AVRAHAM YOFFE ENTERS THE STAGE
Although it fell under the general purview of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Nature Reserves Authority was an independent government corpora-tion, ruled by an eleven-person board and advised by a scientific committee. The law stipulated that Authority members represent a broad range of ministerial, scientific, and public interests. The group's first meeting, in January 1964, included most of the key players in the political maneuvering and manipulations that surrounded the legislation: Yadin, Men-delssohn, Smilansky, Weitz, Alexandron, and Paz. To preside over this unruly cast, Moshe Dayan appointed a new face: an active IDF general, Avraham Yoffe.
It was also natural for Dayan to appoint the head of his nature preser-vation department, Paz, to serve as Director of the new NRA (or, as it quickly became known within nature circles,” the Authority”). Yet once the flush of victory wore off, Paz was left with his existing staff of hunt-ing inspectors. During its first year there were never more than sixteen workers in the entire agency, although conditions were somewhat better than before the establishment of the Authority. For instance, at his previ-ous job Paz had no access to a private car, but as director of the Authority he was important enough to receive a vehicle. However, he still lacked suf-ficient status to merit a telephone in his home for emergencies.[55]
In January 1964 the Authority set up shop in an old German house under the literal shadow of the central office of the Ministry of Agriculture in the Kiriyah, a government/army complex in downtown Tel Aviv. Fearful that their rivals would try to send the law back to the Knesset and cancel the two-tier system, Paz and his staff worked around the clock to create user-friendly reserves that might be showcased in defense of the independent Reserves Authority.[56] (Ironically, the flurry of trails, parking lots, and signs placed in a few small reserves such as the Tel Dan streams and the Tanur waterfalls actually blurred the distinction between parks
Amotz Zahavi and the SPNI leadership still had a paternalistic attitude (bordering on condescension) toward the new Authority. After all, their lobbying had created the institution, and it was being run by one of their own. Still, the leaders of the SPNI recognized their own limitations. If na-ture enthusiasts today have a quixotic image, during the early 1960s they were considered positively eccentric. Amotz Zahavi came up with the novel idea of enticing General Yoffe (see Figure 13) to take over the job of NRA Director when he retired from his post as Head of the Northern Command. It may have been Zahavi's greatest single inspiration.
Yoffe's biography was indistinguishable from those of other elite “British army alumni” from the Yishuv, the leaders whom David Ben-Gurion ultimately favored to command Israel's military.[57] Although many of these men, such as Yigael Yadin, Ezer Weitzman, and Haim Bar Lev, were ten years his junior, they were Yoffe's peers because of their veteran status; they were his friends and, in many cases, relatives. Yoffe was born in the agricultural village of Yavnael in 1913 to parents who came to Israel during the Second Aliyah, in 1906.[58] He studied at the Yishuv's leading agricultural boarding school, Mikva Yisrael, and distinguished himself as the most mischievous of the many students who would later on assume the leadership of the new State.[59] He was active in a youth movement and helped found Kibbutz Tel Amal (later called Nir David). Yoffe trained under Orde Wingate's[60] night battalions, and when World War II broke out, he formally joined the British Army, in which he served with distinc-tion for six years. The experience left him with a lifelong appreciation for English culture; in his final days he joked about bringing the British back so the country might be run properly.[61]
In 1946 Yoffe returned to his kibbutz but was soon called back to full-time service by the Haganah, the Yishuv's military organization. (At his wife's behest, Yoffe finally moved to Haifa in 1950, yet he always missed the pastoral communal life of the kibbutz.[62]) After serving as a battalion commander in the Golani Infantry Brigade during the War of Independence, he stayed on as a career officer for fifteen more years, until the age of 51. During the 1956 Sinai Campaign, he headed the 9th division, which raced down the Sinai desert to conquer Sharm el-Sheikh at the peninsula's southern tip. Overnight he became a national hero.[63] In 1963, although still on active duty, he received special permission to serve as chairman of the newly formed Nature Reserves Authority Council.
He was not an obvious choice from the point of view of the environ-mental community. Yoffe was known to be a hunting enthusiast who took advantage of his military privileges to pursue his nefarious hobby.[64]
Ever the good soldier, Uzi Paz was supportive of the idea of assigning Yoffe to head the NRA and volunteered to step down. Abdicating the top position at a new government agency for the good of the Authority con-stitutes one of the most selfless acts in the history of Israeli public service, much less environmental administration. Paz's wife Batyah was not en-thusiastic about the decision and to this day feels that it was never ade-quately appreciated.[65] But Uzi Paz had no regrets.
Yoffe was hesitant. There were other ideas he had envisioned for a civil-ian career, including running development projects in Caesarea. Dayan in-sisted that he run the Authority full-time.[66] Ultimately the lobbying from the conservation community proved irresistible. Yoffe retired from active military service in November 1964, and in May 1965, Haim Givati, the new Minister of Agriculture, appointed him director; Yoffe immediately appointed Paz as his Deputy.[67]
While nationally Avraham Yoffe still enjoys recognition as a military hero, in the environmental community his stature has become mythical. It is virtually impossible to find anyone who worked with him to say any-thing bad about him. Everyone has a favorite story that highlights his larger-than-life proportions. Yoffe's son Danny claims that people's mem-ories exaggerate his father's actual dimensions. “He really was not that tall. Just wide. He loved food, truly a carnivore. And he ultimately died of diabetes.”[68]
His appetite remains the topic of tall tales to this day. Reuven Ortal, a young inspector at the time, remembers a goodwill feast in Yoffe's honor hosted by the mukhtar of the Druze village of Beit Ja'an. So many local guests wanted to meet the army hero that they had to host the banquet in two waves. Yoffe had no trouble eating twice. Wasting no room on vegeta-bles, he devoured all the exotic meat delicacies, especially the tongue and skull.[69] Even in more refined settings, his appetite sometimes got the bet-ter of him. Yoffe had a habit of walking into the kitchen of his host, open-ing the refrigerator, and pulling a leg off of a chicken or helping himself to some other tasty morsel without being invited.[70]
Not only for food did the general have an appetite. His relationship with his second wife Aviva, the elder sister of Leah Rabin, was not always a happy one. (Yoffe's first wife died in a motorcycle accident with Yoffe's brother driving. The family complications did not end there, however. He soon married Aviva, literally the girl next door, who previously
Taking the job as the head of the Authority changed him as much as it did the Authority. While Yoffe had always felt close to nature, his son Danny insists that with the appointment he was born again. Yoffe gave away all his hunting rifles and never shot at another animal, even during the “hunting” season, when it would have been permissible.