Last update - 00:00 20/09/2007
How amateur astronomers helped Israel win the War of Independence
By Yuval Azoulay
In the garden of his home in Tel Aviv's Zahala neighborhood, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, Mordechai Gihon described the battle he waged at the end of the War of Independence to obtain medals for members of the Haganah's astronomers unit. "I think it's a shame that in the end, they failed to receive an award," said the former intelligence officer of the Haganah, a pre-state Jewish underground. "They deserved it."
Every week, Rinat Sagi arrives in Gihon's home to plumb his memories for the book she is writing about him with her colleague, Effi Melzer. Gihon opens albums that reveal black-and-white photographs and original drafts that he prepared during his stint as a Haganah officer in the astronomers unit. Every picture in the album depicts another story from a different period of Israeli history.
The story of the astronomers unit - amateur astronomers who assisted the Haganah in gathering intelligence about the Arab Legion's movements in and around Jerusalem - still rouses Gihon, an 85-year-old professor, archaeologist and historian, to enthusiasm.
"It all began one morning in the fall of 1947, when David Zaichik came to see me," he recalled. "He introduced himself as an amateur astronomer and said that he could help us with his telescopes. We tried it and discovered that his telescopes permitted us to see deep into enemy territory, 100 times better than we had in the past. But the problem was that the field of vision was very narrow, because the instruments were created to observe stars. We thought that if we placed the telescopes in higher locations, with overlapping points of view, we could get more definitive pictures, and that proved true."
About 30 amateur astronomers from Jerusalem were enlisted by Gihon and Zaichik to observe enemy positions from hills, towers and tall buildings in the city. The astronomers, who worked in shifts throughout the day, provided daily close-ups of Arab Legion positions at a level of definition that permitted the identification of firing apertures and gun barrels pointed at Jewish forces. Close-ups of Arab Legion soldiers were of a quality that made it possible to discern their facial features.
The voluntary unit had no official title or number. The Haganah referred to the astronomers as "Zaichik's people." Zaichik, a botany professor, directed its operations.
Lenses were trained on Ramallah, Beit Jalla, the Old City of Jerusalem and other sites where Arab forces were concentrated. "I could see as far as the outskirts of Ramallah with regular binoculars, but that didn't help me, because most of the Arab forces were inside the city," Gihon recalled. "With those telescopes, we saw deep into Ramallah. We even saw soldiers sitting and reading from a piece of paper."
"Zaichik's people" honed their operations over time: They attached cameras to the telescopes and produced more detailed pictures for intelligence officers. "They did not provide us with an abundance of pictures, but what they did photograph was highly interesting," Gihon said.
He recalled how volunteers from the astronomers unit climbed tall posts to attach their telescopes. "It was a superb engineering mission. They were over 40 years old, and they had to climb these columns that were a few dozen meters high very carefully, because their equipment was fragile. They manned their posts faithfully. Even when it was winter and bitterly cold, they continued their activities. And because they had never served in the military, it was very difficult for us to equip them with stocking caps and other military equipment. We had to employ all kinds of shady tricks to provide them with appropriate clothing. They were the eyes of Jerusalem during those days."