Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Begin instinctively understood this. Using the basic knowledge of English that he had acquired during the previous three years by listening to the BBC World Service while in hiding, he composed the text of a communiqué that would be distributed throughout the country. In his haste and perhaps also confusion of English usage, the Irgun leader—like others in the Yishuv—equated caning with flagellation and strokes with lashes. “WARNING!” posters declared in Hebrew as well as English.

  A Hebrew soldier taken prisoner by the enemy was sentenced by an illegal British Military “Court” to the humiliating punishment of flogging.

  We warn the occupation Government not to carry out this punishment, wich [sic] is contrary to the laws of soldiers honour. If it is put into effect—every officer of the British occupation army in Eretz-Israel will be liable to be punished in the same way: to get 18 whips.28

  The warning was not taken seriously. Less than a week later, the same military court found Aaron Cohen, a seventeen-year-old, guilty of distributing Irgun pamphlets and sentenced him to twelve strokes of the cane—in addition to a lengthy jail term. Under the Emergency Regulations, it now only remained for Barker, as GOC, to confirm the sentences. The Vaad Le’umi, the Palestine rabbinate, and the Jewish Bar Association, among others, beseeched Barker to remit the caning sentences—maintaining that rather than imparting a harsh lesson, each stroke would create new wellsprings of sympathy and support for the Irgun. The GOC, however, ignored their plea, and on December 27, Kimchin was caned. That night the Irgun issued a second warning:

  For centuries you have been whipping “natives” in your colonies—with impunity. In your foolish pride you dared to consider the Sons of Israel in Eretz-Yisrael as “natives” too.

  You are mistaken. Zion is not Exile. The Hebrews are not Zulus. You will not whip Hebrews in their Homeland. And if you do—then “His Majesty’s Officers” will be whipped in full public view.29

  The following evening Major Paddy Brett of the Second Parachute Brigade was enjoying a quiet dinner with his wife at Netanya’s waterfront Metropole Hotel when several men approached their table. A revolver was produced, and the major agreed to accompany them outside. He was bundled into a waiting car and driven to a deserted spot on the outskirts of town where he was given eighteen lashes from a rawhide whip. Police and troops in armored cars had immediately sealed off the area, and search parties were about to be dispatched when, less than an hour later, Major Brett reappeared at the hotel—naked from the waist up, the skin on his back lacerated. Shortly afterward a car carrying five men was stopped at a roadblock between Petah Tiqva and Kfar Saba. A gunfight ensued, and the men were arrested. When troops searched the trunk, they found a variety of weapons—as well as two rawhide whips. Meanwhile, four other armed Irgunists seized a British noncommissioned officer in Rishon-le-Zion, who was subjected to the same treatment as Major Brett. About the same time ten Irgun fighters abducted two British staff sergeants in Tel Aviv and, after whipping them with a length of rope, left them tied to a tree in the Hadassah Gardens.30

  Montgomery was livid. “I am particularly anxious to know,” he told Dempsey, “if the Army is to be forced to accept this insult or if it is to be allowed to take the offensive against such terrorist acts.” Preeminent among his concerns was the effect on troop morale, which, as Cunningham also knew, was at the breaking point. Only days before, Ben-Zvi had complained to the new chief secretary, Sir Henry Gurney, about the increasing number of random assaults on Jewish citizens by often inebriated troops. The potential for more widespread violence against the Yishuv was thus taken seriously by the army. Accordingly, all troops were immediately confined to barracks as preparations were made for a massive show of force. Countrywide antiterrorist operations commenced early on December 30 when troops from the Sixth Airborne Division cordoned off and searched Petah Tiqva and Netanya and then the next day moved on to Rishon-le-Zion and thereafter on consecutive days to Tel Aviv and Rehovot. More than six thousand people were screened, of whom just over a hundred were detained for further questioning. The amount of arms seized was frustratingly meager, amounting to only a pistol, some spare rifle barrels, and a handful of ammunition.31

  The Yishuv saw these operations for what they were: punitive instruments of coercion meant to impact the community regardless of whether the terrorists themselves were affected. For the Irgun, however, they provided yet another opportunity for the group to taunt the security forces and embarrass the government. On the night of January 2, 1947, while the army was preoccupied with searching Rehovot, Irgun fighters struck in a dozen places throughout the country. As dusk fell, multiple teams simultaneously assaulted the Syrian Orphanage complex in Jerusalem, now an army billet known as the Schneller Barracks, and a military camp in Hadera, south of Haifa. For the first time, homemade flamethrowers produced in Irgun workshops were used in some of the attacks. Within the hour, additional incidents had been reported in both cities as well as in Tiberias, Lydda, and along the Haifa–Tel Aviv road. Although security force casualties were surprisingly light (one killed and twenty wounded), the psychological blow dealt to the government and its security forces was significant.32

  “Palestine: Full Scale Terror; Irgun Attacks with All Resources,” blared the headline on The Daily Telegraph’s front page the following morning. Successive editorials both in that paper and in The Times blamed the Labour government for the policy vacuum that had given rise to the renewed violence. According to The Daily Telegraph, this had also critically deprived the security forces of direction and purpose, thus casting them on the defensive and rendering them vulnerable to attack. “The finest troops in the world,” it warned, “will not put up indefinitely with being allotted the passive role of bomb-fodder.” The Times was equally blunt: Continued inaction, it opined, was unacceptable. The time had come to impose increasingly more “onerous regulations” on the Yishuv until the terrorist organizations were eliminated and the attacks on British forces ceased.33

  The coverage and the editorial commentary provided renewed validation of the Irgun’s strategy. “In many cases the British Sunday papers report terrorist incidents in so sensational a manner,” Gurney complained to Creech Jones, “as to constitute what is, in fact, advertisement for terrorist organisations.” This was precisely Begin’s intention.34

  Indeed, there was also no denying that the January 2 operations had achieved all their objectives. Not only had they focused attention on the Irgun’s growing martial capabilities, but they had clearly revealed the increasingly repressive nature of British rule. Following the assault on the British military headquarters at Citrus House in Tel Aviv, for instance, troops belonging to the Sixth Airborne Division had rounded up approximately seventy Jewish males, including a cripple and an invalid dragged from his bed. They were then taken to the Sarona army base, Gurney confirmed to Creech Jones, and forced to run a gauntlet of troops as well as British and Arab police who tripped and beat them with fists and rifle butts. Four men lost consciousness during the ordeal, and six required hospitalization for their injuries.35

  None of this was welcome news for the Labour government, which, with the advent of the New Year, faced a series of hard decisions on Palestine. To date, every one of its initiatives to formulate a policy—whether in concert with the United States or in negotiation with Palestine’s Arab and Jewish communities—had failed. The latest blow had come just before Christmas, when the Zionist Congress meeting in Basel voted to boycott the London Conference, scheduled to resume in late January 1947. The decision dealt a crushing setback both to Bevin’s hopes of restarting the talks and to Creech Jones’s futile attempts to placate the Zionist movement’s moderate wing through the concessions he had dispensed throughout the fall. It was also a stunning repudiation of Weizmann’s leadership and a rejection of his judiciousness, patience, and abiding faith in Britain. Half-blind and enfeebled by age and illness, Weizmann had delivered an impassioned speech to the assembly decrying both terrorism and extremism. Drafted i
n part by the Oxford political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, it was hailed by Weizmann’s confidante Baffy Dugdale as “perhaps the greatest I have ever heard.” But it could neither turn back the tide of anti-British sentiment that dominated the proceedings nor counter the influence of the decidedly confrontational, mostly American hard-liners, who rallied around Ben-Gurion and pressed for a program of active resistance, including the renewal of armed struggle. Arguments from leading figures like Golda Meyerson, the acting head of the Jewish Agency’s political department, that the terrorists’ popularity was growing in direct proportion to official Zionism’s perceived passivity had proven irresistible. These concerns were by no means unfounded. According to British intelligence, the Irgun had bragged of having attracted so many recruits at the expense of the Haganah that it did not have enough officers to train them all.36

  It was not only the Yishuv that had soured on Britain. Palestine’s Arabs were just as unyielding and similarly ill-disposed to negotiations unless their own ineluctable demand that Palestine remain a unitary state was accepted. In addition to their long-standing fears of Zionist conquest and displacement, the recent intensification of Jewish terrorism had produced fantastical notions of British perfidy and collusion. Conspiracy theories abounded to explain all manner of government decisions and policies, including the release of the remaining Operation Agatha detainees, the fact that no collective punishment measures were levied against the Yishuv, the perceived tolerance of repeated disruptions to rail traffic across the country, and the announcement in late December that the cost of maintaining the Jewish illegal immigrants in camps on Cyprus—at an estimated £2 million per year—would be borne by all of Palestine’s taxpayers.37

  The most immediate problem facing the Labour government, however, was getting the Colonial and War Offices to agree on a security policy for Palestine. The divergence in assessments that had followed the previous spike of terrorist activity back in November had resulted in Attlee’s directing Creech Jones and Montgomery to produce a joint memorandum on the subject. But the document that had emerged a few weeks later was notable less for any apparent modus vivendi than for the wide chasm that continued to separate the Palestine administration and the military. The sharp uptick in terrorism at the end of 1946, coupled with the ignominy of the flogging incidents, had endowed this issue with even greater urgency. Regardless of whatever policy for Palestine’s future the government might decide, it was absolutely imperative that order be maintained in the country to facilitate its implementation.38

  With this in mind, the cabinet’s Defence Committee, which comprised all the relevant principal ministers, including the prime minister, and the CIGS, met on New Year’s Day to try to resolve this impasse. Creech Jones spoke first. In his view, political considerations had to take precedence over security concerns, especially if the London Conference was to be revived and given any prospect of success. The colonial secretary claimed that great strides had been made in strengthening the Yishuv’s moderate leadership and had produced a discernible inclination toward cooperation. Bevin followed. It was impossible, he believed, to separate Palestine’s immediate security needs from the government’s ultimate determination of the mandate’s future. In the meantime, however, British prestige across the region was crumbling. This was very dangerous, he warned, because Britain’s prosperity and stature as a world power depended on its continued access to Middle Eastern oil. Palestine was thus “strategically essential” to British interests in the region, and any settlement of Arab and Jewish claims must take account of this. Montgomery spoke next. He proclaimed his complete and utter disbelief in the Colonial Office’s assertion in its section of the joint memorandum that the Jewish Agency “had the extremists under control.” According to all the intelligence he had seen, nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, the “whole country was in the grip of lawlessness.” Harking back to his experiences in Palestine during the Arab Rebellion, Montgomery urged that the entire country be flooded with mobile columns of troops.39

  Attlee spoke last. The current status quo in Palestine was completely unacceptable, the prime minister declared. The military had been placed “in an impossible position” by the operational restraints imposed on it. He therefore again instructed the Colonial and War Offices, this time in direct consultation with Cunningham, to draft a completely new directive that would clearly define the rules of engagement under which the military’s power could be brought to bear to restore and maintain order in Palestine. “The Prime Minister came down heavily on my side,” Montgomery records in his memoir, “and the Colonial Secretary was routed.” This perhaps explains why, as the Defence Committee members left the meeting room, Creech Jones surprised Montgomery by asking him to prepare the draft of the directive for discussion at a meeting to be held in two days’ time, with the high commissioner attending, at the Colonial Office.40

  Cunningham arrived in London via Malta on the afternoon of January 3. The meeting began testily that evening with the high commissioner once more rebutting the CIGS’s accusations that he had prevented the army from taking offensive action against terrorism. The crux of the matter, Cunningham reiterated, was that counterterrorism was primarily a police responsibility, because success depended on information provided willingly by the civilian populace—a point that Wickham had also emphasized in his recent report. The CIGS strongly disagreed. The problem as he saw it was that the army “was not allowed to act unless there was evidence of terrorist activity: it must wait for the terrorists to act and was always on the defensive.” Citing the success achieved by the army during the Arab Rebellion, Montgomery outlined his plan of “turning the place upside down” through countrywide searches without waiting for either evidence or provocation. He conceded that this would likely inconvenience innocent people and upset daily life, but that was precisely the point. The Yishuv, he predicted, would then “tire of being upset and would co-operate in putting an end to terrorism.” So fervent was his faith in this outcome that the CIGS was prepared to stake “the whole strength of the British Army” on it and if necessary to relocate sufficient forces to Palestine from either Germany or Egypt for these operations. After further discussion, agreement was reached on the four-point directive that Montgomery had drafted. In a concession to Cunningham, a carefully worded proviso was inserted prohibiting purely punitive operations that would needlessly impact law-abiding communities. As the meeting concluded, the CIGS inquired whether Cunningham was now prepared to give military commanders a free hand in Palestine to carry out the directive. An appalled Cunningham replied that he most certainly was not because his job was to take into account the political as well as the security aspects of governing Palestine. Creech Jones then intervened, suggesting that this was an issue best left for the cabinet to decide. Montgomery was clearly perturbed, and on that note the meeting adjourned.41

  The cabinet considered the matter at its January 15 meeting. The minutes record a consensus that “more vigorous action” was required in Palestine and that “leniency towards the terrorists would not strengthen the influence of the Jewish Agency.” The directive, as drafted by Montgomery, was approved and the army given the green light to take the offensive. In anticipation of just this outcome, the CIGS had already written to Dempsey with instructions that once authorization for these more aggressive operations was obtained, the army must be ready to act with alacrity. This, Montgomery had advised, would also entail “that the whole life of the armed forces in Palestine be at once adjusted to the new policy” so that terrorist opportunities to kidnap soldiers were minimized, if not eliminated completely. Accordingly, new orders were issued declaring out-of-bounds all but a handful of cinemas, restaurants, cafés, and bars in Palestine that the military authorities judged to be secure. Troops were also instructed to walk or travel armed in pairs when venturing outside military facilities or encampments.42

  Similar restrictions were now imposed on civilian officials as well. The newly appointed undersecretary of f
inance, John Fletcher-Cooke, arrived that winter to replace his deceased predecessor, Julius Jacobs, one of the King David Hotel bombing’s Jewish victims. He described the grim existence that he and his fellow civil servants endured. “My life and work in Jerusalem, like those of every other Government officer,” Fletcher-Cooke recalled, “was severely circumscribed. Armed guards accompanied me to my Jewish dentist for treatment; armed guards patrolled the main shopping area for an hour or two on certain days, which were the only times we could visit the shops and the banks; and travelling outside Jerusalem was only permitted with armed escorts.” Their dependents were subject to the same strict precautions. As a young boy, David Tomlinson remembered going with his family in early 1947 to Jerusalem, where his father commanded an army transport company. He initially traveled to school by bus with other British children. But then intelligence surfaced of a Lehi plot to blow it up. Thereafter, Tomlinson rode to and from school in the backseat of an army staff car—accompanied by armed escorts sitting on either side of him.43

  Despite all these security measures, the terrorist attacks continued. On January 12, Lehi carried out its first major operation in months, using a stolen staff car, packed with explosives, to demolish the Haifa district police headquarters. Four policemen were killed and more than sixty people injured; the cost of rebuilding the facility was estimated to be well over £200,000. Then, two days later, a military court convicted another seventeen-year-old Irgun fighter implicated in the attempted robbery of the Jaffa Ottoman Bank to life imprisonment and eighteen strokes of the cane. With tension already running high, the Palestine administration sought a face-saving solution to avert a complete breakdown of relations with the Yishuv. It found one in the form of a government doctor who was sent to examine the boy in his cell at Jerusalem’s central prison. The doctor duly concluded that the young man was not healthy enough to tolerate corporal punishment, and the administration, citing medical reasons, revoked the caning sentence. This still left Aaron Cohen, the Irgunist convicted in December, whose sentence of a dozen strokes from the cane Barker had already confirmed. However, citing the incongruity of penalties stipulated in the Emergency Regulations and the Palestine Juvenile Offenders Ordinance, where the latter limited caning only to people aged sixteen or younger and took legal precedence over the Emergency Regulations, the Palestine government announced that this component of Cohen’s sentence was being nullified. At age seventeen, the press release explained, Cohen had not in fact been eligible for this punishment in the first place.44