A State at Any Cost, page 45
The members of the committee then wondered how a Jewish-majority state in Palestine could ensure equal rights for the Arab minority that would live among it. Ben-Gurion responded that there was no reason for concern. The Arabs of Palestine, he proclaimed, would never be a minority, as they were part of the Arab world, with its hundreds of millions of inhabitants who would surround the Jewish state. The members of the committee were not convinced—not because they thought he was lying, or perhaps not only because they thought he was lying, but because it was one of the principal internal contradictions in his argument, one that he did not reconcile to their satisfaction.35
Crossman was appalled by the double game Ben-Gurion played after the Holocaust—obedient recognition of British rule, along with terror aimed at bringing it to an end. Neither the Irish nor the Boers had done such a thing, he wrote. They dared to take up arms against a large imperial power and received the fruits of their daring. “I formed the view that Ben-Gurion and his directives should have had the courage to break openly with Weizmann,” he wrote, “to go underground and together with the Irgun [Etzel] to raise the standard of revolt.”36
That is exactly what Ben-Gurion did, while continuing to play his double game.
*
On the afternoon of Monday, July 22, 1946, more than ninety people were killed when a bomb went off in the southern wing of the King David Hotel. Most of the dead were Britons, Jews, and Arabs; the wing housed the offices of the British administration and army. At the time, it was the most lethal terror attack in history, and it remained so for many years thereafter. It was carried out by members of Etzel.37 When it happened, Ben-Gurion was on his way from New York to Paris.
*
When World War II broke out, Etzel accepted Ben-Gurion’s “dual formula,” and suspended, for the most part, terror against the British. The organization’s commander, David Raziel, even fell in Iraq in the service of the British. Menachem Begin, who reached Palestine in 1942 and was chosen Etzel commander at the end of 1943, declared a revolt against British rule. “There is no longer a cease-fire between the Hebrew nation and youth and the British administration in Palestine, which is turning our brothers over to Hitler,” he wrote. He was referring principally to the White Paper immigration quotas. “The British regime completed its shameful betrayal of the Hebrew nation and there is no moral basis for its existence in Palestine.”38 The revolt he led was aimed, for the time being, at British rule in Palestine, not at Britain itself, as its soldiers battled the Nazis. As in Jabotinsky’s days, the difference between what Begin and Ben-Gurion said was mostly a matter of style and tactics; their national goal was shared.
Etzel soon launched a series of terror attacks against the British, which included placing bombs in government offices and police stations. The militia sabotaged bridges, railroad tracks, and telephone lines. Some of its members were captured and, in a few cases, executed. The terror campaign undermined the Zionist movement’s contacts with the British; in London, it threatened to end the negotiations for the establishment of the Jewish Brigade.39
But Ben-Gurion’s principal concern was Etzel’s political influence—the organization’s terror attacks were accompanied by an ongoing propaganda campaign. Its operations were not aimed only at the British. They also sought to gain Etzel and the Revisionist movement prestige in the Jewish public, at the expense of the labor movement. Begin was also looking over his shoulder at an even more militant terror faction that had split away from Etzel in the summer of 1940, Lehi. The name is the Hebrew acronym of Freedom Fighters for Israel; the British called it the Stern Gang. The organization specialized in bank robberies and assassinations of British officials. In August 1944, Lehi operatives threw a bomb at the high commissioner’s car, and in November they assassinated Lord Moyne, then the most senior British official in the Middle East. The contest of Zionist patriotism that had characterized local politics in Jewish Palestine in the 1930s returned. In the 1940s, however, it was also a struggle over who would rule the Jewish state that would be born after the war. The labor movement referred to Etzel and Lehi as the “breakaway” movements, and Ben-Gurion sought to smash them.40
The decisive discussion came at an open meeting of the Histadrut membership, a few days following Moyne’s murder. He proposed dismissing from their jobs “everyone connected to these gangs,” even if he or she had not personally committed a terror attack but was only involved in advocating for the militias. The same was true of schoolchildren. Those engaged in propaganda for the militants—for example, by putting up posters—should be expelled from school. He called on children to turn in their parents who had helped the dissidents by giving them money, even if only under coercion. He demanded that people not provide refuge to members of the breakaway groups who were fleeing from the police. And he said that they should be turned in to the authorities. He termed them bandits and murderers, “some are maniacs and some charlatans.”
Not all his associates agreed. Some feared a civil war, and others found it difficult to break free of the long-standing Jewish communal proscription on turning Jews over to non-Jewish authorities. But the “terror gangs” were also a threat to the labor movement, Ben-Gurion stressed. He told his people that it was time to make a decision: “either terror or an organized labor movement.”
Shlomo Zemach objected that his rhetoric was liable to backfire. “When you besmirch the honor of these youngsters and call them all sorts of horrible names, the natural response of the masses is to defend them, and in doing so to be forgiving of their actions.” In any case, going after the dissidents was considered dirty work, and as such it was carried out by “volunteers” who ostensibly operated at the Haganah’s behest. They were called Mishmar Ha’uma, the National Guard. About two hundred people were put through a five-day course that trained them in security, counterterrorism, detective work, and surveillance, as well as in how to abduct and interrogate the dissidents, which often involved torture. The result was the Hunting Season, or the “Saison,” as it came to be called. According to the Haganah History Book, about seven hundred names were handed over to the British secret police, and about three hundred people were arrested. Some thirty children were expelled from school.41
The operation against the dissidents prompted Etzel and Lehi to carry out joint operations. In July 1945, they together blew up a railroad bridge.42 Both organizations also held talks with the Haganah, and at one point everyone reached a consensus that the internecine war was detrimental to the national cause. Eliyahu Golomb, who was understood to be the uncrowned commander of the Haganah, died in June 1945, leading to greater involvement by Ben-Gurion in the organization’s activities.
Moshe Sneh, the chief of the Haganah National Command, was then thirty-six years old, a former Polish army officer and leader of the Zionist movement there. He was a physician by training. Ben-Gurion valued his astuteness, as well as the political advantage he offered. Affiliated with the parties and factions of the center-right, Sneh did not belong to the labor movement. As such, he was not involved in the movement’s tangled intrigues, plots, and battles of competing interests. He was thus on good terms with his fellow Polish Zionist Menachem Begin. At the end of 1944, the two men talked about a possible alliance between Etzel and the Haganah.43 After the war, Ben-Gurion authorized Sneh to sign a cooperation agreement with Etzel and Lehi. “The two rival factions should be invited for full cooperation, on condition of unitary authority and absolute discipline,” Ben-Gurion wrote to Sneh. His reason: “We require a constant effort to ensure the unity of the Jewish community in Palestine, and above all among its fighters, for the sake of the war.” The cooperation freed him of the need to defend the much-reviled policy of the Saison, and deprived the separatist organizations their monopoly on the revolt against the British. Up to that time, the Palmach’s fighters had had to make do largely with helping along the Holocaust survivors who had reached Palestine’s shores in illegal immigration ships. That was uplifting and humanitarian work, but it generally did not require much heroism. Now, in October 1945, the Jewish Resistance Movement was born.
*
Not all terror attacks were carried out jointly, but for the most part they were coordinated and received sanction in principle from a civilian committee with a mysterious and somewhat puerile name—the X Committee. Ben-Gurion set it up himself; its composition reflected that of the Zionist coalition. He lent a hand to the Jewish Resistance Movement partly in preparation for his final and decisive round against Weizmann, who opposed terror.
He was in a fighting and autocratic mood. “His manner of speech is simply inhuman,” Moshe Sharett wrote to Moshe Sneh. “If you agree with him eighty percent and differ twenty percent, or agree with his main point and argue a minor point, or agree in general but differ on a specific detail—he immediately focuses all his fervor on that twenty percent, that minor point, or that detail, and the altercation is so powerful that it is as if the dispute were over one hundred percent.” Sharett was particularly aggravated by Ben-Gurion’s attitude. “You never manage to get out a complete sentence with him,” he griped. “He immediately interrupts, latches onto a word he doesn’t like, confronts and rages.”
On October 7, 1945, Ben-Gurion sent Sneh a letter he signed with the pseudonym “Amos’s father.” According to the letter, “The response is not to be limited in this country to immigration and settlement. It is necessary to use sabotage and reprisals. Not personal terror, but reprisals for every Jew who is murdered by the White Paper authorities. Every act of S [that is, sabotage] needs to carry great weight and make a great impression. Care should be taken to avoid human casualties to every extent possible.” When he told his party colleagues about this letter a few months later, he stressed that he worded it with great care. He did not mean to issue an absolute prohibition against actions liable to lead to a loss of human life. Rather, his directive was to avoid this to every extent possible.44 During the months that followed, he tried to conduct the terror campaign from Paris. In doing so, he sent out contradictory messages and lost control of the resistance.
“I HAVE A PLAN”
In mid-June 1946, members of the Palmach blew up eleven bridges. It was the Resistance Movement’s most daring operation up to that point. The next day, Etzel operatives abducted five British officers. That was the underground faction’s response to a death sentence the British had imposed on two of its men. The abduction of the officers was understood to be part of the rivalry between Etzel and the Palmach, despite the coordination between them. Ben-Gurion demanded that the Jewish Agency Executive condemn the kidnapping and promise to help the authorities apprehend the perpetrators. But two weeks later, he wrote to Sneh: “English newspapers are reporting that you are threatening to take action against Etzel if the officers are not released. They should be demanded to release them, but all internal conflict is definitely not desirable now.”
A few days afterward, on June 29, 1946, the British authorities sent seventeen thousand troops on a search-and-seize operation aimed at crushing the Jewish Resistance Movement. This included arresting several Jewish Agency leaders, among them Moshe Sharett, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, and David Remez. The Jews called the operation the Black Sabbath. Ben-Gurion, then in Paris, was at the top of the British wanted list.45
It was already close to midnight when word reached Paris about what was happening in Palestine. The news was first broadcast by the BBC, and then also arrived via a secret wireless communications system Ben-Gurion used for contacts with Palestine. Ben-Gurion was in his hotel, surrounded by his aides. He looked dazed and asked Ehud Avriel to take him for a drive around Paris. During the ride, he did not emit a sound. A few hours later, as dawn broke, Avriel returned him to the hotel. Only at this point did he finally speak. “I’ll tell you what needs to be done,” he said, as if it were an original idea that had suddenly come into his head. “We need to establish a Jewish state.”
Black Sabbath, or, as Ben-Gurion termed it, “the pogrom arranged for us by [Prime Minister] Mr. Atlee,” was another seminal public trauma suffered by the Jews of Palestine while Ben-Gurion was outside Palestine, like the terror offensive of 1929 and the anxiety brought on by what seemed to be an impending Nazi invasion. For the first time since his Sejera days he felt personally unsafe. His people warned him not to go to Palestine or to London, lest he, too, be arrested.46
*
Two months after Black Sabbath, on July 1, 1946, Sneh ordered Begin “to carry out that little hotel thing at the earliest opportunity.” The hotel in question was the King David. The attack was planned collaboratively by Haganah and Etzel experts; Etzel assumed responsibility for the actual execution. The X Committee had previously signed off on an attack on “a central institution of government.” It may well be that the committee’s members did not know that this meant the King David Hotel. Perhaps they did not want to know, or perhaps they were not officially told. Ben-Gurion knew about the plan. On July 6, 1946, he wrote to Sneh: “Your proposal exceeds the framework of the five provisions and cannot be accepted. Operate only within the five provisions.” He was referring to the operational guidelines that he had sent Sneh the previous October, which had included a warning to refrain, as far as possible, from life-threatening actions. He would later be able to claim that he tried to prevent the attack. But the letter was not particularly vehement. Whatever the case, he took off hastily the next day for the United States, where the arms of the British law could not nab him.
Chaim Weizmann happened to be in Palestine that week. He put pressure on Sneh to reduce terror to the minimum; at one point, he threatened to resign if his demand was not met. Sneh told Begin to postpone the King David operation. On July 20, he wrote to him: “If you still take account of my personal appeal, I hereby beseech you to suspend the activities that are currently pending for a few more days.” He asked Begin for a postponement, not a cancellation, and he asked rather than ordered. He did not direct him to hold his fire and did not warn that violating his request would bring on a renewal of the Saison.47
*
In America, Ben-Gurion met with Jewish leaders and several government officials, but he does not seem to have been all that busy. He had time to buy books, and also asked his secretary to send him other books from Palestine. He may have feared that his American exile would last a long time. He also dealt with his shopping list from home—bed linens, tablecloths, and towels.
He soon bucked up his spirits and made a full recovery, just as he had done in 1929. “I have a plan,” he informed Paula. The New York Times reported from London that he was free to go there and would not be arrested. His response: “I am grateful to the government for this generosity. I hope that I will not require it much longer.” Less than three weeks later, he was back in Paris. He heard about the bombing of the King David on the morning he arrived. He updated himself on the details, including Sneh’s role, and then cabled the Jewish Agency Executive: “I do not want to be and cannot be responsible, and neither am I prepared or able to bear the moral burden alone.” He may have intended the cable for British eyes. In any case, he shared responsibility. To be able to carry on his work, he had to place the full blame on Begin, and that is what he did. Sneh, who came to Paris, received his full backing, just as David Remez had following the Solel Boneh scandal; it was Ben-Gurion’s way of extricating himself from such situations.48
*
He sent the plan he had told Paula about to a number of prominent people, and submitted it to the Jewish Agency Executive, which convened in Paris. Palestine on both sides of the Jordan would become a neutral zone, free of foreign armies, and divided into two states, Abdulliya (after King Abdullah of Transjordan) and Judea. Abdulliya would be composed of those areas populated by Arabs, in the center of Palestine (including Jenin, Nablus, and Ramallah), with six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand inhabitants all told. Judea would receive unsettled areas to the east of the Jordan River, the Jordan Valley, and the area around the Dead Sea. Neither country would maintain an army, only the forces necessary to maintain internal order. Each would set its immigration regulations for itself. Disputes between the two would be mediated by the United Nations. The Christian holy sites would be under control of the churches.
Different versions of the plan have been preserved. The main point was partition, one that would not require population transfer. Practically, the plan accomplished nothing, except perhaps to answer a need Ben-Gurion felt to regain control over events following Black Sabbath, just as he had sought to do following the 1929 disturbances. In keeping with that, he took care to keep playing a double game, or, as he put it, “Neither Masada,” by which he meant a fight to the death, “nor Vichy,” by which he meant capitulation. He himself saw “at least one merit” to the plan, as he wrote: “It will expose the lie in what Mr. Bevin and his supporters are saying, to the effect that they are in Palestine in order to bring about peace between Jews and Arabs.”49 Both Abdulliya and Judea would soon be forgotten, because one of the participants in the Jewish Agency Executive’s deliberations in Paris would set in motion a decisive process.
*
Nahum Goldmann, a rising star in Zionist diplomacy who generally worked from the United States, was sharp of mind and well connected, crafty and with a great zest for life. He had long advocated partition; the most prominent Zionist leader in America, Abba Hillel Silver, opposed it. In Paris, Goldmann explained to the Executive’s members that President Truman was getting sick of Palestine and that the coming congressional elections might offer the last opportunity to achieve something for Zionism, the least of a few possible evils. As Goldmann did his best to persuade them, he was informed by telephone from Washington that the White House would, in a few days’ time, announce its position on the issue. He offered to take the first plane to Washington to influence the deliberations at the last moment, but conditioned his offer on being authorized by the Jewish Agency Executive to inform the American government of its consent to the establishment of a Jewish state in a part of Palestine.
