The Sword And The Olive

by van Creveld, Martin

  If the situation had not been serious—the outlying neighborhoods were in danger of being overrun and some of their inhabitants had to be evacuated—it might have been comic. Following three days of skirmishing Tel Aviv was saved by a detachment of Jewish constables whom the British had been training at a camp near Ramla, some fifteen miles away. Alerted by telephone, eighteen men deserted their posts and marched to the sound of the guns. Upon arrival they were issued ancient Turkish rifles by the British official in charge of Jaffa Harbor. Thus armed, they paraded in martial splendor through the streets of Tel Aviv, where inhabitants are said to have cheered madly. Apparently this demonstration of overwhelming force sufficed to drive the Arabs—a mere disorderly mob with even less organization than the Jews—back to the city of Jaffa. It also convinced the British that their Jewish auxiliaries could not be trusted, and they were accordingly dismissed.

  Hagana’s operations in response to the rioting that took place elsewhere in the country were on an even smaller scale, often no more than five or six men seeking to stop a crowd while armed with pistols with or without ammunition. The last skirmish took place in Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter in November 1921, where approximately 5,000 Jews lived and where Hecht, normally based in Haifa but happening to be present, took charge. Five Jews were killed and forty wounded in the narrow alleyways. Though the assailants possessed hardly any firearms, they compensated with edged weapons; eyes were gouged out, breasts and testicles cut off, and the like. Next, however, Hagana asserted itself. Some ten members, armed with pistols and hand grenades, took up positions and managed to hold off an Arab mob for forty minutes until the arrival of the British police.

  From that point on, calm was restored. Thanks in part to the moderate policies of the high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel,12 the years between 1922 and 1929 were perhaps the most enjoyable for the British in Palestine and were, from a security point of view, almost absolutely quiet. Jews immigrated at an unprecedented rate, and though the number of those who left was almost equally great, the Yishuv managed somehow to increase the Jewish population from 84,000 in 1922 to 175,000 nine years later.13 The British, fearing they would alienate the Arab population, took few practical steps to implement the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, in which they had promised a “national home” for the Jews in Palestine. On the contrary: In 1921-1922 the territory east of the River Jordan was detached from Palestine, and a new interpretation of the document was published that specifically excluded the possibility of creating an eventual Jewish state. Nevertheless, the community felt it could rest secure in the bosom of a civilized imperial power that delivered peace and, until the onset of a recession in 1927, unprecedented economic prosperity as well.

  As the Yishuv devoted its resources to building new settlements, the development of Hagana was excruciatingly slow. In theory Hagana was centralized, countrywide, and solely responsible for overseeing the defense of the entire Jewish community. In practice it was a “primitive confederation” 14 between the three main branches, that is, those located in the cities of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa as well as many smaller ones in settlements all over the country. The organization being illegal, communication among its parts was difficult and sometimes dangerous. Hence each of the rural branches was often forced to look after itself in purchasing arms, organizing guards, mounting patrols, and so on. Moreover, the organization’s left-wing, socialist ideology was not shared by the entire Jewish community that, then as now, was sharply divided along political lines. This led to the establishment of several rival organizations. Some were so ephemeral that their very existence was barely noted and can be documented only through the memoirs of their few members. Others, though invariably much smaller and less well developed than Hagana (on which they modeled themselves), were destined to prosper.

  By the late twenties, the time it was destined to undergo (and, let it be said immediately, fail) its second test, Hagana must have had a few thousand members. In Haifa, for example, there were some three hundred members out of a Jewish population of 16,000; the 16,000 Jews formed about a third of the city’s total population. Virtually all were part-timers, and only about half could be supplied with arms of any sort.15 Training was in the hands of former sergeants and corporals who had served in various World War I armies. It was carried out during the members’ free time, normally twice a week, at various secret locations that had to be constantly guarded against discovery. Time was taken up largely with drills and familiarization with weapons as well as intellectual exercises (“What would you do if an Arab came at you up front and two more on the left?”). To acquaint the members with the country, hiking tours were held, perhaps with the odd pistol carried along in great secrecy. In 1925, Hagana even conducted an experimental squad commanders course, totaling around twenty men, in the woods on Mount Carmel near Haifa. That, however, was as far as things went. With a few exceptions—notably Yochanan Ratner, a professor of architecture at Haifa’s Technical Institute and a former Russian army officer who later became the first chief of staff (COS)—military experience at any level above enlisted was entirely absent.

  Either because Ha-shomer had been driven underground during the war and was incapable of looking after its own—as its leaders said—or because it deliberately hid its best equipment—as its enemies claimed—what arms it did pass on to Hagana were almost useless. Even so, the collapse of the Ottoman empire had resulted, as such events will, in large numbers of weapons being abandoned or sold by the retreating Turkish soldiers. When that source dried up, Hagana members, strapped for cash and taking advantage of the still unsettled conditions, sometimes “exed” (short for expropriated) money from Jewish and other “capitalists,” particularly those who were engaged in illegal activities such as smuggling and who could not therefore turn to the authorities for protection.16 More funds were made available by the various Zionist organizations abroad and used for buying arms in Europe, chiefly Vienna, where arms were cheap. They were packed into suitable containers—the favorites were refrigerators, which could be reassembled and sold upon arrival, and earth-moving equipment—and smuggled into the country by way of Beirut, where French control over the port was relatively lax. From there they were taken overland into Galilee.

  The resulting stocks, mostly pistols and rifles but already including the occasional machine gun, were stored in underground chambers, later to be known as slikkim (hideaways), all over the country. Given the great variety in types of weapons, getting hold of ammunition represented a problem; attempts were made to manufacture it, though with what success can no longer be established.17 The largest single slik was at Kfar Giladi in the far north, where, as already mentioned, the Shochet family and a number of former Ha-shomer members had made their homes18—and where previously unknown caches are being unearthed to the present day. Presumably selected because it was close to the Lebanese border and out of the government’s way, eventually it turned out to be equally remote from the places where the arms were needed.

  Provided thus with organization and arms, Hagana designated a commander for each town and settlement. Particularly in the smaller places the cadres in question were part-timers, barely distinguishable from the majority of the working population among which they lived. Perhaps in the entire country only a dozen or two were full-time “soldiers”; even many of those were primarily askanim (Hebrew for the Russian party activist) who combined their work for Hagana with their political activities. Each commander was responsible for drawing up a defensive plan; selecting the relevant positions to be occupied in case of an emergency; storing and distributing such arms and other kinds of equipment as were to be had; and allocating his men among the positions. Communications between the various positions were to be maintained by means of whistles, flags, flashlights, and messengers selected among high-school students as well as female Hagana members. Under British ground rules the latter were immune to searches and were therefore often used as ambulant slikkim. This was a role in which women and the
ir male comrades were inordinately proud. Only a very few women actually fought, and then only in self-defense.

  Under British rule the existence of Hagana and many of its activities were, in principle, illegal. Those caught bearing arms without license incurred long jail sentences. Nevertheless the authorities, well aware that their own forces were thinly spread, were prepared to tolerate at least some kind of Jewish self-defense organization. Throughout the twenties repeated discussions were held between the British authorities and Ben Tsvi, who was acting as the chief Hagana representative and whom his interlocutors described as a “perfect Bolshevik.” The objective seems to have been to find some way in which the more remote settlements in particular might keep their arms and at the same time put them under British control by means of an extended licensing system. Though no formal agreement was reached, the fact that the talks were held at all indicated the British willingness to close an eye to some of Hagana’s activities; in Jerusalem, so long as arms were kept out of sight, Hagana was even able to organize maneuvers and hold them openly, right under the government’s nose.19 Then and later, had this not been the case, the organization probably could not have existed.

  Such, roughly, was the state of Hagana when the second Arab uprising broke out in 1929. This time it started in Jerusalem, where Jews and Arabs had been bickering over the former’s right to pray at the Wailing Wall.20 The Arab leader was the mufti or chief Muslim priest, Haj Amin al Hussayni, the head of a prominent clan whose members had held the position since the middle of the nineteenth century. From the beginning of the year there were repeated incidents as Jews mounted parades to demonstrate their presence and Arabs tried to stop them by rock-throwing and knifings. Massive Arab rioting began on August 23 under the usual battle cry itbach al Yahud (slaughter the Jews). Thanks to ten years’ development under British supervision the country’s infrastructure was now much more advanced, to the point that telegraphs were already being replaced by a network of some 3,000 telephones.21 Though the Arabs, unlike the Jews, did not have any countrywide leadership and were only very loosely coordinated, this network enabled the uprising to spread like wildfire to Jaffa, Haifa, Safed, Tiberias, and numerous smaller places.

  Once aroused, the forces of order turned out to consist of 142 British policemen, half of whom were stationed in Jerusalem. The army is said to have had 77 troops, nine armored cars, four pickups, and a handful of patrol aircraft that had been equipped with machine guns for strafing; they were assisted by 169 Jewish and 1,063 Arab policemen.22 Since both the high commissioner and the chief of police were out of the country on leave, command devolved to their subordinates, lowly majors and captains.

  Since the British forces were so small, the task of defending the Yishuv during the critical first four days fell almost entirely on Hagana. Individual commanders reacted quickly, taking up positions and attempting to hold them. However, the organization as a whole did not, nor in fairness could it have done so. Seeking to fragment the uprising and to prevent it from spreading, the British authorities promptly suspended all newspapers, halted rail traffic, blocked the main roads, and cut the civilian telephone network (but because most of the operators were Jewish, this last measure was only partially effective and tended to work against the Arabs and in favor of the Yishuv).

  In Haifa, where Hagana did better than anywhere else, the disturbances started on August 25 and lasted for three days. At the peak, 3,000 Jews were driven from their homes, some of which were looted by rampaging Arab mobs. In the face of this a number of “strategic” positions were occupied and held.23 On the second day a force of ten men, commanded by one Nachum Levin, actually commandeered a bus, drove it down the slopes of Mount Carmel into the Arab neighborhoods, and opened fire—quite an innovation for the time. Meanwhile a call for help went out to that old warhorse, Shochet’s wife, Manya, in Kfar Giladi. Ultimately she was able to bring in reinforcements, including seven men and, much more important, thirty rifles. Some were smuggled in an ambulance; Ms. Shochet went so far as to slice the hands and face of a companion with a razor in order to simulate (if that is the term) a wounded person in need of medical attention. Others were carried in the back of a Buick specially modified for the purpose.24 By that time, though, the riots had already subsided.

  Elsewhere things went less well for Hagana. The worst outbreak took place in Hebron, where the ancient, strongly orthodox Jewish population trusted in their neighborly relations with the Arabs and where no self-defense organization existed at all. On August 24 an Arab mob broke in and massacred sixty-five people with clubs, agricultural implements, and knives. The remaining 300 or so escaped (from then until the years after 1967 no more Jews lived in the city). Smaller massacres, accompanied by looting and burning, took place in Safed and in the village of Motsa near Mount Kastel to the west of Jerusalem. A car was sent from Jerusalem, and its occupants succeeded in extricating the remaining inhabitants; next the settlement was abandoned, plundered by the Arabs, and set on fire (as were a number of other settlements throughout the country, including Mishmar Ha-emek and En-Zetim in the north, Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem, Chulda near Ramla, and Beer Tuvia in Philistia). According to Hagana history, in Beer Tuvia the women were begging to be poisoned when three British aircraft appeared and saved the situation.25

  In Tel Aviv, at that time a more sizable town with a population of about 50,000, some 230 Hagana members immediately obeyed orders and presented themselves. The men were issued what arms were to be had—rifles, pistols, and a couple of light machine guns—and sent out to occupy positions in the various neighborhoods. There they were joined by small groups of vigilantes, often consisting of citizens who had served in the Jewish battalions or else of high-school students. Some brought along their own unregistered and unlicensed pistols, whereas others came with homemade swords, axes, and the like. The two “armies” faced each other across the agricultural space then separating Tel Aviv from Jaffa. From time to time a British armored car would appear on the scene, firing into the air and causing both Jews and Arabs to run for cover before it moved somewhere else. Later these patrols became more frequent, putting a cap on the disturbances, which became increasingly limited to potshots.

  In fact the British, even though taken by surprise and requiring time to get organized, reacted credibly enough. On the afternoon of August 27 the first reinforcements in the form of 400 Royal Marines aboard the warship Barham reached Haifa from Malta; their arrival sufficed to overawe the city, which quickly began returning to normal. Elsewhere, too, the appearance of disciplined British units, even those with few troops, was usually enough to disperse the crowds. At the end of six days 133 Jews and 116 Arabs had been killed, 339 and 232 wounded; whereas almost all Jewish casualties were caused by Arab rioting and sniping, most Arab casualties were inflicted by organized units of British and British-commanded troops. Order in the towns was quickly restored, although operations aimed at suppressing small-scale guerrilla activity in the countryside took much longer and were ongoing six months later. Eventually some 1,300 people were put on trial, most of them Arabs but including a few Jews as well. Twenty-six Arabs and three Jews were sentenced to death, but most of the sentences were later commuted; three Arabs actually hanged.

  The events of 1929 were to prove a turning point in the history of Hagana and, with it, of the yet to be born Israeli Defense Force. Speaking in public, the Yishuv’s leaders, many of whom were conveniently out of the country at the time the troubles broke out, were ecstatic about the heroism displayed by their fellow citizens; thus, Ben Gurion as chairman of Histadrut claimed that Hagana “had saved our people from destruction” and demanded that it be “further fortified.” In private, however, they were much less laudatory, savaging it for failing to protect Hebron and Safed in particular. Organization, training, armaments, and readiness all came under critical fire—by the same politicians, needless to say, who throughout the twenties had starved Hagana of funds.

  After two years of ugly squabbling, incl
uding a minor “commanders’ revolt,” these criticisms finally led to Hecht’s forced resignation (although in practice without real authority, as the organization’s titular head he was the natural scapegoat; at the same time, paradoxically, he was blamed for trying to do too much on his own without consulting the rest). Control of Hagana passed from the Histadrut to the Zionist executive as the highest directing body both of the Jewish Agency and of world Zionism. From 1935 on, the head of both bodies was David Ben Gurion, who thus assumed overall responsibility for the community’s political and military fortunes. Day-to-day control was exercised by a five-man committee; two members represented Histadrut, two the towns, and one the collective settlements. The guiding spirit remained Eliyahu Golomb, the archtypical party activist who had thus rid himself of his principal rival. Yet however modest Hecht’s achievements, his term of office marked the real foundation of the first Jewish armed force to serve the Jewish people in nearly two thousand years.

  “Beyond the Fence”: Hagana detachment searching Arab marauder, 1938.

  CHAPTER 3

  “BEYOND THE FENCE”

  FOR BRITAIN THE events in Palestine, a small province that straddled British communications between the Suez Canal and their much more important holdings in Iraq, acted as a warning. The number of troops stationed in the country was increased to two battalions; additional British policemen were also recruited until their number reached 744 in 1935, in addition to 1,452 Arab and 282 Jewish auxiliary police. New roads were built, particularly one linking Acre with Safed that for the first time opened western Galilee, heretofore an area crossed only by goats, to the movements of modern armed forces. A professional police officer named Herbert Dowbigin was brought in from Ceylon to investigate and submitted a new plan for policing the country.1