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The 6th Airborne Division was a major element of the British Security Force in Palestine between September, 1945 and May 1948. Faced with the unenviable task of upholding the law in a lawless country, the individual British soldier had to face continual opposition from a hostile Jewish community. This story is described by General Wilson, then a Major, who served with the division during this period.
The mission of British forces was simply "to keep the peace." To achieve this goal, the 6th Airborne Division conducted a variety of counter-insurgency operations in both urban and rural environments. These operations were designed to locate illegal arms caches, limit Jewish-Arab violence and capture dissidents who had attacked British positions. The destruction of the King David Hotel, the most famous terrorist attack of the Mandate period, is treated in great detail.
With 6th Airborne Division in Palestine 1945 - 48 is a tribute to the British soldier. It is also an excellent case study in unconventional warfare. It will be of great interest to any student of the intricate problem that Palestine presents.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Although the Second World War officially ended in August 1945, the political and social consequences of the war continued for many years. Palestine was one country where peace did not come after the end of the war, as Jewish migration into the country and the Jews desire for an independent Jewish nation brought them into conflict with both the Arab population and the British authorities. This book tells the story of this period from a down to earth perspective, from the often neglected perspective of British soldiers caught between two divided communities and subject of political indecision. A very moving and informative book, this is easy to read being well written. In my view, it contains lessons from history equally applicable today. For political and military historians, a must read account of a traumatic period of history in the middle east.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Self serving account of the British army's failure to crush the jewish national movement
30 Jan 2012
Format:Hardcover
It is said that the victors write the history. With the middle east that often doesn't seem to be the case. Dare Wilson's book is one such book that is nevertheless possibly useful in showing how a military man can so misread a situation, fail at the time and then fail utterly to draw the right conclusions afterwards.
This book is if anything an example of how best to alienate a civilian population and prepare the way for your own defeat. If it is read at all it should be read in conjunction with Menahem Begin's 'Revolt'. Begin was the commander of the victorious Irgun, Britain's nemesis.
Montgomery the Chief of Britain's Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in his autobiography admitted that his country was 'driven out' of the country.
The British army left with its tail between its legs having alienated the jewish and arab civilian populations and after being harried and worn down by jewish underground forces. Jewish forces mostly kept a truce during WWII , not replying to the arrests of Hagana members or to the blockading of the coast against jewish refugees from the nazis.
Britain had occupied Palestine in 1917 after having beaten Turkey all the way back from the strategic Suez canal and driving on to Damascus.
Britain was then given a League of Nations Mandate to enable jews to develop their ancient lands on both sides of the Jordan. After receiving the mandate Britain tore off the major part of the lands and handed it over to a foreign arab sheikh who had been kicked out of his own territory.
Pretty soon after this Britain decided that the small amount of land left for the jewish national home should also be given over to arabs. And just before World War II broke out, in an attempt to appease pro nazi arab sentiment the British White Paper illegally ended all dreams of jewish indpendence in their own land. It halted jewish immigration and gave arabs a veto of all matters that happened in the mandatory territory. This effectively meant Britain establishing yet another arab country.
Not surprisingly jews objected to the British navy blockading the coast of Palestine to jews escaping arab and nazi persecution during WWII. In doing this Britain played its part in jewish deaths in the holocaust. This and Britain's cynically having handed Czechoslovakia in 1938 over to the nazis meant that after 1939 the jewish population saw the British army in their country for what it was, as an occupation by a colonial and imperialist power.
During WWII however the jewish population aided the British war effort, serving in the British army and supplying British armies throughout the middle east with essential supplies, hoping that the British labour party after the war would keep its promises to establish the jewish homeland as it was legally beholden by the League to do. After the War ended this did not happen, and British suppression of the jews was stepped up. Britain wanted, just as with the setting up earlier of Transjordan, to hand Palestine over to a pliable arab sheikh who would not object to the country being used as one large british military base (The RAF alone had 25 airfields in the land of Israel). Britain pre Suez crisis did not then realise that its days of playing the superpower and of dictating the fate of nations according to its imperial will were numbered.
After 1945 when the british army began to actively prepare to hand the territory over to the arabs and attempt to destroy the jewish national movement they encountered effective resistance, mostly peaceful, but something they had not before encountered. The jews mostly attempted not to take lives in their encounters with the British army, but would return fire if British patrols came upon them. The favour was not however returned, and many Irgun prisoners were brutalised, summarily executed or refused medical treatment by the British army so that they died of wounds. This was nothing new. British soldiers had used such methods to crush the arab revolt in 1936.
British airfields and bases were attacked in response to raids on kibbutzim by the British army seeking to divest the Jewish Agency of its weapons needed for defence. Britain arrested jewish leaders, yet on the day it tried to decapitate the whole jewish leadership with mass arrests, not one leader of the jewish underground forces was captured.
Dare Wilson could not admit that his own efforts along with Britain's policies of trying to suppress the jewish national movement were a complete and utter failure. Wilson trumpeted the odd success like discovering an arms dump at Yagur but nearly all the others were missed. Under the noses of the British occupation forces, the Jewish Agency set up machinery imported from the USA (without american connivance. The US embargo was strictly enforced) to make munitions for the coming "war of anihilation" promised by Azzam Pasha of the Arab League.
Britain's only real success was that of the Royal Navy which saw to it that the borders of Palestine were sealed throughout the war, thus condemning millions of jews to death in german concentration camps (Germany originally wanted to expel all jews, but Britain's diplomacy in european countries and its navy navy stopped that).
The Stern group or 'gang' as the British liked to call it, along with the Irgun and the Haganah ran rings around the British. British army and police Top Secret plans and reports were often disseminated amongst the Haganah heirarchy by the Shai (forerunner of the Mossad) even before the originally intended recipients were made aware of the contents. This was because the struggle against the British was a popular anti-colonialist struggle by the jews living in Palestine, against a superpower that just like the present Obama administration saw its interests as being served by arabs rather than a tiny jewish state.
What greater accolade can be given to the jewish resistance groups than by the CIGS Montgomery who moaned in his autobiography that Britain was, "Driven out of Palestine". Until then the British weren't used to that. They liked to flog and hang the natives into submission and could not understand it when the jews replied in kind. When they were flogged, they kidnapped british soldiers and after a trial flogged them. When Irgun prisoners were executed for possessing arms, the Irgun replied similarly.
Of course when Britain left Israel in 1948 it would not even then call it quits instead leading the Jordanian army against the new Israeli army, arming and training other arab armies such as Egypt's. Britain under Attlee and Bevin could not restrain its imperial ambitions for the new state of Israel, using its airforce to attack jewish forces. This only came to an end in January 1949 when the Israel airforce shot down British spitfires and took their pilots prisoner. Britain could not then deny, as it had up to then, that it was taking an active part in trying to destroy the new state of Israel so that it could establish a puppet arab regime in that land.
Sadly for Britain it did not realise that just as it had its imperialistic ambitions kicked out of it by the jews and Israelis, it would soon be hounded out of most of its colonies. Not that British imperialism has ever been totally crushed, with Britain's continued occupation of the Malvinos islands being a case in point.
The counter-insurgency operations described by Wilson mostly either did not happen, or were not the success he claims them to be. This was an example of how NOT to conduct operations and if this book was the textbook of British operations to counter resistance in their empire after the war, then it is no suprise that they so quickly lost it.
The 'cordon and search' operations were the greatest of failures. For their massive use of resources and the enormous disruption of civilian life, the destruction of jewish property and manhandling of people going about their daily lives, the British never netted Menahem Begin who was at one point sunning himself on Tel-Aviv beach whilst British soldiers were turning over households and making people's lives a misery less than a mile away. Even 'Black Saturday' failed to net any top jewish military commanders. The British had lousy intelligence because they alienated jewish people through their open antisemitism, their murders in captivity of captured fighters and for their open favouring of the arab cause.
Menahem Begin's 'the Revolt' recounts actual operations, the successes and the failures, honestly. Because Begin could be honest with himself, he could learn from the failures, adapt, and carry on to victory. His story of how the Irgun (there are other excellent books dealing with the other groups' contributions) systematically undermined the British imperial will to remain in Palestine is fascinating and accompanied by pictures such as one of the Irgun's deservedly unpopular inventions (with the British), a truck mounted bouncing bomb that cleared high fences surrounding military bases.
The jewish struggle as the first successful anti-imperialist struggle after 1945 gave other resistance movements such as those in India and Kenya an example to follow.
The greatest proof of British forces total failure was that despite 100,000 troops equipped with all the modern machinery of war dedicated to suppressing the jews, the moment the British army left in May 1945 Israel was able to turn itself from an underground and defend itself against regular arab armies, to eventually push back the 5 invading arab countries ( british equipped, trained and even led ) back to their own borders.
This book is if anything an example of how best to alienate a civilian population and prepare the way for your own defeat. If it is read at all it should be read in conjunction with Menahem Begin's 'Revolt'. Begin was the commander of the victorious Irgun, Britain's nemesis.
Montgomery the Chief of Britain's Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in his autobiography admitted that his country was 'driven out' of the country.
The British army left with its tail between its legs having alienated the jewish and arab civilian populations and after being harried and worn down by jewish underground forces. Jewish forces mostly kept a truce during WWII , not replying to the arrests of Hagana members or to the blockading of the coast against jewish refugees from the nazis.
Britain had occupied Palestine in 1917 after having beaten Turkey all the way back from the strategic Suez canal and driving on to Damascus.
Britain was then given a League of Nations Mandate to enable jews to develop their ancient lands on both sides of the Jordan. After receiving the mandate Britain tore off the major part of the lands and handed it over to a foreign arab sheikh who had been kicked out of his own territory.
Pretty soon after this Britain decided that the small amount of land left for the jewish national home should also be given over to arabs. And just before World War II broke out, in an attempt to appease pro nazi arab sentiment the British White Paper illegally ended all dreams of jewish indpendence in their own land. It halted jewish immigration and gave arabs a veto of all matters that happened in the mandatory territory. This effectively meant Britain establishing yet another arab country.
Not surprisingly jews objected to the British navy blockading the coast of Palestine to jews escaping arab and nazi persecution during WWII. In doing this Britain played its part in jewish deaths in the holocaust. This and Britain's cynically having handed Czechoslovakia in 1938 over to the nazis meant that after 1939 the jewish population saw the British army in their country for what it was, as an occupation by a colonial and imperialist power.
During WWII however the jewish population aided the British war effort, serving in the British army and supplying British armies throughout the middle east with essential supplies, hoping that the British labour party after the war would keep its promises to establish the jewish homeland as it was legally beholden by the League to do. After the War ended this did not happen, and British suppression of the jews was stepped up. Britain wanted, just as with the setting up earlier of Transjordan, to hand Palestine over to a pliable arab sheikh who would not object to the country being used as one large british military base (The RAF alone had 25 airfields in the land of Israel). Britain pre Suez crisis did not then realise that its days of playing the superpower and of dictating the fate of nations according to its imperial will were numbered.
After 1945 when the british army began to actively prepare to hand the territory over to the arabs and attempt to destroy the jewish national movement they encountered effective resistance, mostly peaceful, but something they had not before encountered. The jews mostly attempted not to take lives in their encounters with the British army, but would return fire if British patrols came upon them. The favour was not however returned, and many Irgun prisoners were brutalised, summarily executed or refused medical treatment by the British army so that they died of wounds. This was nothing new. British soldiers had used such methods to crush the arab revolt in 1936.
British airfields and bases were attacked in response to raids on kibbutzim by the British army seeking to divest the Jewish Agency of its weapons needed for defence. Britain arrested jewish leaders, yet on the day it tried to decapitate the whole jewish leadership with mass arrests, not one leader of the jewish underground forces was captured.
Dare Wilson could not admit that his own efforts along with Britain's policies of trying to suppress the jewish national movement were a complete and utter failure. Wilson trumpeted the odd success like discovering an arms dump at Yagur but nearly all the others were missed. Under the noses of the British occupation forces, the Jewish Agency set up machinery imported from the USA (without american connivance. The US embargo was strictly enforced) to make munitions for the coming "war of anihilation" promised by Azzam Pasha of the Arab League.
Britain's only real success was that of the Royal Navy which saw to it that the borders of Palestine were sealed throughout the war, thus condemning millions of jews to death in german concentration camps (Germany originally wanted to expel all jews, but Britain's diplomacy in european countries and its navy navy stopped that).
The Stern group or 'gang' as the British liked to call it, along with the Irgun and the Haganah ran rings around the British. British army and police Top Secret plans and reports were often disseminated amongst the Haganah heirarchy by the Shai (forerunner of the Mossad) even before the originally intended recipients were made aware of the contents. This was because the struggle against the British was a popular anti-colonialist struggle by the jews living in Palestine, against a superpower that just like the present Obama administration saw its interests as being served by arabs rather than a tiny jewish state.
What greater accolade can be given to the jewish resistance groups than by the CIGS Montgomery who moaned in his autobiography that Britain was, "Driven out of Palestine". Until then the British weren't used to that. They liked to flog and hang the natives into submission and could not understand it when the jews replied in kind. When they were flogged, they kidnapped british soldiers and after a trial flogged them. When Irgun prisoners were executed for possessing arms, the Irgun replied similarly.
Of course when Britain left Israel in 1948 it would not even then call it quits instead leading the Jordanian army against the new Israeli army, arming and training other arab armies such as Egypt's. Britain under Attlee and Bevin could not restrain its imperial ambitions for the new state of Israel, using its airforce to attack jewish forces. This only came to an end in January 1949 when the Israel airforce shot down British spitfires and took their pilots prisoner. Britain could not then deny, as it had up to then, that it was taking an active part in trying to destroy the new state of Israel so that it could establish a puppet arab regime in that land.
Sadly for Britain it did not realise that just as it had its imperialistic ambitions kicked out of it by the jews and Israelis, it would soon be hounded out of most of its colonies. Not that British imperialism has ever been totally crushed, with Britain's continued occupation of the Malvinos islands being a case in point.
The counter-insurgency operations described by Wilson mostly either did not happen, or were not the success he claims them to be. This was an example of how NOT to conduct operations and if this book was the textbook of British operations to counter resistance in their empire after the war, then it is no suprise that they so quickly lost it.
The 'cordon and search' operations were the greatest of failures. For their massive use of resources and the enormous disruption of civilian life, the destruction of jewish property and manhandling of people going about their daily lives, the British never netted Menahem Begin who was at one point sunning himself on Tel-Aviv beach whilst British soldiers were turning over households and making people's lives a misery less than a mile away. Even 'Black Saturday' failed to net any top jewish military commanders. The British had lousy intelligence because they alienated jewish people through their open antisemitism, their murders in captivity of captured fighters and for their open favouring of the arab cause.
Menahem Begin's 'the Revolt' recounts actual operations, the successes and the failures, honestly. Because Begin could be honest with himself, he could learn from the failures, adapt, and carry on to victory. His story of how the Irgun (there are other excellent books dealing with the other groups' contributions) systematically undermined the British imperial will to remain in Palestine is fascinating and accompanied by pictures such as one of the Irgun's deservedly unpopular inventions (with the British), a truck mounted bouncing bomb that cleared high fences surrounding military bases.
The jewish struggle as the first successful anti-imperialist struggle after 1945 gave other resistance movements such as those in India and Kenya an example to follow.
The greatest proof of British forces total failure was that despite 100,000 troops equipped with all the modern machinery of war dedicated to suppressing the jews, the moment the British army left in May 1945 Israel was able to turn itself from an underground and defend itself against regular arab armies, to eventually push back the 5 invading arab countries ( british equipped, trained and even led ) back to their own borders.
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2 reviews
WITH 6TH AIRBORNE DIVISION IN PALESTINE, 1945-1948
12 Aug 2009
Format:Hardcover
WITH 6TH AIRBORNE DIVISION IN PALESTINE, 1945-1948
MAJOR GENERAL DARE WILSON, CBE MC
PEN AND SWORD, 2008
HARDCOVER, $39.95, 273 PAGES, PHOTOGRAPHS, MAPS, APPENDICES, GRAPHS
The 6th Airborne Division was formed in the late summer of 1943 and consisted of the 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades and the 6th Air Landing Brigade. Prior to their transfer to Palestine in September, 1945, they had participated in D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and Operation VARSITY. It had been designated the Imperial Strategic Reserve at the end of the war in Europe. Administered by Great Britain under the terms of the 1923 League of Nations Mandate, Palestine was a hotbed of continuing strife between Jews and Arabs. Arab intransigence over the surge of Jewish immigration that followed the end of the war in Europe in May, 1945, led to the formation of extreme dissident Zionist groups such as IZL (Irgun Zwai Leumi), the Stern Gang, Haganah, and the Lehi (Group), all seeking to promote their aims through violence. As tensions mounted, the 3rd Parachute Brigade moved to Lydda District, incorporating Tel Aviv and the 6th Air Landing Brigade to Samaria; while the 2nd Parachute Brigade remained in Gaza. Terrorist outrages, including assassinations, and the murder of airborne soldiers were exacerbated by the failure of the British White Paper in November, 1945 to offer a political solution to the Palestine problem. The division responded with aggressive cordon and search operations, road blocks, convoy protection, and guarding key points, which became the daily routine between 1946 and early 1947. Curfews imposed during strikes and rioting in Tel Aviv earned airborne troops the Jewish "Kalanyot" nickname, which associated the maroon beret with a red poppy, that has a black heart. Jewish civilians obstructed troops by all means. These operations were aimed at locating illegal arms caches, limiting sectarian hostilities and atrocities and capturing dissidents who frequently targeted British positions and personnel. The destruction of the King David Hotel, the most notorious terrorist incident of the Mandate period, is covered in detail. In mid-1947, a United Nations Special Committee recommended a partition of Palestine between Arab and Jew. Violence intensified as each side sought advantage before its planned introduction on 15 May 1948. Bus loads of Jews were rescued by airborne soldiers from Arab ambushes and one parachute battalion in Haifa regularly held the line between inter-communal violence. The bulk of the division departed Palestine in April, 1948 and the remainder followed prior to partition in May, 1948, ending Britain's role. The 6th Airborne Division was disbanded in line with peacetime reductions prior to its withdrawal from Palestine on 1 April 1948. Originally published in 1948 as CORDON AND SEARCH when the author was a relatively junior officer, WITH 6TH AIRBORNE DIVISION IN PALESTINE, 1945-1948, remains entirely relevant not just as the definitive history of the division's exemplary tour but as an expert description of how counter-insurgency operations should be conducted.
Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida
MAJOR GENERAL DARE WILSON, CBE MC
PEN AND SWORD, 2008
HARDCOVER, $39.95, 273 PAGES, PHOTOGRAPHS, MAPS, APPENDICES, GRAPHS
The 6th Airborne Division was formed in the late summer of 1943 and consisted of the 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades and the 6th Air Landing Brigade. Prior to their transfer to Palestine in September, 1945, they had participated in D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and Operation VARSITY. It had been designated the Imperial Strategic Reserve at the end of the war in Europe. Administered by Great Britain under the terms of the 1923 League of Nations Mandate, Palestine was a hotbed of continuing strife between Jews and Arabs. Arab intransigence over the surge of Jewish immigration that followed the end of the war in Europe in May, 1945, led to the formation of extreme dissident Zionist groups such as IZL (Irgun Zwai Leumi), the Stern Gang, Haganah, and the Lehi (Group), all seeking to promote their aims through violence. As tensions mounted, the 3rd Parachute Brigade moved to Lydda District, incorporating Tel Aviv and the 6th Air Landing Brigade to Samaria; while the 2nd Parachute Brigade remained in Gaza. Terrorist outrages, including assassinations, and the murder of airborne soldiers were exacerbated by the failure of the British White Paper in November, 1945 to offer a political solution to the Palestine problem. The division responded with aggressive cordon and search operations, road blocks, convoy protection, and guarding key points, which became the daily routine between 1946 and early 1947. Curfews imposed during strikes and rioting in Tel Aviv earned airborne troops the Jewish "Kalanyot" nickname, which associated the maroon beret with a red poppy, that has a black heart. Jewish civilians obstructed troops by all means. These operations were aimed at locating illegal arms caches, limiting sectarian hostilities and atrocities and capturing dissidents who frequently targeted British positions and personnel. The destruction of the King David Hotel, the most notorious terrorist incident of the Mandate period, is covered in detail. In mid-1947, a United Nations Special Committee recommended a partition of Palestine between Arab and Jew. Violence intensified as each side sought advantage before its planned introduction on 15 May 1948. Bus loads of Jews were rescued by airborne soldiers from Arab ambushes and one parachute battalion in Haifa regularly held the line between inter-communal violence. The bulk of the division departed Palestine in April, 1948 and the remainder followed prior to partition in May, 1948, ending Britain's role. The 6th Airborne Division was disbanded in line with peacetime reductions prior to its withdrawal from Palestine on 1 April 1948. Originally published in 1948 as CORDON AND SEARCH when the author was a relatively junior officer, WITH 6TH AIRBORNE DIVISION IN PALESTINE, 1945-1948, remains entirely relevant not just as the definitive history of the division's exemplary tour but as an expert description of how counter-insurgency operations should be conducted.
Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A self serving account of the unsuccessful British attempts to crush the jewish national movement
30 Jan 2012
Format:Hardcover
It is said that the victors write the history. With the middle east that often doesn't seem to be the case. Dare Wilson's book is one such book that is nevertheless possibly useful in showing how a military man can so misread a situation, fail at the time and then fail utterly to draw the right conclusions afterwards.
This book is if anything an example of how best to alienate a civilian population and prepare the way for your own defeat. If it is read at all it should be read in conjunction with Menahem Begin's 'Revolt'. Begin was the commander of the victorious Irgun, Britain's nemesis.
Montgomery the Chief of Britain's Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in his autobiography admitted that his country was 'driven out' of the country.
The British army left with its tail between its legs having alienated the jewish and arab civilian populations and after being harried and worn down by jewish underground forces. Jewish forces mostly kept a truce during WWII , not replying to the arrests of Hagana members or to the blockading of the coast against jewish refugees from the nazis.
Britain had occupied Palestine in 1917 after having beaten Turkey all the way back from the strategic Suez canal and driving on to Damascus.
Britain was then given a League of Nations Mandate to enable jews to develop their ancient lands on both sides of the Jordan. After receiving the mandate Britain tore off the major part of the lands and handed it over to a foreign arab sheikh who had been kicked out of his own territory.
Pretty soon after this Britain decided that the small amount of land left for the jewish national home should also be given over to arabs. And just before World War II broke out, in an attempt to appease pro nazi arab sentiment the British White Paper illegally ended all dreams of jewish indpendence in their own land. It halted jewish immigration and gave arabs a veto of all matters that happened in the mandatory territory. This effectively meant Britain establishing yet another arab country.
Not surprisingly jews objected to the British navy blockading the coast of Palestine to jews escaping arab and nazi persecution during WWII. In doing this Britain played its part in jewish deaths in the holocaust. This and Britain's cynically having handed Czechoslovakia in 1938 over to the nazis for "peace in our time" meant that after 1939 the jewish population saw the British army in their country for what it was, as an occupation by a colonial and imperialist power that kept its promises in the breach, and that would sacrifice any other nation on the altar of its own self-interest (as it interpreted them at different times).
During WWII however the jewish population of Israel aided the British war effort enormously, serving in the British army and even more important keeping British armies throughout the middle east supplied with essential goods and munitions, hoping that Britain after the war would keep its promises to establish the jewish homeland as it was legally beholden by the League of Nations Mandate to do.
After the War ended this did not happen, and British suppression of the jews was stepped up. Britain wanted, just as with the setting up earlier of Transjordan, to hand Palestine over to a pliable arab sheikh who would not object to the country being used as one large british military base (The RAF alone had 25 airfields in the land of Israel). Britain pre Suez crisis did not then realise that its days of playing superpower and of dictating the fate of nations according to its imperial will were numbered.
After 1945 when the british army began to actively prepare to hand what was left of the territory of Israel over to the arabs and attempted to destroy the jewish national movement, they encountered effective resistance (mostly peaceful such as organising the immigration of refugees from the holocaust). This was something the British had not before encountered, a parallel state organised, educated and not needing the British occupiers to 'civilise' them. They were often highly educated and far above the league of their British rulers.
The jewish military resistance mostly attempted not to take lives in their encounters with the British army, but would return fire if British patrols came upon them. The favour was not however returned, and many Irgun prisoners were brutalised, summarily executed or refused medical treatment by the British army so that they died of wounds. This was nothing new. British soldiers had used such methods to crush the arab revolt in 1936.
British airfields and bases were attacked in response to raids the nascent institutions of Israel and on kibbutzim by the British army seeking to divest the Jewish Agency of its organisation, and weapons needed for defence. Britain arrested jewish leaders, yet on the day it tried to decapitate the whole jewish leadership with mass arrests, not one leader of the jewish underground forces was captured.
Dare Wilson could not admit that his own efforts along with Britain's policies of trying to suppress the jewish national movement were a complete and utter failure. Wilson trumpeted the odd success like discovering an arms dump at Yagur but nearly all the others were missed. Under the noses of the British forces the Jewish Agency set up machinery imported from the USA (without american connivance. The US embargo was strictly enforced) to make munitions for the coming "war of anihilation" against jews promised by Azzam Pasha of the Arab League.
Britain's only real success was that of the Royal Navy which saw to it that the borders of Palestine were sealed throughout the war, thus condemning millions of jews to death in german concentration camps (Germany originally wanted to expel all jews, but Britain's diplomacy in european countries and its navy navy stopped that).
The Stern group or 'gang' as the British liked to call it, along with the Irgun and the Haganah ran rings around the British. British army and police 'Top Secret' plans and reports were often disseminated amongst the Haganah heirarchy by the Shai (forerunner of the Mossad) even before the originally intended recipients were made aware of the contents. This was because the struggle against the British was a popular anti-colonialist struggle by the jews living in Palestine, against a superpower that just like the present Obama administration saw its interests as being served by arabs rather than a tiny jewish state that everyone 'knew' would never be able to survive. The British believed that jewish forces would crumble in a few weeks once their arab friends invaded in the wake of British withdrawal. Marshall in the USA gave a similar assessment of the situation.
What greater accolade can be given to the jewish resistance groups than by the CIGS General Montgomery who moaned in his autobiography that Britain was, "Driven out of Palestine". Until then the British weren't used to that. They liked to flog and hang 'the natives' into submission and could not understand it when the jews replied in kind. When jews were flogged as a humiliating reminder who the imperial rulers were in the Land of Israel, british soldiers in turn were captured, and after a trial also flogged. When Irgun prisoners were executed for possessing arms, the Irgun replied similarly. The message was simply, 'do as you will be done by'. Britain could not accept that, and in the end decided to leave and let its arab proteges invade and do what even Britain could not get away with, the ethnic cleansing and genocide of jews of the Land of Israel.
When Britain left Israel in 1948 British army officers led the Jordanian army against the new Israeli army, arming and training other arab armies such as Egypt's. British artillery officers aimed the heavy guns which fired into jewish civilian areas of Jerusalem from the commanding heights by the Tomb of the prophet Samuel. At that time in May 1948 jews had no artillery of their own to defend themselves (these same lands in Samaria palestinians wish Israel to give to them, which would enable the exercise to be repeated again).
Britain under Attlee and Bevin could not restrain its imperial ambitions for the new state of Israel, using its airforce to attack jewish forces. This only came to an end in January 1949 when the newly established Israel airforce shot down British spitfires and took their pilots prisoner. Britain could not then deny, as it had up to then, that it was taking an active part in trying to destroy the new state of Israel (so that it could establish a puppet arab regime in that land).
Sadly for Britain it did not realise that just as it had its imperialistic ambitions kicked out of it by the jews and Israelis, it would soon be hounded out of most of its colonies. Not that British imperialism has ever been totally crushed, with Britain's continued occupation of the Malvinos islands being a case in point.
The counter-insurgency operations described by Wilson mostly either did not happen, or were not the success he claims them to be. This self aggrandising book was an example of how NOT to conduct operations. If this book was the textbook of British operations to counter resistance in their empire after the war, then it is no suprise that they so quickly lost it.
The 'cordon and search' operations were the greatest of failures. For their massive use of resources and the enormous disruption of civilian life, the destruction of jewish property and manhandling of people going about their daily lives, the British got meagre results. They never netted Menahem Begin the Irgun head who was at one point sunning himself on Tel-Aviv beach and issuing commands to his forces which were conducting operations even whilst British soldiers were turning over households and making people's lives a misery less than a mile away. Even though Beigin was recognised by non-members of his organisation the hated occupier never received the information as to his whereabouts that they had offered large rewards for.
Even 'Black Saturday' failed to net any top jewish military commanders. The British had lousy intelligence because they alienated jewish people through their open antisemitism, their attacks on civilians, their murders in captivity of captured fighters and above all for their open favouring of the arab cause.
Menahem Begin's 'the Revolt' recounts actual operations, the successes and the failures, honestly. Because Begin could be honest with himself, he could learn from the failures, adapt, and carry on to victory. His story of how the Irgun (there are other excellent books dealing with the other groups' contributions) systematically undermined the British imperial will to remain in Palestine is fascinating and accompanied by pictures such as one of the Irgun's deservedly unpopular inventions (with the British), a truck mounted bouncing bomb that cleared high fences surrounding military bases.
The jewish struggle as the first successful anti-imperialist struggle after 1945 gave other resistance movements such as those in India and Kenya an example to follow.
The greatest proof of British forces total failure was that despite 100,000 troops equipped with all the modern machinery of war and a secret police effort dedicated to suppressing the jews, the moment the British army and administration left in May 1945 Israel was able to turn itself from an underground and defend itself against regular arab armies. They would within the year push back the 5 invading arab countries ( british equipped, trained and even led ).
This book is if anything an example of how best to alienate a civilian population and prepare the way for your own defeat. If it is read at all it should be read in conjunction with Menahem Begin's 'Revolt'. Begin was the commander of the victorious Irgun, Britain's nemesis.
Montgomery the Chief of Britain's Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in his autobiography admitted that his country was 'driven out' of the country.
The British army left with its tail between its legs having alienated the jewish and arab civilian populations and after being harried and worn down by jewish underground forces. Jewish forces mostly kept a truce during WWII , not replying to the arrests of Hagana members or to the blockading of the coast against jewish refugees from the nazis.
Britain had occupied Palestine in 1917 after having beaten Turkey all the way back from the strategic Suez canal and driving on to Damascus.
Britain was then given a League of Nations Mandate to enable jews to develop their ancient lands on both sides of the Jordan. After receiving the mandate Britain tore off the major part of the lands and handed it over to a foreign arab sheikh who had been kicked out of his own territory.
Pretty soon after this Britain decided that the small amount of land left for the jewish national home should also be given over to arabs. And just before World War II broke out, in an attempt to appease pro nazi arab sentiment the British White Paper illegally ended all dreams of jewish indpendence in their own land. It halted jewish immigration and gave arabs a veto of all matters that happened in the mandatory territory. This effectively meant Britain establishing yet another arab country.
Not surprisingly jews objected to the British navy blockading the coast of Palestine to jews escaping arab and nazi persecution during WWII. In doing this Britain played its part in jewish deaths in the holocaust. This and Britain's cynically having handed Czechoslovakia in 1938 over to the nazis for "peace in our time" meant that after 1939 the jewish population saw the British army in their country for what it was, as an occupation by a colonial and imperialist power that kept its promises in the breach, and that would sacrifice any other nation on the altar of its own self-interest (as it interpreted them at different times).
During WWII however the jewish population of Israel aided the British war effort enormously, serving in the British army and even more important keeping British armies throughout the middle east supplied with essential goods and munitions, hoping that Britain after the war would keep its promises to establish the jewish homeland as it was legally beholden by the League of Nations Mandate to do.
After the War ended this did not happen, and British suppression of the jews was stepped up. Britain wanted, just as with the setting up earlier of Transjordan, to hand Palestine over to a pliable arab sheikh who would not object to the country being used as one large british military base (The RAF alone had 25 airfields in the land of Israel). Britain pre Suez crisis did not then realise that its days of playing superpower and of dictating the fate of nations according to its imperial will were numbered.
After 1945 when the british army began to actively prepare to hand what was left of the territory of Israel over to the arabs and attempted to destroy the jewish national movement, they encountered effective resistance (mostly peaceful such as organising the immigration of refugees from the holocaust). This was something the British had not before encountered, a parallel state organised, educated and not needing the British occupiers to 'civilise' them. They were often highly educated and far above the league of their British rulers.
The jewish military resistance mostly attempted not to take lives in their encounters with the British army, but would return fire if British patrols came upon them. The favour was not however returned, and many Irgun prisoners were brutalised, summarily executed or refused medical treatment by the British army so that they died of wounds. This was nothing new. British soldiers had used such methods to crush the arab revolt in 1936.
British airfields and bases were attacked in response to raids the nascent institutions of Israel and on kibbutzim by the British army seeking to divest the Jewish Agency of its organisation, and weapons needed for defence. Britain arrested jewish leaders, yet on the day it tried to decapitate the whole jewish leadership with mass arrests, not one leader of the jewish underground forces was captured.
Dare Wilson could not admit that his own efforts along with Britain's policies of trying to suppress the jewish national movement were a complete and utter failure. Wilson trumpeted the odd success like discovering an arms dump at Yagur but nearly all the others were missed. Under the noses of the British forces the Jewish Agency set up machinery imported from the USA (without american connivance. The US embargo was strictly enforced) to make munitions for the coming "war of anihilation" against jews promised by Azzam Pasha of the Arab League.
Britain's only real success was that of the Royal Navy which saw to it that the borders of Palestine were sealed throughout the war, thus condemning millions of jews to death in german concentration camps (Germany originally wanted to expel all jews, but Britain's diplomacy in european countries and its navy navy stopped that).
The Stern group or 'gang' as the British liked to call it, along with the Irgun and the Haganah ran rings around the British. British army and police 'Top Secret' plans and reports were often disseminated amongst the Haganah heirarchy by the Shai (forerunner of the Mossad) even before the originally intended recipients were made aware of the contents. This was because the struggle against the British was a popular anti-colonialist struggle by the jews living in Palestine, against a superpower that just like the present Obama administration saw its interests as being served by arabs rather than a tiny jewish state that everyone 'knew' would never be able to survive. The British believed that jewish forces would crumble in a few weeks once their arab friends invaded in the wake of British withdrawal. Marshall in the USA gave a similar assessment of the situation.
What greater accolade can be given to the jewish resistance groups than by the CIGS General Montgomery who moaned in his autobiography that Britain was, "Driven out of Palestine". Until then the British weren't used to that. They liked to flog and hang 'the natives' into submission and could not understand it when the jews replied in kind. When jews were flogged as a humiliating reminder who the imperial rulers were in the Land of Israel, british soldiers in turn were captured, and after a trial also flogged. When Irgun prisoners were executed for possessing arms, the Irgun replied similarly. The message was simply, 'do as you will be done by'. Britain could not accept that, and in the end decided to leave and let its arab proteges invade and do what even Britain could not get away with, the ethnic cleansing and genocide of jews of the Land of Israel.
When Britain left Israel in 1948 British army officers led the Jordanian army against the new Israeli army, arming and training other arab armies such as Egypt's. British artillery officers aimed the heavy guns which fired into jewish civilian areas of Jerusalem from the commanding heights by the Tomb of the prophet Samuel. At that time in May 1948 jews had no artillery of their own to defend themselves (these same lands in Samaria palestinians wish Israel to give to them, which would enable the exercise to be repeated again).
Britain under Attlee and Bevin could not restrain its imperial ambitions for the new state of Israel, using its airforce to attack jewish forces. This only came to an end in January 1949 when the newly established Israel airforce shot down British spitfires and took their pilots prisoner. Britain could not then deny, as it had up to then, that it was taking an active part in trying to destroy the new state of Israel (so that it could establish a puppet arab regime in that land).
Sadly for Britain it did not realise that just as it had its imperialistic ambitions kicked out of it by the jews and Israelis, it would soon be hounded out of most of its colonies. Not that British imperialism has ever been totally crushed, with Britain's continued occupation of the Malvinos islands being a case in point.
The counter-insurgency operations described by Wilson mostly either did not happen, or were not the success he claims them to be. This self aggrandising book was an example of how NOT to conduct operations. If this book was the textbook of British operations to counter resistance in their empire after the war, then it is no suprise that they so quickly lost it.
The 'cordon and search' operations were the greatest of failures. For their massive use of resources and the enormous disruption of civilian life, the destruction of jewish property and manhandling of people going about their daily lives, the British got meagre results. They never netted Menahem Begin the Irgun head who was at one point sunning himself on Tel-Aviv beach and issuing commands to his forces which were conducting operations even whilst British soldiers were turning over households and making people's lives a misery less than a mile away. Even though Beigin was recognised by non-members of his organisation the hated occupier never received the information as to his whereabouts that they had offered large rewards for.
Even 'Black Saturday' failed to net any top jewish military commanders. The British had lousy intelligence because they alienated jewish people through their open antisemitism, their attacks on civilians, their murders in captivity of captured fighters and above all for their open favouring of the arab cause.
Menahem Begin's 'the Revolt' recounts actual operations, the successes and the failures, honestly. Because Begin could be honest with himself, he could learn from the failures, adapt, and carry on to victory. His story of how the Irgun (there are other excellent books dealing with the other groups' contributions) systematically undermined the British imperial will to remain in Palestine is fascinating and accompanied by pictures such as one of the Irgun's deservedly unpopular inventions (with the British), a truck mounted bouncing bomb that cleared high fences surrounding military bases.
The jewish struggle as the first successful anti-imperialist struggle after 1945 gave other resistance movements such as those in India and Kenya an example to follow.
The greatest proof of British forces total failure was that despite 100,000 troops equipped with all the modern machinery of war and a secret police effort dedicated to suppressing the jews, the moment the British army and administration left in May 1945 Israel was able to turn itself from an underground and defend itself against regular arab armies. They would within the year push back the 5 invading arab countries ( british equipped, trained and even led ).
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