Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Montgomery was incandescent at this craven surrender to terrorist threats and had made his feelings clear on this subject at the cabinet meeting on January 15. Since 1938, he complained, no Jewish terrorist convicted of a capital offense had yet to be executed. In 1946 alone, eighty-three such offenders had escaped the gallows for one reason or another. More appalling, even cases of corporal punishment were now being remitted. “It is a weak and thoroughly bad policy,” the CIGS maintained. “It is merely laying up great trouble for ourselves if we remit sentences because we are afraid of possible Jewish reaction. We are afraid of nothing and it is high time we made this clear to all illegal armed organisations in Palestine.” He had the cabinet’s full backing—with Attlee noting the adverse impact that this serial commutation of sentences was also having on Arab opinion. Montgomery personally apprised Cunningham of the cabinet’s decision the following day, just hours before the high commissioner was due to return to Palestine. Henceforth, terrorists convicted of capital offenses would be put to death without either delay or demurral.45

  Imperial history is littered with examples of decisions to embrace the death penalty for convicted terrorists as a means of imparting a stern deterrent message and thereby demonstrating governmental resolve and steadfastness. In reality, the results more often than not have been counterproductive, turning popular opprobrium into sympathy and terrorists into freedom fighters. Martyrs thereby arise where none had previously existed. Both Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion, who agreed on little else, clearly understood this a decade before, when a young member of Betar named Shlomo Ben-Yosef became the first and only Jew to be hanged in Palestine for a political crime. The Revisionist Zionist leader had then presciently warned the British that “martyrs become prophets and bombs become altars.” Within weeks of Ben-Yosef’s execution a thoroughly revitalized and further radicalized Irgun had unleashed a renewed campaign of violence that greatly complicated British efforts to restore order in Palestine at an especially critical time. Looking back on these events, Ben-Gurion had bitterly observed that Ben-Yosef’s death, more than any other contemporary event, had galvanized popular support within the Yishuv behind the Irgun. Addressing the House of Commons on January 31, 1947, the Labour MP Richard Crossman, a member of the Anglo-American Committee, had made the same point within the context of current developments in Palestine. A recently convicted Irgun fighter named Dov Gruner would provide the first test of both the government’s determination to enforce the Emergency Regulations’ death penalty statutes and the utility of capital punishment as a coercive instrument with which to defeat terrorism.46

  As a test case demonstrating British resolve, however, Gruner was a particularly poor choice. It is easy to see why the authorities would have thought otherwise. At the time of his arrest the previous April, Gruner was thirty-four years old and had been caught in flagrante during an Irgun raid on a police armory in Ramat Gan shooting at members of HM Forces and planting explosives. Shot in the face and his jaw shattered, Gruner had spent more than eight months recovering in the hospital before he was judged fit to stand trial. But however much the British saw him as epitomizing the cold-blooded Jewish terrorist, to other eyes Gruner’s life story evoked simultaneously the suffering of European Jewry, the courage and tenacity of a new generation of Palestinian Jews willing to take control of their own destiny, and an ethos of self-sacrifice and personal integrity that reflected positively on the Irgun.

  Born in Hungary before World War I to a religiously observant family, Gruner had studied engineering before illegally immigrating to Palestine in 1938, at age twenty-six. In 1941 he enlisted in the British army. A twice-wounded combat veteran of the Italian campaign, Gruner learned at the end of the war that most of his family had perished in the Holocaust. He joined the Irgun shortly after being demobilized in 1946, only to be arrested during the abortive arms raid a few months later. Articulate and intelligent, Gruner had delivered a searing indictment of British rule when offered the opportunity to make a final statement before being sentenced, eloquently denying the military officers who sat in judgment their authority and right to do so. Even Churchill had been moved to call attention in Parliament to Gruner’s bearing and demeanor, observing that the “fortitude of this man, criminal though he be, must not escape the notice of this House.” On January 24, Barker confirmed Gruner’s death sentence, and the execution date was fixed for the twenty-eighth. The chief rabbi, citing the Irgun fighter’s exemplary military record while serving in the British army and tragic family circumstances, unsuccessfully beseeched Cunningham to spare the condemned man’s life. The Irgun’s appeal came predictably as a threat. “Execution of prisoners of war is premeditated murder,” it stated. “We warn the British regime of blood against the commission of this crime.”47

  Nonetheless, fortified by the new operational directive and the recent arrival in Palestine of the Third Infantry Division, military commanders there remained supremely confident of their ability to meet any challenge. Indeed, when questions had been raised in Parliament whether the army now had all the powers it required in Palestine, Creech Jones had hastened to assure the House that it did. But what the army still lacked was the intelligence necessary to begin, much less sustain, a genuinely effective counterterrorism effort. At a meeting held at Government House with Cunningham, Gurney, and Dempsey, for instance, Barker had disclosed that the major searches then under way in various parts of the country were being conducted without any hard information or even suspicion of terrorist activity in those areas. The Irgun thus retained the initiative—as Begin proved on January 25, when the group put into motion its plan to thwart Gruner’s impending execution.48

  Shortly past 5:00 that evening, a retired British army major named H. A. I. Collins was serving tea to a Jewish lady friend in his downtown Jerusalem apartment when there was a knock at the front door. After leaving the military in 1945, Collins had served for a year in the Palestine government as deputy controller of light industries before striking out on his own. Unique among the British expatriate community, he was widely known for his many connections with Jewish businesses and more so, as The Times observed, for being “especially well disposed towards Jews.” Accordingly, Collins doubtless thought nothing of the woman waiting on his doorstep who said there was someone with her who wished to speak with him. As Collins opened the door, three Irgun men armed with Sten guns barged in and ordered him to face the wall. A fourth Irgun man came up behind Collins and covered his face with a rag doused in chloroform. Collins collapsed and was carried outside into a waiting car. His female companion was held in the apartment for nearly an hour and then freed. She immediately called the police. Terrorism alarm sirens sounded as hastily erected roadblocks brought all traffic in the city center to a standstill. Soldiers erected barricades on every corner, forcing pedestrians to pass through a series of checkpoints arrayed along each street. A curfew was imposed over Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods the following morning as police and army units conducted house-to-house searches. Roving armored police vehicles and army foot patrols also swept the city—all to no avail.49

  While the hunt for Collins continued in Jerusalem, Judge Ralph Windham, scion of the aristocratic Bowyer-Smyth baronetcy and newly promoted president of the district court, was presiding over a Tel Aviv courtroom. Resplendent in traditional British judicial wig and gown, Windham was hearing what he later recalled as a “rather boring succession case,” when about half past noon six armed men arrived at the building on Yehuda Halevy Street. While three kept watch outside, the other three burst into the courtroom and seized Windham. He was hustled into a waiting car and driven away. Roadblocks were quickly established, but they were again too late, and Palestine once more was plunged into crisis.50

  The Irgun had successfully maneuvered the government into a corner. To proceed with Gruner’s execution risked condemning a distinguished jurist from a renowned family and a former officer of the British army to certain death. But to succumb to this brazen act of
blackmail undermined the rule of law that the execution was designed to uphold and risked the continued erosion of British prestige both inside Palestine and beyond. The fact that this new imbroglio had occurred on the same day that the London Conference reconvened only made matters worse. In desperation, the Palestine administration seized upon yet another face-saving solution. With less than twenty-four hours remaining before Gruner would hang, Barker was prevailed upon to sign a respite order granting him a two-day stay of execution so that Gruner might consult with his attorney about filing an appeal with the Privy Council in London—the king’s most senior, standing advisory body. Having bought some time with which to continue the search for Collins and Windham, Cunningham now turned his attention to obtaining the Yishuv’s assistance. That same afternoon, the Jewish Agency’s Golda Meyerson and Eliezer Kaplan together with Israel Rokach, the mayor of Tel Aviv, were summoned to Government House. Cunningham delivered a blunt ultimatum: either Windham and Collins were freed, unharmed, within forty-eight hours, or martial law would be imposed over Tel Aviv, Petah Tiqva, and Ramat Gan. This measure, which was unprecedented even in the Palestine mandate’s long and violent history, would entail, the high commissioner explained, the withdrawal of all civil administration from the affected areas, which would be cordoned off and placed under military rule and hence subject to the orders of the local military commander. In essence, the entire populations of those communities would be confined to their homes under strict curfew, and all commerce and social interaction would cease.51

  The threat of martial law had been raised by Gurney earlier in the month when he had met with two other senior Jewish Agency officers following the flogging incidents. At the time, Colonial Office officials had judged it to have been effective in pressuring the agency to persuade the terrorists to accept a temporary, self-imposed truce. When again wielded now, it produced similarly salutary results. The Jewish Agency Executive promptly passed a resolution unequivocally condemning the kidnappings and calling upon the “demented desperadoes” responsible for this outrage to release their captives. Rokach issued a similar plea. At just past nine o’clock that same evening, a telephone call was made from a factory at Ramat Gan to the Jaffa police station. It was Windham informing them that he had been freed—minus his wig, which the kidnappers had kept as a souvenir. Collins was released the following night. Although Windham had been treated well, Collins suffered serious injury from the chloroform, which burned his eyes, nose, and mouth and prevented him from eating. He had also been kept at the bottom of an abandoned well just outside Jerusalem, whereas Windham was held in the comparatively more comfortable confines of a simple shack, where he was given fresh fruits and other food to eat as well as copies of The Palestine Post and Arthur Koestler’s novel about militant Zionism, Thieves in the Night, to read. Windham would go on to lead a full and vibrant life, eventually becoming chief justice of Tanganyika, whereas Collins would thereafter be burdened with recurrent respiratory problems believed to have been caused by the chloroform before dying of emphysema in 1960.52

  The kidnappings of Collins and Windham had laid bare the government’s inability to protect Britons living and working in Palestine. In the abductions’ aftermath, troops were now ordered to walk or travel everywhere in groups of at least four armed persons. But all the Palestine administration could do with respect to the country’s expatriate community was to advise them to remain indoors. Accordingly, on January 27, Cunningham proposed to Creech Jones that all British women, children, and nonessential personnel be evacuated from Palestine and the remaining civil servants all be concentrated behind the aforementioned special, barbed-wire security zones popularly known as Bevingrads. He still believed that security conditions had not deteriorated to a point requiring the imposition of martial law over the entire country. But the high commissioner was convinced that the evacuation should proceed without delay given the Irgun’s threat to “turn Palestine into a blood bath” if Gruner hanged. Barker agreed. In a letter to an irate Katy Antonius, who regarded the decision as yet another capitulation to the Jews, the GOC defended the decision. “We cannot go on having a pistol held at our hearts by these terrorists,” he patiently explained, “and we must make kidnapping almost impossible.” Dempsey also supported Cunningham’s proposal, telling Montgomery that the high commissioner would now be able to “adopt a firm policy without fear of unpleasant reprisals.”53

  The CIGS, however, was again appalled. He wrote immediately to Creech Jones and then to Dempsey. “It is quite monstrous,” he fumed to his Middle East commander, “to negotiate with illegal organisations and to say that unless they do this then we will do that.” Montgomery had no objections to Cunningham’s plan to evacuate British wives and children but instructed Dempsey that once this was accomplished, “you must set about the illegal armed organisations properly and go into battle with a bang.” He then vented his frustrations in a manner that could as easily be interpreted as criticism of the Labour government as of his perennial bête noire, Cunningham.54

  The letter that Montgomery had sent to Creech Jones on January 28 was unrestrained in the opprobrium that it heaped on Cunningham for pressing Barker to grant Gruner’s stay of execution and for providing forty-eight hours’ notice of the imposition of martial law if Collins and Windham were not freed. Although the colonial secretary’s reply to the CIGS was polite and even conciliatory, it is clear that he regarded the repetition of Montgomery’s intemperate views as both impertinent and inappropriate. Creech Jones brought the matter before the prime minister, who then summoned Montgomery to No. 10 Downing Street. Attlee explained to the CIGS that if the contents of either communication ever became public, it would cause grave embarrassment to the government—especially while the London Conference was meeting and a critical debate on Palestine was to take place shortly in Parliament. The prime minister therefore told the CIGS that he would be obliged if Montgomery would retract both missives. Montgomery readily agreed to do so.55

  The CIGS was not alone in his acute distaste for what was happening in Palestine. On January 27 an editorial published in The Times had come out unequivocally in favor of partition—citing the danger and abuse that British troops and police had continually been subjected to because of the government’s delay in announcing a long-term policy. And four days later, the much-anticipated debate on Palestine clearly displayed the depths of parliamentary despair and disgruntlement over the Labour government’s prolonged procrastination. Speaking for the Opposition, the former colonial secretary Oliver Stanley argued that it was no longer possible to carry on ruling Palestine given the events of the past few weeks. “No authority can stand up against such blows,” he declared. “No troops, no police can carry out their duties in circumstances such as these. We cannot have a situation where the administration of justice and the punishment of offenders is being dictated by the criminals themselves. Frankly, so far as I am concerned, sooner than this country should have to endure further humiliations of this kind, I would prefer that we should clear out of Palestine and tell the peoples of the world that we are unable to carry out our Mandate there.” Both Reginald Manningham-Buller, a fellow Tory, and the Labour backbencher Richard Crossman agreed that the mandate in its present form was no longer tenable. Churchill, the leader of the Opposition, had come to the same conclusion. He saw “absolutely no reason” that “poor overburdened heavily injured” Britain should have to continue to bear the responsibility of Palestine alone. The only practicable alternative, the former prime minister suggested, was if the United States was willing to cooperate with Britain on a fifty-fifty basis in implementing an agreed-upon policy for Palestine. In the absence of such a partnership, Churchill argued that the London Conference should be allowed to run its course, but if it failed to produce a solution, Britain should within six months turn the entire question of Palestine’s future over to the United Nations. “It is quite certain that what is going on now in Palestine is doing us a great deal of harm in every way,” he decl
ared. “This is the road of abject defeat, and though I hate this quarrel with the Jews, and I hate their methods of outrage, if you are engaged in the matter, at least bear yourselves like men.”56

  It was now the government’s turn. Creech Jones paid tribute to the security forces and Palestine administration but deflected questions about a long-term policy while the London Conference and other, unspecified consultations continued. It was what he did not say, however, that was important. Earlier that afternoon, in fact only minutes after the debate commenced, the Palestine Broadcasting Service had announced that evacuation orders were being issued to every British household in the country. No appeal was permitted, and everyone to whom this order had been served was instructed to be ready to leave Palestine at forty-eight hours’ notice. Operation Polly—the transfer of all the evacuees by rail to Egypt and eventually home to Britain—was fixed for February 5. In the interim the evacuees would be housed at facilities throughout Palestine. The baggage allowance for each household was limited to only one suitcase, two blankets, one day’s rations, and a baby carriage, if needed. Troops would be posted at vacated residences until the belongings left behind could be packed and removed for shipment. The announcement of Polly also contained news of Operation Cantonment. This entailed the required relocation of all remaining British civilian personnel to special security zones in each of Palestine’s major cities. That same afternoon, troops had already begun to unroll coils of barbed wire around residential areas in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa in order to expand and reinforce existing zones or create new ones. All dwellings within these newly established perimeters that were not owned by British nationals were requisitioned from their owners, who were forced to find accommodation elsewhere. “The object of CANTONMENT,” an operational order explained to the troops, “is to enable the Government to operate and to give the military freedom of action whilst NOT hampered by terrorist blackmail and kidnapping.”57