‘My thoughts and heart are always in Israel – it’s the country that I fought for’

Recently, a friend of Aron’s from his synagogue contacted the JC suggesting that we hear Aron’s life story from the man himself.

And as I learnt over the course of two hours with Aron, liberating the Old City was far from the only major event in Israel’s nascent history that he was directly involved in.

He was born in Jerusalem, then part of British Mandate Palestine, in 1928. At 14, he joined Maccabi Tzair, a Zionist youth organisation. The following year, he and his peers were recruited to the Haganah underground paramilitary organisation, where they began training as fighters.

“We trained under the noses of the British and hid the arms that we used,” Aron recounted. “I learnt to use a gun, a pistol, a rifle. We were training to face the day that we would need to fight whoever it was.”

That day would soon come, but before that, in 1946, Aron witnessed the King David Hotel bombing.

Aron described growing up subject to maltreatment from the British – who would ‘slap Jews and shout “you f****** Jew”’ – and pogroms from the Arabs

“We were training on Mount Scopus and suddenly heard an explosion,” he said. “We saw smoke coming from around the area of the hotel. It turned out that the Irgun dressed someone as a milkman and brought dynamite to the hotel, stored it in the basement, and ran away.”

The Irgun, who were far more extreme than the Haganah, targeted the King David Hotel because it housed the British administrative headquarters.

Aron described growing up subject to maltreatment from the British – who would “slap Jews and shout ‘you f****** Jew’” – and pogroms from the Arabs. He remembered one in 1929 in Safed and Hebron, “where they slaughtered Jews left, right, and centre”.

Midway through 1947, Aron began working for Barclays Bank in Jerusalem, but months later, he was called back to the Haganah when the UN voted in November to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, and a civil war began.

“I was only two or three months into a job that I wanted so much, but I found myself as a guard in the Haganah to prevent the Arabs coming to attack the Jews in Jerusalem,” he said.

Aron spent months stationed at different entrance points to West Jerusalem. One day, he recalled a man coming to snap a photo of him and another soldier. At the time, he didn’t think much of it.

On 14 May, 1948, while at his post in the no man’s land area of Jerusalem, near Jaffa Gate, Aron turned on his radio.

“When David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state, I was listening to the radio, and I can tell you, it was emotional. We knew that if he declared a state, the Arab armies would definitely attack, so he took a great gamble,” Aron explained.

That they did, and once Israel had declared independence, the war between the two separate states began. “Many of my friends got killed then, including one of my relatives,” Aron said.

The war, which lasted until March 10, 1949, was punctuated by several truces. Aron mentioned a sentiment scarcely discussed about Israel’s early years – that without the second of those truces, during which Russia orchestrated a significant sale of Czechoslovakian arms to Israel, its fate could have been quite different.

“Israel was on the verge of collapse because seven armies attacked it,” he said. “When the truce came, we started breathing, knowing that it saved Israel.”

During the latter part of the war, a fellow soldier called him into their commander’s office and gestured at a calendar on the desk. Above the dates for a week in January 1949 was the photo of him and his fellow soldier from the early part of the war – taken by legendary Israeli photojournalist David Rubinger – above a poignant Torah verse about protecting Jerusalem. It was a powerful moment for Aron.

The image of Aron and a fellow soldier, taken by David Rubinger, which he ripped out from the 1949 calendar in his commander's office (Photo: Ben Conway)[Missing Credit]

“My pride for serving is endless,” he said. “We grew up with the British, saw how the British police behaved, how the Arabs hated us, and knew that the only safe place where the Jews could have a home was in Israel. And I just happened to be there to witness the establishment of my own country which I love so much.”

Following his two-and-a-half years officially in the Haganah, which had by then been absorbed into the IDF, Aron went back to Barclays, where he moved quickly up the ranks – “from the edge of the desk to the assistant general manager in Israel”, he said.

He continued to serve in the reserves, as a communications officer – including a stint under former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who was “an amazing, tough person” – and he served during the Sinai War in 1956, although he was posted on the central front while the war raged in the south of Israel.

A comparably calmer decade followed, until one evening in 1967, when Aron and his first wife were entertaining three British inspectors from Barclays for Friday night dinner – “they usually invited themselves”, Aron said.

“Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, two soldiers and a Jeep, and they said: ‘Aron, get your kit and come with us,’” he recounted.

“I ended up in the headquarters of my unit, and I stayed there for three weeks, doing nothing, just listening to the wireless and following events.”

During the Six-Day War, Aron was effectively Moshe Dayan’s personal communicator. “He was a character, I knew him very well,” Aron said of Dayan. “If there was a secret that nobody could know, I used to call him, and even in the middle of the night, he’d pick it up. He did what he wanted – at his own risk.”

On the third day, King Hussein of Jordan – which controlled east Jerusalem – ordered his army to join in the fighting.

“Jordan had [east] Jerusalem. Although there was an agreement that Jews could go to the Kotel, Hussein never allowed any Jews into the Old City,” Aron recalled. “But he stupidly decided to join the war with the Egyptians and the Syrians, and the Israelis took advantage and sent their best units to advance towards Jerusalem.”

For the first time since the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70BC, a united Jerusalem was back under Jewish rule. Aron was among the first to enter the Old City on that historic day, alongside Dayan, Rabin and Uzi Narkiss, as per the famous photo – also captured by Rubinger.

From left, General Uzi Narkiss, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and Chief of Staff Lt. General Yitzhak Rabin in the Old City of Jerusalem after its fall to Israeli forces (Photo: David Rubinger/the National Photo Collection of Israel)[Missing Credit]

“We went in Jeeps as far as we could go through the Old City, then we all walked to the Kotel,” he recounted. “I wanted to see the Kotel, which I knew from my childhood, but I had not seen it for 20 years.”

“It was unbelievable,” he smiled. “And such a relief.”

Despite serving in various capacities for more than three decades, Aron said he didn’t especially like the army.

“I did the army because I thought it was essential – because I thought that if I don’t, who’s going to do it?” he said.

“Today, we have terrible arguments about recruitment [between the Israeli government and the Charedi population]. It’s a terrible thing that people don’t want to share the burden,” he continued.

Aron moved to London in 1971 to marry his second wife, Marilyn, and they welcomed their daughter, Amanda – who has now given him two granddaughters – and they made a happy life with a “lovely circle of friends”.

Despite spending most of his life in England, Aron’s bond with Israel has never faded. Arguably, it has only grown stronger in recent years, as “since October 7, I’ve been glued to the television”, Aron said.

My conversation with Aron took place on Yom Ha’atzmaut, and Aron said that he spent the previous evening watching the service for the remembrance of Israel’s fallen soldiers.

“I was sat there thinking of every single soldier who died during the wars in Israel,” he said. “For me, it is heartbreaking. I lost a few friends in the War of Independence and know exactly what it means.”

“My thoughts and heart are always in Israel,” Aron concluded. “I’m very attached – it’s the country that I fought for and love so much.”