The Reckoning

by Patrick Bishop

  Among the regulars at Ilin’s soirées were three of the CID’s brightest officers. Arthur Giles was a child of the empire, born in Cyprus in 1899 to a family of soldiers and clergymen. He served in the Royal Navy in the First World War before joining the Egyptian Police Service where he acquired the honorific title of ‘Bey’, by which he was known to everyone. Giles Bey spoke Arabic, Greek and Turkish and was regarded as a brilliant policeman. In 1938 he decided his career would benefit from a change of scene and in March he was appointed head of the Palestine CID.

  Dick Catling was a wiry, energetic twenty-seven-year-old. Like Geoffrey Morton he had joined the Palestine Police to escape the soul-destroying lack of opportunity in 1930s Britain. He came from a family of Suffolk farmers and butchers but decided to seek his fortune in London. ‘The only work I could find to do was in the City of London in a wholesale textile warehouse,’ he recalled. ‘I worked there for three and a half years and on most days at lunchtime I would wander down to the Pool of London and look at the ships, and say to myself, I really must get into one, and go away as soon as I can because this is all too depressing.’ One day, returning home to Suffolk, his train stopped at Ipswich. ‘There was another train on the other side of the platform and I looked out of my window and saw sitting in this other train a young man with whom I was at school. I hopped out and went across and said Parker, haven’t seen you since we were at school. He told me he was off to Palestine to join the police there, so I returned to my train and thought, well, if Parker can go to Palestine, surely I can.’2 Now, four years after arriving, he was one of Giles Bey’s brightest young detectives and relishing the challenges involved in penetrating the complicated and constantly changing world of Jewish political and military activism. It was ‘an extraordinarily fascinating battle of wits’, he said long afterwards. ‘We had to get up very early in the morning if we were going to come out on top.’3

  Catling’s guide through the thickets of the Jewish political demi-monde was another East Anglian. Tom Wilkin was three years older than Catling and, like him, came from an ordinary home. His family lived in the Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh where they were publicans, grocers, drapers and shoemakers.4 He seems to have served in the Suffolk constabulary before joining the Palestine Police in 1931. Early in 1933 he went with a policeman friend to a ball at the Eden cinema, a Moorish-style venue in the centre of Tel Aviv, to celebrate the light-hearted Jewish festival of Purim when people wear fancy dress and make merry. Among the revellers was a blonde, pretty young woman wearing a long flowing dress and a black mask. Wilkin nonetheless recognized her as the same girl he had tried unsuccessfully to chat to at the Tarshish café overlooking the sea a few days earlier. Wilkin was a low-ranking inspector of police who lacked the polish of the young officers from old British regiments who populated Tel Aviv’s bars and hotels. He was slightly-built, had reddish hair and wore a rather unconvincing moustache. He was understandably nervous about making another approach to this sophisticated belle but his friend assured him that fate had clearly decreed that they should meet. They danced and talked. The young woman told him that she gave English lessons. Wilkin wanted to improve his Hebrew and they agreed to meet again. Thus was born an intriguing and unlikely love story that would endure until Wilkin’s violent death eleven years later.

  The woman in the mask was Shoshana Borochov. She was the daughter of Dov Ber Borochov, a Russian-born Marxist-Zionist whose ideas helped shape the attitudes of the Yishuv’s left-wing establishment. Despite the high level of fraternization between Mandate officials and the Jews of Palestine, liaisons were frowned upon. Jewish parents were uneasy with their daughters consorting with Gentiles who seemed increasingly unsympathetic to their cause. The authorities, meanwhile, were concerned that soldiers and policemen would find that their loyalties were divided in the inevitable conflict between heart and duty. Shoshana and Tom defied the taboos despite family disapproval and official discouragement. They were not the only ones. Despite mounting tension between the Jews and the British, a surprising number of romances sprang up. Dick Catling had a Jewish girlfriend for a while, a Tel Aviv rabbi’s daughter whose sister went out with another policeman.

  Wilkin’s Hebrew lessons were more than a ruse to win time with Shoshana. He was a natural linguist and was soon speaking the language fluently. He was intellectually curious and had a voracious interest in Jewish history and culture. Shoshana was from the Yishuv’s elite and introduced him to her circle. From these encounters Wilkin made his own friends, including businessmen like Ilin whom he met at a reception held by the mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel Rokach, and leading figures in the Jewish Agency and the Haganah. They were impressed by his good manners and genuine willingness to see their point of view, though when Ilin once challenged him over the ‘immorality’ of the stringent British restrictions on Jewish immigration he defended the Mandate line robustly.5 Wilkin was careful not to advertise the range and quality of his contacts. ‘He was a very close man … a secretive man if you like,’ Catling remembered. ‘He worked quietly and, more often than not, alone.’6

  Wilkin’s chief, Giles Bey, was equally energetic in cultivating all the players in his domain, Arab and Jew, no matter where they were placed in the political spectrum. He would meet anyone and sit talking for hours, uncensoriously exploring their opinions in an apparent spirit of impartiality. It was a technique that his brighter subordinates – notably Catling – adopted and used to great effect.

  The word soon spread that Giles Bey was a policeman to be trusted. This reputation attracted some surprising approaches, none more so than a communication he received at the end of 1938 from David Raziel. Raziel was in a delicate position. The Irgun were now engaged in a continuing campaign of reprisals against Arabs. At the same time, they were the main organizers of illegal immigration to Palestine, a traffic that was swelling weekly as the circumstances of Europe’s Jews grew ever more desperate. Both activities placed a burden on the Mandate’s law and order resources and attracted the unwelcome interest of the Palestine Police in the Irgun’s operations and members.

  The CID played an extremely important role in the affairs of the Mandate. Its field of activities was broad and included monitoring all aspects of political life in Palestine. Its reports were crucial in determining the views of Sir Harold MacMichael and the analyses and recommendations he sent back to the Colonial Office. The department was very well informed about the machinations of established Jewish organizations. Much of the information came from friendly sources inside the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi – the Jewish National Council, which represented all the main factions of the Yishuv. The authorities also engaged in systematic phone tapping from listening posts based at the Jerusalem headquarters and the CID’s four district headquarters. Yishuv organizations – and particularly the Haganah – were equally well informed about the workings of the Mandate. Jewish policemen and Jewish officials routinely passed on information to the Haganah’s intelligence service, the Shai. The Irgun’s equivalent section, Meshi, also had its moles. According to Yaacov Levstein, who became one of Stern’s most loyal lieutenants, ‘from its inception Meshi did not spare any efforts to infiltrating the CID and making use of its employees, who provided us with first-hand information on political affairs, lists of men about to be arrested, copies of various documents etc.’7

  Raziel’s feelings towards the British were ambivalent. Unlike Avraham Stern he had not arrived at the conclusion that it was they who were the chief obstacle to a Jewish state and were therefore the Irgun’s prime enemy. Like Jabotinsky, Raziel retained the hope that, despite Britain’s anti-immigration policy and periodic appeasement of the Arabs, in the right circumstances it could still bring its weight down decisively on the side of the Jews. At the end of 1938 it seemed that the right circumstances were approaching. Another world war was looming and Britain would need all the help it could get. An offer of military cooperation might be parlayed into unequivocal support for a Jewish state. Raziel decided
that the time had come to reach out to the Mandate authorities. He made his overture in a letter to Giles Bey in which he wrote that he was ‘not an enemy of Great Britain in Palestine’. Indeed, he admired British culture and believed that Britain had ‘a friendly attitude towards my people’. The Jews in Palestine were surrounded by hostile Arabs and needed the support of a European ally. The Irgun might ‘criticize the methods of the government’. But ‘we do not intend to uproot their rule’.8

  Giles’s response has not survived. However, within a few months of the letter being sent the Mandate’s policy had swung onto a new course which dealt a blow to Jews who believed in Britain’s good intentions. As 1939 dawned, war with Germany seemed not merely probable but inevitable. This realization forced a reassessment of British policy in Palestine. The Arab revolt had attracted widespread support in neighbouring Iraq, Syria and Egypt. It was vital to keep them on side in the coming fight. Two divisions of British troops who might be needed elsewhere at any minute were tied up fighting the Arabs. Some settlement would have to be found before the balloon went up.

  Early in 1939 representatives from the Arab, Muslim and Jewish worlds were invited to London to settle the future of Palestine. The conference opened on 7 February in St James’s Palace and it was clear it was doomed from the start. The Arabs refused to sit with the Jews and each delegation arrived at a different entrance to avoid embarrassing encounters. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s speech had to be delivered twice – at 10.30 for the Arabs and at noon for the Jews.

  It was obvious from the outset that British policy was shifting decisively in favour of the Arabs. As the pointless meetings ground on, the Irgun intensified their attacks on Arabs. They were joined now by ‘special squads’ of the Haganah who had decided that a policy of restraint was no longer tenable if they wished to represent themselves as defenders of the Yishuv. On 27 February 1939, bombs exploded across the country killing thirty-three and wounding nearly sixty. Most of the casualties were in Haifa, where bombs were planted in the eastern railway station and the souk. The Haganah’s calculation that the actions would have at least the acquiescence of the Yishuv proved correct. In his weekly intelligence report, Giles noted that the bloodshed had not been condemned by mainstream Jewry, who appeared to believe that it might force a change of heart by Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary. ‘There is no doubt that the Jewish public now believe that their case has been assisted by these outrages and the hands of the perpetrators have been strengthened thereby,’ he wrote.9

  It was not to be. With no agreement between the parties, the government announced its own plan. The White Paper detailing the provisions was issued on 17 May, making it painfully clear that in the coming conflagration Britain had decided it needed the Arabs more than it did the Jews.

  The White Paper’s message was that, with 450,000 Jews now settled in Palestine, the Balfour Declaration had achieved its aim and Britain was washing its hands of the Mandate. It had never been the intention to create a Jewish state against the will of the Arabs. In consequence Jewish immigration would be limited to 75,000 over the next five years and thereafter would depend on Arab consent. Sales of land to Jews would also be subject to heavy restrictions. It set a ten-year timetable for the establishment of an independent state in which Arabs and Jews would share government.

  The White Paper was a shocking document for Zionists of every stripe. The terms meant that Jews could never form a majority in Palestine, putting an end to the dream of a Jewish state. But it was not just the future significance of the policy that caused dismay. It was the implications for the present.

  Jews were pouring out of Germany but all over the world doors were being slammed in the refugees’ faces. And now the British were drawing the bolts across the gateway to Palestine – the land they had designated as a home for the Jews.

  Cries of protest rang out from all quarters. The Manchester Guardian called it ‘a death sentence on tens of thousands of Central European Jews’.10 In Palestine, David Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency denounced the ‘Black Paper’ as a ‘breach of faith … a surrender to Arab terrorism, a delivery of England’s friends into the hands of its enemies’. The Palestine Post editorial declared that ‘acceptance of this policy would be tantamount to national suicide’.11

  In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv crowds took to the streets setting fire to government buildings and clashing with the police and army. In Jerusalem two British policemen were shot, one fatally, after confronting a 5000-strong mob. In London, on 18 May, Malcolm MacDonald nonetheless told the House of Commons that he had been assured by Sir Harold MacMichael that the situation was ‘generally quiet’. This prompted the tiny red-haired Labour member for Middlesbrough, Ellen Wilkinson, to ask him: ‘what is it like when it is not quiet?’ MacDonald made no reply.12

  Avraham Stern was in Warsaw when the news of the White Paper broke, busy with the training camps, which now had full Polish support, and planning the mass exodus to Palestine. It was brought to him by Nathan Yellin-Mor, a former schoolteacher who was his co-editor on Di Tat. According to Yellin-Mor he took the British U-turn coolly, telling him that it might in fact be good news for ‘it will deal a mortal blow to the Jewish Agency, the National Council and the Zionist leadership – all those who link their future and the future of the nation to a partnership with Britain’.13 That list now included Jabotinsky. Stern’s break with him was out in the open since he had denounced him in a press conference in Warsaw on 6 March, as a ‘former activist following a policy of complacency towards Zionism’s problems’.

  Within forty-eight hours, Stern found himself thrust into a position from where he could attempt to apply his own solutions. The Irgun’s anti-Arab attacks had exhausted any goodwill Raziel might have bought himself with the British by his friendly overture to Giles. As the Yishuv boiled with rage over the White Paper, the CID moved to decapitate the organization. On the morning of 19 May, Raziel set off to Haifa for a meeting with Pinhas Rutenberg, a former Russian revolutionary, who, as well as setting up Palestine’s electricity generating network, was a founding father of the Haganah and a leading Yishuv fixer. The likely purpose of the rendezvous was to further enhance cooperation between the Irgun and the Haganah. It never took place. In order to avoid the British checkpoints that had sprung up on major roads, Raziel decided to fly. He boarded an aeroplane at Sde Dov, just north of Tel Aviv. The aircraft made an unscheduled stop at Lydda a few miles away. The passengers deplaned and were directed into a waiting room where their documents were checked. A few minutes later British policemen appeared and David Raziel was arrested and taken off to the nearby detention camp at Sarafand.

  When the Irgun leadership met to respond to the crisis, they chose Hanoch Strelitz,* the Jerusalem commander, to replace him. Strelitz was born in Lithuania in 1910 and moved to Palestine with his family at the age of fourteen. He was a Hebrew language scholar who had been with the Irgun from the start and commanded the Haifa unit at the time of Wally Medler’s death. He was popular with his men. ‘He had a great influence over us and we loved him as a teacher and a leader,’ remembered Yaacov Polani, who had received his basic training from him.14 Despite his scholarly manner, Strelitz was a hardliner who had been one of the first to argue for the end of havlagah and the start of reprisals when the Arab revolt broke out.

  Strelitz’s first act as commander-in-chief was to widen the scope of Irgun operations. They would continue to kill Arabs. But from now on, in light of the treachery revealed in the White Paper, they would also attack British targets. The first actions would be largely symbolic in nature with the aim of winning over the Yishuv to the Irgun’s way of thinking. Words were as important as deeds and a skilled propagandist was needed to direct the campaign. A message was sent to Avraham Stern that it was time to come home.

  The order could not have been more inconvenient. For one thing Roni had just arrived from Palestine. Anticipating that he would be in Poland until at least the end of the year, Stern had rented a hous
e in the Warsaw suburbs and sent for her to join him. She duly quit her music teaching job, sublet the Tel Aviv apartment and boarded the boat for Constanta. More importantly, he was on the verge of closing several crucial deals. The finishing touches were being put to a large weapons consignment, part of which had been donated free by the Poles. He was also involved in buying, on very favourable terms, the Polish passenger ship Pilsudski, which he hoped would provide the transport for the 40,000 recruits for the liberation army plan.

  Though Stern was becoming increasingly resistant to discipline, the order could not be ignored. He and Roni prepared for an immediate return. Before they left, Lily Strassman took Roni shopping for clothes. Stern had decreed that his wife dress only in Zionist colours and in accordance with his wishes she bought a blue coat. As they headed south the patriotic wardrobe expanded. In Lvov he bought her blue and white shoes and in Costanza a blue and white blouse.

  According to Roni, his nerves were on edge throughout the voyage. What if the police were waiting for him at Haifa? But they passed through immigration unchallenged and were soon ensconced in the Yarden Hotel in Tel Aviv’s Ben Yehuda Street, a broad boulevard that ran parallel to the sea. Stern was still cautious. He told Roni not to leave the hotel in case she ran into friends who would want to know why she was back from Poland so soon. He, too, stayed inside, slipping out at nightfall to meet his Irgun cohorts. After two weeks the couple moved out to an apartment on Rothschild Boulevard, rented in Roni’s maiden name.15