Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Regardless of this change in nomenclature, the attacks continued. On February 28, Lehi bombed a building in Haifa from which the Admiralty made arrangements to expel illegal immigrants and where a military pay office was also located. Then, on Saturday, March 1, the Irgun struck in the supposedly impregnable security zone that the army had recently expanded in downtown Jerusalem.6

  The Jewish Sabbath was arguably the only day of the week when everyone in Palestine could relax. Terrorist attacks seemed never to occur on Saturdays, and only once in recent memory had there been such an incident, and even then it was not clear whether the bomb had been timed to explode on a certain day. Hence, a fatally false sense of security pervaded the country at least once every weekend, and March 1 was no exception. The weather that day was magnificent. It was sunny and unseasonably warm. Jerusalem’s streets were crowded with pedestrians taking advantage of the first sign of the end of winter and of an early spring.7

  About 3:15 p.m., however, the tranquil repose of the Sabbath was broken by the sound of machine-gun fire coming from the stretch of King George V Avenue that bounded the eastern part of Rehavia. An Irgun squad had positioned itself on the roof of a building adjacent to the landmark Yeshurun Central Synagogue and was firing on a sentry post outside the four-story structure directly across the street. Known as Goldschmidt House, it housed the city’s British army officers’ club. Although the property was surrounded by successive layers of barbed wire and heavily guarded by British soldiers and police, the attack’s planners had spotted a gap in the facility’s defenses where the entrance to a military parking lot abutted the club. It was at this spot that the machine gun was concentrating its fire as a stolen army truck suddenly came into view. Accelerating past the dead and wounded sentries, it barreled into the parking lot before braking to a stop alongside Goldschmidt House. Three terrorists wearing British army battle dress jumped from the truck and hurled satchel charges into the building before quickly withdrawing. The ensuing explosions tore through the facility, collapsing its façade, killing thirteen persons, and wounding more than a dozen others. Among the dead were two officers and an enlisted man, a police officer, and nine civilian NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institutes) employees, including a female Polish switchboard operator and the club’s Italian general manager. A number of passersby caught in the cross fire were also injured.8

  The attack on Goldschmidt House was only the opening salvo in a sustained, daylong Irgun assault on military targets across Palestine that did not abate until midnight. Additional incidents were reported in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Hadera, Rehovot, Petah Tiqva, and Rishon-le-Zion. In all, fifteen attacks claimed the lives of eighteen persons and resulted in injuries to twenty-five others. Among the casualties were thirteen civilians, including eight Arabs. The Palestine administration had reacted immediately to the bombing of the officers’ club by imposing a curfew over Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods that evening. As the violence spread, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Petah Tiqva were placed under curfew as well.9

  Sunday morning brought the realization in both London and Jerusalem that a threshold had been crossed the previous day that now required some dramatic, signal response to avert a complete breakdown of security and also shake the Yishuv. For weeks the Palestine administration had been threatening to impose martial law in the event of any new terrorist outrage. The forty-eight separate incidents recorded over the previous dozen or so days had clearly demonstrated the futility of this exercise and the abject failure of all other attempts to secure the Jewish community’s cooperation. In anticipation of this eventuality, Barker had instructed his officers back in January to formulate plans for the imposition of martial law. Skeleton orders as well as detailed maps had thus already been issued to the units charged with its implementation. In early February, Cunningham had obtained permission from London to impose this measure at whatever time he deemed appropriate. Accordingly, at 1:15 p.m. on March 2 the Palestine administration announced that statutory martial law was being declared in those areas already under curfew—with the addition of Bnei Brak.10

  The government justified this extraordinary step on the grounds that since the New Year the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Le’umi had spurned repeated entreaties to actively assist in the suppression of terrorism. “The severe measures now necessary,” the communiqué explained, “are the result of the lack of cooperation against bloodshed and terrorism which [the official Jewish] Institutions have themselves condemned.” The localities placed under military rule, it explained, had been selected because of “direct evidence” linking the terrorists to each of those places.11

  In actual fact, economic considerations and the number of available troops had dictated the operation’s geographic reach and dimensions. Although Haifa, for instance, was cited in the communiqué as one of the venues of terrorist activity warranting martial law, it was exempted because any disruption of the port’s commercial activities would adversely affect the collection of taxes and customs duty and therefore harm Palestine’s economy. Further, despite a garrison of a hundred thousand men, there were still not enough forces to extend martial law beyond the five affected municipalities.12

  Nonetheless, even this limited application of martial law to select areas affected some 300,000 people; its draconian provisions impacted almost every aspect of their daily lives. All commerce stopped. Bus, train, taxi, and delivery services were suspended. Banks closed. The operation of private cars and commercial vehicles was prohibited. Postal, telegraph, customs, tax collection, courts, and all other government services ceased. Telephone exchanges in the affected locales were shut, and calls could be neither made nor received. People were confined to their residences for all but three hours a day when grocery stores and some pharmacies were permitted to open between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. No more than six persons, however, were allowed to gather in any one place, and no one was allowed to either enter or leave the cordoned-off areas within which soldiers and police conducted house-to-house searches for arms and terrorists.13

  Although army headquarters in Jerusalem and the military commander responsible for martial law in Tel Aviv, Richard Gale, publicly denied any punitive motive, in reality that was exactly its purpose—as both his memoir and various contemporaneous government communications attest. This was also evident from the discussion held between Cunningham and Barker on February 5. They had then agreed that because “economic pressure [was] the crux of the matter,” martial law must be applied to Tel Aviv—as the hub of Jewish commercial life in Palestine—regardless of whether that municipality was directly implicated or not in whatever future terrorist incident might prompt its imposition. An assessment prepared by the director of plans at the War Office specifically cites this objective as well. “Such measures by striking at the liberty and pockets of the private citizens,” it argued, “may induce them to co-operate by laying information against and refusing to shelter the terrorists.”14

  This rationale is vital to understanding why the government and the military were so convinced that martial law would succeed where all previous measures and attempts to obtain the Yishuv’s assistance against terrorism had failed. On February 13, for instance, Cunningham had explained to Creech Jones that “in martial law the Jewish community sees economic disaster as well as widespread hardship” and therefore was “paranoiac” with fear of its imposition. As Barker’s infamous nonfraternization order following the King David Hotel bombing showed, senior military commanders were already convinced that money was the Yishuv’s pressure point. This was also the conclusion reached by the Sixth Airborne’s intelligence officer, who, on March 7, observed in relation to the supposed salutary effects that martial law was having on the Yishuv, “Making of money is almost a second religion with the Jewish race.” A subsequent assessment by this same officer confidently predicted that the Jews would be forced to “go on a manhunt to save themselves and their pockets.”15

  The Yishuv’s leadership never doubted martial law’s real purpose. Withi
n hours of its imposition, the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Le’umi issued a joint statement deploring the measure as an act of retaliation directed against the entire community “for the crimes of a few desperate young men.” The government was also assailed for pursuing policies with respect to Jewish immigration and statehood that had long ago eliminated any prospect of cooperation. Nevertheless, both institutions vaguely promised that “the disciplined force of the Yishuv will intensify their action against terrorism so as to bring to an end all murder and bloodshed in this country.”16

  As for the Irgun, the government’s resort to martial law accorded perfectly with its own objectives. Begin’s preeminent goal had long been to make Palestine ungovernable. With the Goldschmidt House and subsequent countrywide attacks he had now nearly achieved that aim, with half of Palestine’s Jewish population and two of the country’s three major metropolitan areas under military rule. “Posterity will know that on that bright Saturday, March the First, 1947,” Begin boasted, “we brought about a turning-point in the history of our country and our people. We deprived the enemy of time for secret preparations; we speeded up events by a full year. And whoever can appreciate what that year might have meant to us, can realise that the Jewish people owe a debt of gratitude to its sons in the Assault Force of the Irgun Zvai Leumi.”17

  Although Begin’s claim is staked out in typically grandiloquent prose, his fundamental argument cannot be dismissed as mere hyperbole. The intent of the March 1 attacks appears to have been threefold: first, to demonstrate the group’s ability to strike wherever and whenever it pleased—against even heavily defended and well-protected military targets; second, to underscore the Irgun’s long-standing cri de coeur that there would be no peace for the British in Palestine until they acceded to Jewish demands on both statehood and unrestricted immigration; third, to deprive Britain of the time that the Labour government sought to arrange a settlement of the Palestine question favorable to its regional diplomatic and strategic interests. According to Samuel Katz, the group’s chief propagandist, the Irgun high command regarded the UN referral decision as nothing more than a plot by Bevin to buy “sufficient time to demonstrate that Britain was indeed in effective and undisputed control” of Palestine in order to perpetuate its rule once, it anticipated, the UN had also proven unsuccessful in divining a lasting solution.18

  Judging from the reaction of the British press, it would appear Begin achieved his first two aims and, at the very least, prepared the groundwork for the third. “Govern or Get Out,” read the headline plastered across the front page of the following morning’s Sunday Express. On Tuesday the title of The Manchester Guardian’s lead editorial was “How Long?,” and the author argued that the “renewed outbreak of terrorism in Palestine is a reminder that the Government’s decision to submit the case to the United Nations has in itself changed nothing. The wanton savagery of the terrorists, the inability of the Jewish majority to stop them, the inevitable but futile reprisals, the general atmosphere of hate and fear which is making life intolerable for soldiers and civilians: all these things continue and will continue until a settlement is reached.”19

  The government was again assailed in the House of Commons by both Opposition and backbench MPs. “Why,” Churchill inquired of the colonial secretary, “is it that measures now proposed to be taken are likely to be more effective than other measures which have been taken at various times in the last 12 months following on similar outrages?” With martial law having been in force for only a day, Creech Jones was understandably vague and evasive in his reply, but there were already disquieting signs that the Opposition leader’s skepticism was well-founded.20

  Indeed, within hours of martial law’s declaration, the Irgun had already retaliated. Though the first two incidents were minor—involving an explosion outside an army encampment in Rehovot and a road mine that injured two paratroopers near Hadera—they were harbingers of more to come. Each day brought some fresh act of violence, so that by the end of the first week a total of fifteen terrorist attacks had occurred, resulting in the death of one soldier and injuries to seventeen others, in addition to the six policemen and nearly two dozen civilians (including five Arabs) who were wounded. Although most had occurred in areas not under martial law, Tel Aviv and the parts of Jerusalem that the military controlled accounted remarkably for more than a third of the incidents. The perpetrators belonged to either Lehi or the Irgun and appeared to have struck with impunity regardless of the restrictions on movement and relentless security sweeps.21

  The following week showed only a marginal improvement in security. Fourteen terrorist incidents were reported between March 10 and March 17. One soldier died, while fifteen others sustained injuries. The most serious had occurred in the early hours of March 12, when, for the second time in as many months, the Irgun assaulted Jerusalem’s Schneller Barracks, despite its location inside the martial law zone governing Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood. A Lehi attack two nights later on a freight train north of Petah Tiqva wrecked nineteen oil tank cars and left one Arab railway worker dead and another wounded—the week’s only civilian casualties.22

  Cunningham was rapidly coming to the conclusion that martial law was not the panacea to Palestine’s security problems that Barker and other senior officers had touted it to be. In fact, only two dozen known terrorists had been arrested—none of whom had been caught inside any of the affected areas. Moreover, the vast majority of people detained for further questioning had subsequently been released when no evidence linking them to terrorism was found. And although some Jews had come forward to provide information to the authorities, this was only on a very limited and ad hoc basis. The more organized campaign, championed by the official Jewish institutions, that Cunningham had sought never materialized. It was also proving economically costly to the Palestine administration because of the loss of tax and other revenue.23

  Most problematically, the longer martial law remained in force, the more concerned its military commanders were becoming about its effects. In a surprising twist, they now worried that should “the shoe pinch too hard for too long,” all hope of ever obtaining the Yishuv’s cooperation would be lost. Indeed, the previously cited War Office planning document had specifically cautioned, “Severe restrictions of public services …, owing to the dislocation they cause, cannot be continued for prolonged periods and if maintained for too long lose their value by antagonizing public opinion.” Less than two weeks after martial law was declared, this was already occurring. Fearing outright defiance of the curfew as well as the outbreak of rioting and similar disorders if martial law were maintained, Gale, the Tel Aviv zone’s commander, now lobbied for its removal. “I therefore preferred to lift the curfew myself rather than have it broken under my nose as a result of having insufficient forces to guarantee its proper imposition” is how he explained his rationale in the operation’s after-action report. Cunningham concurred, and on March 14 he informed Creech Jones of his decision. “I wish to repeat that we shall not stop terrorism by any military or other repressive action alone,” the high commissioner emphasized. In anticipation of the criticism that lifting martial law would provoke in London, Cunningham pointedly suggested that “those who advocate stronger measures and ‘turning the country upside down’ ” would do well to read the section of Gale’s assessment where the First Infantry Division commander stresses that martial law’s continuation “would spell disaster and drive recruits into the I.Z.L. and Stern.”24

  On March 16 the Palestine administration announced that effective noon the following day martial law would be withdrawn. It sought to put the best face on a dismal outcome by explaining that the community’s encouraging, albeit limited, inclination to cooperate with the authorities, coupled with the potentially dire effect that the measure’s continuance would have on Palestine’s economy, had prompted the high commissioner to suspend martial law. “It is hoped that it will not be necessary to resort to these severe measures again,” the communiqué i
neffectually fulminated. “It is clearly in the interests of both the Government and the Jewish community that such action should be avoided if possible.”25

  The Irgun and Lehi separately responded to the news with a new round of attacks that same night. Irgun bombs cut the Iraq Petroleum Company’s pipeline in three places near Haifa, Kfar Hasidim, and Afula, while a roadside Lehi IED wounded four British soldiers. A new army intelligence assessment reported that the two groups had no “intention of easing up with their attacks against the security forces … and will listen to no amount of reasonable argument that they should do so. They are rabid and beyond reasoning,” it forlornly concluded. The Yishuv, for its part, did not buy for one second the government’s explanation for martial law’s removal. The entire operation was decried by editorials in Davar, Ha-Boker, and The Palestine Post as an ineffectual and counterproductive exercise that left the terrorist organizations unscathed while adversely affecting law-abiding citizens. As Ben-Gurion explained in a terse telegram to Attlee, martial law had neither “affected terrorists nor stopped their outrages but instead ha[d] increased resentment of hard-hit population, created fertile soil for terrorist propaganda, frustrating community’s attempts to combat terrorism by itself. Martial law absolutely futile and senseless unless really meant to punish whole community, ruin its economy and destroy the foundations of the Jewish National Home.”26