The Jewish Story: The Arab Revolt

victorious warriors win first and then go to war says sun tzu while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win well i don't know if i'm at war but i'm definitely seeking victory on the behalf of god and i feel like if that can come about then we'll all be winners because i'm rob mike foyer and this is the jewish story episode 33 the arab revolt so we've come a long way since the question of who threw the first punch between the arabs and the jews although if you read the papers you might think that's still what it's all about and the fight in the land of israel is now over much more than a particular dunham of land a national battle has emerged and since zev jabotinsky crossed the jordan with the jewish legion and joseph trumpledor comforted his peers by telling him that it was good to die for their country not to mention the riots of the 1920s zionism has become increasingly militarized in response it may be worthwhile before you listen to this to go back to episode and refresh your memory on the origins of the hate triangle that's emerged between the british the arabs and the jews in the land of israel and the pattern of the pressure of jewish immigration and land purchase the eruption of arab violence and the british response of first brutal repression and then political concessions that's how three quarters of the palestine mandate became trans jordan in the wake of the 1921 riots and jewish immigration was nearly halted altogether in the wake of the 1929 but the 1930s are going to be a whole new level of struggle between british arab and jew first of all the palestinian branch that's grown out of the trunk of arab nationalism has begun to come into its own and it's growing more militant every single day because as palestine is coming to be seen as separate from southern syria and feels the need to differentiate itself from the new colonial state of trans jordan it is hatching a growing national consciousness it's a consciousness which is slow to form against the family clan and regional loyalties which already defined the people living there and still do i mean we're talking about a mix of peasants of the bedouin and itinerant laborers who've made their way in that's the bulk of the population and they will be largely unpoliticized but some of the wealthy and educated as well as many of the urban youth be they a notch above the average worker or even a few peasants dispossessed by land sales and the general economic hardships of the thirties they're ripe for new political identity urbanization is on the rise in the world as a whole and in this region in particular as industrialization follows the arrival of the german jews in the mid-30s and all their capital as we spoke about and british colonial development begins to gather steam and most peasants evicted from the land which is either sold right out from under them by its absentee owners or simply is part of a larger economic consolidation in the hands of arab owners they're going to move to the cities and then there's the rapid rise in literacy amongst arab youth it's a result of the liberal educational policies the british pursues in opposition to those which the ottoman had downright oppressive so you add to this urbanization from the creation of what we would call an urban proletariat and the rise in educational opportunity the regional struggles of arab nationalism during the interwar period as well as certain elements of islam and international intrigue between the european empires and then you have a picture of how the politicization of arab culture came about and hajj amin husseini will still dominate palestinian politics at the opening of the 1930s from his position as head of the supreme muslim council in 35 he and his family formed the palestinian arab party in order to compete with the opposition parties whom he quickly labeled as collaborators for their very willingness to continue meeting with and talking to the zionists the platform of the arab party called for resistance to the establishment of a jewish home and even set up a youth corps which the sure i'm saying wrong named for an association of arab knights from the middle ages and modeled on the hitler youth when you hear the echoes of history first those who struggled against the crusaders and looking to their model to the greatest jew hater in history at their foundational meeting hajimeen's aide jamal husseini declared that hitler had started off with only six followers and now had 60 million and already in only two months after hitler took power hajime told the german council in palestine the muslims inside and outside palestine welcomed the new regime of germany and hoped for the extension of the fascist anti-democratic governmental system to other countries the connection between hajime and the nazis will only grow stronger in the coming decade and therefore there will be an absolute opposition between he and the zionists but for now the oath that his youth court took is as clear an expression of the palestinian arab party's vision as we can find life my right independence my aspiration arabism my principle palestine my country and there is no room in it for any but arabs i believe in this and allah is my witness now if you need a reminder about the political developments amongst the jews during the 30s go back and listen to episodes 29 and 32 but in brief at this point remember the labor zionists control the jewish agency executive which is part of the political life of the yeshu in the land of israel and also hold a dominant majority in the world zionist council which is zionism outside the land as well ben gurion is already the undisputed leader within the land though haim weizman is still holding on to the presidency of the wzo outside his son will not entirely set until european jewry which is his power base is consumed in the storm to come in opposition the revisionists led by zev jabotinsky have been pushed further from the political pale as the decade has progressed first recall their failed attempt to win the executive in the early 30s then remember the persecutions that followed in the wake of the or lazarus murder and finally their break with the world zionist organization and the founding of the enzio the new zionist organization of 1935. kabutinski is still a potent leader particularly amongst the polish jury where his youth movement betar is strong and its political following numbers perhaps in the millions but he is an exile from the yeshua and his followers have already been labeled as dissidents and even dangerous fanatics and we're going to see more of that conflict further on in this episode ben gurion actually attempted to bridge the gap between the jewish and palestinian national movement in the early days he met repeatedly with musa al-alami head of the palestinian arab executive that actually had been formed in the wake of the 1920 riots there he tried to argue that zionism would develop the country to the benefit of both peoples it was a standard line and i think was perhaps genuine most of the time but replied that he'd rather see it desolate for a hundred years than see zionism succeed and we're going to sense in the coming episode a lot of the scorched earth policy which both arabs and jews will take over the option of sharing so slowly the labor zionists are forced awaken from their illusion that the violence of the 1920s was the work of bloodthirsty fanatics or hooligans that they had incited ben gurion was perhaps the first on the labor side to recognize that the twin pressures of jewish land purchase and immigration were driving the rise of palestinian nationalism in fact had helped to create a palestinian national identity now in the 1930s arab population is going to decline from more than 82 percent of the mandate to 70 by the end and land purchases will continue at a pace that leads arab leadership to define it as a life or death issue as it is seen today unless you think that a life or death issue would stop them from selling there's an observation from dr heinrich wolfe german council in jerusalem who noted that the arab nationalists quote in daylight were crying out against jewish immigration and in the darkness of the night were selling lands to the jews the harsh clarity which jabotinsky had expressed in the early 20s about the need for zionism to develop behind an iron wall of armed might was now becoming clear to the labor zionists as well as ben gurion said there is a fundamental conflict we and they want the same thing we both want palestine and he was even still able at this point to see the situation from the arab perspective where i in arabi said i would rise up against immigration libel sometime in the future to hand the country over to jewish rule what arab cannot do his math and understand that immigration at the rate of sixty thousand a year means a jewish state in all palestine well he was certainly right that the arabs of the mandate could do the math and that an uprising was in the making on the international scene what contributed that uprising was britain's failure to block italy's occupation of libya now that made the empire look weak in arab eyes never something liable to contribute to stability and when the league of nations imposed italian banks and businesses with a sanction that triggered a minor but significant economic crisis in the issue of unemployment suddenly spiked and the response of the issue of only added fuel to the fire of the palestinian nationalist struggle here's a quote the history's fundamental aim is the conquest of labor no matter how many arabs are unemployed they have no right to take any job which a possible immigrant may occupy no arab has the right to work in jewish undertakings if arabs can be displaced in other work too that is good notice once again how jewish labor something today which is labeled as the province of the fanatical right was actually a core principle of the labor left so you add to this international shift as well as the economic struggles a major draw which struck from 31 to 34 and we're in for trouble i mean in general the all-powerful image of the european empires was weakening in the 30s in 1935 street riots in cairo led to an egyptian treaty with the british and a general strike in syria forced the same with the french so you put it all together and the time seems ripe for a palestinian nationalist uprising to follow suit on april 15 1936 a gang of armed arabs set up a roadblock in the hill country near tokaram snapping each driver that passed to ask them one simple question are you an arab or are you a jew now if the driver was arab they extorted money from him to fund the coming revolt and if he was a jew they shot him three men would be dead before this roadblock ceased the next day at the funeral of one of the victims in yaffo the crowd turned violent attacking any arab bystander that they could find and a rumor quickly spread that an arab woman in several syrian labors had been murdered in response an angry mob surged out of the arab quarter of jaffa in the subsequent riots more than nine jews were killed and sixty injured and violence raged back and forth for two days eight more jews were killed and six arabs died at the hands of the british police before calm was restored and though the violence was triggered by unplanned circumstance these incidents became known as the beginning of the great arab revolt and from the outset of the revolt the traditional land-based leadership of palestinian arab society was swept aside forced to follow along as the young primarily urban nationalists take the lead those who are the product of the process of formation that we mentioned in the introduction the arab higher committee the ahc was formed to lead a general strike and they declared that the arabs the mandate would only go back to work if the british halted all jewish immigration and land purchases immediately and entirely they also demanded that the mandatory authorities allow for the election of a popular legislature which their population majority of course would allow them to dominate and this goes to a core question were they asking for their simple democratic rights or are they undermining the very purpose for the formation of the mandate to begin with don't forget britain received this mandate from the league of nations in order to create a national home for the jewish people not to create a popular democracy either way the strike lasted half a year and though its actual economic impact was limited i mean the port at haifa remained open the railways continued to run and the peasants continued to sow and harvest nevertheless its political impact proved tremendous not only was this the strongest expression of palestinian nationalist sentiment to date and therefore a critical element in the formation of their national identity it brought to the fore a whole new class of young activists and put them in positions of power which were based on their radicalism and readiness for violence as opposed to their connection to the traditional land and clan based authorities which they'd replaced so along with the economic weapon of a general strike 1936 also saw the beginning of as i said the arab revolt which really might be called a guerrilla civil war between arabs british and jews between april and october of 1936 there were nearly 2 000 attacks on jewish targets and almost 800 more on british security forces and government officials 80 jews were murdered and hundreds wounded along with the widespread destruction of property now lest you think this was a one-sided battle the british security forces took a heavy toll in return some 900 arabs were killed and wounded in the first month of the revolt alone and that was despite the refusal of the mandatory authorities to apply full force in quelling the rebellion believe it or not despite those numbers high commissioner general arthur walshup preferred to contain the situation through controlled military force rather than simply crush the rebels outright now why would that be the british aren't known for their empathy toward rebels the answer is an important element of the imperial perspective on our conflict because his goal was not to defeat the arabs his goal was to preserve british prestige in the area and to restore stability without incurring any undue animosity and bitterness amongst the arab majority in palestine and in the region as a whole but because of this soft hand so to speak by the summer of 1936 the arabs of palestine were in full revolt led by the arab higher committee which gradually but inexorably came under the domination of you guessed it al-husseini in fact as the revolt progresses husseini is going to use the chaos and violence as an opportunity to eliminate nearly every one of his political rivals through assassination or through voluntary exile when they leave on the run with the gunman behind them that's an important element for us to remember as we go forward not in this episode but others that the arab revolt turned almost inevitably to an internacional warfare and that will threaten the jewish revolt to come as well so the arabs are in vault and the british are doing a balancing act between their imperial aims to placate the arabs of the region as a whole and the local need and responsibility for law and order what are the jews doing well on april 19th during the very first wave of violence a manifesto was published on behalf of the tel aviv municipality calling on the public to refrain from irresponsible acts and it declared that quote the return of public security depends largely on the self-control and self-restraint the of the hebrew public that's right mayor disingoff the mayor of tel aviv was attempting to calm his fellow jews in light of the deaths of their companions by telling them that the key to peace was self-restraint at the same moment more or less ben-gurion and jewish national fund president menachem were delivering speeches in an exact similar vein at a meeting of the zionist parties in jerusalem and so almost overnight the concept of self-restraint became the official response of the zionist offices to the first wave of the aero revolt now they didn't make the idea up it had its roots deep in the patterns of behavior that originated during the first and second holyoke then the jewish immigrants sensed their vulnerability and they felt that passivity in the face of violence was actually the only safe response don't provoke your attackers that attitude was also enshrined in the guidelines of hashomer if you recall that first armed force of the zionist movement and that was despite internal descent which was headed by the head of hashomer himself israel shochat nevertheless hashomer rejected the idea of revenge and civilian terror in favor of selective and focused attacks which even those were only to be carried out as a last resort in the end it would be ben-gurion who is most influential in installing the philosophy of restraint is the only acceptable response to the violence of the arab revolt and despite his political dominance of the life of the yeshua it was not a simple fight in the wake of the murder of five jews in mid-may ben-gurion was actually forced to threaten to resign from his position as chairman of the jewish agency in order to compel the haganah commanders in jerusalem to refrain from taking vengeance that's how important he was in the eyes of yeshuv if he left people felt everything was over and so the field commanders of his underground army were forced to back down now we know from the street battles between labor and revisionist zionists that had rocked the yeshuv only a few years before and from things we haven't discussed yet that ben-gurion was not afraid to use violence but it's critical to remember particularly in light of the intra-jewish struggles that lie ahead that ben-gurion had an absolute belief in the subordination of military power to civilian authority he wasn't afraid of using violence but he was absolutely certain that only politicians ought to decide where how and when to use it remember that when we get toward the end of this season so this need for control had actually already caused a split within the back in 1931. if you recall the haganah was originally formed under the auspices of the hist that general labor federation of jewish workers and that with the goal of defending the jews during the arab riots of the 1920s go back to episode 30 for a refresher on their origins but it turns out that not every field commander saw eye to eye with the politicians and their notions of the appropriate use of force in 1931 as ben gurion was in the process of subordinating the haganah away from the history to the political leadership of the jewish agency executive making it truly the official army of the yeshuv a split within the ranks took place the jerusalem district commander avraham tahomi together with many of his men refused to return their weapons to the haganah command and they formed their own underground militia what was known as the irgunzvai leomi the national military organization more commonly known at first as the ergun bet and then ultimately just as the ergun and as we'll see going forward their choice of name right national military organization versus the defense language of the haganah was not purely cosmetic but meantime ben-gurion's policy of restraint of hablaga was not without logic or claims at least to morality he knew that the jews were still numerically weak and therefore ultimately dependent on british military strength in order to continue to purchase one more dunam one more goat and that required the cautious use of force he knew that if they tipped the scales too far there would be a brutal british response toward the jews especially the issue dared to take any independent military action against the arab villages and guerrilla groups and he knew that that response could crush his nascent army he also had a belief that the west would never forgive the jews if they adopted a policy of revenge and therefore he emphasized what he called the moral element of restraint claiming that jewish tradition dictated retaliation should be limited to those directly involved in attacks now i don't want to get into an analysis of david ben-gurion's religious background but this is not an obvious claim and as we'll see going forward whatever jewish tradition may say and as someone who both studies and teaches that can tell you could make it say almost anything what you're actually hearing here is a voice of his own psychology coming through but more on that later overall ben-gurion sought to place the burden of defense on the mandatory authorities and thereby avoid all these complications and in reality his move was not without major achievements because in the first year of the revolt nearly 3 000 jews were given permission to openly bear arms and many thousands more were brought into the police and security activities together with the british forces and this official militarization was a fundamental change in the situation of the issue the labor leadership saw these jewish recruits to the british police as a basis for a jewish militia under british command not even to speak of the haganah and they themselves will be ready for battle once the mandate ended as ben gurion boasted this is already a little army but that was at the beginning of the revolt by august the situation had deteriorated because whatever the perceived strategic or moral benefits of restraint of haf laga were to the leaders of the labor movement the arabs saw it as a sign of cowardice and weakness the jews were judged to be a people quote in whose veins flows milk and not blood and 30 of the 80 jews murdered in that first phase of revolt died in the single month of august a fierce debate erupted within the mapai reflect israel the core political party of the labor movement on the policy of havelagh of restraint beryl catnilson informed the meeting of the national council that he would soon quote tearfully abandon the principle of restraint one wonders why he cried to see it go and when a gruesome series of murders rocked the yeshu between august 13th and 16th an editorial in daily haaretz of all things cried out in the south and in the north throughout the country people are being butchered and the official labor newspaper davar warned in its headlines if we despair of our fellows meaning the british security forces we shall know how to lean on ourselves finally two nurses were ambushed and killed as they were leaving the government hospital in jaffa on august 17th and the restraint began to fray a series of attacks by the haganah and ergon bat organization in jerusalem in haifa left several arabs dead none of whom were in any way connected to the killing of those jews the mapai central committee convened to debate the question of restraint before it was completely broken on one side stood eleahu golum the architect of the haganah and a leading figure within labor zionism in general and he informed the assembly that it was no longer a matter of yeshua's security at that moment but rather quote the question of our existence in the country the time had come he said to withdraw from the policy of restraint since quote a war was being fought between two peoples over the future of the country a war he said which the jews would lose if they were not wise enough to discover the talent for self-sacrifice possessed by the arabs and that's a lot of what this question comes down to and if you read the news and follow what's happening in our country today it's still a live question are we at war or not so with the support of his fellow haganah leaders golomb proposed quote group punishment for the village of a perpetrator of any crime that was to be his solution and as an example he suggested that in response to the murder of three jews the day before in the vicinity of quran hundreds of armed jews should have been recruited to attack nearby calcilia and he admitted that that kind of act didn't exactly conform with the education and values that had been nurtured by the labor movement and furthermore that it would inevitably affect innocent people but nevertheless golem insisted that launching attacks on the places from which arab attackers set out was essential and far more effective and even moral than the acts of blind revenge of the previous few days meaning if the official armed forces did not take off the gloves then the people would take to the streets standing against him was moses shertok who would become moshe shahrait and ultimately the second prime minister of israel as well as foreign minister for many years together with david ben-gurion and he took the podium to oppose any suggestion of reprisals now you have to understand that in the absence of hein weitzman and david ben-gurion both of whom were in europe at the time he was the highest ranking official present and therefore it would fall to him to approve any operations shertock claimed that such a proposal for reprisal meant suicide for us and the destruction of all we have built he actually wept open tears during the debate and said that golum's words made him feel as though he were witnessing the destruction of the second temple and in the end shaitak won the day the policy of havlagha of restraint was maintained even though the haganah was given permission to resort to quote special means where necessary nevertheless the political echelon of the jewish agency had maintained its control over the military the months from october 1936 all the way through the summer of 1937 were actually quite quiet and that was true as a result of two things first of all the intervention of the arab states which helped put an end to the general strike which allowed the arab higher committee to step down off the shaky branch that threatened to destroy their own economy and second was the decision of the british to finally import thousands of regular troops from egypt in order to crush the rebels who had begun to dominate the countryside well quiet may have come but the debate about restraint was far from over in fact if you're in tune with israeli society today then you know it's a topic still liable to raise blood pressures and cause angry exchanges of nazi weak gullus jew depending on what kind of crowd you run in in late 1936 it was actually the poet charles chernakovsky who gave the deepest voice to this struggle and don't forget we are a people who values its poets above its fighters then he published what's called parashat dina the dina affair in which he came out in support of revenge attacks now tcherkovsky was revealed by all the jews of the israel on the right and on the left and therefore his words couldn't be dismissed as were those of his contemporary uretsv greenberg in parshadina instead of the curse that the bible puts in the mouth of jacob that he places on his sons shimon and levi for deceiving and killing the man of shechem after they kidnapped and raped his daughter dinah in tchanakovsky's poem dina blesses her two brothers for their actions and she condemns the cowardly behavior of her other brothers who didn't rally to the slaughter the poet had given powerful expression to the ideological and psychological tension that was tearing the shoe apart to the divide which he characterized as a galoot posture of exile posture which relied on the gentiles for safety and even looked to them for approval on one side and on the other side the emerging sauber mentality the native born israeli with a posture of aggressive struggle and disdain for world opinion now such a divide was bound to embody itself in more than poetry may have seen restraint as expressive of the essence of labor ideology and their particular view of jewish morality even though they struggled against the restraint but the irgun bet had no such vision as the homie and its other leaders reached out to zeb jabotinsky and gradually became associated with his revisionist movement the rejection by the argument of restraint became expressive of a general militant posture of the revisionists and the rejection of what they saw as an exilic morality which glorified powerlessness and elevated victimhood to a sacred ideal by the end of the first phase of the arab revolt each of the two primary streams of zionism labor and revisionists could probably be said to have its own militia and beyond their differing political positions what divided them was the question of the proper posture to take toward their enemies and so even as arab violence moved into a period of low the tension between the jews rose but there's one more piece to put into place before this phase of our story can be complete because we've seen the provocation of mass jewish immigration and felt the explosion of arab violence and we know this was followed by brutal british suppression and so only the political concessions await at the end of november 1936 just as the six-month-long arab general strike came to an end a british royal commission of inquiry headed by lord william robert wellesley peale arrived in the mandatory palestine and truth be told the timing was no coincidence officially as i said the end of the strike was due to the intervention of arab rulers from throughout the region but practically it was the mufti hajamin al-ussaini who agreed to halt the strike in order to enable the commission to function at his word all hostile activities were suspended during their investigation at once and field marshal john greer still the british military commander in palestine viewed the efficacy of his intervention as evidence of the mufti's total control over the revolt so the commission the peel commission was charged quote to ascertain the underlying causes of the disturbances which broke out in palestine in the middle of april to inquire into the manner in which the mandate for palestine is being implemented in relation to the obligations of the mandatory toward the arabs and the jews and to ascertain whether either the arabs or the jews have any legitimate grievances upon account of the way in which the mandate has been or is being implemented and once they got started in a pattern that was established already back during the commissions which followed in the wake of the riots 1920s the jewish establishment welcomed the commission and trotted out reports and witnesses and all kinds of tours while the arab leadership announced an official boycott nevertheless both sides had their say during the more than seven months of testimony which the commission heard former mayor of jerusalem ragib al-nashashibi an opposition leader of the arabs of palestine presented their case to the commission through unofficial channels and meanwhile not to be outdone by his deadly political rival hajime al-husseini actually testified in front of the commission but in his capacity as the mufti of jerusalem unlike amna more nuanced approach to presentation al-husseini announced that an absolute opposition to any sharing of arab lands with the jews and the demand to a complete end to jewish immigration was the only thing the arabs had to say and perhaps the most dramatic moment for the jewish representatives came when haim weitzman always comfortable in front of the british presented the case on behalf of unrestrained jewish immigration in the shadow of the rising nazi menace he described europe as a place filled with millions of jews quote for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live in places where they may not go in the summer of 1937 the appeal commission released its conclusions in a 400-page report the causes of the arab uprising were deemed to be first the desire of the arabs for national independence second their antagonism to the establishment of the jewish national home in palestine quickened by their fear of jewish domination the rush of jewish immigrants escaping from central and eastern europe arab alarm at the continued purchase of arab land by the intensive character and modernism of jewish nationalism and lastly the general uncertainty as to the ultimate intentions of the mandatory power because up until that last one everything that the arabs had feared were precisely what the british had been given the mandate to do so in light of these conclusions the commissioners recommended an end to ambiguity after all even in our rapid overview of the event of the last 20 years we've seen the british promise the land of israel to two peoples make plans to divide it with another colonial power and throughout it all pursue a policy of divide and conquer which really served its own imperial purposes but now for the first time an official government commission admitted that the mandate had become unworkable the solution in their eyes was to be a further partition of the palestine mandate into arab and jewish regions whose ultimate political forms were to be determined and i say a further division lest we forget that three quarters of the land originally allotted to the mandate were already divided off to make the state of trans jordan in the wake of the riots of 1921. it's a repetition of that pattern now is important to note for the events which will unfold over the next 20 years that partition was only part of this plan having heard extensive testimony regarding the cycle of fear and violence that had roiled the mandate since the british appeared the commissioners argued that in order for any agreement to become final and for the violence to cease there would have to be a transfer of populations the arabs from the area of the jewish state and the jews from the arab designated area now the arabs in palestine were disappointed with the recommendations of the peel commission at first the opposition mostly ragged agreed to consider the partition plan at least as an option but it wasn't long before he was forced to recant public opinion amongst the arabs was in the hands of hajime husseini and he rejected partition out of hand threatened to renew the vote and essentially issued a death warrant to anybody who disagreed now the jewish agency also had serious doubts about accepting the principle of dividing the land on one hand was their sense of betraying the patrimony that had been bequeathed to them by history no matter how secular the labor leadership may have been they had a vision of the wholeness of the land of israel and of course all of them knew the story of solomon's wisdom and how the true mother is the one who refuses to divide the baby in half on the other hand land is not a baby members of the commission urge them that half a loaf is better than no bread at all and the opportunity for immediately establishing a jewish state in order to provide a place of refuge for the jews of europe who had begun to flee nazi germany was a strong temptation they were also well aware that securing a legitimate piece of the pie didn't preclude acquiring more in the rounds of violence they all saw as yet to come and under the leadership of ben gurion heim weizmann and yitzhak benzvi the 20th zionist council voted 300 to 150 to negotiate with the wood head commission that was sent afterwards to test the viability of these recommendations of the peel commission after all in the end of the day for the first time an official british agency had presented a report which described the jewish national home as a jewish state on the way what the specific borders might look like depended mostly on what the way ahead held the peel report was sent to the league of nations and duly approved and in a sense partition and population transfer became foundations of regional diplomacy that persist down to our very day but 1937 would provide no solution for the confusion in the land of israel and the struggle between these two national movements in the face of universal arab opposition and the growing shadow of war the need to placate the arab street made the british began to back away from the conclusions of the appeal report before its ink was even dry when the wood head commission was sent as i mentioned to try to negotiate the actuality of the peel report they issued a further report that advocated limiting a jewish state to a small area of the coastal plain and dropped entirely the idea of population transfer as israeli historian benny morris said the commission had ostensibly been set up to look into ways of implementing the peel partition recommendation but in effect its mandate was to bury the peel proposal and the entire idea of partition by the end of 1938 this was made clear when the colonial secretary published an additional declaration stating quote his majesty's government after careful study of the partition commission's report have reached the conclusion that the political administrative and financial difficulties involved in the proposal to create independent arab and jewish states inside palestine are so great that this solution of the problem is impractical and as everyone knows politics like nature abhors a vacuum in the absence of creative solutions there's always the law of the jungle to fall back on when the violence of the arab revolt resumed in the summer of 1937 two things had changed first was that the arabs turned their guns directly on the british as well as on the jews and on september 1937 lewis andrews commissioner of the galilee district was assassinated an act that marked the beginning of widespread action against british rule and that's significant for our story because britain now really unleashed her full military might on the rebels during the fighting in 1938 68 british subjects 292 jews and at least 1600 arabs were killed and by the end of the revolt in 1939 arab estimates were that some 5 000 killed and 10 000 wounded as well as nearly 6 000 in prison palestinian american historian rasheed khalidi notes that over 10 percent of the adult male population was killed wounded imprisoned or exiled the british response to the second phase of revolt was so shattering that many historians attribute israel's victory in 1948 in no small measure to the decimation of local arab power by the british in 38 and 39 the second change which 1938 brought was amongst the jews as the pressure of rising violence began to break the fragile consensus around how laga restraint i didn't mention it but during the first round of violence zeb jabutinski had instructed the members of betar and their revisionist movement to display restraint and patience this wasn't out of the same ideological belief in the value of the labor movement rather it was his consistent belief that only by establishing a jewish battalion as he had attempted to do during war one and ultimately succeeded one which was sanctioned by the british authority only that way would it be possible to defend the issue in a politically sustainable fashion he wanted to create a jewish army he was also opposed to terror and reprisals on moral grounds except when there was no longer any choice here's a selection from one of his articles at a time do not dare to punish the innocent what's superficial and hypocritical nonsense in war any war each side is innocent what crime has he committed against me that enemy soldier who fights me and he's as poor as i as blind as i as much a slave as i who has been recruited against his will there is no war which is not conducted against the innocent therefore every war and the tribulations it brings is accursed whether offensive or defensive and if you do not wish to harm the innocent you will die and if you do not wish to die then shoot and stop prattling and so during the deliberations of the peel commission jabutinski had issued clear-cut orders to the commanders of the urgoon if the riots are renewed show no restraint and that's why it came as no surprise that in the wake of the killing of three jews a few months later eleven arabs were gunned down in various acts of retaliation when news of these unrestrained acts reached david ben-gurion he was on his way from france in the united states and he noted in his diary quote it is not out of the question that these hooligans his code name and indeed the code name of the whole labor movement for the revisionists are planning to use these outrages to foil the establishment of a jewish state now that seems strange from a bunch of people who are so committed to the idea of a state but what ben grimm meant was that he suspected these were planned attacks on the part of the revisionists who opposed the partition plan of the appeal commission and hoped to sink it by kindling the hostilities between arab and jew it was no secret that zev jabutinski opposed the division of the land of the israelite anyway he'd been amongst the loudest voices which protested the tearing away of trans jordan from the mandate in 1922 and the urgoon adopted as its emblem a fist clenched around a rifle held over a map of israel showing both sides of the jordan river its motto read only thus at a gathering in tel aviv on september 3rd 1937 moshe shertock warned the etso the argoon that the yeshua's security forces meaning the haganah would fight them if they did not cease their terrorist activity as we'll see in the story going forward there was no such restraint showed toward their fellow jews talk announced that such acts were disgraced to the hebrew tradition of combat exemplified by the 1920 battle of tel hai now these are strong words and they deserve some serious thought we've spoken a lot about telhai and the symbolism and symbolic power it held in the mind of the early zionists let's not forget that telhai was a battle which the jews lost and which ended in the death of their forces and that models an essentially defensive posture but as i pointed out last episode the betaris and revisionists coming out of the pressure cooker of poland were far more attuned to the argument that it's better to kill one's enemies than to die nobly at their hands furthermore we have to take this term terrorism head on because in our word it gets thrown around as if it were nothing everybody's condemning terrorism everybody's enemy is a terrorist the one thing the west and east can agree on is that there's a need to wage war on terror but i've got news for you you don't make war on a method i mean aside from the difficulty of differentiating between war and terror which may be an edgy term but i'll tell you you can't really do it i'll give you an example most people would agree that bombing a tank on the battlefield is a legitimate act of war i think they'd probably agree that bombing the transport truck which is bringing the tank from the rear guard up to the battlefront is also a legitimate act of war perhaps sinking the ship on which the tank was transported from the industrial basis of a foreign country is also an act of war what about bombing the factory in which the tank is being produced maybe how about firebombing the neighborhoods in which the factory workers work so that's a major problem and for the purposes of our story as we've seen and we'll see the hakanah did not differ essentially with the ergun about methods of combat certainly not in the bitter intercommunal civil war which lies ahead why then did they call the irgun terrorists i think it's because terrorist is a word we use when we want to push people beyond the pale without having to give any real consideration to what's driving their actions the west does not want to consider the origins and aims of radical islam and so we have a war on terror on a method instead of a fight against jihad which is a worldview israel doesn't want to contemplate the complexities of the palestinian national narrative for our own story and identity so they're all terrorists and none of them are part of a national liberation movement and the labor zionists will give no legitimacy to the revisionists not to their vision of leadership in a non-socialist jewish state nor the more radical dream of israel a truly israelite kingdom and so they will become terrorists because one doesn't talk to terrorists after all on november 9 1937 five jewish workers set out to work in the fields of kibbutz kiryat near jerusalem they were encircled by an arab ambush and after exchange of fire all five were killed kibbutz you're familiar with it the hill of five was named for them the murders stunned the jewish community in jerusalem but despite their pain and anger the leaders of the jewish agency continued to call for restraint and on the day of the murder an important shift took place within the mandatory government they announced the establishment of military courts in palestine and declared the shooting of a firearm at any person the possession of weapons and acts of sabotage and terror all to be capital crimes it was the first step toward martial law a martial law that would only come into full during the struggle between the british and the jews in the 40s at the same time the jewish agency executive made an announcement quote forbidding terrorism and issued a call for all loyal public institutions to use all means at their disposal to uproot terrorism in the country meaning the unrestrained in your attitude toward jews but not toward the arabs the reaction of the revisionists and the urgoon was of an entirely different character on sunday november 14th 1937 ergoon units launched a wide-scale series of retaliatory raids in various parts of the country yitzhak bensui then chairman of the vadlumi the national council that ran the issue called it black sunday but in zionist history november 14th has actually gone down in their memory as the day on which the restraint was broken it was not the first time that the ergun had set out to attack arabs in retaliation for attacks on jews but this time the operation was carried out on the initiative of their general headquarters and with jabba tennessee's endorsement it was david raziel the commander of the initial operation who believed that these attacks marked the transition from passive to active defense and explain the two methods as follows defensive actions alone can never succeed he says if the objective of the war is to break the will of the enemy and this cannot be achieved without shattering their power we clearly cannot be content with defensive action purely defensive tactics will never break the enemy's strength all these calculations lead to one conclusion he who does not wish to be defeated must attack the urgoon's actions took the arabs completely by surprise and attacks on jews ceased entirely for some time the british police however responded by carrying out large-scale arrests amongst the revisionist party activists and it was this stage of revolt that another phrase which continues to play an important role in the internal israeli discourse around the appropriate uses of power and violence was born purity of arms a manifesto published on behalf of the jewish agency executive in the local press on november 16th only two days after restraint was broken declared the following the jewish issue was severely tested during the period of bloodshed and withstood it with courage and tenacity it defended all of our positions but also maintained a purity of its arms of defense out of moral recognition and political maturity the issue meticulously adhered to the boundaries of self-defense and by overcoming elemental impulses and exercising national discipline managed to avoid harming innocent arabs the manifesto was composed by ben gurion based on drafts provided by moshe shertock and while it may have been expressive of a genuine desire to establish ethical norms for the growing conflict it was certainly written to draw a clear distinction between the types of military action used by haganah and those by the edsel except a closer look at the process which transformed the haganah into a militia which could eventually become the core of the israeli defense forces gives one a sense that perhaps this manifesto is a case of the lady duff protests too much let's take a look at the man who helped make that process happen ord charles wingate was born in 1903 in british colonial india to an officer in the british army and the daughter of a missionary family his parents were members of the plymouth brethren a non-denominational christian movement which had originated back in great britain during the 20s and 30s that's 1820s and 30s now the brethren subscribed to the dispensationalist belief that was popular in the mid 19th century that a new dispensation was at hand one which would usher in the thousand-year millennial kingdom predicted in christian scriptures and whose advent hinged on the restoration of the jewish people to their land back in episode 27 we touched on the role that such christian zionism played in the lead-up to balfour declaration and there we talked about the large-scale impact of such police on the political picture and as i noted at the time it may or may not have been a decisive factor in the british cabinet support of zionist ames during and after world war one but ward wingate embodied his christian beliefs in service of the jewish people on a more personal scale quite simply he believed that the bible was true that god had given the land of israel to the people of israel and that their return to it would usher in the redeemed world which he saw as a blessing for all humanity and whether one shares his beliefs or not there's no question that they drove his actions nor is there a doubt about the impact he made on the zionist project in general and its military posture in particular like his father before him young ord was commissioned into the british military in 1923 serving first in india and then in the sudan where he studied arabic and semitics and acquired a familiarity with the middle east a natural leader if a bit eccentric by 1936 wingate had risen to the rank of captain in that same year he was transferred to the palestine mandate as a staff officer in military intelligence ok ok no jokes about contradictions and terms the arab revolt was fully underway when he arrived and wingate's immediate assessment was that the guerrilla war being waged in the towns and countrysides was best fought with overwhelming a force applied through small commando assault units but his was not a purely military calculus remember ord saw the creation of a jewish state in the land of israel as a religious imperative so he further pressed that these units should be jewish staffed and only british led and in the beginning he was ignored the british were wary enough of the jews they were training for the police force already sensing the potential for the tension between imperial interests and jewish national aspirations to erupt into violent conflict and in general you know conventional minds fear unconventional methods and unconventional messengers i mean wingate kept the bible with him at all times which made him odd in the eyes of many of his contemporaries and he was fond of quoting from it not only for effect but as a proof for his actions he was so intensely focused on defending the jews that he not only put off his fellow british officers even the zionists didn't know what to do with him at first this is aside from the fact that he was given to wearing an alarm clock on his wrist eating raw onions for its health virtues and lounging around in the nude nevertheless wingate was a demanding and successful commander with a knack for cultivating politicians who helped him circumvent his military superiors and after only four months in the mandate he was telling every politician whose ear he could catch that the british empire should ally itself militarily with the jews now not only did that counter the grain of the standard british wisdom which as we said was to placate the arab majority of the region it seemed to be an absurd claim on the face of it i mean the jews didn't even have an army and anyway as i said the foreign office and the committee for imperial defense saw the situation from the exact opposite perspective middle east was rich in oil home to strategic military bases for the british and satisfied the routes to india in the far east by 1938 it was clear to the powers of imperialism that the tens of millions of arabs and the hundreds of millions of muslims in their empire were far more important to placate than all the jews in palestine or the world together at a time when britain was moving toward barring entry of any more jews to the land of israel at all wingate told everyone who would listen that the mandate could easily absorb a million jews within seven years he even claimed that the jews would make better soldiers than the british citing his bible as proof and could provide the key to preserving the empire in the general war brewing on the horizon now wingate wasn't in a position to make colonial political policy but he did have the power to create facts on the ground and so he pushed ahead with his vision of jewish commando units and in june of 1938 when the countryside could fairly be described as in enemy hands wingate submitted a report entitled secret appreciation of possibilities of night movements by armed forces of the crown with object of putting an end to terrorism in northern palestine here's a quote there is only one way to deal with the situation to persuade the gangs that in their predatory raids there is every chance of their running into a government gang which is determined to destroy them the idea was to carry the offensive to the enemy to take away their initiative and keep them off balance and in particular to produce as he said in their minds the belief that government forces will move at night and can and will surprise them either in villages or across country and as i said the force was to be mixed british jewish operating out of jewish settlements rather than british bases the jewish police in the hagenai after all had good intelligence contacts and they knew the land while the british had the formal training the equipment and of course official support wingate insisted it would be an unbeatable combination and as the violence of the arab revolt continued unabated into 1938 his argument began to gain weight in the minds of the colonial administration until eventually archibald waffle commander now of british forces in palestine gave his approval with his superior officers in hand wengley found it quite easy to win over the support of the jewish agency and the leaders of the haganah and it was easy because in many ways his plan dovetailed with what the haganah was already trying to do itzhak sade who had been tasked in 1937 by ben gurion to form special units for just such offensive defense would later say for some time we did the same things as wingate but on a smaller scale and with less skill we followed parallel paths until he came to us and in him we found our leader now you should know that who brought the ethic of the red army into the haganah and it will be wingate who teaches them the power of retribution so iniate made his main base at ain harod why well his personal identification with the biblical judge gideon was profound and we all know that that gorilla leader of the children of israel had destroyed a large enemy force with only 300 men in elite units selected from 32 000 candidates and so the special night squads came into being wingate was trainer commander and combat soldier all rolled into one and it's no exaggeration to say that in the creation of the special night squads he shaped both the fighting tradition of the haganah and ultimately of the idf the israel defense forces that was its successor taking the war to the enemy commando tactics covert operations and the use of retaliatory raids as a deterrent all left their mark on the future leaders of the haganah who were his students and perhaps more than anything else what left its mark was wingate's ethic of officers who led from the front a practice which he of course learned from his hero gideon who told his commanders see me and do the same you can look it up in judges 7 17. in the eyes of his superiors wingate's primary mission was to use these special night squads to ambush the arab saboteurs attacking the tap line that's the pipeline which carried oil from the fields of iraq so the refineries in port of haifa a vital imperial interests but lord wingate's goals were eschatological not colonial he had no problem serving the imperial needs of his british masters but his soul was in service of jewish statehood and the messianic era he believed would bring about and by the way you don't hold your punches when you're fighting for the messiah that's why the sns raided border villages used as bases by the mufti's men and in general sought to degrade or even destroy the military capabilities of the arab forces and plant the terror of jewish power deep into their hearts wingate was the inheritor not only of the best military tradition to the british but also its most powerful colonial prejudice toward its servants therefore he had no inhibitions in relating to the arab villagers who he saw as a barrier to his goals in an absolutely brutal fashion in fact his use of cruelty humiliation and severe collective punishment provoked criticism even from his zionist supporters not to mention his military superiors but in the end of the day the war being waged in the mandate from 36 to 39 was marked by exceptional brutality on all sides and wingate's sns was marked by effectivity in its goals and therefore his personal battle went on despite the qualms his superiors made it had it went on that is until his problematic politics overtook his tactical utility he simply could not subordinate his sense of religious vision to his duty as an officer in the colonial forces in late 1938 wingate asked for home leave while in london he arranged a private meeting with colonial secretary malcolm mcdonald to lobby against the 1938 woodhead commission which as we said had abandoned the proposals to partition the mandate into a viable arab and jewish state when word of that meeting reached his superiors in palestine they removed him from command and in may 1939 he was transferred back to britain and in recognition of the intense loyalty he held to the zionist cause and the potential danger his skill set posed should they come in direct conflict with british imperial interests his passport was stamped with an entry forbidding him return to palestine ward wingate's personal involvement with the return of the jewish people to its land was at an end but many of those he trained as i said in the special night squads went on to become heads of the palmach that was the striking arm the haganah and later the israel defense forces in reality his impact as a commander was matched by the symbolic power which he held the minds of the zionist organization here was a christian who was so committed to the jewish mission that his code name was haydeed the beloved friend and it's how he's remembered down to this very day ward wingate went on to fight many more battles in the service of the empire eventually dying in the rank of major general in a plane crash in 1944 during world war ii and his epitaph is perhaps best given in his own words which were his battle order before the opening of his grill operations in burma victory and war cannot be counted upon but what can be counted is that we shall go forward determined to do what we can do to bring this war to the end we believe best for our friends and comrades in arms without boastfulness or forgetting our duty resolve to do the right so far as we can see the right our aim is to make possible a government of the world in which all men can live at peace and with equal opportunity of service notice his aim equal opportunity of service and he concludes finally knowing the vanity of man's effort and the confusion of his purpose let us pray that god may accept our service and direct our endeavors so that when we have done all we shall see the fruit of our labors and be satisfied it is already three years that i'm calling upon you polish jewry who are the crown of world jewry i continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer i became gray and old in these years my heart believes that you dear brothers and sisters do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spit its all-consuming lava i know that you are not seeing this because you are immersed in your daily worries today however i demand your trust you were convinced already that my prognosis have already been proven to be right if you think differently than drive me out from your midst however if you do believe me then listen to me in this eleventh hour in the name of god that any one of you save himself as long as there is still time and time there is very little these were the prophetic words of zev jabotinsky spoken in warsaw on the night of tisha b'av the 9th of in august of 1938 as the great revolt was raging in the land of israel in the underground armies were struggling with each other over the question of restraint and morality and war the world was linching ever closer to a volcanic explosion little more than a month after jabutinski's speech his last teacher address to his largest and most loyal audience the munich agreement was signed by the leaders of germany france united kingdom and italy not by the czechoslovakians by the way whose prime territory was being offered up in the agreement in hopes that it would satisfy the nazi hunger for lebensron for more room we know how that ended but when neville chamberlain returned to 10 downing street he read out the agreement to the waiting crowd and then gave a brief address which has gone down in history at least the ending of it my good friends he said for the second time in our history of british prime minister i was returned from germany bringing peace with honor i believe it is peace for our time we thank you from the bottom of our hearts go home and get a nice quiet sleep i leave it to your knowledge of history to ascertain how much peace and quiet was actually purchased through the munich pack and the darkness is only growing reaching a new death only a month or so later on the night of november 9th 1938 cristal nacht the knight of broken glass jewish homes hospitals and schools were ransacked the attackers destroyed whole buildings with sledgehammers 267 synagogues throughout germany austria and the sudetenland formerly czechoslovakia were destroyed over seven thousand jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed hundreds were killed or died in the aftermath and the name cristalnach the night of broken glass comes from the shards of glass that filled the streets after the windows of all these buildings were shattered the violence was carried out by the sa the nazi paramilitary group together with german civilians but kristallnacht was a turning point in the nazi political persecution of the jews economic political and social exclusion had moved on to beatings incarceration and murder and as second in command hermann goring said at a conference only a day after the program the jewish problem will reach its solution if in any time soon we will be drawn into war beyond our border then it is obvious that we will have to manage a final account with the jews this is the darkness which lies on the horizon of our story and there's no avoiding the obligation to tell its tale and i for one as the grandchild of survivors couldn't manage to do it if not for the final words of jabotinsky on that fateful and prophetic night in warsaw and what else i would like to say to you in this day on tisha b'av whoever of you will escape from the catastrophe he or she will live to see the exalted moment of a great jewish wedding the rebirth and the rise of a jewish state i don't know if i will be privileged to see it my son will i believe in this as i am sure that tomorrow morning the sun will rise i want to thank a few people i want to thank the people who give their hard-earned money to help make this show free and widely available and really to make it happen i want to invite you to join them go right now to rob mike.com in the upper right hand corner you'll see a button that says be a patron and you can click on through to give a little bit of per podcast support i want to thank the land of israel network that's the land of israel.com for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many wonderful people i want to thank the pardes institute p-a-r-d-e-s dot org dot il for building a school allows me to teach and reach the hearts of mine