“The events of August last cannot easily be forgotten,” the Shaw Commission Report had warned. Indeed, nearly a century later, the 1929 riots and the Hebron massacre in particular are still looked upon by many Jews as a watershed in the history of the Yishuv, in its relations with Palestine’s Arabs, and in the lineage of Jewish self-defense efforts that eventually resulted in the birth of the State of Israel and establishment of the Israel Defense Forces. It was now clear that the Yishuv could no longer remain dependent on British guns and bayonets for its protection; it required a fully trained, suitably prepared, and well-armed self-defense force of its own.49
The outbreak, magnitude, and rapid escalation of the disturbances had caught the Jewish leadership as completely off guard as it had the British. The Zionist Executive, for instance, had departed Palestine in late July to attend the biennial Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland, and thus were also away during the worst of the violence. The Haganah had nonetheless swung into action as soon as the rioting had erupted in Jerusalem. Its commanders requested permission from Luke to arm five hundred of its fighters and deploy them in defensive positions throughout the country. The chief secretary refused, citing the government’s view that any Jewish action was likely to provoke further Arab violence. The Haganah commanders, however, ignored him and did whatever they could to defend the Yishuv. The group’s shortcomings were evidenced by the large number of Jewish casualties.50
The Haganah, the Yishuv’s leaders concluded, clearly lacked sufficient quantities of arms and ammunition. Training had been rudimentary and too informally organized, run by small teams of volunteers who arranged meetings and exercises under the guise of youth sports and other recreational programs. Upon returning to Palestine, Ben-Gurion, the Histadrut’s director, pressed for the allocation of additional funds to the Haganah, arguing that the “self-defense forces saved the Yishuv from destruction. The riots’ first lesson to the Yishuv and Zionism is the consolidation and strengthening of the Haganah.” It was agreed to reorganize and centralize the Haganah command, to increase funding of the group, and to improve recruitment procedures and training. Civilian control of the Haganah passed from the Histadrut, which could no longer afford to underwrite the costs of a self-defense force, to the recently created Jewish Agency, the political institution established by the Zionist Organization earlier in 1929 to oversee Jewish immigration, land purchase, and settlement in Palestine.51
The issue of Jewish self-defense nevertheless continued to be the politically partisan issue it had become when the Haganah had first associated itself with the Histadrut eight years before. Many Betarim belonged to the Haganah, and during the 1929 disturbances they had defended the Yishuv either in that capacity or as independent Betar units. The ideological differences separating the Labour socialists from the Revisionists proved irreconcilable, and in 1931 a dispute arose between Haganah headquarters and its Jerusalem commander, Abraham Tehomi, a staunch Revisionist Party member. Tehomi’s ideological affiliation, coupled with his stubborn independence and aggressive interpretation of Haganah defense policies, had brought him into repeated conflict with his superiors. Their disagreements finally exploded in April, when Tehomi, accusing the Haganah of discriminating against its nonsocialist members, quit. A majority of the Jerusalem detachment followed him and, armed with weapons taken from the Haganah’s local armory, announced the formation of a new Jewish self-defense force that they called the Haganah-Bet (bet being the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet). Members of the Haganah unit in Tel Aviv along with students from that city’s Betar school also joined the new group, as did some similarly disgruntled Haganah members from Haifa and Safed.52
The Haganah-Bet, however, did not officially align itself with the Revisionist Party. Although its members were overwhelmingly Revisionists or Betarim, the party did not exercise direct influence over the new organization, nor did Jabotinsky occupy any formal position. Instead, a civilian board representing all the Yishuv’s nonsocialist political parties was created to provide guidance and advice. Tehomi was appointed the Haganah-Bet’s commander. Recruits continued to be drawn from various local sports clubs, like the Maccabee association, but also from students at Jerusalem’s new Hebrew University. The new force’s training generally resembled that of the original Haganah—marching drills, field exercises, conditioning, and the use and care of small arms. But unlike the Haganah, the Haganah-Bet did not see itself as a self-defense force. And it therefore did not limit its training to defensive tactics only. Instead, the Haganah-Bet provided instruction in more offensively minded operations, including sabotage, bomb making, and hit-and-run attack—in other words, the core tactics of terrorism.53
CHAPTER 3
Red Days of Riots and Blood
Palestine had always exhibited a remarkable ability to reset itself back to some semblance of normality following each violent spasm of unrest and upheaval. The aftermath of the 1929 riots similarly brought a return to the tense tranquillity that passed for civility under British rule. There were no new serious outbreaks of violence for the next seven years. This was also a time when the country prospered and the benefits of British governance were arguably most evident to Palestine’s inhabitants. Investment in building and infrastructure was transforming the country both economically and aesthetically. In Jerusalem, such architectural gems as Government House and the King David Hotel were constructed between 1929 and 1931 and remain among the lasting examples of this burst of public and private construction. The pipeline linking the oil fields in Kirkuk, Iraq, with the newly built refinery at Haifa was completed soon after, thus further reinforcing that port city’s—and in turn Palestine’s—economic and strategic importance to the British Empire.1
Government district officers were especially active throughout this period, providing services in health, education, urban development, and agriculture to Palestine’s populace. Those responsible for rural areas often made their rounds on horseback, sometimes accompanied by a doctor, calling at villages and arranging for medical care, the building or staffing of schools, the allocation of government money to dig new wells, the building and repair of roads, and help with agriculture. The latter category embraced a vast array of government benefits that were routinely provided free of charge to Arab villages and Jewish settlements alike. It “was a tremendous lovely life to lead in the open air doing what we were there for,” Stewart Perowne, an Education Department official, recalled. The incidence of smallpox and cholera was greatly reduced, and the availability of chlorinated water and pasteurized milk in the more developed areas of the country increased appreciably. The number of children attending government schools doubled, creating a new problem—overcrowding. The country’s British rulers might therefore be forgiven the conceit that the new decade heralded a new era of peace and prosperity for Palestine in contrast to the bloodshed and disorder of the previous one.2
In November 1931, Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Wauchope succeeded Chancellor as high commissioner. Wauchope, the only one of Palestine’s seven high commissioners ever to be reappointed to a second term, was also perhaps the most colorful and eccentric. The new high commissioner was also remarkable for his complete and utter lack of favoritism between Arab and Jew. Wauchope, for instance, used his own money to fund agricultural projects for Arab villages, including an experimental hill fruit cultivation station, and was never more pleased than when he was called a “friend of the fellah [Arab peasant].” In addition, Wauchope personally paid for the construction of new schools for Arab children. He was also intensely interested in Jewish agriculture and the development of kibbutzim (rural farming communities) and demonstrably sympathetic to the Zionist cause. “Apart from helping us on immigration,” Ben-Gurion recalled, “Wauchope seemed to have a deeper understanding than any other High Commissioner of what we were trying to do in Palestine, that we were not only trying to develop a country but also revive our nation.”3
At the same time, the high commissioner also maintained good
relations with the mufti, who he believed exercised a moderating influence over the Arab community. Wauchope had standing instructions that letters from the mufti were to be answered the same day—and the reply dispatched by hand via special messenger. He also repeatedly turned a blind eye to the Supreme Muslim Council’s money problems and sloppy bookkeeping. Finally, Wauchope reportedly never once threatened to cut off government funding when seditious sermons were preached in mosques under the council’s aegis.4
Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany, however, would have a profoundly destabilizing effect on Palestine. On January 30, 1933, the Nazi Party leader was sworn in to office as Reich chancellor. It was not long before the aggressive persecution of the country’s Jews commenced; by the end of the year, accordingly, thirty-seven thousand Jews had left Germany—including the nearly seven thousand who immigrated to Palestine.5
The German refugees constituted almost a quarter of the record thirty thousand Jewish immigrants, mostly from Poland, who arrived in Palestine during 1933. This figure was in fact greater than the total of the previous six years combined. The number of refugees settling in Palestine increased to forty-two thousand during 1934 and peaked at sixty-two thousand the following year. The country’s Jewish population thus expanded by more than 80 percent between 1933 and 1935. Jews now made up 27 percent of Palestine’s total population of 1.3 million people compared with just 16 percent in 1931. Jewish land purchases from Arabs increased commensurately. Between 1930 and 1932, for instance, Jews bought from Arabs an average of nineteen thousand dunams—a unit of measurement used during the Ottoman Empire equaling slightly less than a quarter of an acre—per year of land. This nearly doubled in 1933 (to thirty-seven thousand dunams) and again in 1934 (to sixty-two thousand dunams). In 1935 alone Jews acquired seventy-three thousand dunams. Palestine’s Arabs, meanwhile, watched these developments with grave concern as the new immigrants and their money transformed their land.6
In point of fact, Arab restiveness and resistance to the Zionist enterprise had never abated. It was not long after the 1929 riots that word of continued anti-Jewish violence reached Jerusalem. A police intelligence report for the week ending October 19, 1929, stated that an Arab gang rumored to number some four hundred men was terrorizing Jews in the Safed area. The gang, which was known among Arabs as the Green Hand, actually consisted of no more than about twenty-five men. Significantly, they considered themselves mujahideen—or holy warriors, thus underscoring the fusion of religion and nationalism into the powerful rebellious force that the 1929 riots had achieved. A more detailed report followed a week later that revealed an organized campaign of sedition abetted by the Supreme Muslim Council and funded by the Arab Executive. A combined force of army and police eliminated the Green Hand early in 1930. That was the good news. The bad news was that the authorities had determined it was actually a prototype of sorts to test the waters for resuming the inchoate revolt that the 1929 riots had started. Although this initial experiment had failed, Chancellor worried that similar groups would follow.7
Chancellor’s prediction initially proved inaccurate. Whatever plans for renewed rebellion were being made in the countryside, it was the increased pace of Jewish immigration and concomitant land purchase that preoccupied the mostly urban-based Arab leadership for the next three years. Hitler had been in power less than a month when the Arab Executive met to discuss how the Arabs might make their displeasure with the government’s abandonment of the Passfield White Paper known. Their concerns were indeed well-founded; just when Nazi persecution was escalating, MacDonald’s “Black Letter,” reaffirming Britain’s support for Zionism, had in effect flung open the gates of Palestine to Jews seeking to flee Germany and neighboring countries. Editorials and stories in the Arab press painted a dire picture of ongoing and increasing Jewish immigration, and in March 1933 the Arab Executive issued a sternly worded manifesto criticizing the British government’s decision to permit “the discarded Jews outcast by Germany” to immigrate to Palestine. But the Arab leadership was again coming to the conclusion that words alone would have little effect and therefore called for a mass protest to be held in Jerusalem on October 13, 1933.8
Just past noon on the appointed day, a crowd that the police estimated to number about two thousand people assembled at the Temple Mount. The plan was to march in protest to the government offices just outside Damascus Gate. The police, however, were ready and waiting. A cordon of some sixty men, including twenty mounted police, had drawn up outside the city walls to meet the procession as soon as it left the Old City. The officer in command repeatedly warned the demonstrators to disperse, but the crowd continued to surge forward, egged on by a cadre of more militant, younger leaders who had seized control of the march. The police charged, their baton blows met with successive volleys of stones. Within an hour, the melee was over with neither the police nor the marchers having sustained serious injury.9
The Arab Executive was disappointed. It had hoped to attract a broad cross section of city and country Arabs alike from throughout Palestine. Very few protesters not already resident in Jerusalem, however, had bothered to come. Accordingly, the Arab leadership announced that another demonstration would be held two weeks later, this time in Jaffa. Both sides now had ample time to plan. The biggest challenge that the police faced was the budgetary constraints that had deprived it of even proper riotcontrol gear. Accordingly, Harry Rice, the CID’s chief, instructed one of his staff to come up with a solution. The young corporal returned a couple of hours later with fifty ordinary baking pans each twenty inches in diameter. His clever idea was to weld handles with padded straps onto the pans, thus turning them into shields. The transformation was hastily effected in the PPF’s Jerusalem workshop, and the makeshift shields were dispatched to Jaffa in advance of the scheduled protest.10
Friday, October 27, was the Muslim holy day. A larger number of worshippers than usual packed Jaffa’s mosques that morning. The tension, almost imperceptible to begin with, had risen with the heat of the day as a large crowd continued to gather in the main square, beneath its distinctive Ottoman-era clock tower, awaiting the end of prayers. Sensing trouble, shopkeepers quickly shuttered their businesses, and passersby hurried away. Shortly after noon, the mosques emptied, and suddenly thousands of men were pouring into the square. Facing them was a line of some sixty police, wearing steel helmets and armed with truncheons and the baking pan shields. A screen of twenty dismounted Bedouin constables from the PPF Camel Corps headquarters in Beersheba were positioned in front of the police line with an additional forty officers mounted on horseback behind. The official estimate put the crowd at seven thousand people—with fewer than a hundred police arrayed against them. The officer in charge was Deputy Superintendent Faraday, who had distinguished himself four years earlier in Safed, when he had saved that town’s Jewish community during the 1929 riots. Standing in the ranks, in command of one of the PPF’s detachments, was also Assistant Superintendent Cafferata, the hero of Hebron. He was ordered to lead the first baton charge in hopes of dispersing the crowd. It had no effect; three or four more charges were launched before complete pandemonium broke out.11
Colin Imray, a young police recruit manning the cordon, recalled the chaos around him: “Stones came from everywhere and seemed to hit friend and foe alike.” Faraday now realized that the grievously outnumbered police were rapidly losing control and were also unable to extricate their injured comrades from the mob. Accordingly, at 12:20 Faraday ordered a fifteen-man police firing party waiting in reserve into the square. He again told the crowd to disperse. When it refused, Faraday issued the command to open fire. It took three successive volleys to disperse the mob; a fourth volley was directed at Arab gunmen shooting at the police from a café. Two hours passed before order was completely restored. By that time, one Arab policeman lay dead, and fifty-six other officers had been wounded, three seriously. Twenty-six demonstrators had been killed and nearly two hundred others injured. “It was an awful day,�
�� the British constable A. L. Abraham later wrote. “Little did we realize what the years ahead would bring.”12
Word of the events in Jaffa quickly spread. That same evening an Arab mob numbering some two thousand people rioted in Haifa, assaulting Jews and repeatedly stoning the police struggling to maintain order. Gunfire was again required to quell the disturbances. Even still, the disorders continued the next morning. When they finally ended, four Arabs had lost their lives, and sixteen police had been wounded. Another Arab demonstrator was shot dead by police that same day in Nablus, where things had also gotten out of hand. There were two more spasms of rioting in Jerusalem on October 28 and 29 before the police finally regained control—with the assistance of two squadrons of RAF fighter aircraft deployed from Egypt that repeatedly buzzed the crowd before it finally dispersed.13
In contrast to previous disturbances, the police had performed remarkably well, as the report from the inevitable commission of inquiry that followed attested. It was the Arab leadership, however, who drew the most important lessons from the disturbances. This was the first time that the protests had been organized and not spontaneous, proving that the Arab leadership was able not only to mobilize the masses but also to control them. The implications of this newly found power, coupled with the new self-confidence it bred, would shortly be revealed on a far more extensive and consequential scale. For the moment, however, the disorders had clearly depicted the depth of Arab anger over Jewish immigration and land purchase and, even more so, the sense of betrayal and unconcealed hostility felt toward the government. This was an especially dire development. For the first time Zionism became equated with British imperialism, spawning an enmity that would henceforth be directed with equal fervor against both.14
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