Manya Shochat

In May 1908, Manya married Israel Shochat, who was 9 years younger than her. She had 2 children with him: Gideon (Geda), 1912,[6] and Anna, 1917.[7]

By 1921 Manya and Israel were no longer living together. Despite Israel’s relationships with other women they continued their political activities together and Manya repeatedly nursed him during his recurring bouts of illness. According to Rahel Yanait Manya attempted to commit suicide in the early 1920s.[8]

Gideon Shochat was a pilot in the British Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II and later became one of the founding pilots of the Israeli Air Force, rising to the rank of colonel. He committed suicide in 1967. In 1971, his daughter Alona married Arik Einstein, a famous Israeli performer. They had 2 daughters together. They later divorced, the daughters remaining with their mother. They later became Orthodox Jews, and the daughters married Uri Zohar's sons. Zohar was a good friend of Einstein and became one of the leading figures in the Orthodox community.

In a 1986 interview in Haaretz Anna revealed how estranged she and her brother became from their parents. Geda had been left in Palestine when Manya and Israel were exiled to Bursa. He was first looked after in Kinneret but later cared for by an Arab family. After the war the children were bought up in the children’s house in Kfar Giladi.[9]

As a result of her first visit, Manya reached a conclusion which anticipated that of Arthur Ruppin. She understood that the model of plantation settlement, favored by Baron Rothschild, where Jewish owners employed Arab workers and were subject to economic overseers, could never be the basis for Jewish national life. It led to financial difficulties and disaffection. She concluded that only collective agricultural settlement could produce Jewish workers and farmers who would be the basis for building a Jewish homeland. Her first priority was finding a solution for the problem in Hauran.

Manya left for Paris, where one of her brothers was editor of an agricultural journal, to research the feasibility of her ideas and then to convince the Baron to back them. In 1905, a fresh wave of pogroms swept the Russian Empire. Meir Cohen, an old friend from Minsk, came to Paris seeking the aid of the Jewish community to buy arms so they could defend themselves. Manya laid aside the Hauran project and put her efforts towards fundraising instead. She convinced Rothschild to donate 50 000 gold francs to that end.

Guns and ammunition were bought in Liège and smuggled into Russia. To deliver the final consignment, Manya disguised herself as a young rabbanit from Frankfurt, bringing eight cases of scriptures, a gift for the yeshivot of Ukraine. The guns were successfully delivered to the Jewish underground. Not one was lost.

Manya returned to Palestine in 1906 to further pursue her Hauran plan. Towards the end of the year, she traveled to the United States to raise funds for that and arms for Russian Jews. Whilst in America she met Judah Magnes, and they formed a long lasting friendship.[10]The idea of collective settlements in general, and the Hauran scheme in particular, received no support. She realized that the only way to convince people that it could work was by putting it into practice, so she returned to Palestine in 1907. Manya shared her idea with members of "Poalei Tzion" and "Hapoel Hatzair". Hankin convinced Eliahu Krauze to give them stewardship over a failing agricultural experiment in Sejera for a year.[11] Manya was appointed manager responsible for establishing a training farm at Sejara. The farm was used as cover by Bar Giora a newly formed underground militia founded by Israel Shochat and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. The following year Bar Giora reinvented itself as HaShomer. Its goal was to take over the responsibility of guarding Jewish settlements which had previously being using local watchmen.[12]

She married Israel Shochat in May 1908.

They moved to the German Colony, Haifa in 1910. Three years later they moved to Constantinople where Manya taught German whilst Israel studied for an Ottoman law degree[13]

In November 1914 she was arrested and sent to Damascus for interrogation[14] and was subsequently deported, along with her husband to Bursa, in Turkey. They returned around Passover, 1919, after attending the Poalei Tziyon convention in Stockholm.

In 1921 she was in Tel Aviv when riots broke out with Arab mobs attacking Jews in Jaffa. Along with other Hashomer members, she took part in the fighting. At great risk, she would walk around, disguised as a Red Cross nurse, to keep an eye out on developments. Her experience in Russia came in handy as they attempted to smuggle in grenades for the defenders of Petah-Tikva. She hid them among baskets of vegetables and eggs. The car they were in got mired just outside the town. A patrol of Indian cavalry approached. Their role was to search all travelers for arms. With great presence of mind, Manya averted disaster. She ran up to the patrol, begging them to help rescue the car from the mud. While they were pulling it out, she watched the baskets, saying that she didn't want the eggs to break. The cavalry then even provided an escort until they got into town.[15]

Shochat in the 1930s

After the riots were over, she traveled to the United States to raise funds for the defense efforts. Due to a series of differences of opinion between her and Pinhas Rutenberg, the transfer of funds was frozen and the two didn't speak for years. However, she did manage to send several thousand dollars to her husband who was waiting in Vienna, earmarked for the purchase of weapons for the Haganah. Israel Shochat oversaw the procurement and shipment of the weapons to Palestine.

Following the dissolution of Hashomer in 1920 Manya and other veterans established a new secret organisation calling themselves the Circle. One of their bases was at Kfar Giladi and their first action, May 1923, was the assassination of Tawfiq Bey, a senior police officer in Jaffa at the time of the riots.[16][17]

In 1924 she was among those arrested in connection with the assassination of Jacob de Haan. She subsequently broke off relations with Ben Gurion over his failure to come to her defence when it was known that the Haganah in Jerusalem had ordered the killing.[18]

In 1925 she joined Brit Shalom, a Jewish group that advocated a bi-national state in Palestine.[19]

Manya and Israel Shochat were active in the Gdud HaAvoda (lit.: the "Work Battalion") and clandestine immigration, as well as arms smuggling. In 1930, Manya Shochat was among the founders of the League for Arab-Jewish Friendship. In 1948 she joined the Mapam party.

Manya Shochat on a stamp issued on the 60th anniversary of HaShomer, 1970.