Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

Down the centuries, Jews had done that. But this Friday Sabbath in September 1929 was different. Rabbis had urged as many men as possible to be united in public prayer and to show their determination to their right to do so. It was intended not only as an expression of their faith, but also as a visible symbol of their Zionism—and a reminder to the Arab population, who vastly outnumbered them, that they would not be cowed.

For months there had been persistent rumors that the Muslim population were once more becoming increasingly angry over what they saw as Zionist expansion. These fears had started with the 1917 Balfour Declaration and its commitment to a formal Jewish homeland in Palestine. To Arabs who lived there and could trace their ancestry back to the Prophet, this was an outrage. Land that they had farmed for many centuries would be threatened, perhaps even taken from them by the Zionists and their British protectors, who had arrived at the end of the Great War to place Palestine under a Mandate. The British had ruled as they did in other parts of the empire, trying to please both sides. It was a recipe for disaster. Tensions between Jews and Arabs had increased. There had been skirmishes and bloodletting, often over where the Jews wanted to build their synagogues and religious shuls. But the Jews were stubbornly determined to exercise their “prayer rights” at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. For them it was part of the core of their faith.

By noon, the hour of the shema prayer, there were close to a thousand reading aloud the ancient words of scripture before the yellow sandstone wall. The rise and fall of their voices had its own soothing cadence.

Then, with stunning swiftness, missiles—stones, broken bottles, and tins filled with rubble—rained down on them. The assault had been launched by Arabs from vantage points around the Wailing Wall. The first crack of gunfire rattled, a ragged volley of musket shots from Muslim marksmen. Jews fell and were dragged away by their fleeing neighbors. Miraculously, no one was killed, though the injured numbered scores.

That night the leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, met. They quickly realized that their carefully planned demonstration had lacked one essential: foreknowledge of an Arab onslaught.

One of those present at the meeting spoke for them all: “We need to remember scripture. From King David onward, our people have depended on good intelligence.”

Over cups of Turkish coffee and sweet pastries were sown the seeds for what would one day become the most formidable intelligence service in the modern world: Mossad. But its creation was still almost a quarter of a century away. All that the Yishuv leaders could suggest as a first practical step on that warm September night was to pool what money they could spare and call upon their neighbors to do the same. The cash would be used to bribe Arabs who were still tolerant toward Jews and who would provide advance warning of further attacks.

In the meantime Jews would continue to exert their right to pray at the Wailing Wall. They would not depend on the British for protection, but would be defended by the Haganah, the newly formed Jewish militia. In the months to come a combination of prior warning and the presence of the militia faced down Arab attacks. Relative calm between Arab and Jew was restored for the next five years.

In that period the Jews continued to secretly expand their intelligence gathering. It had no formal name or leadership. Arabs were recruited on an ad hoc basis: peddlers who worked in Jerusalem’s Arab Quarter and shoeshine boys who burnished the boots of Mandate officers were put on the payroll, along with students from the city’s prestigious Arab Rouda College, teachers, and businessmen. Any Jew could recruit an Arab spy; the only condition was the information was shared. Slowly but surely the Yishuv obtained important information not only about Arabs but about British intentions.

The coming to power of Hitler in 1933 marked the start of the exodus of German Jews to Palestine. By 1936 over three hundred thousand had made the long journey across Europe; many were destitute by the time they reached the Holy Land. Somehow food and accommodations were found for them by the Yishuv. Within months Jews made up over a third of the population. The Arabs reacted as they had before : from the minarets of a hundred mosques came the cries of the mullahs to drive the Zionists back into the sea.

In every Arab mafafeth, the meeting house where local Arab councilmen met, came the same raised voices of angry protests: We must stop the Jews from taking our land; we must stop the British giving them arms and training them.

In turn the Jews protested that the opposite was true, that the British were encouraging the Arabs to steal back land lawfully paid for.

The British continued to try to placate both sides—and failed. In 1936 sporadic fighting flared into full-scale Arab revolt against both the British and the Jews. The British ruthlessly suppressed the rebellion. But the Jews realized it would only be a matter of time before the Arabs struck with renewed fury.

Throughout the land young Jews rushed to join the Haganah. They became the core of a formidable secret army: physically hardened, crack shots, and as cunning as the desert foxes in the Negev.

The network of Arab informers was extended. A Haganah Political Department was set up to spread dissension through disinformation. Men who later became legends in the Israeli intelligence community learned their skills in that formative period before the start of World War II. The Haganah—the word means “defense” in Hebrew—became the best informed of all the forces in the Holy Land.

World War II brought a renewed uneasy peace to Palestine. Jews and Arabs sensed the grim future they would both face if the Nazis won. The first details of what was happening in the death camps of Europe had reached the Yishuv.

David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin were among those who attended a meeting in Haifa in 1942. There was consensus that the survivors of the Holocaust must be brought to their spiritual home, Eretz Israel. No one could estimate how many there would be, but everyone agreed the arrival of the refugees would rekindle confrontation with the Arabs—and this time the British would openly side against the Jews. Britain had steadfastly said it would refuse to admit the survivors into Palestine after Hitler was defeated, on the grounds it would create a population imbalance.

Ben-Gurion’s urging for an upgrade of the Haganah’s intelligence capacity was fully endorsed by the meeting. More informers would be recruited. A counterintelligence unit would be formed to uncover Jews who were collaborating with the British and unearth “Jewish communists and dissenters in our midst.” The new unit was known as Rigul Hegdi and was commanded by a former French foreign legionnaire working under cover as a traveling salesman.

Soon he was turning up Jewish women who consorted with officers of the Mandate; shopkeepers who traded with the British; café owners who entertained them. In the dead of night the culprits were brought before Haganah drumhead courts-martial; the guilty were either sentenced to be severely beaten or were executed in the Judaean hills by a single bullet in the back of the head. It was a precursor to the ruthlessness Mossad would later display.

By 1945 the Haganah included a unit responsible for procuring arms. Soon caches of Italian and German weapons captured in North Africa after the defeat of Rommel were being smuggled by Jewish soldiers serving with the Allies across the Egyptian Sinai Desert into Palestine. The arms came by ramshackle trucks and camel caravans and were stored in caves in the Wilderness where the Devil had tried to tempt Jesus. One hiding place was close to where the Dead Sea Scrolls were waiting to be discovered.