Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Raziel was buried in the British military cemetery at Habbaniyya. A decade later, the Iraqi authorities gave permission for his coffin to be transferred to British-ruled Cyprus on condition that it not be brought to Israel. There, Raziel was reinterred in a Jewish cemetery outside Nicosia. Shortly after Cyprus obtained its independence from Britain in 1960, one of Raziel’s successors as Irgun commander, Menachem Begin, then a member of the Knesset, persuaded Archbishop Makarios III, the new president of the Republic of Cyprus, to permit Raziel’s remains to finally return to Israel. On March 16, 1961, Raziel was buried with full military honors at Israel’s National and Military Cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl. The date of his death—the twenty-third of Iyar in the Jewish calendar—is annually commemorated as the date on which all Irgun members who fell in battle are honored.48

  CHAPTER 7

  The Revolt

  Every other week the police force’s intelligence department provided the chief secretary and his staff with a numbered copy of a limited-distribution, classified assessment of political trends in Palestine. The CID’s secret report for November 2, 1942, was unremarkable—except for one item in the final paragraph. In what seems almost an afterthought, the CID chief, Arthur Giles, concluded his biweekly report by noting the arrival in Palestine of a lance corporal serving in General Władysław Anders’s Polish army in exile. “On more than one occasion recently Revisionists with a wide knowledge of Betar affairs in Palestine and abroad,” Giles wrote, “have drawn attention to the arrival in this country of Menakem Beigin [sic], a private soldier in the Polish Army, and ex-Betar leader in Poland, and have hinted that he is an extremist who merits careful supervision.”1

  The PPF of course had long been faulted for both its anemic intelligence and its perennial inability to anticipate trouble. But Giles’s highlighting of Menachem Begin’s importance was prescient. This lowly noncommissioned officer in an army without a homeland would soon become the most wanted man in Palestine. Physically at least, this future prime minister of Israel and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was an unlikely occupant of any country’s most wanted list. Short, bespectacled, and slight to the point of frailty, Begin, wearing his Polish army battle dress in photographs taken shortly after his arrival in Palestine, appears more rabbinical and scholarly than soldierly and tough. It is perhaps because he so utterly failed to fulfill the conventional image of a bloodthirsty terrorist that he successfully evaded the manhunt for him throughout the final years of the British mandate. His disguise for a time while underground between 1944 and 1947 was in fact that of a rabbi with the fictitious name of Israel Sassover. But despite Begin’s innocuous, bookish outward appearance, he had already been hardened by first having grown up with the anti-Semitism endemic to Poland and then having experienced firsthand penal servitude in the Soviet Gulag.2

  The youngest of three children, Begin was born in 1913 in Brest-Litovsk, a backwater at the confluence of the borderlands of what then comprised Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. He and his family were devout, multilingual Zionists who believed fervently in the importance of education but who themselves remained consigned to the lower-middle or middle classes. Only Menachem and his sister survived World War II. Both his parents and a brother were among the estimated three million Polish Jews who perished in the Holocaust.3

  From a young age, Begin showed an aptitude for both learning and public oratory. Life for the Begins, as for other Polish Jews, however, was not easy. Half a century later, Begin still remembered the hunger that he and his family endured during World War I. As a small child during the war, Begin watched as the tsarist secret police arrived at the family’s front door to arrest his father, Ze’ev Dov, on suspicion of assisting the Bolsheviks. The elder Begin’s comportment, dignity, and presence of mind made a lasting impression on the son. Some two decades later, when Soviet NKVD (the KGB’s precursor) agents came for him, Begin drew on this memory. As his father had done, Begin politely inquired whether his visitors had a warrant for his arrest. They did not, but they told him he must come away with them anyway. The agents were taken aback when Begin then offered them some tea, which they politely declined. Begin then insisted on shining his shoes before departing, having secured permission to take two books with him: a biography of the great British statesman Benjamin Disraeli and the Bible.4

  Ze’ev Dov’s bravery in rushing to the aid of a rabbi being accosted in the street by an anti-Semitic Polish soldier who was threatening to cut off the cleric’s beard with a knife was also something that the younger Begin never forgot. Heedless of the consequences, Ze’ev Dov struck the soldier with his walking stick. Both he and the rabbi were arrested and taken to a nearby fort where they were severely beaten. “I have never known a man braver than him,” Begin explained many years later. “Throughout my life I have worked with courageous people. Yet I shall never forget how my father fought to defend Jewish honour … I remember two things from my childhood: Jews being persecuted and the courage of the Jews.”5

  It is not surprising therefore that Begin should inevitably be drawn to the aggressive, muscular Zionism espoused by Jabotinsky and Betar. He joined the youth movement at age fifteen and first heard Jabotinsky speak about two years later. Both were galvanizing, seminal experiences for the young Begin that left a lasting imprint on him. According to one of his biographers, Sasson Sofer, Betar was the “most significant milestone” of Begin’s youth and “served as the cradle of his astonishing career.” Listening to Jabotinsky was no less of an epiphany. “My entire life has been influenced by him,” Begin would later reflect. Jabotinsky’s “willingness to fight for the liberation of the Homeland” and his “logical analysis of facts in political matters” deeply impressed Begin, who rose steadily within Betar, eventually becoming commander of the Brest-Litovsk chapter before leaving home in 1931 to attend Warsaw University Law School.6

  Throughout his time in Warsaw, often at the expense of his studies, Begin familiarized himself with every aspect of Betar operations: recruitment and personnel management, training, propaganda, and even the illegal trafficking of weapons from Poland to Palestine. He thus acquired the fundamental skills essential to the successful operation of any political entity—not least one also engaged in illicit, clandestine activities. This led to Begin’s promotion as head of the Betar organization in Poland and his subsequent advancement first to head of Betar’s propaganda department and then, in 1936, as natsiv (commissioner) for Czechoslovakia—the movement’s most senior national office. He finally managed to graduate with his law degree that same year.7

  Begin was also becoming both more militant and stridently anti-British. In 1937, for instance, he was arrested for leading a demonstration at the British embassy in Warsaw protesting Britain’s policy for Palestine. Inevitably, both inclinations brought him into conflict with his political mentor and idol, Jabotinsky. Indeed, in 1935 Begin had lamented the Revisionist Party’s reinvention as yet another political entity rather than as a movement willing to use armed force.8

  By 1938, Begin’s growing stature within Betar afforded him the platform from which to amplify these views, thus setting the stage for his famous public challenge to Jabotinsky at Betar’s Third World Conference, held in Warsaw in September 1938. Begin openly criticized his mentor’s continued faith in Britain, the estrangement of Betar’s leaders from their young followers, and Jabotinsky’s clinging to an increasingly anachronistic vision of Zionism on a continent being inexorably pulled toward war. A stunned Jabotinsky repeatedly interrupted his disciple’s speech, disputing his historical analogies and sarcastically questioning the practical implications of Begin’s call to embrace a new phase of Zionism—predicated on armed struggle. But Begin’s forceful oration had struck a chord among the delegates, who repeatedly erupted in thunderous applause. With the audience in his hands, Begin brazenly proposed that the Betar oath be changed so that instead of affirming to “use my strength for defence,” new recruits would henceforth pledge themselves to “fight in defence of
my people and to conquer the homeland.” His proposal having been accepted, Begin confronted Jabotinsky again at the Sixth World Revisionist Conference that followed the Betar event. This time, he attacked Jabotinsky for trying to reconcile the Revisionists and the Labor Zionists and in turn the Irgun and the Haganah.9

  Five months later Begin’s ascendance within Betar was completed when, in February 1939, he became the movement’s leader. His tenure, however, was brief. Germany invaded Poland seven months later, and Warsaw was attacked. Reluctantly, Begin fled the city with his bride of only a few months, the former Aliza Arnold, daughter of a Revisionist Party activist. In late October, after considerable difficulty and hardship, they arrived on foot in Vilna, Lithuania, where most of Betar’s leadership had also congregated. The formerly independent Baltic state had just been annexed by the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the agreement negotiated by Hitler’s and Stalin’s foreign ministers that allowed each country to devour all the territory between them. The following ten months passed mostly uneventfully for the Begins in their adopted home. However, news of Jabotinsky’s death in August 1940 prompted various public memorial services among the Betarim in Lithuania that inevitably attracted the NKVD’s attention. Begin’s two eulogies brought him under increased surveillance, and on September 20, 1940, police arrived to take him to Vilna’s Lukishki prison for questioning. After seven months of interrogation, which Begin frequently turned into a form of Socratic dialogue with his persecutors, he was informed of his conviction without trial on charges of being “an agent of British imperialism” and hence “an element dangerous to society.” Begin was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in a Soviet correctional labor camp.10

  Hence, in June 1941, Begin found himself on a Russian ship carrying political prisoners to a Stalinist labor camp in Siberia when news of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union interrupted the journey. With the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin had concluded an agreement with the prime minister of the Polish government in exile, General Władysław Sikorski. Among other things, it authorized the establishment within Soviet territory of a Polish army in exile. Thus, in a sudden and dramatic turn of events, Begin was presented with the option to volunteer for service in the army then forming under General Anders’s command or to continue his trek deeper into the Gulag. Begin chose the former, and for the next ten months he and the four thousand other Polish Jews who had also joined the exile army trained and marched.11

  In a further stroke of good luck, Prime Minister Winston Churchill obtained Joseph Stalin’s permission for General Anders’s forces to be transferred to Palestine. On foot and by truck, Begin and his fellow soldiers slowly made their way southward—through Iran, Iraq, and Trans-Jordan. He recounts the convoy’s arrival at the east bank of the Jordan River—the biblical boundary of Eretz Israel. “I left the automobile, waded a little way into the grass,” Begin wrote, “and drank in the odour of the fields of my Homeland.” It was May 1942.12

  Once in Jerusalem, Begin was reunited with his wife, who had fled Europe shortly after his arrest. They settled into comfortable domesticity, though he led a double life, dividing his time between his duties as a soldier in the Polish army and his responsibilities as a senior Betar commander, alongside growing involvement in Irgun affairs. These extracurricular activities brought Begin to the CID’s attention when the British lodged a formal complaint with the Polish military command. Begin was forced to resign his Betar post as natsiv for Palestine. Although many of his friends urged him to desert, Begin’s sense of personal honor forbade it. Accordingly, senior Revisionist Party officials, along with influential figures involved with the Irgun’s aboveground political and fund-raising activities in the United States and other prominent friends, joined forces to lobby the Polish government in exile for Begin’s release from service. Eventually, their efforts succeeded, and late in 1943 Begin was granted a year’s leave that in practice amounted to an honorable discharge. That same day, Begin presented himself at a meeting of the Irgun high command in Tel Aviv. “I stand now before you,” he declared, “in an Irgun soldier’s uniform—in citizens’ clothing.”13

  The organization that Begin immersed himself in had, however, fallen on hard times. The deaths of Jabotinsky and Raziel within a year of each other had deprived the Irgun of both leadership and vision at a critical moment when the group was already directionless and struggling. Meridor, Raziel’s deputy, had proven incapable of reversing the drift and providing effective leadership. Whatever confidence remained in his leadership had largely dissipated.14

  Although accounts vary whether Meridor himself proposed that Begin assume command of the Irgun or whether his fellow Irgunists forced the decision on Meridor, on December 1, 1943, at the age of thirty, Menachem Begin became the Irgun’s sixth commander.15

  Begin was not the most obvious choice, but there were few alternatives. His lack of military expertise generated the greatest concern within the group. The new Irgun leader was himself under no illusions about either the challenges before him or the steep learning curve he would need to surmount. Amichai Paglin, a senior Irgun officer, later explained, “We felt that someone had arrived who brought with him an awareness of [our] historic mission. He appeared confident of his authority and willing to accept the full responsibility.”16

  Few of his supporters, however, would have predicted either Begin’s emergence as an underground strategist par excellence or his lasting influence on terrorism and revolutionary warfare to this day. His strategy was simple but made the most of the Irgun’s limited resources and inherent weakness vis-à-vis the government’s security forces. The handful of men and meager number of weapons that in 1943 constituted the Irgun could never hope to challenge the British army on the battlefield or confront the police force head-on and win. Instead, the group would function in the setting and operate in the manner that best afforded the terrorist the means of concealment and escape. Based in the city, its members would bury themselves within the surrounding community, indistinguishable from ordinary, law-abiding citizens. Then, after careful planning and preparation, they would emerge from the shadows to strike before disappearing back into the anonymity of Palestine’s urban neighborhoods.17

  Further, in contrast to other colonial rebellions that had either sought decisive military victories in actual battle or relied on protracted struggles of attrition, Begin’s strategy involved the relentless targeting of those government institutions that symbolized Britain’s oppressive rule of Palestine. His plan was not to defeat Britain militarily but to systemically undermine its authority. “History and our observation,” Begin later wrote, “persuaded us that if we could succeed in destroying the government’s prestige in Eretz Israel, the removal of its rule would follow automatically. Thenceforward, we gave no peace to this weak spot. Throughout all the years of our uprising, we hit at the British Government’s prestige, deliberately, tirelessly, unceasingly.” Accordingly, the Irgun sought to stage daring and dramatic acts of violence designed to attract international attention to Palestine and thereby publicize the Zionists’ grievances against Britain and their claims for statehood. As with the mainstream Zionist movement, the United States and American Jewry would become a specific focus of the Irgun’s propaganda and fund-raising efforts.18

  Begin’s most immediate priority, though, was to resume the Irgun’s revolt. More than three years had passed since its suspension, and during that time the condition of European Jewry had become more desperate and the future of the Jewish national home in Palestine less certain. The white paper’s continued immigration restrictions at once denied Europe’s Jews the prospects for salvation and the Yishuv the critical population mass needed to achieve statehood. The possibility of renewing hostilities against Britain had already preoccupied the Irgun during the months preceding Begin’s appointment. But these discussions had stagnated because of internal divisions and inertia as well as from the vigorous interventions of the Yishuv’s off
icial leadership. According to British intelligence, the Jewish Agency and the Haganah had met with the Irgun and the Stern Group in June 1943 to persuade both dissident organizations that any unilateral, “premature action … would be worse than useless.” This warning had achieved its intended effect within the Irgun, thereby prolonging its operational paralysis. But with the war’s outcome now clear, even if its actual end remained uncertain, Begin was convinced that the time for talk and inaction had passed. In perhaps the most powerful passage in his memoir, Begin asks,

  What use was there in writing memoranda? What value in speeches? … No, there was no other way. If we did not fight we should be destroyed. To fight was the only way to salvation.

  When Descartes said: “I think, therefore, I am,” he uttered a very profound thought. But there are times in the history of peoples when thought alone does not prove their existence … There are times when everything in you cries out: your very self-respect as a human being lies in your resistance to evil.

  We fight, therefore we are!19

  His first move as the Irgun’s new commander in chief was to reconfigure the group’s high command. Begin asked Aryeh Ben-Eliezer to join a new leadership council, which in essence functioned as the Irgun general staff, and Eliahu Lankin and Shlomo Levi, who had both served under Meridor in a similar capacity, to remain. Meridor himself was granted leave with the understanding that upon his return to active duty he would become deputy commander. At the new high command’s first meeting, Begin unveiled his plan to publish a proclamation of revolt followed by the recommencement of attacks on British government targets. His proposal was accepted, and the necessary steps were undertaken to prepare the Irgun for battle. Begin directed his subordinates to procure more arms for the Irgun’s depleted armories, increase recruitment, improve training, and acquire additional finances. The organization’s geographic command structure was also reorganized. New branches were established and existing ones revitalized in all of Palestine’s main urban centers as well as at key rural settlements both in the southern half of the country and in the upper Galilee. Within each of these commands, Irgun personnel were assigned to either assault teams, propaganda and information units, or logistics and recruitment duties.20