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Aaron Aaronsohn Signed “Chevrat Achrayut HaBehemot” Receipt (1914) *Very Rare* For Sale
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Aaron Aaronsohn Signed “Chevrat Achrayut HaBehemot” Receipt (1914) *Very Rare*:
$3000.00
Aaron Aaronsohn (Hebrew: אהרון אהרנסון) (21 May 1876 – 15 May 1919) was a Romanian-born Ottoman agronomist, botanist, and political activist, who lived most of his life in Ottoman Syria. Aaronsohn was the discoverer of emmer (Triticum dicoccoides), believed to be "the mother of wheat." He founded and was head of the NILI espionage network. Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, argues that both the victory of the British Army led by General Allenby and the Balfour Declaration itself were in good measure the result of Aaronsohn and NILI.
Aaronsohn’s parents were among the founders of Zikhron Ya'akov, one of the pioneer Jewish agricultural settlements of the First Aliyah. He was the first car-owner in Palestine and one of the first to own a bicycle, which he brought back from France.
He botanically mapped Palestine and its surroundings and became a leading expert on the subject. On his 1906 field trip to Mount Hermon, while trekking around the Upper Galilee in the area of Rashaya in what is now Lebanon, he discovered Triticum dicoccoides, whom he considered to be the "mother of wheat", an important find for agronomists and historians of human civilization. Geneticists have proven that wild emmer is indeed an ancestor of most domesticated wheat strands cultivated on a large scale today with the exception of einkorn, a different ancient species, which is currently just a relict crop.
This discovery made Aaronsohn world-famous and, on a trip to the United States, he was able to secure financial backing for a research station established in Atlit in 1909. Aaronsohn built up a large collection of geological and botanical samples and established a library.
In 1918, Aaronsohn was one of the experts consulted for the purpose of demarcating the northern boundary of Palestine, focusing on the need for irrigation water. He envisaged a boundary that would assure the inclusion of the sources of the Jordan, Litani and Yarmuk rivers. His approach became the official Zionist baseline presented to the Peace Conference in Paris in February 1919.
During World War I, the Ottomans had joined sides with the Germans, and Aaronsohn feared the Jews would suffer the same fate as the Armenians under the Turks. Together with his assistant Avshalom Feinberg, his sister Sarah Aaronsohn and a few others, Aaronsohn organized Nili, a ring of Jewish residents of Palestine who spied for Britain during World War I. He recommended the plan of attack through Beersheba that General Edmund Allenby ultimately used to take Jerusalem in December 1917 as part of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. Owing to information supplied by Nili to the British Army concerning the locations of oases in the desert, General Allenby was able to mount a surprise attack on Beersheba, bypassing strong Ottoman defenses in Gaza.
In 1917, Chaim Weizmann sent Aaronsohn on a political campaign to the USA. While there, Aaronsohn learned that the Ottoman authorities had intercepted a Nili carrier pigeon, which led to the arrest and torture of his sister Sarah and other members of the underground.
After the war, Weizmann called on Aaronsohn to work on the Versailles Peace Conference. On 15 May 1919, under unclear circumstances, Aaronsohn was killed in an airplane crash over the English Channel while on his way to France. There are still some who blame the British government.
Aaronsohn died a bachelor and had no children. His research on Palestine and Transjordan flora, as well as part of his exploration diaries, were published posthumously.
After Aaronsohn's death, the director of British Military Intelligence confirmed that Allenby's victory would not have been possible without the information supplied by the Aaronsohn group.
Aaron Aaronsohn Signed “Chevrat Achrayut HaBehemot” Receipt (1914) *Very Rare* $3000.00
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