Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Nonetheless, apologists for Lehi have never allowed the truth to get in the way of a good story and, seeking to further justify Moyne’s murder, have persisted in perpetuating this fiction.43

  In the end, the main reason that Lehi targeted Moyne and MacMichael before him was the offices they held and the British rule they represented. Hakim, the assassin himself, is clear on this point. According to Sadovsky, Hakim had told Sitner that Lehi had marked Moyne for death primarily because he was “the official representative of the British General Policy in the Middle East.” He then added that Moyne’s complicity in the Struma disaster had also been a consideration. Significantly, Hakim said nothing about Moyne’s alleged personal racist views or any other opinions he had about Jews or Zionism as justification for his having been targeted. Bet-Zuri had already told his Egyptian interrogators the same thing.44

  Even Yezernitzky, the assassination mission’s architect, would later assert that Lehi turned its attention to Moyne after the failed attempt on MacMichael’s life because the minister of state was vulnerable given that he did not have the same heavy personal protection detail that thereafter routinely accompanied Palestine’s high commissioners everywhere. Moreover, the explanation that Yezernitzky recalled giving to both Hakim and Bet-Zuri before they each departed for Cairo further belies the targeting of Moyne as a person as opposed to the office he held. “Our attack on Moyne,” Yezernitzky remembered separately telling the two Eliahus, “will clarify exactly who the enemy is … We smash the dragon’s head, not the tail … We believe Great Britain simply cannot carry out her promises to both Jews and Arabs … The deed against Moyne will bring the whole issue into the world forum where it will merit the attention of world opinion and world diplomacy.”45

  Almost from the time it became known that Moyne’s killers were members of Lehi, British authorities in both London and Cairo were deeply concerned that when they were eventually tried in open court, Hakim and Bet-Zuri would use the proceedings, like other Lehi defendants who had been tried in Palestine, as a platform to amplify the group’s seditious, Anglophobic propaganda, but it would now be broadcast to audiences in Egypt, elsewhere in the Middle East, and beyond—including America. Bet-Zuri had alluded to just such an intention, it will be recalled, when he was first interrogated. After being told that he would be tried in Egypt, Bet-Zuri said that this pleased him greatly because the “Arabs generally were in sympathy with the Stern Group” and he would therefore receive a fair trial. Indeed, a Lehi propaganda statement to that effect had been found in Bet-Zuri’s pocket when he was arrested.46

  As preposterous as this claim of Arab support for Lehi might have been, the British authorities were nonetheless alarmed and pressed the Egyptian government to exercise its complete powers of censorship when dealing with press reports concerning the trial. So acute was this concern that British and Egyptian authorities delayed the delivery of letters written by Bet-Zuri and Hakim to their parents in order to prevent their contents from being published. Journalists accredited to cover the trial were bluntly warned by the deputy chief censor, a British national named MacDonald, that “no attempt to ‘make political capital’ of the trial would be passed.” A small army of Egyptian and British officials representing the various civilian, military, and intelligence censorship apparatuses in Egypt as well as from Palestine was deployed to enforce this edict.47

  The trial began on January 10, 1945. Contemporary accounts describe a tumultuous scene of two to three hundred spectators packed into a small courtroom within a building ringed by hundreds of mounted and foot policemen standing guard shoulder to shoulder alongside Egyptian troops with fixed bayonets. At the center of this chaos, the two defendants—watched over by “six giant impassive Egyptian policemen”—were reported to have sat calmly, chatting with their guards. The court was called to order and the charges read. Both men readily admitted their guilt. “We both came in accordance with instructions we got from the secret organisation to which we belong,” Bet-Zuri declared. “We met in Cairo and began acting in accordance with instructions—instructions to assassinate Lord Moyne.” Bet-Zuri also explained how his orders to avoid injuring any Egyptians in the course of the operation had prevented him from shooting the motorcycle policeman who arrested them, thus foiling his and Hakim’s escape. It was further revealed that Lehi had specifically selected Hakim for this mission because he was regarded as “one of the best shots in the gang and this would guarantee the accomplishment of the mission.” Lehi had chosen Bet-Zuri for his “brilliant” oratorical skills under the assumption that he would be an effective “instrument of defense if the men were caught. Both men,” a U.S. intelligence officer who attended the trial observed, “have well accomplished their mission.”48

  Throughout the proceedings neither man would evince any sign of contrition or regret for his act, and they repeatedly rejected their attorneys’ suggestion that they save themselves by pleading temporary insanity. “What I did is right,” stated a note that both defendants signed and gave to the London Daily Express’s Cairo correspondent. As Bet-Zuri later explained, in a statement that is perhaps the classic elucidation of the terrorist mind-set, “Our deed stemmed from our motives, and our motives stemmed from our ideals, and if we prove our ideals are right and just, then our deed was just!”49

  The censors duly forbade the publication of such statements by the press. Just as the British authorities had dreaded, Bet-Zuri’s impassioned but eloquent defense and Hakim’s placid yet confident demeanor greatly impressed the court. The account published in The Egyptian Gazette remarked how “both prisoners looked uncommonly cheerful and talked and laughed together.” Even one of the British military censors present at the trial was moved to admit in his report, “Both of the accused conducted themselves with extraordinary dignity. However wrong their crime may be, the majority felt that the two men are sincere and in many respects admirable. It is obvious that they are not common murderers or hired assassins.”50

  The trial ended on January 16. Two days later the court pronounced the defendants guilty and imposed the death penalty. The verdict accorded perfectly with the wishes of the British government, which saw in Hakim’s and Bet-Zuri’s executions a means finally to defuse continued Arab criticism over Britain’s inadequate response to the assassination. From the outset, therefore, London had maneuvered to ensure that the assassins would receive the maximum penalty for their crime, insisting that they be tried by an Egyptian court and not a British tribunal. In this manner, Churchill was determined to avoid a repetition of the situation that had occurred in 1938, when the death sentence imposed by a British military court on another Palestinian Jew, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, had prompted an international campaign for clemency.51

  With the sentence now passed, British efforts energetically shifted to ensuring that the Egyptian government would not succumb to any such appeals. Churchill personally impressed this point on Killearn. “I hope you will realize,” the prime minister stated, “that unless the sentences duly passed upon the assassins of Lord Moyne are executed it will cause a marked breach between Great Britain and Egyptian Government. Such a gross interference with the course of justice will not be compatible with the friendly relations we have established. As they may be under pressure from Zionists and American Jewry I think it right to let you know my personal views on the matter.”52

  Churchill’s concerns were not unjustified. Less than two weeks later, Killearn reported that the Egyptian procurer general had made an offer to Bet-Zuri whereby his sentence would be commuted if only he “would help to put an end to terrorism by denouncing members of the Stern Gang.” Although Bet-Zuri rejected the deal out of hand, Killearn was furious that the Egyptian authorities should even have considered making such a proposal. “This is shocking,” Churchill agreed in a handwritten note scrawled at the bottom of the ambassador’s telegram. The prime minister’s reply, which bore the foreign secretary’s signature as well, was blunt and to the point. “It is of the utmost importance
that both assassins should be executed.”53

  Hakim and Bet-Zuri were hanged on March 22. Neither had revealed to the authorities the names of their confederates either in Egypt or in Palestine or any other useful information. That night, Sadovsky visited Hakim’s and Bet-Zuri’s burial sites in Cairo’s Jewish cemetery to pay his respects and recite Kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer for the deceased. The police, however, were waiting and promptly arrested him. Under interrogation, Sadovsky confessed to belonging to Lehi and revealed the names of eight group members serving in HM Forces in Egypt. They were also arrested, and together with five other suspected terrorists were discharged from the RAF and transferred to prisons in Palestine. Sitner, the ringleader of the cell, had already been deported to Palestine in January 1945 and, despite being kept under RAF police surveillance, somehow managed to disappear. The CID, however, finally tracked him down in July 1945, and with his imprisonment the final remaining member of the Cairo cell involved in the assassination was behind bars.54

  Hakim and Bet-Zuri were reported to have gone to their deaths singing the Zionist national anthem, “Ha-Tikva,” as well as religious hymns. It is said that Hakim told his executioner that the traditional condemned man’s red shirt and trousers were “the finest suit I’ve ever worn.”55

  That both men accepted their fate without fear or remorse can be conjectured not only from their bearing in court and on the scaffold but from a letter Hakim wrote to his parents shortly after his arrest. “In the first minutes after my capture,” he admitted, “I was a little depressed but now I am absolutely calm and my conscience is settled because I have the feeling that I have done my duty. I am glad to stand this test, because now, more than at any other moment of my life, I am certain of the justice of my ideal, because my ideal is the ideal of truth.” Hakim then assured his mother and father, “I am prepared for everything … I beg you not to worry too much about me and I wish you all the best and that you should see in our days the liberated Jerusalem.”56

  In 1975, the bodies of Eliahu Bet-Zuri and Eliahu Hakim were disinterred from their simple graves in Cairo and brought back to Jerusalem. They were accorded a state burial, complete with full military honors, and reinterred on Mount Herzl, where Israel’s warriors and heroes rest.57

  CHAPTER 11

  Wider Horizons

  On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered, and the war in Europe ended. Even more than in 1918, the Yishuv had cause to rejoice. Jewry’s most demonic enemy had been vanquished, and the Zionist dream of a reconstituted Jewish national home in the Land of Israel had survived perhaps the gravest threat yet posed to its existence. But the Yishuv’s jubilation was tempered by melancholy and uncertainty. Millions of Jews had perished as a result of Hitler’s final solution, and at least a hundred thousand others were languishing across liberated Europe. An editorial in Mishmar published on V-E Day captured the community’s mood: “The destruction of European Jewry demands from those concerned to hasten the rescue of the survivors and bring redemption nearer to the whole Jewish nation by permitting mass immigration into Palestine and by immediately fulfilling the aims of Zionism.” Yet the prospect of independence and statehood, which only a few months earlier had seemed within reach, now appeared to have been irretrievably cast aside, if not completely forgotten.1

  The assassination of Lord Moyne accounted for this cruel twist of fate. Not only had it derailed the government’s progress toward adopting partition, but it had also profoundly alienated the prime minister. Churchill refused to reconsider the matter until he was satisfied that the Yishuv had extirpated terrorism from its midst. Thus a critical window of opportunity for Zionism closed as the prime minister became consumed by more pressing postwar issues and his attention and priorities shifted elsewhere. The white paper, with its severe limits on Jewish immigration and land purchase, remained as the government’s policy for Palestine. This was particularly unfortunate for the Yishuv, because the guiding assumption behind the special cabinet committee’s deliberations had been that the 1939 policy statement had outlived its relevance. Moreover, except for the implementation of its immigration and land settlement restrictions, none of the white paper’s provisions—such as those intended to prepare Palestine for self-rule and eventual independence as a majority-Arab state—were ever enacted. But in the absence of a final decision on the mandate’s political future, the government had also made no attempt nor signaled any inclination either to revise or to replace the white paper. In the tense and anticipatory atmosphere of postwar Palestine, however, this political vacuum breathed new life into the Irgun’s struggle.2

  “With the end of the war, the world had opened to us,” Begin recalled in his memoir, “and we were enabled to draw attention to our small corner in it. Wider horizons had been opened for our military struggle as well. The oppressor had expected we should be drawn into a bloody civil war which would assure him of ‘peace’ and mastery. But we, the rebels, had determined to disappoint him in this, too. With the turning-point that came at the close of World War II we decided not only to continue our struggle but … to intensify it.”3

  As the German capitulation neared, the Irgun had brazenly announced that V-E Day for Britain “would be D-Day for [us].” The plan was to strike on the night of May 13 with coordinated attacks and dramatically announce the recommencement of its revolt the following morning. From the start, however, the operation went awry. The Irgun’s armorers had devised a new type of time-controlled mortar that could fire remotely and thus afford the perpetrators ample time to escape. The three-foot-long, nine-inch-diameter weapon was accurate to about a half mile and could be mounted on the back of a truck and positioned within range of the intended target. An Irgun team was in the process of doing so a short distance from the Police Mobile Force camp in Sarona, outside Haifa, when watchmen from a nearby Jewish settlement came upon the scene. The police were summoned, and four Irgunists, including a senior officer, were arrested.4

  Nonetheless, the following morning posters printed in Hebrew, Arabic, and English appeared on walls in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. Signed by “The Irgun Zvai Le’umi in the Land of Israel,” they ominously read,

  WARNING!

  1) The Government of Oppression should WITHOUT ANY DELAY evacuate children, women, civilian persons and officials from all its offices, buildings, dwelling places etc. throughout the country.

  2) The civilian population, Hebrews, Arabs, and others are asked, for their own sake, to abstain from now until the warning is recalled, from visiting or nearing Government offices, etc.

  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!5

  The Irgun had better luck that same evening when small explosive charges affixed to more than two hundred telegraph poles outside Jerusalem, Lydda, Nablus, and Haifa temporarily disrupted countrywide communications. The next night mortars were fired on the internment camp at Sarona and the district police headquarters in Jaffa. Apart from some windows shattered by the projectiles, however, there was no significant damage, nor was anyone killed or injured. The Irgun’s mixed fortunes continued for the remainder of the month. On the night of May 22, Irgun sappers damaged the Kirkuk–Haifa pipeline. But three nights later a second attempt to attack the Sarona PMF camp was foiled.6

  British intelligence had accurately forecast the resumption of violence that would coincide with V-E Day, and therefore the security precautions undertaken by the authorities in Palestine at least a month before Germany’s surrender may explain the Irgun’s unusual string of failures. This had followed an intelligence assessment prepared for the Chiefs of Staff in December 1944 that had predicted that as the end of the war drew near, “Jewish extremists” would likely “become impatient and force the pace by intensifying their ‘IRA’ [Irish Republican Army] tactics.” But the threat that the chiefs still feared most was a mass uprising spearheaded by the Haganah. “The Jews have an armed and organized strength of 54,000,” a report on internal security in the Middle East that the chiefs submitted to the war cabinet that same month
explained. “Their technique in guerilla warfare is likely to be good, and among their leaders will be British, German and Polish Army trained officers and a number of experienced terrorists from Eastern Europe.” The current forces on hand in Palestine—an infantry division and a handful of support units—would likely be overwhelmed. Accordingly, a second infantry division supported by an armored brigade, three companies of Royal Engineers, and five RAF squadrons would need to be transferred to Palestine. Because these forces could not be spared from their wartime commitments, the chiefs recommended that the manpower and equipment deficiencies still plaguing the recently formed PMF should be redressed immediately.7

  As always, the police were the weak link in Palestine’s security. Rymer-Jones was literally watching the PPF melt before his eyes. His repeated pleas to the Colonial Office to prioritize recruitment had gone unanswered. By March 1945 the situation had become so dire that the British section, which included the PMF, was now nearly 2,000 men below its authorized strength of 5,445 persons. Moreover, the quality of recruits entering the PMF was so poor that Rymer-Jones was given no choice but to dismiss many of the new entrants—of whom no small number had been found to be functionally illiterate. He thought the training staff, which had also been recruited from the British military, was thoroughly inadequate as well.8

  It was perhaps a reflection of the desperate straits that the enervated and overstretched British military found itself in at the close of World War II that General Sir Bernard Paget, the senior British military commander in the Middle East, requested permission in January 1945 to use heavy weapons—artillery, mortars, naval bombardment, and aircraft bombing and strafing—in the event of any new disturbances in Palestine. More astonishing is that this request to use indirect fire in built-up, urban areas against enigmatic irregular fighters concealed within the civilian populace aroused no great concern among the strategic and operational planning staffs in Whitehall. Indeed, within the week the Joint Planning Staff had produced a draft assessment. It cited as precedent the rules of engagement during the 1936–39 Arab Rebellion. There had then been no restrictions placed on the use of artillery, but air-delivered munitions and machinegun fire were subject to strict regulation. Initially, only 20-pound bombs could be dropped—and only beyond a five-hundred-foot radius of any town, village, or even a single standing edifice. Machine-gun fire from aircraft could only be directed against armed rebel bands sighted in open country. However, after three RAF planes had been shot down in one day five months into the rebellion, use of 112-pound bombs was authorized. Toward the end of the rebellion, some restrictions were further loosened. The RAF, for instance, was now permitted to strafe houses or other buildings from which rebel fire was being directed. But at no time had the cabinet permitted bombing of rebel targets where civilians were present, as was now being proposed.9