Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Sir Walter Smart, counselor at the British embassy in Cairo, was similarly convinced that only drastic measures would produce salutary results. In his view, far too little had been done after the attempt on MacMichael’s life three months earlier. “Something in the nature of a thunderclap, like that which followed the Sirdar’s murder,” had been expected by the Arabs then. “If now nothing is done about the murder of Lord Moyne other than the execution of the two murderers, a stop will not be put to this dangerous movement.” The situation, in his view, called for nothing less than the dissolution of the Jewish Agency—a punitive measure he found especially appealing given that it was precisely the punishment that the Palestine government had imposed on the Arabs after Andrews’s assassination seven years before when the Supreme Muslim Council was dissolved.42

  On November 16, Clayton and Smart met with Weizmann as the Zionist leader scrambled between Jerusalem and Cairo to assure British officials of the Yishuv’s commitment to uproot the terrorist organizations. Weizmann’s efforts in this respect had even included, according to a U.S. intelligence report, “begging” the editors of Jewish newspapers in Palestine to refrain from criticizing Churchill’s speech so as not to further alienate the prime minister and enrage British officials across the region. Clayton was left unconvinced by Weizmann’s entreaties. Smart was appalled. “Weissmann [sci],” he caustically observed, “has always posed as a moderate having great difficulties in controlling Jewish extremists. By this attitude he has managed to get a great deal across the British Government.”43

  All these cables, assessments, minutes, and notes, however, failed to budge Churchill from his position that suspending Jewish immigration would accomplish nothing except to “play into the hands of the Extremists.” Unlike Smart and other officials, the prime minister believed that the Yishuv had been genuinely shocked by the assassination, and he told Stanley on November 17 that the community was now in fact more open than ever to Weizmann’s “counsels of moderation.” Accordingly, the prime minister opposed issuing even a warning to the Yishuv about suspending immigration. Churchill was equally against launching any major arms search operations because that too would strike at the section of the Yishuv that comprised neither the terrorists nor their accomplices.44

  On both these points Churchill’s position was prescient. The Chiefs of Staff Joint Planning Staff had completed its analysis of the arms search option’s feasibility the previous day. To be effective, the chiefs believed, such an operation would need to raid simultaneously an estimated sixty Jewish settlements where significant arms caches were believed to be hidden. Accordingly, rather than the one additional division initially assumed, in excess of two more divisions would be required. None of these forces, the Joint Planning Staff emphasized, could be spared from other operational theaters. And even if they could, it was by no means certain that the searches would achieve their objective. There was also the danger that they would make matters worse by stirring the Haganah to rebellion.45

  Churchill had also correctly anticipated the Yishuv’s reaction to any threat regarding the suspension of immigration. Within the week, for example, editorials had appeared in Palestine’s Jewish press attacking this punitive option on the grounds that it would punish innocent victims of Nazi aggression rather than the handful of people responsible for Moyne’s murder.46

  On November 17 the prime minister again addressed the House of Commons. “This shameful crime,” he began,

  has shocked the world. It has affected none more strongly than those, like myself, who, in the past, have been consistent friends of the Jews and constant architects of their future.

  If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.

  If there is to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism, these wicked activities must cease, and those responsible for them must be destroyed root and branch.

  Churchill accordingly demanded the “wholehearted cooperation of the entire Jewish community.”47

  The prime minister clearly intended his remarks to be the “thunderclap” that Smart had argued was needed to rouse the Yishuv. Yet, according to Gort, the community and its leaders were still dragging their feet. Indeed, despite having been in Palestine for only three weeks, his own patience was already wearing thin.48

  In Tel Aviv, the proposed counterterrorism program was then the subject of an intense debate at the Histadrut’s Sixth Plenary Conference. Although the Yishuv’s two principal executive bodies—the Jewish Agency Executive and the Vaad Le’umi—had approved these measures two weeks before, the program had yet to be ratified by the rank-and-file membership of important representative institutions like the Histadrut. The conference thus provided an ideal opportunity for Ben-Gurion and the program’s proponents to champion the proposed effort and ensure it the widest support possible. But from the start, the same profound differences of opinion over the extent and form that the cooperation should take surfaced at this gathering as well. Ben-Gurion vigorously lobbied for approval of the measures. The Yishuv, in his view, had no choice but to actively cooperate with the government against the terrorists or risk harsh reprisals, which he warned would likely include attempts to seize the Haganah’s weapons. “We cannot fight terrorism by condemnation alone,” Ben-Gurion declared. “For people whose only argument is dynamite, persuasion is useless. We need drastic action to wipe out terrorism.” He further described Moyne’s murder and its potential repercussions as a “dagger plunged at the heart” of the entire Zionist enterprise. In the end, his arguments prevailed, and on November 22 the conference approved the four-point program proposed by Ben-Gurion. It called on the community to terminate the employment of people suspected of belonging to either the Irgun or Lehi, expel them from the schools they attended, and evict them from rental property. Terrorist attempts at extortion were also to be “firmly resisted.” Lastly, assistance was to be rendered to the authorities and the police. A similar program tailored specifically for Jewish schools was roundly endorsed by some sixteen Zionist youth groups, the classes of six secondary schools, and the Hebrew Teachers’ College in Jerusalem. Four days later, posters began to appear in Tel Aviv outlining these steps and directing the public to shun the Irgun. Within twenty-four hours, Haganah agents had reportedly apprehended nearly sixty Irgun members. British army intelligence had essentially predicted exactly this outcome of the Haganah’s targeting the Irgun—and, remarkably, that an assassination of a leading British official would likely precipitate it—nine months before. “The culmination of these outrages,” an assessment prepared by the MI5 station in Jerusalem had concluded in February 1944, “may take [the] form either of an attempt on the life of a person of importance in the Administration or of some kind [of] demonstration of force. This would not suit the book [of] the Jewish Agency in any way.”49

  The government, however, was clearly less adept at anticipating the firestorm of incredulity and rage that its handling of the reprisal issue continued to provoke among key British officials across the Middle East. On the morning following the prime minister’s remarks in the Commons, an impassioned letter arrived on Eden’s desk. Its author was Lord Killearn (né Sir Miles Lampson), Britain’s long-serving ambassador to Egypt who also held the title of high commissioner for the Sudan. The Middle East Defence Committee, a smaller, regional variant of the war cabinet, which Moyne had chaired as minister of state and on which Killearn and his fellow ambassadors sat along with the region’s military commanders in chief and most senior national police officers, weighed in the next day. In a lengthy telegram to Eden, the committee endorsed the points that Cornwallis had previously made. It then went on to argue that London had gravely underestimated the crisis that both Moyne’s murder and the government’s hitherto anemic reaction had sparked across the region. Th
e situation was sufficiently serious, the committee believed, as to warrant the diversion of “necessary naval, land and air forces even at the expense of operations elsewhere” to Palestine in support of these punitive measures. In other words, Britain stood to lose more by allowing its authority to be challenged in this manner than by delaying the war effort in Italy.50

  Not for the first time, a bureaucratic struggle now emerged between the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office to determine the government’s policy for Palestine. The combined interventions of the Baghdad and Cairo plenipotentiaries, backed by the Middle East Defence Committee, had now become irresistible. Stanley was therefore compelled to revisit the entire reprisal question. Soliciting Gort’s views, he discovered that the high commissioner was now at one with the ambassadors. Gort had become similarly alarmed about the adverse repercussions that any perception of “apparent undue leniency” would have on his ability to govern the country. He was also concerned about the possible impact on the morale of the Palestine police and civil service. The colonial secretary was now boxed in and had no choice but to place the matter before the war cabinet once more for discussion. He again proposed that consideration be given to the two previously discussed options, albeit with some minor amendments:

  (1) Explicit warning should be given that unless outrages cease immigration to Palestine may have to be suspended; and

  (2) If the necessary troops can be spared they should be moved into Palestine as soon as practicable but should not be used for wholesale arms searches unless further outrages occur.51

  Killearn was furious, his anger doubtless stoked by a report the previous day that two British soldiers in Egypt had been shot at and one severely wounded. Suspicion had immediately fallen on Lehi, though it was later disproven. Nonetheless, there was a perception that Moyne’s assassination had been not an isolated event but part of a Jewish terrorist campaign that had now spread to Egypt. Not content to let the matter rest, Killearn sent a second impassioned message to Eden. He beseeched the foreign secretary to do everything in his power “to overcome this shocking CO [Colonial Office] weakness” by pressing for “immediate effective action.” Referring to Moyne by his forename, Killearn lamented, “Poor Walter’s murder is surely a pretty high price to have had to pay for our previous inaction. Do I really understand that the CO are deliberately prepared to await another outrage (they in fact say so) before having the guts to do the needful. If so, one really begins to feel ashamed that one is an Englishman!”52

  On November 23, Stanley submitted a memorandum explaining his own position to the war cabinet. He proposed a two-track middle course. First, the Foreign Office’s objections notwithstanding, the Yishuv should indeed be publicly warned that if further terrorist outrages were to occur, the government would be forced to take what he termed “drastic action,” including suspending immigration. Second, additional troops should be moved to Palestine as soon as possible, although they would be deployed for wholesale arms searches only in the event of renewed terrorist violence—again, in contrast to the Foreign Office position.53

  The war cabinet considered the matter on November 24. It agreed that no wholesale searches for arms should at this time be undertaken. A new assessment prepared by the Chiefs of Staff had painted an even more dismal picture of the likelihood of success than the Joint Planning Staff had. The chiefs argued that the previous year’s search of Ramat Ha-Kovesh had clearly demonstrated the difficulties and risks attending any effort to seize illegally held Jewish arms. They therefore concluded that the search option was impractical given the uncertainty of success coupled with the harm that would be done to the war effort in Europe. The war cabinet concurred, noting that “searches were rarely productive; secrecy as to the action contemplated was difficult to maintain; mistakes were made by the troops and bad feeling engendered.” Such operations were thus best left to the police. At the same time, however, the war cabinet acknowledged that there were too few police in Palestine to execute this mission. Therefore the chiefs were instructed to reorganize military units already in-country into mobile columns with a strength of two hundred men each to better assist the police with such operations. The war cabinet further decided to notify the high commissioner that although he was free to carry out local, specific searches, “no systematic searches for arms should … at this stage be undertaken.” The discussion then turned to the immigration suspension option. The war cabinet concluded that for the moment no public warning regarding the suspension of immigration would be issued. Instead, the high commissioner was authorized to approach Weizmann privately and inform him that in the event of any new outbreak of terrorism the government would not hesitate to take such action.54

  CHAPTER 10

  Tears of Bereaved Mothers

  The war cabinet’s meeting on November 24, 1944, had also resurrected long-standing concerns about the PPF’s condition and performance. Not for the first time in its history, the police force was found to be well below its authorized strength and seriously handicapped by a shortage of British police. This was especially lamentable in Churchill’s view given the constraints on military manpower imposed by operations in Italy. Drawing on his experiences as secretary for air and colonial secretary in the early 1920s, when he had direct responsibility for Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and then in the treaty negotiations that followed, Churchill averred that terrorism was always best “tackled as a police problem rather than by military forces in conventional formation.” The war cabinet agreed and recommended that all possible steps immediately be taken to increase recruitment to the PPF and improve its intelligence capabilities through the addition “of carefully picked expert personnel.”1

  Only a few days before, the inspector general, Rymer-Jones, had lunched with Stanley and the deputy prime minister, Clement Attlee. He had assured both ministers that provided the Yishuv’s cooperation was forthcoming, the police would have no trouble vanquishing the terrorists. Rymer-Jones made exactly the same point to Guy Liddell, MI5’s head of counterintelligence and a future deputy director general of that service, when they met on November 25. However, the symbiotic deficiencies in manpower and intelligence grossly belied that claim. His visit to London in fact had been prompted not by the Moyne assassination but rather by Rymer-Jones’s efforts to kick-start a long-promised Colonial Office recruitment drive. When he met with Stanley and Attlee, he bluntly told them he required at least fifteen hundred British police beyond the existing complement to cope with the Jewish terrorist threat. Without this allocation, he said, “it was like trying to make bricks without straw.”2

  Although an ambitious recruiting campaign was duly promised, the fact remained that the vast majority of young British men eligible for military service preferred to join one of the branches of the armed forces rather than enlist in the colonial police. Moreover, the overall shortage of manpower five years into the war, coupled with the exigencies of the fighting itself, made the military extremely reluctant to provide troops for internal security duties.3

  The intelligence issue was perhaps even more problematic. At various critical moments in its history, poor intelligence had repeatedly undermined the PPF’s performance. The situation in 1944 was no different; until the war cabinet’s discussion on November 24 there is little evidence that any serious attention had been paid to the quality of the CID’s intelligence gathering and analysis. It might have been that the early successes against the Stern Group, including the killing of its founder and leader, had blinded nearly everyone to the more grievous threat now presented by the Irgun’s revolt. In any case, it was not until Alexander Kellar of MI5 arrived in Palestine in late November as part of a two-month visit to the Middle East that the scope and depth of the CID’s incompetence became apparent.4

  Kellar was perhaps the archetypal twentieth-century British spymaster. Educated at Edinburgh, Yale, and Columbia Universities, he was a dandy, a snob, a homosexual, and what the postwar director general of MI5, Sir Percy Sillitoe, hi
mself a policeman, disdainfully referred to as one of the “long-haired intellectuals” then populating the U.K. intelligence establishment. According to the British historian of intelligence Christopher Andrew, the nefarious ministerial intelligence adviser named Maston in John le Carré’s first novel, Call for the Dead, was modeled on Kellar.5