Anonymous Soldiers
Page 22
Roused by the growing controversy now surrounding its response, the Palestine government belatedly took punitive action against the Yishuv. Police investigators had determined that the terrorists had used the nearby Jewish settlement at Givat Shaul as both a staging area and an escape route. In the course of their inquiries, however, they were stymied by the settlers’ denial of any knowledge of Lehi’s preparations for the attack and their general refusal to provide any information whatsoever. The administration decided to punish the settlement by levying a £500 fine on it. This means of collective punishment had of course often been used against Arab villages during the 1936–39 rebellion. Accordingly, it was precisely the type of action that should have pleased the Arabs and assuaged their complaints of prejudicial treatment of the Yishuv. However, it not only failed to mollify Arab discontent but opened the Palestine administration to a new round of recrimination. The gravity of the crime, Palestinian Arab leaders now argued, was unprecedented; they regarded the imposition of a fine on just one settlement as grossly insufficient and instead demanded that the entire Jewish community be punished.19
Moyne made the same point in a letter to Stanley. He implored the colonial secretary to consider the implications of the Palestine administration’s lenient treatment of the Yishuv on Arab opinion across the region. The failure to punish the Yishuv, he warned, “can hardly pass unnoticed in the Middle East and opinion here may begin to wonder if H.M.G. are either impotent to redress such threats or even willing to condone them.”20
Neither the Colonial Office nor the Palestine government, however, was prepared to reconsider punishing the Yishuv. Officials in London and Jerusalem maintained that the cabinet’s long-standing restrictions on the use of British military forces in Palestine for internal security duties prevented the adoption of any harsher measures. Although this argument was perhaps technically correct, it failed to take into account the consequences of doing nothing more. In addition to the Arabs’ continued anger, the administration’s passive response set the stage for renewed confrontation with the Yishuv. Newspaper editorials, for instance, paid lip service in the brevity of their condemnations of the attack on MacMichael and instead emphasized the incompetence of the police and the ineptitude of the Palestine government for having allowed the terrorist organizations to take root. The Jewish Agency made precisely this argument while also seeking to advance its own political agenda at the expense of the Revisionists by blaming the Irgun for the incident. Although Lehi had taken credit for the attack in pamphlets and posters distributed in Palestine’s major cities on the night of August 16, the following day Reuben Zaslani, the Jewish Agency’s head of intelligence, claimed that the Irgun was responsible. During a discussion with the U.S. Army intelligence and liaison officer attached to the Jerusalem consulate, he explained that the agency had offered to organize a police unit of its own to deal with the terrorists, but the British had rejected it out of hand. Zaslani made the same argument to the American consul. Significantly, these meetings had their intended effect of establishing a formal liaison arrangement between the Jewish Agency and the OSS.21
Meanwhile, the Irgun regarded the Yishuv’s evident indifference both to the attack and to the government’s renewed pleas for assistance as a green light to continue its own offensive. Just before midnight on August 22, the group launched a new series of attacks, simultaneously assaulting three British police facilities in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. In a communiqué reporting the coordinated operation, the Irgun provided its analysis of recent developments in Palestine. “The fight for liberation,” it proclaimed, “is growing even more fierce. The oppressing Government has approached the Yishuv and asked them to help its C.I.D. men to find and arrest the Soldiers of Israel—but in vain. That is our luck. We know that the Yishuv is split on many social and political questions, but stands united behind the armed fight for our last hope. We also know that in his heart, every Jew is with us.”22
MacMichael left Palestine on August 30. The route from Government House to the Jerusalem railway station was lined with police and soldiers—as much out of affection for the high commissioner as for security. His farewell address to the people of Palestine the previous evening had faithfully captured the essence of his rule: a profound affection and admiration for the Arabs alongside an equally deep distrust and suspicion of the Yishuv. Eschewing sentimentality, the departing high commissioner concentrated instead on what he termed the dangerous “fanaticism” gripping the country; he was clearly referring to the Yishuv—and not only to the two terrorist organizations but to the Jewish Agency as well.23
MacMichael’s message was not lost on the police who were also complaining about the Jews’ favorable treatment compared with the Arabs’. Police morale, which was always tenuous given the PPF’s chronic manpower shortages, had deteriorated further as a result of the additional security demands created by the two terrorist campaigns. Giles, the CID’s chief, made no effort to conceal his dislike of Jews and opposition to any kind of Jewish state in Palestine. Teddy Kollek, the indomitable mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, who was then a young official in the Jewish Agency’s political department responsible for official liaison with British, American, and other Allied countries’ intelligence services, points out this does not mean that Giles was anti-Semitic. Rather, he was typical of long-serving British civil servants in the Middle East, Kollek believes, who understood the Arabs better and therefore preferred them to Jews.24
This combination of factors might have persuaded the Palestine government that some additional punishment of the Yishuv was required. The Irgun attacks on August 22, coming so closely on the heels of the attempt on MacMichael’s life, appear to have been the deciding consideration. Accordingly, in what was intended to be a dramatic assertion of governmental authority, the army and the police were authorized to carry out a mass cordon-and-search operation of the Jewish-populated city of Petah Tiqva, outside Tel Aviv. The stated purpose of the operation was twofold: to seize hidden arms stockpiles and to apprehend terrorists believed to be hiding there.25
At 6:00 a.m. on September 5, troops and police supported by units of the newly established Police Mobile Force (PMF)—the rapid-intervention force composed entirely of British officers—descended on Petah Tiqva. Unlike ordinary police, the PMF was armed with machine guns, mortars, and other automatic weapons and deployed in armored vehicles. While the troops sealed off the city and blocked all entry and exit, the PMF and other army units commenced the searches. A curfew was imposed, and the entire population was ordered to remain in their homes. Each search party was handed a map of Petah Tiqva schematically divided into square grids and assigned a sector. While these teams methodically combed through every dwelling on every street in their assigned areas hunting for hidden arms caches, the city’s residents were rounded up and paraded before teams of police specialists, who checked their identities against lists containing the names and photographs of known terrorists. Over half were subsequently released; among the remainder were reportedly several members of both the Irgun and Lehi. But the police dragnet missed perhaps the biggest catch: Begin himself. His cottage, located in the Hasidoff quarter at the edge of Petah Tiqva, for some reason was not included in the sweep and thus was never searched nor its residents screened and questioned.26
A total of over fifty known and suspected Irgun and Lehi members were now in police custody as a result of the Petah Tiqva operation and arrests separately carried out in Tel Aviv. Even so, British intelligence officers remained skeptical that any dent had been made either to the terrorist organizations themselves or in the sympathy and limited support they enjoyed from the community. Indeed, unlike the curfews in March and April, the more severe operation in Petah Tiqva estranged the community further from the government while seeming to goad the terrorists to still greater excesses.27
Begin was quick to realize that the Petah Tiqva operation had provided the group with an opening to promote its self-appointed role as defenders of the Jewish popu
lace against the oppressive machinery of British rule. Within days its propagandists had distributed pamphlets throughout the country proclaiming its intention to retaliate for the search, warning the government that continued use of the army in this manner would force the group to reconsider its policy of “non-interference in the war effort.”28
On September 27, the Irgun made good on that pledge. In a dramatic show of force, at least 150 terrorists simultaneously assaulted the police stations in Haifa, Qalqilya, Qatra, and Beit Dajan. The operation was unprecedented both for the large number of Irgun fighters involved and because three of the targets were located in purely Arab areas, which had not been the scene of any Irgun attacks since the Arab Rebellion. Indeed, for the first time since then as well, both Arabs and British service personnel were killed and injured. With this bold stroke, the Irgun shattered the Palestine government’s hopes that the deteriorating situation in the country could be contained until the arrival in a few weeks’ time of the new high commissioner, Lord Gort.29
More bad news followed two days later.
Tom Wilkin, now a police assistant superintendent, was widely regarded as among the CID’s best intelligence officers. He “knew more about Jewish politics and organizations,” his boss, Assistant Superintendent Geoffrey Morton, recalled, “than did the rest of the Palestine Police put together.” Accordingly, Wilkin had long been at the top of Lehi’s target list; his part in Stern’s death two years before had intensified these efforts as both he and Morton (who had actually fired the fatal shots) were relentlessly stalked. This had taken a heavy toll on Morton, who, at Wilkin’s urging, had obtained a transfer to Trinidad the previous May. Lehi now redoubled its efforts to kill Wilkin—a fact that he was increasingly aware of. On September 24 the CID office in Jaffa told Wilkin about a highly credible plot to kill him in the very near future. For the first time in his career, Wilkin requested a police escort. Although his request was not denied, it was not promptly acted upon. Hence, Wilkin was alone when he emerged from his Jerusalem living quarters on St. Paul’s Road, just two hundred yards from his office in the Russian Compound, five days later. Two Lehi gunmen were waiting. The CID officer must have realized what was happening, because he was found with his pistol drawn halfway from its holster. But Wilkin never had a chance. He was shot eleven times as both assassins emptied the chambers of their revolvers into his lifeless body before jumping into a waiting car.30
This time, the Palestine government’s response was immediate. By late afternoon a twenty-four-hour curfew had been thrown over the Jewish sections of Jerusalem. The curfew was lifted for daylight hours the next day but remained in force during hours of darkness until October 5.31
But this was only the beginning. So far as Sir John Shaw, the chief secretary, was concerned, some signal action was required both to bring the terrorists to heel and to impress upon the public the importance of its cooperation. As the officer administering government until Lord Gort arrived, Shaw was plainly worried by the deterioration of security. In short order, the high commissioner had nearly been killed; coordinated, en masse terrorist assaults had been simultaneously launched against multiple defended targets; and now a revered senior police officer had been shot to death just steps from headquarters. Even though Shaw himself regularly carried a .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster beneath his familiar gray seersucker suit coat, he was not by nature or disposition an alarmist. In fact, he was known—and respected—for his professional bearing, calm demeanor, and unimpeachable impartiality, the latter a particularly rare trait among British civil servants then in Palestine. “I am not pro-Arab or pro-Jewish,” he liked to tell people. “I am pro-British.”32
Shaw also had a long and intimate knowledge of Palestine, having first come there a quarter of a century earlier as a young lieutenant in General Allenby’s conquering army. Six feet seven inches tall, he towered over virtually everyone he met. He also exuded an air of utter imperturbability. As a matter of both defiance and prestige, for instance, Shaw had insisted that the King David Hotel remain open to guests and diners despite the government’s and military’s ever-expanding presence throughout the establishment. Rymer-Jones would later complain, “ ‘Normal conditions must be maintained’ was the parrot cry [and] John Shaw was the high priest of the great god Normal and this was to lead to nothing but tragedy.”33
Accordingly, the three-page, single-spaced top secret telegram that Shaw sent to Stanley late the same night of Wilkin’s murder could have only had a galvanizing effect on the colonial secretary when it was deciphered and read the following morning. “It is sufficiently evident,” he argued,
that the crises of the last 6 months, culminating in widespread concerted attacks on police stations by armed Jews in force on Wednesday night, in which four Arabs were killed and the murder of Superintendent Wilkin this morning, are not attributable to an isolated small gang of terrorists, but are planned and executed by a formidable organization, which is able to command a considerable force of well armed men …
The police, with all possible support and co-operation by the Army, have done fine work in very trying circumstances. They have been searching and patrolling unceasingly; they have indefatigably sought for information; large numbers of suspects have been arrested, interrogated and detained. The strain on manpower has been heavy.
It has become clear, however, that these measures, essentially defensive as they must be, are not enough and that unquestionably something more positive is required if lives are to be protected, law and order maintained, and the authority of the Government upheld.34
Shaw therefore proposed that the 276 male and 26 female Jewish terrorist suspects currently incarcerated at the Latrun and Acre prisons be secretly removed from Palestine and relocated to “such country as His Majesty’s Government may select.” He justified this extraordinary measure—whereby people who had been detained merely on suspicion of participating in, or encouraging, terrorist acts but had not yet been formally charged, much less tried, for their alleged offenses would be transferred to military custody, summarily deported from the country, and imprisoned elsewhere—on the grounds that it was no longer possible to ensure the security of Palestine’s prisons from terrorist attack. “The details of removal and embarkation,” he assured Stanley, “will be worked out in secrecy and in consultation with the army and the whole business will be organised as a military operation.” Although the possibility that this action might provoke still worse violence had to be considered, the chief secretary argued that this concern was outweighed by the beneficial effect he believed the deportations would have on “rightminded members of the community” and the deterrent it would have on “evil-doers.” In any event, the army was confident that there were sufficient forces to meet any such contingency. The Colonial Office’s legal advisers had already reviewed the plan and confirmed the legality of the proposed deportations.35
The cabinet discussed the request at its meeting on October 7. It was clear that the security situation in Palestine, Stanley began, was more serious than had previously been thought. In contrast to the small number of perpetrators involved in the mostly isolated terrorist incidents of the recent past, the attacks on the police stations had evidenced “all the characteristics of a carefully planned military operation.” Moreover, intelligence reports continued to stress the combined strength of the terrorist organizations was in excess of five thousand people, while the British section of the police force, upon which the main security burden had fallen, had no more than three thousand personnel. The cabinet approved the decision two days later, and on October 19, 251 imprisoned Jewish terrorists whom the authorities deemed the most dangerous were secretly flown from Palestine to British-occupied Eritrea aboard eighteen DC-3 transport aircraft accompanied by fighter escort.36
With the detainee issue resolved, Shaw’s attention shifted to renewed efforts to obtain the Jewish Agency’s cooperation. As if to underscore the startling deterioration of security, the government communiq
ué that announced the detainees’ deportation had contained information about a new security measure whereby air raid sirens would henceforth sound in any urban location where terrorist activity was occurring. “Upon the siren being sounded,” the public was instructed, “all vehicular traffic within the town area will come to a complete stop.” The siren was thus intended as a “call to increased vigilance,” which the public was expected to regard as an opportunity to report to the police immediately “any suspicious movements or persons” that it either encountered or observed.37
But what Shaw still sought was the community’s active cooperation and assistance in preventing and preempting terrorist activity—not just responding when it had already occurred. The problem, as he explained in a lengthy telegram to Stanley, was the growing “numbers of Jewish young men and women who are becoming infected with the gangster virus; these are providing recruits for the terrorist organization.” This was the direct outcome of the Jewish Agency’s “totalitarian organization and regimentation” of the Yishuv—which amounted to nothing less than the “negation of free thought and speech.” Sedition was taught in the schools and fomented by the Jewish youth movement in a manner, the chief secretary continued, that was “unpleasantly reminiscent of Hitler Youth.” The effect could be seen both in the recruits swelling the terrorists’ ranks and in the dangerous number of passive sympathizers who, “even while they doubt the wisdom of [the terrorists’] methods, are multiplying.”38
Shaw regarded “terrorism in Palestine … [as] an infectious disease, all the more so when it has the semblance of success and appears, on the whole, to be attended by not very serious consequences for the perpetrators.” In the circumstances, he concluded, there was a “very real danger” that if the security situation was not brought under control soon, police morale would continue to be affected, thus further undermining the government’s counterterrorism efforts. The chief secretary argued that if the government could somehow convince the Yishuv that the terrorists’ activities were having a detrimental effect on the war against Germany as well as undermining the Zionist cause in both the United States and Britain, the Jewish Agency and in turn the Yishuv might become more inclined to cooperate with the authorities. Accordingly, he proposed that British military headquarters for the Middle East join with the Palestine government in issuing a proclamation along these lines. Finally, the chief secretary suggested that the Colonial Office undertake a public relations campaign in Britain to influence “responsible Jewish” opinion in that country. Its purpose would be to garner not “big headlines in popular papers so much as leading articles” in prominent broadsheets such as The Times of London and The Manchester Guardian favored by the most educated and influential stratum of Anglo-Jewry. This effort would be supported by a weekly newsletter detailing Jewish terrorist activities in Palestine that the secretariat in Jerusalem would provide to the Ministry of Information in London for distribution to the British press.39