The Reckoning
Page 29
7. Morton Papers.
8. Morton, Just the Job, p. 136.
9. Palestine Post, 26 January 1942.
10. Quoted in Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 265.
11. Ibid., p 253.
12. Ibid., p. 261.
13. Interview with Uri Avnery, Tel Aviv, 28 February 2013.
14. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., pp. 264−5.
15. Ibid., p. 258.
16. Ibid., p. 259.
17. Shamir, op. cit., p. 51.
18. Eliav, op. cit., pp. 152−3.
19. See Palestine Post, 12 February 1942, p. 3.
20. Eliav, op. cit., p. 154.
21. Ibid.
22. TNA HO 334/228.
23. Morton, op. cit., p. 137.
24. Ibid., p. 139.
25. Eliav, op. cit., p. 158.
26. Palestine Post, 21 January 1942.
27. Palestine Post, 22 January 1942.
28. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Ternent, late 1970s.
29. Palestine Post, 22 January 1942.
30. Efrem Dekel, SHAI: The Exploits of Hagana Intelligence, Thomas Yoselof, 1959, p. 30.
Chapter 9
1. HA 47/3.
2. ‘Operations at 30 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv’, Morton Papers.
3. Morton, Just the Job, p. 142.
4. The identity of the informant is unclear, but Morton reported to Giles that the gang assumed it was the owner of the flat (HA 47/3).
5. Morton, op. cit., p. 142.
6. ‘Operations at 30 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv’, Morton Papers.
7. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Ternent, late 1970s.
8. ‘Operations at 30 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv’, Morton Papers.
9. Binyamin Gepner interview with Alec Ternent.
10. It can be read on p. 162 of Eliav’s Wanted. It starts with the police bursting in and opening fire with cries of ‘Bloody Jews! Filthy Jews!’ and ends with Levstein delivering a stirring oration from his stretcher.
11. Baruch Nadel, telephone interview with Moshe Svorai, Haifa, 9 March 1976, JIA.
12. Exchange reproduced in ‘The Murder at No. 30 Dizengoff Street: How Four Freedom Fighters Fell’ (Lehi pamphlet), Morton Papers.
13. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Ternent, LMA.
14. TNA FO 1093/330.
15. Ibid.
16. Eldad Harouvi, Palestine Investigated: The Story of the CID of the Palestine Police Force, 1929−1946, 2011, p. 221, translated from the Hebrew by Murray Rosovsky (unpublished).
17. Moshe Svorai interview with Ada Amichal-Yevin, JIA.
18. HA 47/9.
19. Ibid.
20. Morton Papers.
Chapter 10
1. Amichal-Yevin, In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, p. 278.
2. Ibid., p. 282, testimony of Roni Stern.
3. Palestine Post, 6 February 1942.
4. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 281.
5. Ibid., p. 276.
6. Eliav, Wanted, p. 166. Zak is transliterated as ‘Jacques’ throughout.
7. Another man was mentioned − ‘Abraham Maeri’ – but by the time the notice appeared the police had established that this was an alias of Avraham Amper, now dead.
8. HA 47/3, Alan Saunders, Report to the Chief Secretary, 20 February 1942, ‘The Stern Group’, p. 5.
9. Ibid., p. 4.
10. Harouvi, Palestine Investigated: The Story of the CID of the Palestine Police Force, 1929−1946, p. 225.
11. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942, p. 4.
12. HA 47/3.
13. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 273, testimony of Binyamin Zeroni.
14. Ibid., p. 276, testimony of Yitzhak Tselnik.
15. HA 47/3.
16. Tova Svorai, The Last Days of Yair-Avraham Stern, Shaked (undated).
17. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 284.
18. Morton might have been better directing his anger at Binyamin Zeroni. According to Professor Eldad Harouvi in his study of the PPF CID, the Haifa bomb was ‘prepared by Binyamin Zeroni and his men’. Harouvi, op. cit., p. 227. This work has not yet been published in English, depriving non-Hebrew-speaking scholars of a valuable source, an omission I hope will soon be rectified.
19. Morton, Just the Job, p. 143.
Chapter 11
1. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Shand, late 1970s, LMA.
2. Morton, Just the Job, p. 144.
3. Levstein’s testimony differs from the official account in some respects – he says that there was an Arab policeman guarding them initially and Daly did not appear until after Amper and Zak’s death.
4. Eliav, Wanted, p. 119.
5. Morton’s report ‘Avraham Stern’, 13 February 1942, in Stuart Papers, IWM 19259.
6. Ibid., p. 168.
7. Morton, op. cit., p. 144.
8. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
9. Levstein claimed that his communications had been written in the same fashion though Morton’s staff do not seem to have experienced much difficulty cracking the code. He also alleged that Svorai wrote his note in plain Hebrew. In the letter Svorai mentions other attempts to contact Tova from hospital, though he does not say through whom.
10. Morton, op. cit., p. 144.
11. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
12. Tova Svorai, The Last Days of Yair-Avraham Stern.
13. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942, Appendix D.
14. Amichal-Yevin, In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, p. 286.
15. Tova Svorai, op. cit.
16. Ibid.
17. Tova Svorai also claimed that he was wearing a grey suit, but this would be contradicted by the testimony of the policeman who found him, Bernard Stamp, who said he was clad in his underwear.
18. Many of the staff were Arabs, a fact that had alarmed Svorai when he was first brought in. He was reassured by an Arab doctor who ‘spoke to me in English and said you have nothing to worry about, we won’t harm you’. Moshe Svorai, interview with Ada Amichal-Yevin, JIA.
19. Eliav, op. cit., pp. 168−9.
20. Ada Amichal-Yevin, interview with Moshe Svorai, JIA. Svorai remained very sensitive on the subject. In 1993 he won a libel action against Anshel Spielman, director of the Lehi Museum and a former member of the group, for saying in his memoirs that Svorai’s slip had led the police to Yair. In a convoluted judgement, the president of the Tel Aviv District Court Eliyahu Winograd found that Stern had been captured as a result of a routine search and that ‘based on the evidence placed before me, the British did not arrive at the apartment on the basis of information emanating from the slip of the tongue of the plaintiff’.
21. Svorai, op. cit.
22. Morton, op. cit., p. 145.
23. Svorai, op. cit.
24. Tova claimed that among his entourage was a Jewish detective, the same man she had seen in the street three nights earlier. He looked for a while at Stern then left the room ‘as restrained and quiet as when he entered’. The significance of this figure is that his presence lends credence to the idea that it was a police surveillance operation rather than Moshe’s indiscretion that led Morton to Stern. See The Last Days of Yair – Abraham Stern.
25. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
26. It was turned up by James Barr while researching his brilliant account of Middle Eastern Anglo-French rivalries in the period, A Line in the Sand. I tracked it down after noting the reference and owe him a debt of gratitude.
27. The latter point would be disputed by Stern’s supporters.
28. Svorai, op. cit.
29. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 290.
30. Ibid., pp. 289−90.
31. Ibid., p. 292.
Chapter 12
1. TNA KV 5/29.
2. Ibid.
3. Morton Papers.
4. Ibid.
5. JIA 3/112.
6. Jerusalem Post, 13 February 1942.
7. HA 47/3.
>
8. JIA 3/112.
9. TNA KV5/29
10. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
11. HA 47/8.
12. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
13. Morton, Just the Job, p. 147.
14. An honourable exception was Eden’s private secretary, Oliver Harvey, who pleaded for the refugees to be given sanctuary.
15. Quoted in Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 117. In October 1941 a German Jew called Paul Falkenheim, who had been released from Dachau, was caught after being parachuted into Palestine. He was equipped with a wireless set and had instructions to ‘find out as much as possible about troop movements and concentrations, the location of aircraft and their markings, new aerodromes and camp sites, shipping and the feeling among Palestinian Arabs and the possibility of their revolting’. He was warned that failure to obey orders would result in reprisals against his family. British intelligence were unimpressed by this operation and attempts to infiltrate two Armenians into the area and came to the conclusion that either the enemy espionage set up in the Middle East was ‘inefficient’ or it was intended that the agents should be caught to distract attention from ‘more important parachutists and seaborne agents’. See the file KV5/29 in the National Archives for more detail.
16. Quoted in Bethell, op. cit., p. 114.
17. Ibid., pp. 119−20.
Chapter 13
1. Palestine Post, 24 April 1942.
2. Morton, Just the Job, p. 149. Morton says that a watch was kept on the spot and ‘before long a young Jew – a member of the Stern gang – was caught making his way towards the entrance to the orange grove, carrying a sub-machine gun in a parcel’. However, there is no mention of any arrest in police records or in the memoirs of any of the Stern group.
3. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alex Shand, LMA.
4. Morton, Just the Job, p. 149.
5. Gepner, interview with Shand.
6. Papers of Alec Bowden Stuart, IWM 93/58/1.
7. Ibid.
8. IWM 93/58/1. Reznitsky claimed that ‘opposition was raised to the attempt on the life of Mr Morton as apparently Government had taken no steps against the Group for the April 22 bombs [in Jerusalem]’. The shooting of Ezra Sharoni in Jerusalem on 20 April ‘once more angered the Group and the bomb was exploded, happily without effect’.
9. Yaacov Banai, Anonymous Soldiers, Elisha Printing Press, Tel Aviv, 1958, p. 112 (in Hebrew).
10. Quoted in Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, p. 91.
11. Yellin-Mor, Freedom Fighter for Israel, p. 86.
12. Morton Papers.
13. Ibid.
14. IWM 93/58/1.
15. TNA KV 5/29.
16. TNA KV 5/29.
17. Morton Papers. Morton described it as a ‘secret document’ which he retained for his personal files.
18. Morton, op. cit., p. 147.
19. The Palestine Post reported on 21 April 1942 that Becker’s sentence had been reduced to life imprisonment.
20. KV 5/29.
21. According to Colin Imray, a Palestine policeman, there was an officer called Richard Ballantine who had spent much of his career in the Nigerian Police. Ballantine made it clear in his report of the encounter that he was a new arrival in Palestine so it could be that he was serving on secondment for a short period. C. Imray, A Policeman’s Story (unpublished MS, 1983), Rhodes House Library, Oxford University.
22. HA 47/12.
23. Shamir, Summing Up, pp. 39−40.
24. Morton, op. cit., p. 155.
25. Police report: ‘Seizure of Ammunition at Givat Brenner’, Morton Papers.
26. Morton Papers.
27. Morton, op. cit., p. 157.
28. Ibid., p. 172.
29. Morton Papers.
30. Ibid.
31. Morton, op. cit., p. 157.
32. Diary of Alice Morton.
Chapter 14
1. Morton Papers.
2. Diary of Alice Morton.
3. Morton, Just the Job, p. 164.
4. Shamir, Summing Up, p. 46.
5. Quotations from leaflets and poster are taken from CID translations in the Haganah Archive the Morton Papers.
6. It was assumed to have been the work of Yaacov Levstein and his star pupil, Moshe Bar Giora, who had escaped from Jerusalem Central Prison less than two months before. In fact, Levstein, with Shamir’s approval, had disappeared on an extended sabbatical, teaching Haganah men how to build bombs in various kibbutzim. Eliav, Wanted, pp. 207−18.
7. IWM 19259.
8. Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, p. 105.
9. Quoted in J. Bowyer Bell, Terror out of Zion, Transaction Publishers, Piscataway, New Jersey, 1996, p. 112.
10. Ibid., p. 91.
11. Morton Papers.
12. Morton, op. cit., p. 173.
13. TNA WO 216/121.
14. Quoted in Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 172.
15. Ben Lynfield, interview with David Shomron, 1 May 2013.
16. Segev, One Palestine, Complete, p. 7.
Chapter 15
1. Morton, Just the Job, p. 225.
2. Reported in The Times, 15 February 1967.
3. TNA FO 1093/330.
4. Morton, op. cit., p. 227.
5. Daily Mail, 4 February 1972.
6. Morton, op. cit., p. 314.
7. Ibid., p. 292.
8. Opinion of Helenus Milmo, 16 April 1952, Morton Papers.
9. The High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division 1952 M, No. 2157.
10. Morton, op. cit., p. 145.
11. Daily Telegraph, 3 February 1972.
12. Morton Papers.
13. Morton’s counsel, Patrick Milmo, was the son of his first libel lawyer.
14. Morton Papers.
15. Ibid.
16. Gepner Tapes, LMA.
Chapter 16
1. Telephone interview with Ilana Tsur, 4 October 2013.
2. Interview with Dan Stamp, 28 September 2013.
3. Ilana Tsur, interview with Bernard Stamp.
4. Morton Papers.
5. Ibid.
6. Ilana Tsur, interview with Bernard Stamp.
7. Morton Papers.
8. Morton appears to have passed this on to his solicitor. Several copies were left in written and typed form in his papers.
9. Morton Papers.
Chapter 17
1. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Stuart, LMA.
2. Translation from the Hebrew by Ben Lynfield.
3. In Alan Saunders’s report, written eight days later, he writes that Stern ‘was shot by two of the three policemen in the room’. HA 47/3.
4. Harouvi, Palestine Investigated: The Story of the CID of the Palestine Police Force, 1929−1946, p. 226.
5. My thanks are due to James Barr for this information.
6. Morton, Just the Job, p. 105.
7. Ilana Tsur , interview with Bernard Stamp.
8. Maariv, 10 November 1963, translated by Ben Lynfield.
9. Interview with Penny Brook, Hitchin, 21 October 2012.
10. Spectator, 28 January 1989.
11. Spectator, 11 February 1989.
12. Morton Papers.
13. Interview with Penny Brook, Hitchin, 21 October 2102.
Index
The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your ebook. You can use your ebook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.
‘A’ Force 237
Aaronson, Yerachmiel 219, 220
Abdullah, King 16
Abraham, Abraham ben 126
Abramsky, Shmuel 41
Achimeir, Abba 131
al-Husseini, Haj Amin (Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) 11, 12, 15
Albutt, Sergeant 221
Ali, General Rashid 121
Allenby, Sir Edmund 10
Altman, Dr Aryeh 91
Amichal-Yevin, Ada 43, 52, 173
Am
per, Avraham
character of 55
death of 158, 187
involved in bank robberies 100, 130
originator of Polish training camps 54, 99
shot and arrested in Dizengoff Street raid 147, 149–50
Amramoff, Zvi 221
Anglo-Palestine Bank (Tel Aviv) 99–101, 115, 216
anti-Semitism 11, 19, 111
Arab Higher Committee 12, 15, 229
Arabs
British paternalism towards 13–14
British strategy towards revolt 15–16
invasion of State of Israel 229
Jewish reprisals 28–9, 30–1, 35–6, 67–71, 99
population of 9, 11
quiescent during War 83–4
reaction to Partition plan 12
relationship with Nazi Germany 112
revolt against the Jews 11–12, 19–21, 31, 35, 80, 81, 87, 253–4
and sale of land to the Jews 29–30
treated differently to the Jews 202
view of Jews in Palestine 206
Avnery, Uri 72–3, 92, 131
Axis 91, 92, 109, 110, 117, 123, 182, 190, 205
Bachmaris, Nissim 195
Balfour, Arthur James 8–9
Balfour Declaration (1917) 8–9, 10, 11, 63
Ballantine (police officer) 204–5, 216
Bamachteret newspaper 101
Banai, Yaacov 198, 223–4
Bar-Giora, Moshe 196
Barham, Superintendent 119
Barker, Ronald 77, 87, 127, 134, 210
Baruch 136–7, 139
Battershill, William 15, 72
Baxter, Charles 190
Becker, Yehoshua 126, 128, 130, 202–3
admires Stern 220
joins forces with Lehi 220–1
joins the Irgun 220
Begin, Menachem
background 220
considered a murderer by the British 229–30
elected Prime Minister 256
as founder and leader of Herut party 230
publishes claims concerning Morton’s killing of Stern 230–1
Ben-Gurion, David
beliefs 32, 34
biography of 234
character and description 32
elected Prime Minister 256
emigrates to Palestine 32
family background 31–2
reaction to 1939 White Paper 64