Spies in Palestine

by James Srodes

  The conflicts within the ranks of the British command staff in Cairo became even more acute during this spring of setback and confusion. Nowhere was this division sharper than between the senior planners on Murray’s staff and Clayton’s Eastern Mediterranean Special Intelligence Bureau (EMSIB) officers in the Savoy. This schism could easily be called a conflict between supporters of Aaron Aaronsohn’s plan to seize Palestine and those who clung to the Arab Revolt. Welding the many Arab tribes into a serious asset was considered a more cost-effective use of limited resources to maximum effect. In that spring of 1917, the Arab Revolt advocates used the example of T.E. Lawrence as proof they were right.

  T.E. Lawrence, Cairo Barracks (1917)

  The transformation of Thomas Edward Lawrence from a talented but little-regarded writer of articles for Arab Bureau publications to a charismatic folk hero caused many of the Zionist sympathizers to deride him. Both Walter Gribbon and the controversial ornithologist and desert spy Richard Meinertzhagen dismissed him after the war as an “imposter” and “fraud.” That view glosses over the facts that during his 1916–1917 sojourns among the desert Arabs, Lawrence was brave, daring, and skilled at the problematic task of welding the rivalry-ridden Arab leadership into a credible fighting force.

  Once Lawrence received his honors degree in history in 1910, Hogarth took his career in hand and landed him a summer job at an archaeological exploration sponsored by the British Museum. This was followed from 1911 through 1913 on a project sponsored by the museum digging for antiquities and mapping parts of the mammoth abandoned Hittite city of Carchemish. It was there that he became friends with Stewart Newcombe and Leonard Woolley and brushed up against Gertrude Bell who had staked her own claim nearby.

  Once again, Lawrence shifted his focus and identity. During the seasons at Carchemish, he abandoned his interest in the crusading knights and became entranced with the more romantic image of the desert Arab tribes and their fierce codes of honor and survival in that harsh land. He would have happily spent his life studying them and their customs. But the impending outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 put an end to that dream and to the Carchemish project.

  He was turned down for military service because of his size, but Hogarth rescued him to be part of an intelligence team for the British High Command in Cairo along with Newcombe and Woolley. While he was not pleased to be regarded as a junior staffer when the group was assembled as the Arab Bureau, Lawrence had the opportunity to shift his identity again as a spy, and starting in the autumn of 1916, as a leader of an Arab guerrilla force.

  During the last months of 1916 and the first months of 1917, Lawrence gained influence with Sharif Hussein and convinced him to halt efforts at capturing the holy city of Medina, but rather to merely lay siege to it and thus tie up a large Turkish force that could be used at Gaza. Then he gained kudos and later a boost to his legend by directing the band led by Prince Faisal to repeatedly attack the vital railroad tracks across the Hejaz desert, which the Turks needed to supply their garrison at Medina. Those raids took even more Turkish manpower to repair and protect.

  By late in the spring of 1917, Lawrence was no longer a mere staff clerk but a major addition to the British staff clique who believed that the Arabs should be given postwar control (under British–French supervision) over Syria–Palestine, with no important role planned for its Jewish people.

  For Ormsby-Gore, Deedes, and Gribbon (who was now in Egypt), it was necessary for the pro-Zionists on the staff to counter the recent apparent triumphs Lawrence was reporting back from the desert. They needed to come up with a hero figure of their own. While Aaron was certainly an authoritative personality, there was growing gossip and curiosity about his sister, who was directing the “A Organization’s” activities inside Palestine.

  Aaron was agreeable. For weeks, he had been urging Sarah to come to Cairo and safety, and leave the running of NILI to Josef Lishansky. But in the aftermath of Murray’s failure at the first attack on Gaza, Djamal Pasha in a fit of rage blamed Jewish saboteurs and spies for the fact that the British had almost succeeded. His order to expel all the Jews of Jaffa and Tel Aviv sent shockwaves through Syria–Palestine.

  With studied cruelty, he further forbade those to be expelled from seeking shelter in either Jerusalem or Haifa. The wealthy, he stated, could join their families elsewhere, the poor would be provided for (he promised) in desert camps in northern Syria. It was clear this was the beginning of a pogrom whose scope and savagery would know no limits.

  He gloated in Turkish newspapers, “I know the Jewish community in Palestine is waiting for the English like a bride is waiting for a bridegroom, but as the bridegroom comes closer, we will move the bride farther away.”

  More than a thousand refugees flooded into Zichron Ya’akov alone. Those who had relatives were taken in, but the rest were herded into the communal barns and warehouses. Food was already scarce but now the threat of starvation and disease was compounded by the real fear that Djamal’s wrath would fall on them all.

  From the south, Naaman Belkind sent reports combined with Sarah’s that were the first break through the total news blackout Turkish censorship had imposed after the two battles for Gaza. Aaron took the information and used it to produce a report, which was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean Special Intelligence Bureau, then up the command chain to political officials like Mark Sykes and on to the Foreign Office and Lloyd George in London. It detailed how the Jewish residents of Jaffa and Tel Aviv had been driven from their homes with no notice, and were forced to flee after being robbed of the few possessions they had been able to take with them. Those who had relatives in other villages had to make their way on foot; others were herded into makeshift concentration camps in the desert wasteland and left to perish. Those who had tried to resist were hanged from lampposts to hasten the rest.

  Aaron also passed the report to a Reuters news service reporter who made worldwide headlines with it. Before the Turks could produce their own version of the events, the NILI version had an immediate impact in those tense days just before President Wilson decided to take America into the war. Spurred by the outcry from influential Jewish allies of the president, the State Department filed angry protests to both the German and Turkish embassies. Berlin quickly advised the two Pashas in Constantinople to rein in their colleague from further attacks on the Jews in Palestine, at least for the time being.

  Back in Zichron Ya’akov, Sarah could know none of this and the cloud of fear continued to hang over them all. If she came to Cairo she could bear dramatic personal witness to the horrors and help arouse the British command to hasten its liberating invasion. Arrangements were made for her to come on the next visit of the Managem, but Aaron gave strict orders that both Josef Lishansky and Liova Schneersohn were to remain behind to keep the NILI network providing the increasing flow of intelligence being ordered by EMSIB.

  But Lishansky would not hear of staying behind. For all of his energy, intellect, and bravery, he was turning out to be an increasing security danger. The twenty-seven-year-old Lishansky had a long history of courting controversy, for one so young.

  He had been an early member of the Ha-Shomer force that rivaled the Gideonites, but he had been expelled when he killed an Arab in a brawl and had to escape to the south. Ha-Shomer had once been just the farm protectors organized by the Second Aliyah hardliners. Since then it had transformed into a clandestine paramilitary wing of an alliance between the young militant Zionists and the establishment old Yishuv communities. In their eyes, Lishansky was a dangerous traitor and his identification with NILI and the Aaronsohns made them all potential targets of reprisal and denunciation. They also resented his now distributing some of the aid relief funds that Aaron was able to send from abroad. A showdown between the two forces loomed during this time of crisis and fear.

  Worse, Lishansky bruised the feelings of some of the early Gideonite-NILI operatives, who were putting themselves in peril to get the raw data and hand it over to him with
little thanks. When he had first returned from Cairo, Sarah had sent him north to try to recruit new spies—as well as new contacts—from previous friends within Ha-Shomer. But he had taken some of the gold meant for relief work and outfitted himself in new suits, and his bragging manner had offended most of the contacts he approached. In Zichron Ya’akov itself he had become a figure of gossip and suspicion. What was he up to with Sarah, traveling so much, doing who-knew-what? Sarah’s own brother Zvi was increasingly and vocally resentful that Lishansky, and not he, was second in command of NILI. He also was offended at Lishansky’s open attempts to flirt with his sister. When Naaman Belkind came north to press for more information about the fate of Absalom, Zvi horrified the impressionable youth by telling him he suspected Lishansky of betraying, perhaps even murdering, his beloved cousin in order to replace him.

  Despite Aaron’s adamant orders, and against Sarah’s wishes, when the date for her departure drew near, Josef insisted on going with her to Cairo. He would not take no for an answer. The conflict grew even worse when Liova announced that if Josef went, he would go as well. Zvi could take charge at Athlit. For most of this time Liova’s love for Sarah had confined itself to writing sentimental poems to her and following her around like a pet, but he was not about to let her go off alone with the man he considered his rival. It was a catastrophe in the making, and Sarah was powerless to prevent it.

  Sarah’s rationale was that she would stay in Cairo only a few days, meet with Aaron, and settle some problems of how to respond to demands from Yishuv officials for control of the increasing flow of American and British gold that was coming to her. Then she would return while the moon was still in its dark phase. Zvi surely could handle whatever came up during that time. Without saying, she also wanted to get the real story from Aaron about what had happened to Absalom. Josef clearly was grieving but there were parts of his tale that troubled her. Had he really stayed with the dying Absalom while being pursued by the Bedouin, or had he abandoned him? And how much longer could she be expected to keep Absalom’s death a secret from his family and his NILI comrades?

  On the night of April 16, 1917, even as the second attack on Gaza was underway, the Managem anchored off Athlit, and Sarah, Josef, and Liova boarded with their leather bags of intelligence. A day later, they docked at Port Said and Aaron was on the port boat that came out to meet them. There was joy at being reunited with his beloved sister, but it quickly turned to towering rage when Aaron saw Josef as well as Liova. They argued that since the trip was just for three days or so, no harm could come to NILI. But Aaron had a longer stay in mind and, once ashore, turned on Josef in violent anger at this disruption in his plans.

  By this time Aaron finally was getting recognition by General Murray’s personal staff, and the commander himself, for having uniquely valuable expertise and strategic insight about Palestine. Until spurred by London to shift emphasis from relying on Arab allies to drive the Turks from the eastern desert regions of the Ottoman territory, the level of ignorance about Palestine at headquarters was astonishing. While there were knowledgeable Zionists like Sykes, Gribbon, and Ormsby-Gore, many of Murray’s advisers were surprised to learn of the size and spread of Jewish settlements in what was assumed to be an Arab land.

  While the commanding general increasingly invited Aaron to give personal briefings, he was still not quite ready to change his strategy in the Gaza campaigns, which seemed so close to victory only to fall short with heavy losses. Murray listened to, but rejected, two detailed plans that Aaron proposed as alternatives to repeated frontal assaults on Gaza’s city fortifications. One was to launch an amphibious assault on the Palestine coast just south of Haifa. With the Gallipoli disaster still bitter in British memories, that was rejected out of hand. The second, a flank attack on Beersheba to capture its vast wells and then use portable drills and pumps to water the troops and animals in the march through the desert, was dismissed as too complicated. Murray, a sensitive soul, tried to placate Aaron by promising to make him minister of agricultural affairs for all of Syria–Palestine and Mesopotamia if and when the British drove the Turks away.

  Despite this disappointment, Aaron was greatly encouraged by what he saw as increased influence, and began putting in ten-hour days at the Savoy Hotel staff offices and then working into the early morning hours. He completely rewrote the army’s official, and highly secret, briefing book for line officers on Palestine. Many of the maps and descriptions of places had not been updated since the first British surveys of thirty years before, and some data were glaringly wrong. He began to get grudging praise from officers who until recently had sneered at this presumptuous Jewish spy.

  Because of his increased workload and sense of urgency, he was annoyed when Sarah pressed him about Absalom’s fate. He abruptly told her he accepted Josef’s story. Moreover, an Australian cavalry patrol had questioned Bedouin spotted near the site of the gunfight, and was convinced that Absalom had not been abandoned and captured. It was still troubling that the shallow grave the tribesmen said they dug for his body could not be found. They would just have to accept that their beloved comrade was dead and struggle on.

  While Aaron was glad enough to have Sarah safely in Cairo, he also became annoyed at all the attention she received from British officers who came to the Savoy headquarters and to the Continental’s lobby for a look at this rumored Jewish spy heroine who was becoming something of a mythic figure at headquarters. And Aaron was even more annoyed at how Josef and Liova dogged her footsteps everywhere she went, neither letting the other be alone with her.

  Sarah herself was very unhappy in Cairo. She was ill from recurring bouts of malarial fever and weak from malnourishment and stress, and she had shocked Aaron with how much weight she’d lost and how pale her normally healthy complexion had become. Nor was Cairo any more attractive to her than Constantinople had been even though they all dined out, attended the theater, and were feted by the wealthier Jewish émigrés there. While she tolerated the rivalry between her two would-be lovers, she found the attention of the British officers embarrassing since she spoke no English.

  When no less a skeptic than Captain Edmonds visited them at the Continental Hotel to express the high regard the command had for her work, she replied in icy French that if he was truly grateful he could arrange an instant boat trip back to Athlit. She did not, as some have written, meet Lawrence as he was deep in the desert planning the daring raid on the strategic Red Sea port of Aqaba that would burnish his myth.

  Finally in mid-May, Aaron agreed to arrange a trip home for the trio on the Managem. He had become worried at the state of NILI operations and ordered to dramatically increase the flow of information from the group, now that the Gaza offensive had failed. Even more important, his work spreading international alarm over the travails of the Jews of Jaffa had sparked a flood of aid money from America and Britain, and those funds were desperately needed back in Palestine. He also recognized that the rivalry between Josef and Liova was turning into dangerous enmity that could cause real trouble when they had to work together at Athlit.

  Indeed, just as the three were to board the ship at Port Said, Lishansky went into a temper tantrum and threatened not to go back. It took three days of cajoling until finally, on May 17, the Managem sailed within sight of the Athlit station but could not land Sarah and the others because of a sudden storm. They returned and languished in Port Said for another two weeks. During that time Josef was occupied with a British training course on explosives. The British wanted NILI to destroy a vital railroad bridge that crossed the Jordan River and brought essential supplies to the Turkish front near Beersheba. When his instructor offered Josef a £100 bonus for undertaking the mission, he threw another temper tantrum.

  Finally the three set sail and, again, were prevented by weather from getting ashore. This time the resentful captain insisted that the ship complete its other assigned patrol and then return, not to Egypt but to the big Royal Navy base at Famagusta, Cyprus.

&
nbsp; Two more sweltering weeks were wasted at anchor in Famagusta, where the trio was forbidden to go ashore. Two months after they had set out for Cairo, the Managem anchored off Athlit on June 15, and sent Sarah and the others ashore with a sizable store of provisions that included large sacks containing fifty thousand gold French franc coins that, along with British gold sovereigns, were the only acceptable hard currency in that desperate region. It was a literal lifesaver for the starving Jewish communities now choked with refugees from Jaffa and other cities where Turkish oppression had become insupportable.

  The gold turned out to be more than a lifesaver for the communities; it arrived just in time to prevent a complete collapse of the NILI organization. During Sarah’s two-month absence, her brother Zvi had been unable to effectively command the widespread network and keep it working. Worse, her disappearance caused gossip to circulate that she had run off with Lishansky, and joined her other siblings in a life of luxury with the British.

  Zvi, despite his jealousy of Lishansky’s senior role, lacked both his energy and willingness to take risks. He panicked when he and Ephraim were visited by a delegation from the security committee of the Yishuv organization. These elders pointedly accused the Aaronsohns of putting all the Jews in Palestine at risk of extermination with their dangerous spying. Colonel Aziz Bek had shifted his counterespionage efforts from quashing Arab subversion to a full-time probe of the Jewish population, and he was known to be making pointed inquiries of a possible spy ring somewhere south of Haifa.

  When the elders threatened to denounce the Athlit station to Colonel Bek, Zvi panicked and despite Ephraim’s advice, promised to urge Sarah to dismantle NILI as soon as she returned. The wave of fear throughout the Yishuv also had its effect on NILI operatives everywhere. To add to his miseries, Naaman Belkind had become increasingly unwilling to accept the fantasy about Absalom being in England. Lishansky’s disappearance merely fed Belkind’s suspicion that he had murdered his cousin to take his place in Sarah’s affections.