he said smoothly, “if you would be so kind? Carefully remove the weapon and drop it to the ground. One false move and you are instantly dead.”

Ellie sidled to the door, and holding one hand above her head, she took the gun from the cockpit and lowered it to the ground.

Hassan walked to the door, peering in at Moshe, who lay across two backseats, nearly unconscious. “We meet again, Moshe,” he sneered.

“Perhaps for the last time?”

“Hell is not deep enough for you to hide, Hassan.” Moshe coughed as Shaul snarled from the rear of the cabin.

Hassan quickly stepped back. Then, eyeing the leashed dog, he cocked his gun and raised it toward Moshe’s head, meeting his eyes with cold hatred. An instant later he lowered the gun barrel. “No,”

he said with a cruel smile. “You shall die last. As I have died, slowly died inside. You shall see those you love fall around you and writhe in agony.” He turned his gaze toward Howard. “On your knees, fat man!” he screamed, knocking Howard to the ground.

“No!” cried Ellie. “Please don’t!”

“You are next, woman!” Hassan’s voice rose and cracked with hatred. He shoved her roughly to her knees beside Howard and raised the barrel of the gun.

Shaul lunged against the rope, and it snapped just below the knot. He jumped from the cockpit and hit Hassan just as he pulled the trigger of the gun. The shot went wild as, fangs bared, Shaul slammed Hassan against the ground.

“Help me!” screamed Hassan.

Howard grabbed the gun that Hassan had dropped and scrambled to his feet. Ellie turned her head away as Shaul tore at the throat of the man who had attacked her so many weeks ago. In seconds Hassan’s shrieks faded to a gurgle, and Shaul stood proudly over the body.

“Get in,” Howard said in a barely audible voice. “Don’t look at him.

Just get in.”

Ellie ducked beneath the plane and climbed in from the opposite side.

Howard helped David to his feet. “Can you still fly this thing?”

David staggered against him. “Flew all the way to England once with a busted leg,” he gasped, as Howard helped him into the cockpit and placed the scrolls in after.

“Get us out of here,” said Howard, his eyes on four Jihad Moquades who now lined the top of the rock wall. He jumped in as the engine coughed to a roar and the plane began to roll up the highway.

“Shaul!” Ellie shouted to the dog. “Come on, boy!”

The Arabs raised their rifles, and bullets popped all around where the dog still stood over his victim. He spun instantly and ran after the plane. Howard held the door wide as Shaul ran alongside. “Come on boy! You can make it!”

With a mighty leap, Shaul cleared the ground, landing squarely on Howard’s lap.

The wheels of the plane cleared the top of Mar Elias Monastery, and they slowly spiraled upward, out of range of the bullets of the Jihad Moquades.

Epilogue

In a quiet hallway at Hadassah Hospital, Ellie sipped coffee as she awaited word on Moshe’s surgery. Howard had already taken Rachel and Yacov back home from the bedside of their grandfather to a much-needed rest, and David slept in a room on the floor below.

Ellie reached into her coat pocket in hopes of finding a handkerchief.

Instead her fingers closed around the small package that Miriam had given her. She pulled it out and placed it on her leg. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was eight o’clock in the evening. Ellie closed her eyes and imagined her mother and father and brothers gathered around the Christmas tree opening their gifts. “It’s morning back home,” she said quietly. “Christmas morning, Miriam, and I’m thinking of you.”

She carefully unwrapped the package, smiling softly as the intricately carved, olivewood cover of a small Bible emerged from the red paper. She traced her name carved beneath a cross covered with tiny rosebuds. The old woman had had it made especially for her. She opened the cover and recognized Miriam’s cramped handwriting.

Little Ellie,

And so you are home this Christmas in peace and safety among
those you love. On this day as you remember us, I wish to pass
along a gift I received so very long ago. It is a promise that has
never dimmed and never changed. You will find it in the book of
Romans, chapter the eighth, the verses thirty-five through thirty-nine. I was young once and wondered as you do. Now I am old and I
doubt no longer. So I give this gift to you. With much love for you in
this old heart, I wish you Merry Christmas.

Miriam

Ellie smiled tenderly and touched Miriam’s name with her index finger. She wondered now what her life would have been if she had gone home to the safety of California. If Uncle Howard had sent a short note explaining Miriam’s death. If she had not stood on the deck of the
Ave Maria
and wept as the old boat ran aground. If she had not seen Rachel touch the face of Yacov and call him Brother… .

Would she ever have known that God’s love was bigger than heartache?

Ellie laughed aloud at the foolishness of her thought. Once she had doubted that God could ever stay in a place like Jerusalem; now she wondered if she ever would have found Him in Los Angeles.

“But You’re even in LA, aren’t You?” she whispered with a smile.

“Merry Christmas,” she said as she opened her little gift and read the promise.

Digging Deeper into

The Gates of Zion

“God says our lifetime is not much more than a breath of wind. In all of eternity we are a tiny second, the blink of God’s eye. Still, He sees us and cares for us. And He’s got a reason for our being here.”

—Howard Moniger, archaeologist (p. 120)

Do you ever wonder if God has a reason for your life? a plan that only you can fulfill?

You are not alone. At times we all question how life works and what role we play in the grand scheme of the universe.

In the fall of 1947 a fragment of the Jews of Europe, like Rachel Lubetkin, had survived the horrors of concentration camps. These remaining Jews had one hope: to reach their true home in Jerusalem.

Yet many who managed to reach there in the Aliyah, the great migration, were interned in barbed-wire cages. Others became targets of Arab terrorism. After all they had suffered, they wondered what God was doing. But the very fact they had survived was in itself a miracle.

As Moshe Sachar, archaeologist and secret Haganah member says, “There are so many things I do not understand, yet I believe that just beyond my understanding lies the answer. God says that we will be a nation once again. I do not understand how we have survived the oppression of two thousand years of Christian and Muslim hatred, yet we stand on the brink of statehood. Therefore, what God said through the prophets must be truth. Perhaps my duty is to find the promises, and in those I will find truth for my existence” (p. 193).

Dear reader, that is what we are asking you to do. If you long to know the plan for your life, the “truth for your existence,” and to find your true home, why not examine Scripture for yourself? Who knows? You, too, may be part of a miracle!

Just as Yacov and Rachel were—brother and sister who had assumed each other was dead and then were reunited.

As Ellie was—a young woman who had no cause to live for until she faced death firsthand.

As David was—a fighter pilot who had never understood his father’s faith until he became involved with the Haganah.

And as Moshe was—a university professor who played a significant role in bringing Jews secretly to their Promised Land.

We trust that the following questions will help you dig deeper for answers to your daily dilemmas. You may wish to delve into these questions on your own or share them with a friend or a discussion group. But most of all, we pray that you will “discover the Truth through fiction.” For we are convinced that if you seek diligently, you will find the One who holds all the answers to the universe (1

Chronicles 28:9).

Bodie
& Brock Thoene

SEEK …

Prologue

1. When have you worried about the fate of a loved one, as Simon did (see p. vii)? What was the situation?

2. Simon knew that the brutal Roman legions were nearing Qumran, which would mean his death. If you, like Simon, had only a few days to complete “urgent work” (p. viii) before you die, what would be most important to you to accomplish?

3. “We have another way to fight against those who say there is no God in Zion. Though we all descend to the grave and Israel be empty, God still lives” (the prophet Isaiah, p. ix).

Do you believe these statements to be true?

God still lives, even if men die.

Even in the midst of death and destruction, God can fulfill His promises.

Why or why not?

PART I

Chapters 1–2

4. “Ellie believed little of religion for herself. Indeed, she had rarely thought deeply enough to even come to the right questions” (p.

10).

How much do you believe of “religion”? In your quiet moments, what questions about Yeshua or Jesus come to your mind?

5. “These people were survivors—
the survivors
of Auschwitz, Ravensbruk, and Birkenau—places where millions of men, women, and children had died simply because they were Jews.

They had faced starvation, forced labor, brutality, and torture— because they were Jews. Ultimately they succumbed to the gas chambers, the ovens, and the anonymity of mass graves—because they were Jews” (p. 11).

The Holocaust was horrific and unconscionable. Its devastating effects will be felt upon generations of those who suffered, those who participated, and those who stood by and watched. Sadly, this is not the only time in history that the Jews or other people groups have suffered. Can you think of another time or times in history when people suffered simply because of who they were? What was the situation?

6. Moshe Sachar led a dangerous double life: “blockade runner by night, archaeologist and scholar by day” (p. 14). Have you ever felt like two people, and no one knows the real you? When?

7. “There was no running. There was only the shred of hope that by some miracle the gunboat would pass by them without seeing.

God of Abraham,
Moshe prayed,
remember us
” (p. 19).

When the British gunboats dash toward the
Ave Maria,
Moshe’s hopes sink. Yet he hopes and prays for a miracle … and is granted one, although totally different form what he would have imagined!

Have you experienced an unexpected miracle? If so, when? What happened?

Chapters 3–4

8. “We try to live in the ways of peace. We wait for Messiah, Yacov. Until He establishes Israel, we cannot be a nation. There can only be more killing. This Partition is a nasty business for everyone.

Christians will die, Muslims and Jews as well. It is a nasty business” (Rabbi Lebowitz, p. 29).

“Many of us here in Palestine believe in the Christ. He is the Messiah. When there is once again a nation of Israel, He must return, and perhaps soon… . But this fellow Haj Amin Husseini, he hates all who stand by the promises for Israel… . The Mufti will not rest until the Jews are driven into the sea, until Jerusalem is capital of the United Arab Nation of Palestine. No Jews” (Ishmael, pp. 34–35, 36).

“After four years in a world war fighting Nazis, [David] could end up getting his tail shot off over a piece of real estate no bigger than Rhode Island” (p. 42).

“When and if the British do indeed give up the Mandate, they will leave in their wake a vacuum―not a vacuum of promises or pronouncements, but a vacuum of military power… . No doubt Haj Amin Husseini will be first in line to fill that vacuum with his own power. It is my guess that he will not wait until the British pull out to begin chipping away at the territory granted to us for a Jewish homeland” (David Ben-Gurion, p. 81).

What light do these comments shed on your understanding of the country of Israel and the city of Jerusalem today? Why are these places so important to both Jews and Arabs? Why have they been such a hotbed of killings, car bombings, etc., for generations? Why can the two races not simply share the land, as those who voted for Partition in November 1947 believed they should?

9. If you lived in Jerusalem in November 1947 and had to become part of one of these four groups, which group would you be a part of, and why? (See chapter 4 for explanations of these groups.) Christian Arab

Muslim Arab

Zionist

Traditional Jew

10. “Ellie … was so unsure herself about what she felt or what she really believed. Her folks had always been so certain of everything. The world was full of right and wrong, justice and injustice, truth and falsehood. There were no gray areas, no maybes.

Ellie had felt exactly as they had until she had fallen in love with David. Then there was no more right or wrong, only him and their love—or what she had thought was love… .

“No one could tell by looking how changed she was. Her mother and father mailed the packages to someone who really no longer existed, thinking all the time that she was still their ‘little girl.’ She didn’t begrudge them that; she simply did not see any reason to tell them any different. No one needed to know what she carried in her soul.

Those secrets were hers. And maybe God’s, if He still happened to be interested. She wasn’t even sure she believed that anymore, either. And maybe it didn’t matter anyway. Nothing could ever give her back what she had lost. Nothing could take the gray away from her life” (p. 38–39).