Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Shortly after 7:00 p.m. on December 27, an Irgun team blew up an electrical substation in Jerusalem, blacking out the downtown commercial district. At that very moment, a combined force of Irgun and Lehi fighters positioned in the historic Assicurazioni Generali Insurance Building opened fire with automatic weapons on the CID headquarters across Jaffa Road in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound. A Lehi demolition squad now stormed the CID offices and blew the door open. Rushing inside, they shot dead a police officer and, advancing deeper into the building, laid their explosive charges, lit the fuses, and withdrew. The ensuing explosion ripped the façade off the three-story building. The blast killed another police officer and four South African Basuto soldiers on guard duty. A gun battle erupted in the streets as other police gave chase. Three more British police were gunned down a couple of blocks away, outside the Orion Cinema off Ben Yehuda Street. One of the attackers was also mortally wounded before the rest of the team could make good their escape. A simultaneous assault was foiled at the CID district headquarters situated on the Tel Aviv–Jaffa border, as police and Sixth Airborne troops positioned on the surrounding rooftops were able to disrupt the attack. Explosive charges nonetheless damaged part of the building and claimed the life of an Arab telephone operator. Concurrently, an Irgun unit attacked the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers workshop in Tel Aviv in search of weapons. The workshop’s armory was less well stocked than had been anticipated, and under heavy fire the raiders withdrew after killing a British sergeant and losing one of their own men. The death toll of British security forces was ten dead and twelve wounded in the worst spate of terrorism in more than a year.37

  The Palestine government responded swiftly, imposing a curfew on the Jewish sections of Jerusalem and on Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan early the following morning. At daybreak, police and soldiers commenced house-to-house searches and identification checks in all three locations. According to one account, as many as fifteen thousand people were screened in Jerusalem, of whom four thousand were detained for further questioning. In Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, fifteen hundred people were similarly scrutinized and nearly sixty taken into custody. Although the curfews and searches were certainly undertaken in hopes of apprehending the people responsible for the attacks, they were also clearly meant to be punitive. An indignant government spokesman drove home this point, arguing that “only people like Hitler … have indulged in this sort of [wanton violence]—Hitler, the greatest enemy the Jews ever had. It was the British who had a very considerable part in eliminating Hitler and today here in Palestine they are being attacked by Jews.”38

  The personal tragedy suffered by nine-year-old Ann Turton only heightened the sense of outrage explicated by the above spokesman. She had now lost two fathers to Jewish terrorism. Her natural father had been one of the four CID officers who three years earlier had been lured by Lehi to a booby-trapped Tel Aviv apartment building where they all were killed. Her mother, who had just recently died, had subsequently married another British police officer, Assistant Superintendent George F. Smith. His body had been pulled from the rubble of the Jerusalem CID headquarters, and her designated guardian, Superintendent Howard Beard, had been wounded by the blast. In a 1973 interview, Beard, the longest continuously serving officer in the history of the PPF, having joined in 1920, bitterly recalled the incident: “It was cold blooded savagery and of all the nations of the world, the British deserved such treatment less than any. I wondered then, as I wonder now, what one has to do to convince Jews that they have no more and no less rights than anyone else.”39

  On the morning of December 28 both Ben-Gurion and Shertok were summoned to Government House. The high commissioner wanted answers to two questions: whether the Jewish Agency had been involved in the attacks and, if not, whether it was prepared to cooperate with the government in apprehending the people responsible for the previous night’s “outrages”—the euphemism widely used by British authorities in both Jerusalem and London to describe acts of Jewish terrorism. Ben-Gurion glibly replied that the agency was no more responsible for the attacks than the government’s policies that had provoked them. He then tried to change the subject, complaining that all requests for an official inquiry into killings of Jewish settlers by British soldiers at Givat Hayim the previous month had been ignored. Cunningham would have none of it, retorting that he had conducted his own investigation of the Givat Hayim incident and was satisfied that the shootings were justified. Returning to the matter at hand, he asked if the Jewish Agency was prepared to help bring the perpetrators of the violence to justice. Again Ben-Gurion prevaricated. He could not commit to anything without first consulting his colleagues. In any event, Ben-Gurion’s own view was that cooperation was no longer feasible; anti-British feeling within the Yishuv was now too strong.40

  The following day Ben-Gurion issued a detailed statement to the press recounting almost word for word the discussion that he and Shertok had with Cunningham. As Daphne Trevor observed in her contemporaneous chronicle of the final years of British rule over Palestine, the Jewish Agency statement “was not a declaration of principle, but a statement of political facts. The regime which had to come into existence to establish and maintain the White Paper had at last created so general and so solid a hostility to the Government that the Agency leaders judged it futile to call for active opposition to terrorism. They believed that if they tried to do so they would fail and would thus cease to represent Palestine Jewry in any effective sense.”41

  To Cunningham, however, it was a declaration of war. Only hours earlier he had recounted for Hall his discussions with D’Arcy about the options at the government’s disposal given Ben-Gurion’s statement that the Jewish Agency could no longer control the Yishuv. Cunningham thought it was still premature to implement the ultimate sanction of occupying the Jewish Agency headquarters building (popularly known in Hebrew as the Sochnut) in Jerusalem and interning its leadership. The potential disruptions that would attend the Anglo-American Committee’s visit again figured prominently in his thinking. But after reading Ben-Gurion’s account of the meeting in the press, Cunningham changed his mind.42

  The cabinet met on New Year’s Day 1946 to consider the matter. The arms search option was again raised, discussed, and dismissed. The proposal to detain the Jewish Agency leadership was also considered—but deferred for the time being. However, Cunningham’s suggestion to grant immigration certificates to Jewish Holocaust survivors with close relations already in Palestine was approved, though pending the consent of the region’s Arab governments.43

  In point of fact, the Haganah had neither approved nor authorized the December 27 attacks. Its own statement, issued under the heading “This Is Not the Path,” termed the operation “irresponsible acts that facilitate the government’s war on the Zionist enterprise and hinder our crucial struggle.” At the same time, though, the Jewish Agency had known in advance of the Irgun’s plans, even providing the authorities with what British intelligence described as a “half hearted warning that … [the] targets might be police stations.” But the information was judged too imprecise to be of any practical value and, as Paget explained to the CIGS, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, “probably had [the] object of covering” the agency’s back. The reality of the situation as 1946 began was perhaps best summed up by Nathan Friedman-Yellin, a member of the Lehi high command, in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We are at war with the British Empire now,” he stated. “There is no other way. The British are determined that Palestine shall never become a Jewish State. We are equally determined that it will.” Any hopes of resolving this dispute peacefully had been overtaken by events. “It is clear now,” the Lehi commander declared, “that the aim of the Jewish people cannot be realized through conferences, commissions and the writing of memorandums.”44

  To a country wearied by six years of warfare, with its citizens still queuing because of food, gasoline, and other rationing, the advent of the New Year in Great Britain was a correspondingly somber af
fair. As a percentage of population, Britain had almost twice as many men still serving in its armed forces as the United States—a further burden on its depleted Treasury. Of this number, nearly fifty thousand were required in Palestine to maintain order. And a succession of bleak intelligence assessments throughout the fall and winter had repeatedly underscored the impossibility of a reduction in those troop levels anytime soon.45

  Numbers alone painted a sufficiently depressing picture. Both American and British intelligence put the Haganah’s strength at some 50,000 trained personnel, with the Palmach’s “shock troops” comprising an additional 5,000 men. The Irgun was thought to have between 3,500 and 5,000 members, of whom 1,200 to 2,000 were estimated to be combatants. Lehi was reckoned by some reports to have no more than 250 members and upwards of 500 by others. If we adjust for imprecision or exaggeration, a parity of sorts thus existed in the number of government security forces and Jewish fighters—an unenviable balance in the best of circumstances. The rule of thumb for government success in counterinsurgency, for instance, has historically been set at a ratio of ten or even twenty soldiers and police to every irregular fighter. Even accepting five to one as the minimum ratio required for successful urban operations, the number of British forces positioned in Palestine at the start of 1946 was woefully inadequate.46

  Worse, reports came that the Irgun’s operational capacity had been further enhanced by the arrival of some three hundred illegal immigrants with prior experience as Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis in Poland, including six persons who had taken part in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. These men joined an estimated sixty Jews who had served in British army commando units during the war and had recently been organized as an elite strike force within the Irgun. Still more disquieting news followed at the end of the month, when British intelligence learned of the Haganah high command’s decision to strengthen collaboration between the Palmach and the Irgun. To this end, some 460 Palmach fighters had been lent to the Irgun, and £300,000 of Haganah funds was allocated to its new ally to underwrite the joint operations. A first installment of this payment, amounting to £56,000, had reportedly already been paid to the Irgun, and the first Irgun mission involving the Palmach men had been successfully executed—the armed robbery of £35,000 from a train near Hadera. As a quid pro quo the Irgun had reportedly agreed to stop extorting money from wealthy Jews and stealing from Jewish merchants and to submit for Haganah review and approval all its attack plans.47

  The increasing reach and growing sophistication of the Jewish underground’s intelligence gathering was another source of profound worry. A CID assessment, for instance, described the formidable capabilities of the Irgun’s intelligence unit and its penetration of both the Palestine government and the police. “They are in a position to tap telephones, open mail, and even to have access to official correspondence between Government Departments,” the report explained, with the effect of obtaining advance knowledge of “exactly when and where searches are to be made, and make their arrangements accordingly.” Another PPF analysis of the Irgun noted that “their ‘Intelligence Branch’ is excellent, with secret agents in all walks of life: employed in the main hotels, and even in police headquarters. A number of their rank and file—apart from their normal military training—must enlist for a year in the Palestine police: Inspector-General Rymer-Jones said ‘We must have had a turn-over of thousands.’ Finally their discipline is as strict as any army in the world.”48

  A document captured at a Lehi safe house in Tel Aviv early in January 1946 was similarly revelatory about that organization’s intelligence capabilities. Lehi operatives routinely cultivated sources among police officers, government officials and employees, soldiers and seamen, personnel in Jewish organizations, journalists, radio and telephone operators, factory owners, and private security guards and watchmen. “In connection with the acquisition of equipment,” the document recounted how “attention is paid to the prospects of acquiring arms by theft and purchase; tailors and launderers are to be contacted to obtain uniforms of all kinds; topographical instruments, maps, binoculars, military headgear, Government and Army forms, passes and documents, rubber stamps, radio and signaling equipment, military telephone directories and other military literature and the use of transport are wanted.” The challenge of extracting information from captured Lehi fighters was cited in still another intelligence report. “I must warn you … that these terrorists are hard nuts to crack,” Alexander Kellar advised Trafford Smith in the Colonial Office, “and it is by no means easy to get them to talk.”49

  At a meeting held in the Colonial Office on January 9, Rymer-Jones detailed for Hall the extent to which the Jewish police section of the PPF had been thoroughly suborned by all three underground organizations. Jewish police officers, accordingly, “could be relied upon only for routine duties not involving security,” with the situation especially grave in Tel Aviv, where PPF operations had been the most negatively impacted.50

  Rounding out this dismal picture was the terrorists’ own growing popularity with the Yishuv and the mounting disquiet their activities were causing among Arabs both in Palestine and farther afield. “Admiration for the skill and the courage of the terrorists” was palpable across the entire Jewish community, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Charteris, the director of military intelligence at army headquarters in Jerusalem during 1945 and 1946, who later became private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, wrote. “Actuated by a spirit of complete ruthlessness, which takes no account of human life, provided with an abundance of targets and the initiative enabled to make their reconnaissance on the spot, and, above all, protected by the local population who are at best too frightened to give them up and at the worst, entirely their supporters, they have an enormous advantage over the forces of law.” Arab opinion in Palestine, meanwhile, was reportedly becoming more hostile to Britain, with complaints about the inadequacy of the government’s response to both Jewish terrorism and illegal immigration increasingly expressed. These developments, the British legation in Baghdad reported, were unfavorably impacting Iraqi attitudes toward Britain.51

  The challenges facing the army in Palestine at this time are perhaps best captured by Lieutenant General Richard “Windy” Gale’s recollection of his first inspection visit to the country in January 1946. Gale had just been appointed to command the First Infantry Division, which was completing its retraining and reorganization in Egypt before returning to Palestine. This innovative, battle-hardened soldier was stunned by what he saw on a large wall map of Palestine at Jerusalem headquarters depicting with red pushpins the myriad installations, communications nodes, and other vital facilities deemed vulnerable to terrorist attack and thus requiring protection. “The map looked more like a child suffering from an attack of measles than a display of serious military dispositions,” he recalled. His commanding officer, D’Arcy, also regarded the situation with grave dismay. “I can find no precedent and little help in our long history of Imperial policing,” he wrote to his men in a directive dated January 11. “You will realise too,” the GOC emphasized, “that the object of the opposition will be, very largely, to discredit us in the eyes of the world and that no occasion for propaganda to that end will be missed and that no sacrifice of their own innocent people will, for one moment, deter them.”52

  The uneasy quiet that had settled over Palestine with the start of the New Year ended on January 19, when the Irgun struck multiple targets in Jerusalem. The pattern was similar to the previous month. An Irgun team blew up the electric substation on St. Paul’s Road shortly after eight in the evening, thus blacking out the area of the city where the main assaults would occur. Minutes later, under cover of darkness, separate Irgun teams simultaneously converged on the Russian Compound police headquarters, the central prison on the compound’s eastern edge, and the nearby Palestine Broadcasting Service studios on St. Paul’s Road. A series of explosive charges planted by Irgun sappers damaged parts of the police facility and the prison, and the attackers safel
y withdrew. A British army patrol intercepted the twin assault parties approaching the radio station. A fierce firefight erupted in which an army officer was mortally wounded and two of the terrorists were killed. A third was wounded and taken prisoner. As the raiders retreated, they planted land mines to slow any pursuit. An army truck detonated one of the mines, and then a police bomb disposal expert died while attempting to disarm another. Given the restrictions that the cabinet had recently imposed on security operations, Cunningham had few options. For the second time in a month, he ordered a curfew imposed on Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods, the previous one having been lifted only two weeks before. This curfew, however, was stricter. All movement was forbidden between the hours of four in the afternoon and ten in the morning. Police and army units also mounted house-to-house searches of several Jewish neighborhoods. Some 3,000 people were interrogated, of whom 150 were detained for further questioning. The network of ancient caves and cisterns beneath homes in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter was subjected to especially intense searches for hidden arms by the PMF and a battalion of the Highland Light Infantry.53

  The following evening brought more bad news. Earlier in the day, a Palmach demolition team disguised as painters had smuggled explosives concealed in paint cans into the Coast Guard station at Givat Olga, which was being rebuilt following the November attack. Shortly before 9:30 p.m. a phone call was made to the installation warning the British police and the anti-aircraft squad stationed at the facility to evacuate the area without delay. The warning was ignored, and seventeen men were injured, including a soldier who later died of his wounds. About the same time, the RAF radar installation on Mount Carmel in Haifa, which also tracked ships suspected of bringing illegal immigrants to the country, received a similar phone message. The caller explained that a time bomb was set to explode and hence the facility should be evacuated immediately. A soldier, however, was able to defuse the device. “We learnt a lesson from this incident,” Yigal Alon, the group’s commander, said later. “It is necessary to also use booby traps that cannot be defused and that will at the very most kill only the person attempting to dismantle” any bombs.54