Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Kellar was the British intelligence community’s preeminent expert on the Jewish terrorist organizations. His detailed knowledge and thorough understanding of Zionist politics and both its legitimate and its sub-rosa institutions had greatly impressed his boss, Liddell, the counterintelligence division’s head. Kellar’s expertise in these areas was greatly facilitated by his access to the fruits of the intelligence community’s tightly guarded, and reluctantly shared, ability to secretly read and listen to both coded and open messages sent between London and Jerusalem by Jewish Agency officials.6

  Since at least 1939, both the British Government Code and Cypher School (the forerunner to today’s GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, which is the British counterpart of the U.S. National Security Agency) and the Radio Security Service, maintained by MI6, had been intercepting these communications. In addition, Home Office warrants had authorized MI5 to tap the phones at the Jewish Agency’s London offices at 77 Great Russell and open its mail. British intelligence had therefore been privy to the intense discussions held at the end of October between Shertok and Golomb in London with their colleagues in Jerusalem over the cooperation issue. All this information was duly provided to Stanley and Churchill. Kellar appears to have been the main conduit of this traffic. It was known by its top secret code name, ISPAL—presumably an acronym for “Intelligence Service—Palestine.”7

  ISPAL was highly confidential, but Gort seems to have become thoroughly acquainted with its intelligence products while he was in London prior to leaving for Palestine in late October. As ISPAL’s principal guardian at MI5, Kellar became the incumbent high commissioner’s personal guide through the intricacies of both this top secret treasure trove of information and the various Zionist institutions and officials. The two men, Liddell recorded in his diary, “established a complete bond of confidence”—to the extent that Gort was “popping in and out of [Kellar’s] office every day … [and] even rehearses with Kellar what he is going to say to Shertok.”8

  By coincidence Kellar was scheduled to make his second tour in seven months of MI5’s outstations in the Middle East in early 1945. He traveled to Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. While in Jerusalem, Kellar stayed in Government House as Gort’s guest, and at the high commissioner’s explicit request he agreed to extend his stay in order to “look into certain security matters which had acquired urgent importance through the increasing tenseness of the political situation existing there.” It was a measure of how critical the security situation in Palestine had become that Kellar spent most of his trip in Jerusalem and fully three-quarters of his report was devoted to Palestine.9

  During his previous visit, Kellar had reported his concerns over the PPF British section’s susceptibility to bribery and especially the insecure communications at Government House that rendered the high commissioner’s telephone lines vulnerable to interception. But, reflecting the views of all the government officials with whom he had spoken, Kellar had been decidedly upbeat at the time about the police force’s ability to handle any trouble. The tone and content of the report of his second visit, however, were considerably more troubled. Kellar was brutally critical of the police and especially the CID. Probing more deeply, he found fault with its feckless record keeping and the poor organization of its files—perhaps the most fundamental requirement of any effective police or intelligence apparatus. Kellar also criticized the quality of the CID’s information and the incompetence of its interrogators.10

  He was particularly taken aback by the lack of institutional knowledge pertaining to the terrorist organizations and their important figures. And Kellar despaired over the abject state of liaison between the CID and the Defence Security Office (DSO), the British Security Service (MI5) station in Jerusalem, and with army intelligence as well. He was especially perturbed by the cooperative arrangement that the CID had entered into with the Jewish Agency in order to gain information on the terrorists. To his mind, this created a dangerous dependency on the agency that both underscored the police force’s own enfeebled intelligence capabilities and made it impossible to independently verify any of the information it was being fed. Kellar regarded this servile relationship as proof positive of the CID’s ineptitude in penetrating the terrorist organizations. Worse still, it laid bare this failure before the Jewish authorities who would therefore draw their own conclusions about the abysmal state of British intelligence. None of this went unnoticed by the Irgun’s leadership, according to the memoir of Mendel Malatzky, a senior commander in the group at that time.11

  Kellar was also critical of the CID for its lax handling of intelligence. “The fact that the Police lack personnel and officers with proper and up-to-date C.I.D. experience has much to do with this state of affairs, but personal friction also plays a part.” Kellar went on to detail how relations between the CID chief, Giles, and his DSO counterpart, Henry Hunloke, were strained to the extent that the sharing, collation, and analysis of intelligence were severely compromised. He described Giles as difficult to work with and suffering “from a noticeable inferiority complex [making him] unnecessarily sensitive to any suspected slight.” The nub of the liaison problem lay in the fact that Giles resented Hunloke because the latter had been asked to Government House for consultations more than Giles.12

  Richard Catling, then a deputy superintendent under Giles’s command, admitted to Kellar that the CID resented the DSO station’s activities. Giles and his men felt that DSO personnel had no business poking their noses in what they regarded as exclusively police business. Kellar had to assure Catling that “members of the Defence Security Organisation had no idea of stealing any kind of march on the Police and were only too anxious to pool their resources with the C.I.D., more particularly at a time when [Catling] himself felt, everything should be done to lessen the dependence of the Authorities on the Agency for the information they needed on the terrorists.”13

  But Kellar’s sharpest indictment was of the CID’s failure to properly interrogate any of the detained Jewish terrorists before they had been shipped off to Eritrea in October. He suggested to Catling that it might not be too late to glean some useful information from the exiled detainees. Catling agreed. Accordingly, arrangements were made to fly six terrorists—whom the CID regarded as “ring-leaders”—to the special MI6 interrogation facility at Maadi, on the outskirts of Cairo, for intensive questioning. The results, however, were disappointing. “The men concerned are cast in the fanatical mould,” Kellar explained, “and, like the I.R.A. during the ‘Black and Tan’ period, they will probably prove difficult or perhaps impossible to break.” But this did not absolve the CID from either its failure to thoroughly interrogate these men in the first place or its evident lack of competence to do so.14

  The section of the report on Palestine concludes with Kellar’s prescient observation that “much clearly needed to be done at Military Headquarters in the King David Hotel, Jerusalem.” Security procedures were so lax that people summoned for interviews to the government and military offices in the southern wing of the building simply wandered the halls until they were called. In addition, local cleaners went about their business without oversight. Kellar was astonished to find a secret military transit order under a bush on the hotel’s grounds. He did what he could to tighten controls on access by unauthorized people and hotel service personnel and also to improve the telephone system’s vulnerability to interception—a problem he found pervasive on both his visits to Palestine.15

  Kellar’s grave reservations about intelligence cooperation with the Jewish Agency and the Haganah raised no eyebrows in either London or Jerusalem. Eden defended this cooperative arrangement to his Middle East ambassadors and their advisers, explaining that the only “really important thing is to round up the terrorists.” To this end, he had assured Killearn in particular on November 30, 1944, that “drastic immediate and practical steps have been and are being taken to round up Stern Group and other terrorists … Numerous arrests have already been
made, including some persons known to belong to Stern Group. Inspector General is confident that given a little time and a police force of sufficient strength [the] power of criminal gangs can be broken.” Whether Eden’s two explicit references to the Stern Group were deliberately misleading or simply based on inaccurate information given to him is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the Palestine administration still had serious concerns about the Jewish Agency’s determination to press ahead with the counterterrorism campaign and moreover was fully cognizant of the fact that the agency’s efforts were directed exclusively against the Irgun and not against Lehi.16

  Only two days earlier, Gort had complained twice in two separate telegrams to Stanley about the meager results of the Haganah’s counterterrorist efforts. “Since the murder of Lord Moyne,” he reported in the first communication, “there has been no cause to complain of the overt attitude of the Agency and Vaad Le’umi leaders, but no real proof has yet been displayed of the will and ability to regain control.” But as the day wore on, the high commissioner’s criticism shifted from that of effort to attitude. Although “Jewish opinion is belatedly aroused against terrorists,” he complained, the “main emphasis is upon possible disastrous consequences of terrorism to Zionism, rather than moral or civic duty.” Indeed, on the same day that Eden was sending the above message to Killearn, Gort was once again finding fault with the Jewish Agency and the Haganah’s conduct. “After a short period of acute alarm,” the high commissioner reported to London, “there are signs that they are beginning to believe that they have ‘gotten away with it,’ and that they will be able to preserve … their internal unity and armed strength intact against the day when the use of force to achieve their major aims is deemed appropriate.” Contemporaneous American intelligence reports made the same point.17

  British intelligence, however, took a very different—and surprisingly far more laudatory—view of the counterterrorist efforts’ initial results. Liddell noted in his diary, for instance, how a highly placed agent in the Jewish Agency, code-named Snake, had passed to the PPF the names and addresses of more than five hundred terrorists. An additional tranche of information contained the locations of terrorist arms dumps. Nearly half the people on the list, Liddell noted, were already in custody. To his mind, this was ample proof that “the more moderate elements in the Zionist movement are afraid that the actions of the extremists may jeopardize the whole future of Zionism.” According to the Canadian historian Steven Wagner, Snake was likely Kollek, the Jewish Agency’s liaison officer to both British military intelligence and the police.18

  On December 6, Gort lunched with Weizmann. As they strolled in the garden together before sitting down to eat, the high commissioner reminded Weizmann, per the war cabinet’s directive from its November 24 meeting, that any hesitation in moving decisively against the terrorists would entail for the Yishuv the most dire consequences. Weizmann was shocked that there should still be any question of the Jewish Agency’s determination to stamp out the terrorist organizations. Indeed, he assured the high commissioner that the Yishuv was doing everything in its power to fight terrorism. Shaken by the mere suggestion of any doubts about the agency’s sincerity or determination concerning this matter, Weizmann asked Gort to please communicate the gist of his message to Churchill while hastening to add that he would himself be writing to Churchill shortly with a more expansive account of the agency’s cooperation.19

  That letter arrived within the fortnight. In it, Weizmann impressed upon Churchill that he was very much aware of the “gravity of the situation” and that in his opinion cooperation with the authorities “is proceeding satisfactorily.” He described how “severe blows” had been dealt to the terrorists with more to follow until “decisive results” were achieved. In closing, the elderly Zionist leader’s deepest fears that the Yishuv might yet have some terrible punishment visited upon it are plainly evident.20

  But British officials in Palestine remained unconvinced of both the sincerity and the effectiveness of the Haganah’s counterterrorism campaign. Shaw was especially dismissive of the inflated claim that five hundred terrorists were now off the streets thanks to the Jewish Agency and the Haganah. In point of fact, he explained to Sir Arthur Dawe, an assistant undersecretary at the Colonial Office, the police had been able to locate and arrest only slightly more than half that number. Of those, thirty-seven had been freed because of insufficient evidence, and another twenty-eight were released but kept under police surveillance. This meant that fewer than a hundred terrorist suspects remained in custody. The police attributed these anemic results to the stale information they were fed by the agency. Further, the few scraps that were accurate pertained mostly to “unimportant members of the illegal organisations” rather than the core leadership and senior operational commanders. When these complaints were brought to the agency liaison officer’s attention, Shaw continued, he professed not to know whom the police were referring to. In response, the CID drew up its own list of fifty-six high-value targets complete with photographs and presented it to the Jewish Agency. The results, however, remained depressingly meager until mid-December, when the Saison—the counterterrorist operation’s code name—finally netted its first big catch.21

  The weather in Jerusalem that winter had been especially harsh. It had rained for what seemed weeks on end. Then, on Friday, December 15, the skies cleared and the temperature warmed. The streets were full of people enjoying the break in the clouds or hurrying to finish their last-minute pre-Sabbath shopping and errands. Having been kept behind closed doors in shuttered safe houses for days on end, Eliahu Lankin, the Irgun’s Jerusalem detachment commander, decided to go out for a walk. He later recalled passing two men loitering on the staircase of the apartment building as he went out. Lankin squeezed past them and headed in the direction of Ben Yehuda Street. The two men followed. He now walked faster and then quickly crossed to the other side of the road. The two men also increased their pace and rapidly drew up behind Lankin as he approached the corner. It was there that they pounced. Lankin’s arms were pinned behind him and bound tightly together. Almost immediately, several other men appeared on the scene to help bundle the still struggling Lankin into a waiting taxi. It sped off in the direction of the police station at the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market. From there, Lankin was transferred under heavy guard to police headquarters at the Russian Compound for interrogation. Later that day he was brought to the adjacent central prison facility and, deemed the most dangerous of the lot, quickly transferred to Acre prison and then exiled to the secret terrorist detention facility in Eritrea.22

  But even this coup failed to mollify Shaw or assuage complaints from the police that the Jewish Agency and the Haganah were withholding the best information and simply feeding the CID unimportant snippets. The chief secretary believed politics lay behind the fact that the full weight of the Saison had been brought to bear only against the Irgun and not against Lehi, the organization actually responsible for Moyne’s murder. The ostensible reason for this focus on the Irgun was the Jewish Agency’s previously cited tactical argument that predated the Moyne assassination and held that the counterterrorist campaign should first be directed against the numerically larger and better-armed Irgun before turning to the smaller and less powerful Lehi, lest they be driven into an alliance against the Jewish Agency. But tactical considerations alone cannot explain why Lehi was now excluded from the agency’s counterterrorist efforts. Instead, the same political rivalries that had long divided internal Zionist politics, coupled with what some observers have argued was the Jewish Agency’s determination to deal with its most serious rival, account for the Saison’s exclusive focus on the Irgun.23

  For Yehuda Bauer, a leading Israeli historian of this period, the explanation is both far simpler and much less conspiratorial. He argues that Lehi simply “read the writing on the wall and suspended operations for about six months.” But the reality appears to be more complex. Following the Saison’s kidnapping of a Sternist
named Todi Peli in mid-December, the Haganah and Lehi supposedly made a deal. Such was the mistrust between the two organizations that when Friedman-Yellin met with Golomb to finalize its terms, the Lehi leader reportedly placed a loaded pistol next to him on the table where they sat. Lehi agreed to suspend all terrorist operations for the duration of Hakim and Bet-Zuri’s trial in order to avoid potentially prejudicing their case. Friedman-Yellin also promised Golomb that Lehi would make no attempt to assassinate Churchill—even though it is not entirely clear that such an operation had been contemplated. The outcome, according to the Israeli historian Joseph Heller, was that only one Lehi member (Peli) was ever seized by the Haganah compared with the dozens of Irgunists. Moreover, neither the Jewish Agency nor the Haganah reportedly ever gave the name of even one Lehi member to the police. By comparison, the two organizations furnished the police with the names of more than seven hundred Irgun operatives and actively assisted in their apprehension.24

  One such person was Ya’acov Meridor, the Irgun’s former commander who was now Begin’s deputy. He was arrested on February 13, 1945, at the house he shared with his wife, daughter, and young son. At 3:00 a.m. they were awakened by pounding on their front door. Meridor’s wife went to investigate, and when she opened the door, British soldiers, uniformed police, and plainclothes CID officers forced their way inside. Meridor’s false documentation in the name of Meyer Silverman was cursorily inspected and then dismissively tossed aside. The police already knew that they had their man. Meridor was handcuffed and frog-marched out the door. He recalled passing a man dressed in ordinary street clothes standing slightly to the side. In the brief exchange of glances between this person and one of the arresting officers, Meridor knew immediately that this man was a Jew, a member of the Haganah, and a Saison operative. A decade later, Meridor could barely contain the sense of rage and repugnance he felt staring into the eyes of his betrayer. “This man was one of my people, of my faith, of my flesh,” he recalled in his memoir of life underground. “He had not been bribed to do this job. That was what hurt most. Every society has its degenerates, but this was the depths of degeneration. This was betrayal.”25