Nevertheless, a few years after Israeli independence had been achieved, the PALMACH veterans came out on top. One reason may have been that they systematically trained for leadership; for example, Sadeh had insisted that every qualified PALMACHnik go through a squad commanders course in addition to basic training. At a time when the rest of Hagana still thought in terms of part-time volunteers, PALMACH commanders already led a regular strike force that was organized first in battalions and then in brigades, albeit ones that were increasingly forced to operate underground as the mandate entered its last years and anti-British operations and persecution intensified. Last but not least, the native-born PALMACH approach was better adapted to the spirit of a people who, then and later, distrusted formality as well as spit and polish. One way or another, and except for the years of Chayim Laskov (1958-1961) and Tsvi Tsur (1961-1964), from 1953 to 1983
all
IDF chiefs of staff were former PALMACH personnel, as were many of its generals.
Once World War II had ended and the servicemen returned, Hagana could muster about 30,000 men and women in various degrees of training and readiness. The core consisted of the 2,000 mobilized members of PALMACH. Its new commander, Yigal Allon, was the first native-born Israeli to reach such a high position in Hagana; a surprisingly gentlemanly character for a man of his background (he had been born in 1918, the son of an out-of-luck peasant in Kfar Tabor), in time he proved to have a first-class strategic mind. He molded the troops into a highly motivated fighting force, “deployed from the sea to the desert” and “always ready to take orders,” as their anthem proudly proclaimed. The remaining Hagana members were reservists available in an emergency. Some 4,000 had passed through PALMACH and constituted
its
reserve—throughout the period PALMACH tended to look upon itself as a separate corps d’elite, an attitude fraught with implications for the future. An additional 3,300 were organized in CHISH (Chel Sadeh or “Field Force”) and represented the direct descendant of the old
nodedot
and FOSH. The bulk of the force, however, was known as CHIM (Chel Mishmar or “Home Guard”). As its name indicates, it consisted of personnel—units would be too strong a word—who were intended for stationary self-defense should the places in which they lived be attacked.
Just as important as organization was the acquisition of additional arms. As had been done previously, some arms were smuggled into the country by various means—a favorite method was to conceal them inside construction and earth-moving equipment—or else procured locally by buying or stealing them from the British. Moreover, Hagana’s own military industries (Taasiya Tsvait, TAAS) had been expanding to the point that, between 1939 and 1944, its size increased sixfold.
18
By 1944 twelve “institutions,” scattered all over the country, were turning out explosives, detonators, hand grenades, mortars, submachine guns, and various types of ammunition—including, on the eve of independence, as many as 20,000 rifle rounds per day. Often located in or near
kibbutsim
, the institutions were staffed by a core of specialists as well as a larger number of youths, both male and female, who volunteered for the task. From time to time the British discovered a workshop and raided it. These raids, however, represented isolated reverses and never disrupted TAAS for long.
In autumn 1945, TAAS’s chief, an engineer named Chayim Slavin, was sent to the United States on a subsistence budget of $9 per day.
19
With funds from the Zionist organization and making use of the postwar glut, he bought up machines for manufacturing ammunition at a fraction of their original cost. They were dismantled into small parts and shipped home in 800 separate crates—the reassembly instructions are said to have taken up an index consisting of 70,000 cards. By the time the War of Independence broke out in November 1947, Hagana possessed 754 mortars of all calibers, 16 antitank rifles, 980 machine guns, 3,662 submachine guns, 17,642 rifles, 3,830 pistols, and 53,751 hand grenades.
20
Once they had been taken out of the
slikkim
and distributed to the units, these weapons turned out to be more than sufficient to take care of the homegrown Palestinian Arab militias. They were, however, hopelessly inadequate for fighting the regular forces of neighboring Arab countries possessing armor, artillery, and aircraft.
In 1945, however, it was the British and not the Arabs who most concerned Hagana. As already mentioned, World War II had brought about a lull in Jewish-Arab relations. Heavily decimated in 1936-1939—as much by their own gangs as by the British and the Jews—many Arab leaders were already beginning to realize that their last hope of survival vis-à-vis the growing Jewish forces depended upon continued British occupation of the country; in fact those who could afford to do so were already beginning to sell property and move elsewhere.
21
In any case the Arabs were relatively quiescent. This enabled Jews and Britons to turn against one another on a scale and with a fury unequaled since the beginning of the mandate.
Both sides did, in fact, have much to complain about. Intent on maintaining their imperial presence in the Middle East, the British regarded the activities of Hagana—even its very existence—as illegal and were concerned with limiting its operations as much as possible. For their part, Hagana and the
Yishuv
behind it were furious at what they saw as the British breach of the promises contained in the Balfour Declaration; from 1941 on, Ben Gurion, as the leading personality, was determined to create an independent Jewish state despite anything the government in London might say or do. Other, more immediate bones of contention included restrictions that had been placed on the purchase of land as well as continuing constraints on immigration—the latter becoming a major issue during the years immediately following the Holocaust, when hundreds of thousands of survivors were desperately trying to get into the region.
Against this background, Hagana, heretofore concerned primarily with defending the
Yishuv
against the Palestinian Arabs and not seldom cooperating with the British, opened operations against the occupiers. The first “action” took place on October 9, when a PALMACH unit numbering a hundred men (it is not known whether there were women among the participants) broke into the camp at Atlit, south of Haifa, where two hundred illegal immigrants were being held. The infiltrators knocked out the Arab guards, and a British police car that appeared on the scene was attacked with grenades and machine guns; it overturned, killing one of its occupants. The internees were smuggled to nearby
kibbuts
Bet-Oren, which in turn was surrounded by thousands of Haifa residents who came out to demonstrate against the British. Fearing a major clash, the latter desisted.
From now on such attacks multiplied. Hagana’s stated preference was for a bloodless struggle; normally it was only when British personnel sought to interrupt the operations (participation in which naturally carried the death sentence) that they were subjected to direct fire. Thus, on November 1, 1945, Palestine’s railway net was sabotaged at no fewer than 153 places, and three patrol boats in the ports of Haifa and Jaffa were sunk. On November 24 two observation posts that had been intercepting immigrant ships were demolished (and like the Irish Republican Army years later, Hagana would call the British ahead of time to let them know that bombs had been planted). All these operations were carried out by PALMACH members who, in their minds, thereby justified the long years of preparation and training. The first months of 1946 saw more attacks on observation posts, a radar station, and four police stations. The climax came on June 17. Several hundred troops set out simultaneously and dynamited ten out of eleven border bridges, causing 250,000 pounds’ worth of damage and temporarily halting traffic between Palestine and the neighboring countries.
22
Not all operations were completely successful, and there were casualties on both sides. Moreover, Hagana was not the only Jewish organization fighting the British during these years. The need to use armed force—at least for self-defense—had been acknowledged by the nascent
Yishuv
since the arrival of the second wave of immigrants in 1900. However, to the mind of the socialist majority such force was only one element in the Jewish awakening. At least as important was the need to “settle the country” and “liberate” (
li-geol
, a term that also carried apocalyptic connotations) it from its “desolation.” Incidentally this was not a uniquely Zionist argument but was one that echoed late-nineteenth-century imperialist ideas concerning Europe’s “civilizing mission.”
23
From the beginning, though, there were those who disagreed. The most important of the “dissenters” or “revisionists,” as they were known, was Zeev Jabotinsky, a bespectacled, highly cultured, and charismatic journalist from Odessa.
Having served in the Jewish battalions during World War I, Jabotinsky in 1920 helped defend the Jewish community in Jerusalem, for which the British gave him fifteen years in jail. Granted amnesty, he found himself at odds with the
Yishuv
’s leaders. Unlike most of them he was no socialist and regarded the communal settlements as secondary—important, perhaps, but hardly the highway to independence and statehood. Instead, and acting on the belief that the British would support such a course, he emphasized the need to prepare a Jewish armed force to take over Palestine from its Arab inhabitants once the British gave the green light. In retrospect Jabotinsky’s belief in British benevolence, which he shared with others such as Dr. Weizman, appears naive, whereas his own craving for things military—including insignia, uniforms, salutes, parades, and certain affectations of behavior that he called
hadar
(glory)—was merely childish. Still, arguably these weaknesses were balanced by a better understanding of the Arab-Jewish conflict. Unlike his socialist opponents, Jabotinsky was ready to admit that the Arab resistance did not result from some terrible misunderstanding. Instead they too were building an embryonic national movement that had right on its side; hence the issue could be settled only by force of arms.
24
In 1925 the Zionist revisionist movement, as well as its youth movement Betar (after the site where the Jews had made their last stand against the Romans in the revolt of 132-135 A.D.), was founded. Its members recited Cohen’s poem about the need to redeem Judaea with “blood and fire” as well as Jabotinsky’s own poem about “dying or conquering the mountain.” In 1931 the dissidents, perhaps 10-20 percent of the entire
Yishuv
, set up their own military organization with the objective of taking a more aggressive line against the Arab gangs as well as the British. During the late thirties, ETSEL (Irgun Tsvai Leumi, or “National Military Organization”) made its presence felt by launching attacks on Arab civilians—a bomb was planted amid a crowded Haifa market, for example—as well as sabotaging government targets such as telephone wires, railways, and a Jerusalem radio station. In response the authorities took action and on September 1, 1939, were able to achieve something of a coup by arresting the entire ETSEL leadership.
Once World War II broke out, Jabotinsky, who was organizing Betar from abroad, announced that ETSEL would suspend its struggle against the British in favor of cooperating with them against the Nazis. ETSEL’s two leaders, David Raziel and Abraham Stern, were released from prison; in May 1941 the former was even sent on a commando operation to Iraq, where he was killed. The truce was maintained, more or less, until December 1941, when the ship
Struma
, a 180-ton Danube cattle boat, limped into Constantinople harbor with 769 Jewish refugees aboard. For two months the Jewish Agency, the Turkish authorities, and the British engaged in negotiations as the latter refused to grant the passengers entry visas to Palestine; finally the Turks lost patience and ordered the ship to sea, where it promptly sank. Whether this was due to its own condition or to an attack by a German submarine, as has been claimed, remains unclear to the present day. In any case almost all its crew and passengers, including 250 women and 70 children, were lost.
Jabotinksy had died in August 1940 and ETSEL, already torn between those who favored continuation of the truce and those who wanted to resume the struggle against the British, split. Seeking revenge for the
Struma
episode one group, led by Abraham Stern, broke away to found LECHI (Lochame Cherut Israel, Israel’s Freedom Fighters), an even more extreme organization. Stern himself was a classics student at Hebrew University. Later he studied in Italy, where he was influenced by fascism; like his master, Jabotinsky, he was a gifted poet whose dark, solemn verses are laced with obedience, duty, and death. He was soon hunted down and killed in a shoot-out, but his followers refused to give up. Unlike Hagana they did not have either the Jewish Agency or Histadrut behind them. Unable to set up even an unofficial taxation system, they were compelled to obtain funds by raiding banks, post offices, and the like as well as by door-to-door collections. They resumed operations against the British, albeit on a very small scale as LECHI probably numbered no more than a few dozen activists.
By early 1944, ETSEL too was prepared to resume operations against the British. From 1943 on it was commanded by Menachem Begin, a fireeating orator from Poland, where his organizational skills had taken him to the head of the local Betar movement. Young—he was born in 1913—Begin, unlike Jabotinksy, was incapable of creating a coherent political ideology. Even more than Jabotinsky he was in love with things military and worshipped force for force’s sake, to the point that, after he had expostulated on the subject at a meeting held in Warsaw just before World War II, Jabotinsky told him to “go and drown yourself in the Vistula.”
25
Between them the two organizations launched a terrorist campaign, attacking and demolishing government offices, capturing arms, and even temporarily occupying the government broadcasting station in Ramalla, north of Jerusalem. In August 1944 Sir Harold MacMichael, the departing high commissioner whom extremists blamed for the
Struma
affair, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Two months later two LECHI members killed Britain’s resident minister in Cairo, Lord Moyne.