Thursday, March 23, appears to have been an ordinary day in Palestine. The news was mostly about the war in Europe. In the United States, twenty thousand people had gathered in New York City’s Madison Square Garden to demand the white paper’s termination as Jews both in Palestine and elsewhere observed a day of prayer and fasting in hope that Europe’s Jews might yet be saved. The day had passed uneventfully for the police as well. The evening shift was taking over from the day one, and there was no indication that this night would be any different from any other despite the disparate terrorist attacks of the past few weeks.44
Around 6:30 p.m., however, a clerk working at the Jaffa district police headquarters was cut down in a hail of gunfire. About thirty minutes later, a British police constable was shot three times as he stood outside the magistrate’s court in Tel Aviv. At 7:30 p.m. gunshots struck a British officer as he walked out of the central police station. Thus, in less than an hour, and in multiple locations across Jaffa and Tel Aviv, Lehi gunmen had killed three British policemen and seriously wounded another.45
Whatever sense of alert the shootings should have aroused among the police seems to have been neglected by their colleagues working late at CID headquarters in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound. Just after 10:30 p.m., John Scott, an assistant superintendent, was disturbed by unusual sounds coming from outside his second-floor office. He went to investigate—and happened upon four men, all dressed in what appeared to be police uniforms, armed with Mauser submachine guns, who had just climbed onto a balcony and entered through an open window using a ladder propped alongside the building. They were in the process of hauling up satchels of explosives from other members of their Irgun assault team waiting below. “Suddenly a piercing whistle punctured the silent darkness,” one of the raiders recalled. Reaching for his pistol while sounding the alarm with his police whistle, Scott was flung backward by successive bursts of submachine-gun fire. He died on the spot.
Under covering fire from the Irgun unit positioned below, the raiders now threw hand grenades and set their explosive charges before retreating. They scrambled down the ladder and fled. One of the Irgunists, the twenty-year-old son of a wealthy Jerusalem family, gasped that he was wounded and then collapsed and died. The remaining nineteen members of the assault team dispersed, discarding their khaki Polish army battle dress and military peaked caps, which had been dyed blue to resemble standard-issue PPF headgear.
An hour later, the first of two explosions rocked the building. The second followed about ten minutes later. Witnesses reported that the blast convulsed nearby buildings “like an earthquake” and broke glass windows in businesses and residences up and down Jaffa Road. The Palestine Post reported that the scene resembled a “ ‘blitzed’ London street.”46
Meanwhile, in Haifa, the police were similarly oblivious to the violence occurring in other parts of the country. A fifteen-man Irgun team had entered the local CID headquarters compound in that city, placed eighty kilograms of explosives against the building’s southern wall, and set the timer to detonate in twenty minutes. A call was placed to the telephone switchboard operator instructing the police to evacuate the building. But before the warning could be conveyed, a miscalculation caused the bombs to explode at 11:30 p.m.—sooner than the Irgun had intended. Three British police officers were killed and three others seriously wounded.
Upon learning of the simultaneous assaults on the CID in Jerusalem and Haifa, the CID chief in Jaffa ordered an immediate search of district headquarters there—the scene of the evening’s first incident. Four rucksacks filled with explosives were discovered, and the building was quickly cleared of its occupants. There had not been a moment to spare: within minutes, it was demolished by successive explosions. Reportedly, a warning had been telephoned to the Jaffa headquarters as well. Nonetheless, from the Jerusalem operation, six British police lay dead, and seven were wounded—the first British casualties that the Irgun had inflicted since the assassination of Cairns and Barker five years before.47
The following morning, the government imposed a 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew over Tel Aviv and the Jewish sections of Jerusalem and Haifa. Roadblocks and checkpoints were set up in each locale, and additional foot and motorized patrols of police, now accompanied by troops, roamed the streets of each city.48
The day’s events, featuring two waves of multiple attacks by both the Irgun and Lehi acting independently of each other, convinced both government and police officials that the resurgence of Jewish terrorism would not be easily contained or controlled. Unlike the previous month’s incidents, when the Irgun’s targets had been largely unprotected and undefended government office buildings, these operations were directed at the heart of the British security apparatus in Palestine and had successfully targeted three well-defended and presumably secure police facilities.49
The Irgun’s brazen show of force had particularly unnerved the British. Army intelligence experts now spoke of the Irgun’s belief that it possessed a “Divine decree” to drive the British from Palestine, noting that this fanaticism “does not mean that they are careless in their methods, for they combine skill and cunning with reckless courage.” An analysis of the Haifa assault similarly warned about the danger of “sudden attack by fanatical assassins.” “The terrorists are free to walk about the street,” U.S. military intelligence analysts agreed, “hide in Jewish communities and spring from ambush at any moment. It is only in the split second after an attack that the British Police have any chance to identify their assailants. This puts them at a terrific disadvantage.”50
It must also be said that police complacency had contributed to the terrorists’ success. At least this was the conclusion of the same American intelligence analysts quoted above. “Incompetence of a gross nature” and “gross negligence of proper precaution” was how the PPF’s performance under fire was described. The attacks, these analysts acidly noted, were the direct result of the “scandalous series of prison escapes” during 1942 and 1943 that had allowed the Stern Group to reconstitute itself as Lehi. Further, despite more than a month of escalating terrorist violence, the American critique continued, the CID had seemed curiously unperturbed. On that same evening, the CID’s chief, Giles, was dining at the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and in the midst of a postprandial poker game when gunfire and explosions were first heard from the Russian Compound, just a short distance away.51
This overall lack of alarm is all the more perplexing considering that the British section of the police—the backbone of the PPF, accounting for half its manpower—was again well below its established strength at precisely the time when both the Irgun and Lehi had resumed their respective terrorist campaigns. It was short some five hundred men, having been poorly served by an apparently desperate recruitment campaign in the U.K. that had allowed members of the British Fascist Party and other highly undesirable individuals to enlist and receive priority transport to Palestine, only to be dismissed and sent home shortly after their arrival. Thus, as had been the case during the Arab Rebellion, the police found themselves unable to function effectively without the support of the army, which, unlike in the past, was now severely constrained by wartime priorities.52
It doubtless was this concatenation of circumstances that prompted the Palestine government on March 28 to reinstate the emergency regulations promulgated under the 1937 Palestine (Defence) Order in Council. As will be recalled, these draconian powers were originally promulgated at the start of the Arab Rebellion in June 1936 and had been suspended only in July 1940—nearly a year after major hostilities had finally ceased. Among other provisions, these regulations established as capital offenses the discharge of “fire-arms at persons, the throwing or depositing of bombs, explosives and incendiary substances with intention to cause death or injury or damage to property; the carrying of fire-arms, ammunition or bombs; interference with or damaging of transport services, or the water, electric or telephone services.”53
It had taken two months of unrelenting viole
nce and countrywide upheaval during the Arab Rebellion before the Palestine administration had felt compelled to embrace this extraordinary step. The far more modest and isolated Jewish urban terrorist campaigns had accomplished the same feat in basically the same amount of time—a fact that gave Begin and his lieutenants immense satisfaction.54
The government clearly hoped that the curfews and reinstatement of the 1937 Order in Council would not only blunt the Irgun and Lehi offensives but also compel the Yishuv to provide the police with the information they needed to eliminate both organizations. Senior PPF officers, however, scoffed at both measures, arguing both that they were woefully inadequate and that the Yishuv should be punished more harshly and thereby coerced to cooperate. Giles was apparently complaining to whoever would listen that no progress would be made against the terrorists so long as London continued to prohibit the sustained deployment of British military units in Palestine on internal security duties. “To get a change in attitude in London,” he was quoted, “we’ve got to wait till the High Commissioner is murdered. Any number of Police Officers, doesn’t count.”55
Giles was not entirely wrong. As had been the case in February, the Yishuv’s response amounted more to weighty words of condemnation than to any tangible act of cooperation. The statement issued by the Vaad Le’umi, however, went much further. For the first time, an official institution openly called on the Yishuv to cooperate with the authorities and “do all in [its] power to isolate the evildoers and those responsible for the insane acts so that they cease, once and for all.” With each passing day that the curfew remained in force, the Vaad Le’umi’s once-controversial line was becoming less a subject of debate and dissension. Although the curfews’ continuance into April generated new complaints from the Jewish Agency, editorials in the Jewish press were appearing that now endorsed the Vaad Le’umi’s position. Typical of these statements was one in Davar: “Only now do we realize the extent of the madmen’s cries on Thursday [that is, the Irgun attacks] to have been greater than thought first. Greater still is the misfortune caused to the Jewish Community. The Yishuv is under curfew regulations—imposed for a crime they have not committed. They have been blamed for deeds perpetrated by the saboteurs of the Jewish national effort and struggle.” These first stirrings of compliance were exactly what the government was after. Shaw made no bones about this when he met with Joseph on March 27. He was forcefully blunt: warning the Jewish Agency official of the dire consequences that would befall the Yishuv if it did not start actively assisting the authorities.56
Six days later, the Palestine administration announced that the curfews would be lifted. Although it had secured no firm commitment from the Yishuv or its representatives, MacMichael and his advisers were convinced that the curfews’ prolongation at this stage might well counteract a palpable inclination on the part of the community to cooperate with the police.57
The Jewish Agency was in fact edging closer toward initiating a serious counterterrorist program. It was propelled forward by a meeting held at the Colonial Office in London on March 30 between Moshe Shertok, the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department; the distinguished Manchester University historian Lewis Namier, who was a political adviser to the Jewish Agency; and the colonial secretary. Stanley opened the meeting by saying that he had a personal message from Churchill to convey: “The Prime Minister, who had always been a sincere friend of the Jews, had been horrified by these outrages, which in his view could do nothing but harm to the Jewish cause.” So unequivocal a warning, especially at a time when the cabinet was seriously considering a plan to scrap the white paper and partition Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, produced the desired effect. Three days later the Jewish Agency approved a program of “broad enlightenment” designed to counteract any sympathy or support from the Yishuv for the two terrorist organizations. Although the new initiative fell far short of the active cooperation sought by the authorities, the program contained a set of practical guidelines for the Yishuv to follow that, it was hoped, would effectively ostracize the terrorists from the community. In addition, the Haganah established a special, internal policing unit to put an end to the terrorists’ intimidation and extortion of money from Jewish merchants and businessmen.58
Golomb unveiled the program to great fanfare at the Tel Aviv Press Club on April 6. He described the recent spate of attacks as “insane crimes of misguided young men” that threatened to undermine the Yishuv’s most important priority: the rescue of its European brethren. The situation, he continued, was different from Ireland in the 1920s and even the Arab Rebellion, where the rebels’ constituents “gained political concessions through terrorism.” In this case, the Jewish terrorists’ “mad recklessness might be borne by the entire community.” Accordingly, the Haganah commander made clear that if the terrorist attacks continued, the Yishuv’s official representatives would be compelled to take matters into their own hands and themselves “punish the culprits.” Golomb then launched into a devastating critique of the government and the police, blaming their incompetence for the current security problems. The problem, he said, was not the lack of assistance from the public but the police force’s failure to act on information that the Jewish Agency had already given it along with the PPF’s utter fecklessness in allowing the successive escapes of Lehi operatives from prison. Finally, Golomb lambasted the authorities for the “official” and “intimate” relations that they had entered into with the Irgun prior to Raziel’s death, citing the confusion this had sown in the Yishuv’s mind when now asked to actively assist in the same group’s eradication. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization and therefore de facto leader of the Yishuv, took this same line in a letter he sent to Churchill’s private secretary. “It is simply not true that we are not—or have not been—co-operating,” the Zionist elder statesman wrote. A memorandum prepared by the Jewish Agency detailing specific instances where information it had given to the police had led to recent terrorist arrests was attached to Weizmann’s letter. All the information in the memorandum was later verified by British army intelligence.59
By May, the Jewish Agency and the Haganah were ready to implement the new program. Golomb presented Shaw and Rymer-Jones with a list of conditions on which the agency was prepared to cooperate with the authorities:
One. 25 to 50 men picked by the Agency to be issued with firearms permits. Permits to be given in blank so as not to disclose names to the police.
Two. These men would endeavour to apprehend those whom Jewish Agency considered responsible for terrorist outrages.
Three. Those suspects apprehended to be detained by Jewish Agency in various settlements.
Four. The Jewish Agency would inform [the government secretariat] of the names of persons so detained but not (repeat not) disclose place of detention.
Five. The Jewish Agency demanded assurances that (A) No punishment should be imposed on any settlement found harbouring a wanted person. (B) Should Police obtain information of where-abouts of fugitive [terrorists] they would not (repeat not) at the same time search for arms.
Six. The Jewish Agency insisted that these negotiations should be conducted direct with police.
The Haganah commander also sought assurances that the security forces would take no action against any terrorist or suspected terrorist without first consulting the Jewish Agency.60
Shaw and Rymer-Jones were taken aback by the far-reaching terms of Golomb’s proposal. They were being asked, in essence, to issue the Jewish Agency and the Haganah a blank check with which to deal with the terrorists entirely in their own way, completely outside the law, and without any vestige of due process. Moreover, by agreeing to suspend searches of Jewish settlements for illegal arms, the government was being asked to condone one form of illegal behavior in return for the agency’s cooperation in eradicating another. The proposed arrangement was therefore less one of cooperation than a delegation of governmental authority to a private body. It was rejected
out of hand. The Jewish Agency interpreted the matter differently. During discussions with U.S. State Department officials in Washington the following November, agency representatives blamed the British for the collapse of the negotiations. “The authorities,” the Jewish delegation claimed, “had deliberately played down the role of the Jewish community in combating terrorism” and thereby had themselves sabotaged any prospect of cooperation.61
With the breakdown of negotiations, a perceptible chill in the agency’s relations with the government followed. On June 9, for example, Shertok delivered a public address in which he declared, “In the near future [we will] have to place our political fate in the hands of the Haganah. We shall not allow our work of construction to be destroyed by the Arabs and the ‘Brits.’ ”62
These same attitudes permeated the Yishuv. For example, press commentary on the trial and convictions of a young Lehi terrorist named Matityahu Shmulevitz in July differed significantly from the robust denunciations of terrorism of February and March. Shmulevitz was found guilty of various capital offenses under the recently reimposed emergency regulations, including shooting at a police officer and being found in possession of a handgun, ammunition, and a bomb. He thus became the first person to receive the death penalty since the new regulations took effect three months earlier and the first Jew since Shlomo Ben-Yosef was sentenced to die. As a British army intelligence analysis reported, although “both press and institutions formerly denounced the terrorists in the strongest terms … there has of late been noticeable both in the press and among the public a strong tendency to condemn the death sentence as harsh and unjustified.” Worse still, another intelligence assessment complained, the Yishuv demonstrably regarded Shmulevitz in particular not as a criminal, much less as a terrorist, but “as a misguided youth … whose actions can be understood when viewed in light of the present tragic circumstances of world Jewry.” U.S. intelligence had noted the same developments in its reports to Washington.63
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