Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Bureaucratic parsimony had also denuded many colonial police forces of the robust intelligence-gathering and analysis capabilities essential for counterterrorism. Here, too, the Palestine Police Force’s CID was an abject case in point. When Alexander Kellar, the London-based MI5 desk officer responsible for the Middle East, visited Palestine in late 1944 and early 1945, he was shocked by the CID’s anemic condition and unprofessional demeanor. Its record keeping and files—the most fundamental requirement of a professional intelligence operation—were shambolic. The CID, he also reported, had thoroughly failed to penetrate either the Irgun or Lehi and was therefore completely and ill-advisedly dependent on the Haganah for information on both. Kellar was especially critical of the CID’s interrogators, who, he argued, lacked the necessary training and detailed knowledge of the terrorist organizations to do their jobs properly. William Moffat, the police intelligence expert who accompanied Wickham to Palestine nearly two years later, was similarly unimpressed with the CID. He thought that its officers were insufficiently aggressive in going out into the field to obtain intelligence and was profoundly troubled by the poor handling of informants. Moffat had therefore urged that additional, specialized training be provided without delay to all CID officers and that sufficient funds be made available for the cultivation of well-placed informants.18

  The integration of intelligence and operations, Sir Michael Carver, the chief of the Defence Staff between 1973 and 1976 and, as such, the commander of Britain’s armed forces, has argued, is absolutely vital to the successful prosecution of a counterterrorist campaign. Yet, because of the CID’s intelligence-gathering and processing inadequacies, this was never achieved in Palestine. Instead, the PPF was driven to try to compensate for these deficiencies by the adoption of ill-conceived and ultimately bungled initiatives such as Fergusson’s Special Squads. Rather than gaining the initiative against the Jewish terrorist organizations, their operations resulted in scandal, thus further alienating the Yishuv from the authorities while heaping calumny and disgrace on the police and underscoring the bankruptcy of Britain’s governance of Palestine.19

  The army’s clumsy operations and counterproductive interactions with the Yishuv, coupled with the enervated police force’s incompetence and harmful militarization, thus helped to breathe life into the Irgun’s struggle. Through terrorist violence, the group sought to foment a climate of fear and alarm in Palestine by demonstrating the security force’s weakness and inability to maintain order. The inherent clandestine nature of terrorist warfare was therefore used by the Irgun to confuse the government and force it to treat the entire Jewish community as the enemy, harboring or protecting or otherwise refusing to divulge information on the terrorists within its midst. That Begin’s strategy succeeded is evident in Gale’s after-action report on Operation Tiger, the massive cordon-and-search operation that the First Infantry conducted in and around Netanya as part of the frantic hunt for the kidnapped sergeants. The “whole Jewish society in Palestine is riddled with underground and illegal organisations,” the First Infantry commander had written. “Now that certain of the underground societies have gone beyond the pale, Jewish society is unable to cope with the situation … This is a people dogged by fear of their own underground organisations and worse, because in some cases the fear results from their own fingers being too dirty to enable them to come out in the open.”20

  In these circumstances the Palestine administration could respond only by imposing on the country a harsh regimen of security measures encompassing a daily routine of curfews, roadblocks, snap checks, cordon-and-search operations, and, for brief periods, the imposition of martial law on select locations. Although major counterterrorist operations such as Agatha and Shark were heralded by the authorities as decisive successes, they in fact proved to be counterproductive: ephemeral victories bought at the cost of further alienating the community. Begin banked on the fact that the upheaval and inconvenience caused by these operations would alienate the community from the government, thwart efforts to obtain the Yishuv’s cooperation against the terrorists, and create an impression in the minds of the Jews of the army and the police as oppressive occupation forces. Further, the more aggressive and conspicuous the security forces were and the more pervasive the physical barriers and other visible defenses against terrorist attack became, the stronger and more powerful and threatening the terrorists appeared.

  At the foundation of the Irgun’s strategy was Begin’s belief that the British, unlike the Germans, who during the war had carried out wholesale reprisals against civilians, were incapable of such barbarity. By pushing a liberal democracy like Britain to mount increasingly repressive measures against the Yishuv, the terrorists sought to push Britain to the limits of endurance.21

  Finally, an integral and innovative part of the Irgun’s strategy was Begin’s use of daring and dramatic acts of violence to attract international attention to Palestine and thereby publicize simultaneously the Zionists’ grievances against Britain and their claims for statehood. In an era long before the advent of 24/7 global news coverage and instantaneous satellite-transmitted broadcasts, the Irgun deliberately attempted to appeal to a worldwide audience far beyond the immediate confines of its local struggle—and beyond even the ruling regime’s own homeland. The success of this strategy, Begin claimed, may be seen in the paucity of global coverage afforded to the civil war that had erupted in Greece after World War II, for example, compared with that devoted to events in Palestine.22

  The Irgun’s political front organizations in the United States—organized and directed by Peter Bergson—were particularly successful in this respect, generating publicity and raising funds for the Irgun, gaining access for an official of the International Red Cross to the special British prison for Jewish terrorists in Eritrea, and securing the passage of resolutions by Congress condemning “British oppression” in Palestine and reaffirming American support for the establishment of a Jewish state. These activities presaged the efforts subsequently undertaken by Irish American activists on behalf of Sinn Féin and the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which had similarly corrosive effects on Anglo-American relations.23

  By September 1947 the Irgun had achieved its objective. Each successive terrorist outrage illuminated the government’s inability to curb, much less defeat, the terrorists. Already sapped by World War II, Britain’s limited economic resources were further strained by the cost of deploying so large a military force to Palestine to cope with the tide of violence submerging the country. Parliamentary sentiment and public opinion in Britain, already ill-disposed to the continued loss of life and expenditure of treasure and effort in an unwinnable situation, were further inflamed by the hanging of the two sergeants.

  This was not a war of numbers. Winning was measured not in terms of enemy losses or assets destroyed but by psychological impact. The Irgun undertook innovative and spectacular attacks such as the bombings of the King David Hotel and the British embassy in Rome, the assault on the officers’ club in Jerusalem’s special security zone, the raid on Acre prison, and the hangings of the two sergeants specifically to demoralize the British and undermine the Labour government’s resolve to remain in Palestine. Indeed, the butcher’s bill was remarkably modest compared with the horrific standards of terrorism today. Between August 1945 and August 1947, a total of 141 British soldiers and police and 40 terrorists died, including those executed or who committed suicide while awaiting execution. Civilian fatalities during the same period were also remarkably low. Fewer than one hundred Arab and Jewish noncombatants perished as a result of terrorism between August 1945 and August 1947, and just over four hundred were injured. The overwhelming majority of these casualties were inflicted in one incident alone—the Irgun’s bombing of the King David Hotel, which perhaps explains why that attack has never been forgotten and remains a source of perpetual controversy.24

  In the final analysis, Britain’s commitment in Palestine exceeded not only its financial resources but, most
important, its will to remain there whether for reasons of prestige or strategic considerations. Without a firm policy it was impossible for Britain to define precisely what its interests in Palestine were. The absence of this policy also violated one of the basic principles of the use of military force: that of having a clear political objective.

  The rise of Israel was the product of many powerful forces in addition to terrorism. At the same time, however, it is indisputable that at the very least the Irgun’s success in attracting attention to itself and its cause and most significantly both hastening and profoundly affecting government decision making demonstrates that—notwithstanding the repeated denials of governments—terrorism can, in the right conditions and with the appropriate strategy and tactics, succeed in attaining at least some of its practitioners’ fundamental aims. Even if the Irgun’s accomplishments were not immediately reflected in terms of the actual acquisition of power in government—Begin and his Herut Party, for instance, remained in opposition for some thirty years—it is a measure of the recognition that the group achieved that Begin was twice granted audiences with members of UNSCOP, including its chairman, to explain the group’s aims, motivations, and vision of a Jewish state in Palestine.

  The Irgun’s terrorism campaign in fact is critical to understanding the evolution and development of contemporary terrorism. The group effectively directed its message to audiences far beyond the immediate geographic locus of its struggle—in New York and Washington and Paris and Moscow as much as in London and Jerusalem. This taught a powerful lesson to similarly aggrieved peoples elsewhere, who now saw in terrorism an effective means of transforming hitherto local conflicts into international issues. Less than a decade later, the leader of the anti-British guerrilla campaign in Cyprus, General George Grivas, adopted an identical strategy. Although there is no evidence that he ever read Begin’s book (an English-language translation of The Revolt had been published in London and New York in 1951) or had studied the Irgun’s campaign, the parallels between the two are unmistakable. The internationalization of Palestinian Arab terrorism that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s would also appear to owe something to the quest for international attention and recognition that the Irgun’s own terrorist campaign pioneered a quarter of a century earlier. And the Brazilian revolutionary theorist Carlos Marighella’s famous Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, which was essential reading for the various left-wing terrorist organizations that arose both in Latin America and in Western Europe during the 1960s and 1970s, embodies Begin’s strategy of provoking the security forces in hopes of alienating the population from the authorities.25

  Thus the foundations were laid for the transformation of terrorism in the late 1960s from a primarily localized phenomenon into the security problem of global proportions that it remains today. Indeed, when U.S. military forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they found a copy of Begin’s seminal work, The Revolt, along with other books about the Jewish terrorist struggle, in the well-stocked library that al-Qaeda maintained at one of its training facilities in that country.26

  Acknowledgments

  I never thought that the hardest part of completing this manuscript would entail writing the acknowledgments. The writer’s block that it induced was not for lack of gratitude, but because of the vastness of the debt I owe to the many institutions and individuals who variously assisted, supported, encouraged, and inspired me to undertake this project—and then to see it to completion.

  First and foremost, I must thank the national and official archives as well as the museums and university libraries in Britain, the United States, and Israel that made the research for Anonymous Soldiers possible.

  The National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) in Kew, London, is unique in combining the efficiency and enthusiasm of archivists and staff with impressive technological innovation; the result of which is unparalleled ease of access to documents and other research materials. I am thus immensely grateful for permission to quote from the voluminous documentary material that I consulted both at Kew and online in the course of researching this book.

  I found a similarly amenable environment at the U.S. National Archives—the original National Archives Building in downtown Washington, D.C.; the Washington National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland; and the bucolic “Archives II” facility in College Park, Maryland. I would be remiss not to acknowledge specifically the invaluable assistance I received from the legendary John Taylor in mining the extensive archives of the Office of Strategic Services.

  In Israel, I was greatly assisted by the dedicated archivists and staff at the Central Zionist Archives, the Israel State Archives, and the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem; at the Haganah Archives and the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv; and at the Weizmann Archives in Rehovot (from whom material cited and quoted appears courtesy of Yad Chaim Weizmann).

  The splendid collection of documents, personal papers, and photographs maintained since 1961 by the Middle East Centre Archive at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, was indispensable to my research. The center’s archivist, Debbie Usher, was especially accommodating and helpful, as was Eugene Rogan, the center’s director at the time.

  The Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford, is another important repository of personal papers used in this book. I am grateful to the archivists who assisted me there and in particular to Lucy McCann, who very kindly arranged for me to read the papers of John J. O’Sullivan.

  The collections held at the Imperial War Museum, London, were also vital to my research. John MacMillan, the son of Lieutenant General Sir G. H. A. MacMillan, graciously allowed me to quote from his father’s papers, as did Elizabeth Keating from the papers of her late husband, Rex Keating. The Head of Documents and Sound, Anthony Richards, very kindly granted me permission to publish extracts from the Montgomery papers. In the case of the Clarke and Rymer-Jones collections held by the museum, every reasonable effort was made to obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holders who, unfortunately, could not be located.

  The Lamport Hall Trustees graciously accorded me access to the papers of Sir Gyles Isham, housed at the Northamptonshire Record Office, and both the trust’s executive director, G. P. S. Drye, and Scott Pettitt made my visit to the record office possible. I thank the trustees for permission to quote from Sir Gyles’s letters and other documents.

  I also acknowledge with gratitude Taylor and Francis, publishers of Small Wars and Insurgencies, for permission to use excerpts from two articles that previously appeared in that scholarly journal. In addition, through the efforts of the volunteers in Project Ben-Yehuda, the poetry of Abraham Stern has been made accessible online to the general public.

  Several institutions materially supported the research and writing of Anonymous Soldiers. I was extremely fortunate to have been elected to a visiting fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, for Michaelmas Term, 2009. Enveloped by the college’s convivial and supportive atmosphere, I swiftly completed the first three chapters of the book. I therefore remain profoundly grateful to the warden and fellows for the privilege of briefly living and working among them. Sir John Vickers was a welcoming and engaging host and I benefitted enormously from the many discussions with Alexis Sanderson, James Adams, Sir Noel Malcolm, and Simon Quinn, as well as the Reverend John Drury. The other visiting fellows that term proved to be delightful colleagues as well, especially Norman Baxter, Anthony Corbeill, Marie-Therese Flanagan, and Katherine Warner.

  Alia Brahimi, of Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Program, first suggested that I apply for a visiting fellowship at All Souls, and Sir Hew Strachan, the program’s director and the Chichele Professor of the History of War and fellow of All Souls, was pivotal in making it possible. It was a pleasure as well to have been appointed a visiting research fellow in the Changing Character of War Program and to participate in its vibrant seminar and lecture series.

  I continued writing Anonymous Soldiers as a Public Po
licy Scholar from January to August 2010 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. This living tribute to America’s twenty-eighth president is a reminder of the wisdom and vision that resides within the U.S. Congress in having created and continued to support this remarkable institution. It was at an absolutely critical juncture in my work on this book when the Wilson Center again gave me the opportunity to return less than two years later—this time as one of its first Distinguished Scholars. I am thus beholden to the center’s president during my initial time there, the Hon. Lee Hamilton, and to his successor, the Hon. Jane Harman, for the wonderful opportunity to benefit twice from the center’s intellectually stimulating and collegial environment. Janet Spikes, the center’s librarian, and her assistant, Dagne Gizaw, were extraordinarily helpful in locating often obscure books from the Library of Congress. During my first stint at the Wilson Center I was also remarkably lucky to have Carrie Glassner as a research assistant—one of the best I’ve ever worked with. My greatest debt, however, is to the center’s long-standing vice president for scholars, Robert Litwak, whose unflagging support, constant encouragement, and generous friendship helped make the completion of Anonymous Soldiers possible.

  I actually finished writing a complete draft of the book between September 2012 and October 2013 while a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation—where I first started work as a terrorism analyst more than thirty years before. My boss at the time and subsequent friend and mentor, Michael Rich, now RAND’s president and CEO, very kindly arranged for me to have an office at RAND’s Washington, D.C., facility; and its director, Lynn Davis, another former boss, and a mentor and friend, provided the warmest of welcomes. As in the past, RAND’s exceptionally talented IT team, headed by Todd McCombs, along with two of its consummate professionals, John Osuna and Reed Stoner, were tremendously helpful in resolving all manner of computing and printing problems.