Anonymous Soldiers
Page 11
The contrast to the Palestine administration’s dilatory response and lenient policies of the previous eighteen months, however, could not have been more striking. For more than a year, Wauchope had prevented the execution of rebels convicted of capital offenses as part of his efforts at conciliation—even though their victims had included soldiers and police as well as civilians. Dill, while GOC, had complained bitterly of this, and Simson’s account of the rebellion’s first year was now in British bookstores. Simson was unsparing in his criticism of the Palestine administration’s feckless performance during the rebellion’s first year. Hence, the pressure from London on the administration to deal decisively with the new outbreak of violence was irresistible. The Colonial Office’s announcement on October 29 that Wauchope would retire earlier than expected paved the way for a dramatic change. It was unveiled less than two weeks later when Battershill revealed details of new amendments to the Order in Council. Military tribunals—presided over by a field officer along with two more junior officers—would replace civilian courts to judge crimes involving the discharge of firearms, illegal possession of arms, bombs, and other weapons, and acts of sabotage and intimidation, with the first two categories punishable by death. All sentences were to be subject to confirmation by the GOC—from which there would be no right of appeal.20
The Irgun, meanwhile, had also made plans of its own to respond to any renewed Arab violence. Around the time of the first anniversary of the Arab Rebellion’s start the previous April, Jabotinsky had sanctioned the more aggressive policy proposed by the group’s new commanders. “Do not restrain yourselves,” he had told them. But at a meeting subsequently held in Alexandria between Jabotinsky and Bitker, accompanied by his two key lieutenants, Rosenberg and Stern, to finalize these arrangements, the Zionist leader had expressed second thoughts. As Schechtman explains, the “necessity and inevitability of such a course appeared obvious … for Jabotinsky it was in more than one respect a difficult decision to make. Though recognizing the bitter political justification for retaliation, he had grave doubts as to the moral aspect of such a course, which was bound to affect not only Arab terrorists, but also such Arabs—men, women and children—who were not directly responsible for indiscriminate killing of Jewish men, women and children.”21
At the end of the day, Jabotinsky’s decision came down to the fact that he felt it was not his place to impose limits on Irgun operations or to dictate the circumstances in which force should be used when he was living safely abroad while Irgun fighters were risking their lives to protect the Yishuv. A revised agreement, accordingly, was concluded that authorized the Irgun to mount whatever retaliatory and offensive operations its commanders deemed necessary. As long as these were infrequent and limited, there was no need to consult Jabotinsky. However, in the event that the Irgun high command decided that more extensive and systematic operations were required, Jabotinsky’s express consent would be obtained before proceeding. A simple telegram signed with the name “Mendelson” would signal his assent.22
The ink was hardly dry on the agreement when yet another reshuffle of the Irgun high command occurred. Although Bitker was a fine soldier, he lacked both the experience and the temperament to lead an underground movement. Moreover, as a newly arrived immigrant, he could not communicate with his subordinates in Hebrew, nor did he possess the intimate knowledge and understanding of the region required for someone in that position. Sensing that he was out of his depth, Bitker had already proposed that he step down as commander and be replaced by Rosenberg, his deputy and chief of staff. Before Bitker could do so, however, unhappiness within the group over his leadership and judgment boiled over. In October, the Irgun general staff and its Revisionist Party counterparts dispatched an emissary—a young South African journalist and member of Betar named Samuel Katz—to Poland to explain the situation to Jabotinsky. The Zionist leader approved the shake-up, appointing Rosenberg to succeed Bitker and elevating Raziel to the number two slot while retaining command of the group’s Jerusalem detachment.23
Irgun operations commenced on November 11 with the bombing of an Arab café in reprisal for the killing of five Jewish farmers outside Jerusalem forty-eight hours earlier. Two persons were killed and five wounded, two seriously. The Palestine government immediately imposed a curfew on the city, and for the next two days a tenuous quiet prevailed. Then, at seven o’clock on November 14, a day henceforth known as Black Sunday, the Irgun struck in both Jerusalem and Haifa. In a series of coordinated attacks seven Arabs were murdered and eight others wounded. Among the casualties were three women.24
These operations marked a significant milestone in the Irgun’s violent history. Not only had the group evidenced impressive command and control in the execution of six coordinated assaults in two different cities, but it firmly established Raziel’s position as one of the organization’s most capable commanders. In his postmortem report to the Irgun high command, Raziel explained how the targets had been carefully selected after detailed reconnaissance.25
The Irgun attacks were roundly assailed by Britons, Jews, and Arabs alike. The Jerusalem city council and representatives from Jewish and Arab business associations denounced the group, as did both the Arabic- and the Hebrew-language press. The Jewish Agency publicly accused the Irgun of “marring the moral record of Palestine Jewry, hampering the political struggle and undermining security.” Raziel’s reply to this criticism was contained in his analysis of the operation’s political and military implications that was circulated within the group and embraced as the seminal explication of the Irgun’s strategy. “The shame of restraint has been removed,” he declared. “And not only honor was saved here, but … the results of the actions are already beginning to show. He who saw the faces of the Arabs on ‘Black Sunday’ and in the days following is able to describe for himself what fear fell on them. All of their insolent heroism that in the past year and a half pierced their eyes disappeared suddenly at once.”26
Raziel was convinced that there was no option for the Yishuv but to transition from what he termed “passive defense” to “active defense.” To his mind, “all of these thoughts lead to one conclusion: he who does not want to be defeated has no choice but to attack … He needs to charge his enemy and to break his force and his will.” The Irgun commander decried passivity as the failed policy of the “Left”—not only of Zionism’s labor-socialists in the Jewish Agency and the Haganah, but also of their gentile social democratic counterparts in Germany and Austria who had supinely acquiesced to Hitler’s repressive policies and spinelessly accepted Nazi domination. Indeed, rather than being deterred by either official condemnation or popular vituperation, the Irgun became more emboldened while burrowing deeper underground. Internal discipline was tightened and stringent security measures adopted to thwart identification and infiltration.27
The group’s secretive recruiting practices evidence this. An Irgun training document described the qualities sought in recruits: “a spirit of sacrifice and love for the nation and fatherland, whether he is able to … think and decide for himself, and to use his own initiative.” Only existing members could recommend potential candidates. The Irgun then conducted a thorough background check of the candidates, including inquiries about their political views, friends and associates, and characters. If a candidate successfully passed this vetting, he was told to present himself at a secret meeting place. The candidate would be admitted only after giving the correct password and then was brought into a pitch-black room where a flashlight was shone directly into his eyes. A specially convened board of examiners would question him about his reasons for wanting to join the Irgun and warn of the dangers that membership in an illegal, underground organization entailed. Finally, the candidate was asked about his attitudes toward Jewish self-defense and to explain the key difference that distinguished the Irgun from the Haganah. If the candidate’s answers and explanations satisfied the examiners, one of his hands was placed on a Bible and the other on a pistol. He was
then ordered to repeat the following oath:
In full cognizance, without any outside pressure, I hereby swear to be a loyal soldier of the Irgun Zvai Le’umi in the Land of Israel guarding its property, soul and national honor and helping to revitalize the entire nation on the land of its forefathers. I hereby take upon myself complete obedience, without refusal and complete silence regarding everything that I know and will know of the matters of the Irgun. I hereby accept upon myself to listen to my commanders and to fulfil all of their orders in every place and in every time. May the Guardian of Israel help and supplement me.28
Against all logic, London had once again permitted the Palestine garrison to shrink to a dangerously inadequate level. In contrast to the two divisions of troops on hand a year earlier, only two “experienced but rather weary” infantry battalions remained—a difference of some fourteen thousand men. Accordingly, Wavell, the new GOC, had no artillery, no armored vehicles (apart from a single company of RAF armored cars), and no cavalry. Moreover, the same rural Arab guerrilla bands that Wauchope had prevented Wavell’s predecessor, Dill, from pursuing the previous year had regrouped and resumed their attacks in the northern part of the country. The situation in Palestine’s cities was little better. In December 1937, for example, an English schoolteacher living in Jerusalem complained to her sister that “conditions here are definitely growing worse, & are even now in some ways more difficult than in times of actual rioting, for with the present campaign of murders … no one feels safe.”29
The police were both of little help and part of the problem. Indeed, it was the PPF’s inability to anticipate the rebellion’s eruption and dimensions that had necessitated the army’s massive intervention in the first place. The police force’s meager capabilities were further strained by the continued unreliability of its Arab section. Despite the lessons of the 1929 riots and Dowbiggin’s attempt to reform the CID, that department remained grievously understaffed at precisely the moment when its services were desperately needed. The number of officers assigned to intelligence duties had neither grown nor been given priority between 1930 and 1936. In 1936, for example, the entire CID comprised just twenty-six British and thirty-nine Palestinian officers. The following year saw the addition of only one Briton, whose presence was offset by the departure of a Palestinian.30
Battershill, as acting high commissioner, pondered all these developments with mounting unease. Palestine was again spiraling out of control. A new approach was required, and for Battershill the solution clearly involved improving the police force’s performance. The army, as events across the previous two decades had repeatedly shown, came and went, with troop strength ebbing and flowing depending on the country’s state of upheaval. But the police should have provided the consistent presence required to maintain order as well as the early warning capability needed to nip any trouble in the bud. The PPF had done neither. Hence, Battershill concluded that the services of an outside expert were again required. He specifically requested someone with long experience of India who was knowledgeable about ethnic violence and civil insurrection as well as counterterrorist operations. Ormsby-Gore selected Sir Charles Tegart.31
Tegart was perhaps the archetypal British colonial policeman. An Irishman by birth, he had joined the Indian Police Service in 1901 at age twenty and within five years had been promoted to deputy commissioner of police in Calcutta and in 1923 to commissioner. Known as the “Man of Iron” because of his efficiency in “putting down revolution and murder in Bengal,” Tegart—uniquely perhaps among senior Colonial Service officials at the time—was also strongly pro-Zionist.32
Tegart and his chosen assistant, Sir David Petrie, arrived in Palestine in December 1937 and submitted their report the following month. In contrast to Dowbiggin’s three-hundred-page tome of eight years earlier, Tegart and Petrie’s assessment totaled no more than sixty-five pages—together with twenty-eight crisply presented recommendations. The report was thus the antithesis of Dowbiggin’s in every way. Tegart and Petrie argued for nothing less than the reversal of all Dowbiggin’s reforms and for the PPF’s complete reconceptualization back to the more militarized organization that Dowbiggin had sought to eliminate. Tegart’s fundamental conclusion was a stark rebuke to his predecessor’s core values of colonial policing. Given his experience in putting down riots and suppressing terrorism and the parallels Tegart drew between the security conditions in India he knew so well and those he encountered in Palestine, his emphasis was diametrically opposed to the unarmed “civilian in uniform” that was Dowbiggin’s colonial model.33
First and foremost, Tegart and Petrie called for the reorientation of the British section’s mission. They regarded any British officers assigned to traffic or clerical duties as a gross misuse of manpower and urged transferring them, as the only truly reliable and responsible members of the PPF, to public security duties. In this respect they advocated the abandonment of Dowbiggin’s fully integrated police force. In contrast to Dowbiggin’s emphasis on demilitarizing the police, Tegart and Petrie proposed the creation of a sufficiently staffed rapid-response strike force composed entirely of British personnel. They did not completely oppose the existence of joint British-Palestinian police units in all circumstances. Indeed, they thought that an irregular rural force employed exclusively on patrol and security duties could only function effectively if it included Palestinian officers. But this would be a unique unit, staffed by a “tough type of man, not necessarily literate, who knows as much of the game as the other side.” Tegart and Petrie also made the seemingly self-evident argument that the traditional blue PPF uniform should be replaced by khaki drill.34
As in Dowbiggin’s assessment, however, the CID absorbed the lion’s share of Tegart and Petrie’s criticism. Inadequate training, poor command, and insufficient staffing, they concluded, had completely undermined its efficiency and effectiveness. Their main recommendation was to obtain the appointment of someone genuinely skilled in and knowledgeable of police intelligence techniques and analysis. The person from the Indian Police Service that Tegart and Petrie had in mind was not available, so Arthur Giles, then assistant commandant of the Suez Canal police and a distinguished veteran of the Egyptian Police Service, was recruited instead. Giles, known by the Egyptian honorific Giles Bey, was regarded as an “authority on Middle East matters after a lifetime in the maelstrom of Arab affairs.” He took up his appointment as the head of the Palestine CID in March 1938. In addition to longer and improved training, Tegart and Petrie recommended that the CID be reorganized. The report did indeed have the galvanizing effect on the CID that the authors intended. By the end of the year, its ranks had expanded tenfold to include 237 British and 236 Palestinian officers.35
But perhaps Tegart’s most enduring legacy was the specially designed fortified police barracks known as Tegart forts—many of which are still used today in both Israel and Palestine and, as one historian of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict notes, “have become as much part of the landscape of the Holy Land as the rocky hills and stone houses.” Tegart intended the structures to serve as liaisons between the police and the army to better coordinate security operations. Built of reinforced concrete, each fort contained living quarters for bachelors as well as married couples; jail cells; interrogation rooms; and a full range of entirely self-contained personnel services, including recreational facilities, a laundry, kitchen, and mess hall. The forts were strategically situated at vital choke points along roads and rail lines, in and around villages, and close to the eponymous fifty-mile-long Tegart Wall of double- and, in certain critical places, triple-layer barbed-wire fence built at considerable expense along Palestine’s borders with Lebanon and Syria.36
Another Tegart innovation was the creation of so-called Arab Interrogation Centres, where specially trained and selected police officers (mostly Arabs) used water boarding and what Keith-Roach termed other “third degree” measures until the detainees, in his words, “spilled the beans.” Douglas Duff, a veteran of the Black
and Tans in Ireland, who had come to Palestine in 1922 as one of the original members of the Palestine Gendarmerie before rising through the PPF’s ranks to become police inspector for Jerusalem, described the process in chilling detail:
This method … had the merit, from the investigators’ viewpoint, of leaving no traces for doctors to detect. The victim was held down, flat on his back, while his head was clamped immovably between cushions that left no marks of bruising. It is not pleasant to talk about and even unpleasanter to admit having witnessed. Usually, we British officers remained discreetly in the background, not wishing to have the shirts of our garments soiled, but we were ready to benefit by information wrung by our subordinates from the wretched suspects or criminals.
The aphorism for torture used by British police of giving someone a good “duffing up” was reputedly coined in reference to the same Douglas Duff. In any case, when Keith-Roach learned that such a center was operating in Jerusalem, he went to Wauchope and had it closed.37
On March 1, 1938, Wauchope left his beloved Palestine for the last time. His successor as high commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael, arrived three days later. A more stunning contrast in personality, temperament, and outlook would be hard to imagine. Where Wauchope was ebullient, vivacious, and generous, MacMichael was austere, aloof, and reserved. A Cambridge classicist who had spent most of his career in the Sudan Political Service, MacMichael was described as withdrawn and introspective. The Yishuv despised him. Ben-Gurion recalled MacMichael as a “nasty person, arrogant and bureaucratic, a real disaster for the Jews, Palestine and the British.” In Ben Gurion Looks Back, the Jewish leader explained why: “He was dreadful. Very bad indeed. I don’t say this because he was opposed to us, which he was. There were others who did not see eye to eye with us but whom we could respect as persons. McMichael [sic] was different. He was petty-minded, arrogant, bureaucratic, full of himself and his power; he behaved as a potentate towards ‘natives’; and, which was the most grievous sin in a man of affairs, he had a closed mind … I cannot recall a single [meeting] which was not distasteful.”38