The Reckoning

by Patrick Bishop

  At a time when the British were anxious to keep Palestine’s Jews on side, Morton was becoming a problem. The Givat Brenner sting – which seems not to have been referred up the chain of command for approval – was unlikely to improve relations between the authorities and the Haganah, who might be needed at any moment to shore up Palestine’s defences. Morton’s part in the raid on 30 Dizengoff Street and his shooting of Avraham Stern meant he was already a controversial figure in the eyes of the Yishuv. Judged from the viewpoint of political expediency, the perspective that Morton so despised, he was becoming more trouble than he was worth. It was time for him to go.

  In early October the Mortons received two days’ notice that there were seats on an aeroplane to take them out. They had just enough time to pile all their furniture and effects into a spare room in a police station before they departed. Morton’s men at Lydda CID, Briton, Jew and Arab, gave them ‘a most wonderful send-off – a farewell party which will always stand out for us as one of the greatest things in our not uneventful lives’.31 Alice wrote in her diary that they left from Lydda at lunchtime on 16 September ‘with about 30 police as escorts’.32 Catling and John Scott came down from Jerusalem to wave them off, with Giles Bey, who was on their flight.

  When they arrived in Cairo that afternoon the city seemed very relaxed and Alice noted there was ‘hardly any effort to black out’. The Mortons put up at the Carlton, ate ice creams at Groppis and lunched at the Gezira Sporting Club with Mr and Mrs Giles. During a visit to the zoo they heard ‘loud bursts of gunfire which made all the animals roar and scream’. It was a harbinger of things to come. Five weeks later the second Battle of El Alamein began. With victory, British fortunes in the war altered for the better. In Palestine, though, things would soon be changing for the worse.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Terrorism Is an Infectious Disease’

  The long journey back was an adventure involving flying boats and a stopover in Lisbon, where life was luxurious and Nazi officers gave Heil Hitler salutes in the hotel lift. After a month they arrived in a wintry, bomb-scarred London to begin a joyless and frustrating existence. The couple lodged at Calton Avenue with Geoffrey’s mother, Sarah, a widow now since her husband’s death in 1940. Geoffrey had been told he was on three months’ leave. Time passed and there was no news of when they would return to Palestine. The waiting got on his nerves. In February 1943 he sent a long letter to Oliver Stanley, the latest in a series of short-lived Colonial Secretaries. Morton wrote that he found himself ‘in peculiar circumstances. After prolonged consideration I feel that I am justified in presuming to bring my position to your notice.’1

  There followed six double-spaced typed pages, starting with a precis of his awards and achievements, a record, he suggested, that was ‘second to none’. It included the moment when he ‘shot and killed outright Abraham Stern, the notorious Jewish gang leader, terrorist and fifth columnist … when he made a desperate break for freedom immediately following his arrest’.

  He then turned to the circumstances of his departure from Palestine. ‘In August last, the Inspector General, with the approval of His Excellency the High Commissioner, informed me that he considered that I had earned a rest and a period of relaxation from the strain of constant watchfulness, and that as a token of appreciation of the good work I had done, the Government was prepared to send my wife and me back to England by air.’ He had ‘received the assurance that everything possible would be done to ensure our return together’ and ‘there was no question of my not returning to Palestine at the conclusion of my leave’.

  This, Morton, hinted, was not the full story and there were other forces at work. It was ‘common talk in usually well-informed Jewish circles that I was to be removed shortly through Jewish pressure … because I had dared to use fully my powers as a Police Officer and had thus created a most undesirable precedent from a Jewish point of view – one which they feared other Police Officers might later emulate.’

  Finally, he appeared to get to the point. ‘This, then, is the position in which I now find myself. When my wife and I arrive in Palestine in due course we must, from the minute of our arrival, take the same precautions for our safety as were necessary throughout 1942.’ Despite all this he was still determined to return, for ‘fortunately I do not suffer from nerves and I am quite prepared to carry on temporarily under these conditions if there is any prospect of a future solution’.

  What did Morton mean exactly? Did he want to go back to Palestine or not? The confusing formula was repeated further down the page: ‘Personally I can see no entirely satisfactory solution to my problem unless of course Palestine undergoes a radical change …’

  Stanley’s reply is not recorded. The Mortons lived on in limbo. For a while he worked in the Crown Agent’s office at No. 4 Millbank, the place where his career had begun, interviewing prospective candidates for the Palestine Police. At last, the Colonial Office made up its mind. They were to return to Palestine. In July 1943, he and Alice boarded a troopship for Durban and spent the next six weeks on the high seas as the vessel took lengthy detours to minimize the risk from U-boats. The last leg of the journey was by air then rail, travelling overnight in crowded, spartan cabins and compartments. It was by no means as much fun as the journey back to Britain, but Alice maintained her sense of humour. ‘I shall be writing a book some day on “men I have slept with”,’ she joked in her diary.2

  Geoffrey’s new posting was in Jerusalem. They found digs in the German Hospice, run by German nuns, where the service was good but the food awful. They made friends with another youngish couple, Bernard Bourdillon, an administrative officer in the Government Secretariat, and his wife Joy, who lived up to her name. ‘When Joy’s laugh rang through the dining room – as it often did, for we were a cheerful party – it brought forth frowns of disapprobation from some of the more elderly residents,’ Morton remembered.3

  Such companionship was a compensation for the boredom of his job. While visiting a tomb at the Pyramids during their Cairo layover on the way home, the Mortons’ guide had told their fortunes. Geoffrey was promised there was ‘a better position coming’. This turned out to be very wide of the mark. He had been promoted to deputy superintendent, but his new duties took him far away from the risky and stimulating work that he enjoyed. He was now in charge of the Criminal Records Office, which included responsibility for the fingerprint department, the narcotics bureau and the headquarters of the Flying Squad. It was not as important as it sounded for ‘most of these sections functioned automatically and needed little or no supervision from me’. He spent several mornings a week watching films in local cinemas in his role as police representative to the Censorship Board. His superiors appeared to have no intention of allowing him near any politically sensitive duties. Nonetheless, the threat from the Sternists meant he still needed around-the-clock armed protection, with Alec Shand and Ahmed Tamimi, a former Arab rebel whom Morton had won over and who now served as a police detective, serving as occasional bodyguards.

  Palestine was relatively quiet. The defeat of Rommel at El Alamein and the failure of Operation Edelweiss in the Caucasus at the end of 1942 meant the German threat had abated, probably for good. The great Soviet victory at Stalingrad early the following year suggested the tide of war was turning. The minds of the Yishuv were now focused on what would happen when it finally ended. Already, though, those who were not prepared to wait that long were stirring.

  The Stern group spent the months after Yair’s death nursing their wounds and considering their next moves. The failure of Ballantine’s peace mission had demonstrated the detainees’ continued commitment to the cause. Their immediate priority was to maintain morale and cohesion. By the summer more than 150 members were held in the Mazra’a and Latroun camps and Jerusalem Central Prison. Conditions were mild. There was plenty of time for theoretical discussions and hashing out future plans. To put them into practice, though, required organization and resources on the outside. In the summer
of 1942 there was little or none of either. If the group was not to atrophy, it was the prisoners who would have to resuscitate it.

  On 16 August, Yitzhak Shamir and Eliahu Giladi broke out of Mazra’a camp. Their escape plan was as subtle as a grandmaster’s gambit in one of the endless games of chess the inmates played, involving a complicated manipulation of the daily roll calls. Giladi, who had taken part in the Anglo-Palestine Bank raid, was notoriously violent and unstable. Expediency soon demanded that he be bumped off. Shamir was dour and utterly lacking in charisma, but he was – as the escape had demonstrated – a brilliant organizer. His treatment of Giladi proved that he was also just as ruthless and determined as his idol, Yair. For the next year he set about creating an infrastructure that would sustain the fighters when the campaign resumed. The new organization would be disciplined, secretive and bold. It would operate under a new name, Lohamei Herut Israel (Freedom Fighters of Israel), or ‘Lehi’ from its Hebrew acronym, which had been thought up by Yair before his death. First, though, it was necessary to organize another jailbreak. Freeing one’s comrades was a sacred duty. Elaborate plans for a breakout from Mazra’a were among the papers discovered at 8 Mizrachi Bet Street when Wilkin and Stamp first searched the place. The prospect of escape sustained those who were banged up. Escape was more than a mere morale booster. It was a necessity. Without a core of hardened operators, Lehi had no chance of resurrection.

  On 1 November 1943, in a wadi near Latroun on the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the dry earth of a slope stirred mysteriously. A hole appeared, which grew wider and wider. Then, one by one, men began to emerge from it, covered in dirt and struggling to suppress their hilarity. After seven months digging through seventy-one yards of soil and stones, the twenty inmates of Hut 4 of the Latroun detention camp were free. They were whisked away to an underground bunker near Bat Yam. In the New Year of 1944, the spirit of Avraham Stern was once again abroad in the land.

  Among the escapees was Nathan Yellin-Mor. He, Shamir and Israel Eldad formed the triumvirate leading an organization that would become the spearhead of violent opposition to British rule in the years ahead. Between them they combined the attributes of the man they followed – Shamir provided leadership and efficiency, Yellin-Mor, the journalist, the eloquence to analyse, articulate and publicize the organization’s goals, while Eldad – described by Shamir as ‘a believer in the Messianic aspects of the liberation of the Land’4 − invoked the quasi-mystical spirit which Yair had fostered with his poetry and prose and which played an essential part in the group’s identity.

  In death Stern’s spell was as strong as ever. The second anniversary of his shooting was marked with leaflets and posters issued in the name of Lehi, handed out wherever Jews gathered and pasted up on city walls. The style followed the tone set by their leader and was wordy and grandiose. Stern was a visionary and a martyr. The other Zionist leaders had ‘sold the Jewish nation for nothing’ and become ‘slaves of the British ruler’.5 Only he had seen ‘the necessity for fighting the foreign ruler, a thing which at that time was regarded by the Yishuv as a crime’. Now, though, people were waking up and ‘his doctrine is accepted by quite a number’. Frequently the tone swells to a religious pitch. One pamphlet declared: ‘OUR WAR IS A HOLY WAR’. In this religion there was only one prophet – the sacrificial figure of Yair. ‘With his death his doctrine did not die but will be continued by his faithful servants and soldiers. His body has been taken from us but no one can take from us that doctrine which he taught us and for which he died.’

  These were precisely the sentiments that might have been heard on the lips of an early follower of Jesus Christ. But there was nothing Christian about the rest of the Lehi message. One leaflet promised Yair’s soldiers would ‘honour his memory’ with ‘a tombstone of blood and fire’. Another, which mentioned MacMichael, Morton and Wilkin by name, promised retribution to any official who operated against them. ‘Every foreigner and traitor in this country shall know that the days of January 1942 will not return … there is no way back. There is no compromise.’

  By now Stern’s disciples were already back at work and the High Commissioner was top of their hit list. MacMichael was the face of the British in Palestine, and in his haughty features they saw everything they hated about government policy. He had been held responsible for the manhunt that killed Amper, Zak and Stern and for the cruel pragmatism that sent hundreds of desperate refugees to the bottom of the Black Sea. Now he was accused of complicity in a much greater crime. By 1943 the scale of Hitler’s extermination policy in Europe was widely known. In the light of this horrible knowledge, Britain’s refusal to offer sanctuary in Palestine to his victims was unforgivable. As a consequence, one Lehi pamphlet raged, ‘millions of Jews have fallen into Hitler’s hands and have been destroyed … millions of Jews are now facing Hell, but the rulers of this country are continuing their criminal policy of closing the gates of Palestine …’

  At three o’clock on the morning of 3 February 1944, a Christian Arab was driving his taxi past the entrance to St George’s Cathedral, the very English-looking Anglican church on the northern edge of Jerusalem’s Old City where the Mandate’s rulers worshipped. He noticed two men perched on a ladder above the stone archway, stopped his car and walked back to see what they were up to. One of the men drew a gun and ordered him to clear off. He went straight to the nearest police station and told what he had seen, then returned with the police party. The men had disappeared. The taxi driver accompanied the police as they drove around the deserted streets. Eventually they spotted two men whom the Arab identified as the suspicious characters he had stumbled upon. When challenged they opened fire, killing the unfortunate taxi driver. Examination of the archway revealed electrical wiring had been installed, prior to placing an infernal machine which, it was assumed, was to be exploded when Sir Harold and his party attended that Sunday’s service. It looked like a Stern gang job.6

  The attempt confirmed that a new wave of violence was rolling through Palestine and in the next months outrages would become a weekly occurrence. Lehi leaflets had boasted that ‘from now on the fighters for freedom will always be armed and use their arms whenever they are in danger.’ On 14 February two Lehi men were pasting up wall posters in Haifa. Round the corner came Inspector R. D. Green and Constable H. E. Ewer. When they tried to arrest the bill-posters, they drew guns and shot the policemen down, mortally wounding both of them. In the next two months three policemen were killed and nine wounded in shootouts and bombings involving Lehi.

  The police countered vigorously, shooting dead the Haifa commander Yerachmiel Aaronson while he was visiting Tel Aviv and arresting others, including Israel Eldad. Hassia Shapira was one of those caught in the dragnet, captured by Alec Stuart and Alec Ternent in a flat in Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv. Inside her handbag they discovered a Colt automatic pistol and ‘what appeared to be a home-made incendiary bomb’.7 Before being sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, she told the court that she was ‘sorry the police entered my room deceitfully, thus robbing me of the opportunity to defend myself with my gun’.8

  It was soon clear that Lehi were no longer a renegade band, operating in isolation. On 1 February came an announcement that the Irgun had abandoned its policy of restraint towards the British until the war with Hitler was over. Its justification was that Britain was effectively Hitler’s accomplice in the extermination of the Jews. ‘There is no longer any armistice between the Jewish people and the British Administration in Eretz Israel,’ it declared.9

  The campaign had already started. Three days before, Irgun operatives had destroyed a number of British lorries in a depot in Jaffa. On 23 March they went much further: Irgun teams blew up the CID headquarters in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem. In the mayhem four policemen were killed. The operations were launched at the same time as a Lehi shooting spree in Tel Aviv in revenge for the death of Aaronson, a few days before. These resulted in two more police fatalities.

  The return of t
he Irgun to the fray reflected a change in its leadership. It was now commanded by Menachem Begin, a thirty-year-old Revisionist veteran who had been head of Betar in Poland before the war. He had arrived in Palestine in May 1942, having survived arrest and torture by the Soviet NKVD, eventual release and service in the Polish army of General Anders. After being given indefinite leave of absence from the military, he joined the Irgun in December 1942 and a year later had risen to the top. Begin had known Avraham Stern in Warsaw and admired him. There were nonetheless significant ideological differences between them. He dissented from Yair’s view that Britain was a greater enemy to the Jews than Germany. However, it was the British who stood in the way of a Jewish state in Palestine, and once there, it was against the British that his energies were turned.

  Begin was anxious to heal the old rift between the Irgun and Stern’s followers. Doctrinal issues remained problematical and Shamir defended fiercely Lehi’s right to organizational independence and freedom of action. However, from now on, the Irgun and Lehi would effectively work in partnership, doubling the threat that the Jewish underground posed to British rule. As MacMichael was to point out in a telegram to London, ‘Terrorism is an infectious disease’.10