These Death Squads were led by Wingate armed and trained Zionists to attack Arab villagers. Wingate was so brutal even his own men complained.
Wingate became politically involved with a number of Zionist leaders and became an ardent Christian Zionist himself. He always returned to Kibbutz En Harod, because he felt familiar with the biblical judge Gideon, who fought in this area, and used it himself as a military base. He formulated the idea of raising small assault units of British-led Jewish commandos armed with grenades and light infantry small arms to combat the Arab revolt. Wingate took his idea personally to Archibald Wavell, who was then the commander of British forces in Palestine.
After Wavell gave his permission, Wingate convinced the Zionist Jewish Agency and the leadership of Haganah, the Jewish armed group. In June 1938, the new British commander, General Haining, gave his permission to create the Special Night Squads (SNSs), armed groups formed of British and Haganah volunteers. The Jewish Agency helped pay salaries and other costs of the Haganah personnel. The SNSs were regarded as “well-oiled killing machines”, while another British official called them “just thuggery really”.
Wingate trained, commanded and accompanied them on their patrols.
Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk wrote about Wingate’s brutality.
The operations came more frequently and became more ruthless. The Arabs complained to the British about Wingate’s brutality and harsh punitive methods. Even members of the field squads complained … that during the raids on Bedouin encampments Wingate would behave with extreme viciousness and fire mercilessly. Wingate believed in the principle of surprise in punishment, which was designed to confine the gangs to their villages. More than once he had lined rioters up in a row and shot them in cold blood. Wingate did not try to justify himself; weapons and war cannot be pure.
Wingate disliked Arabs, once shouting at Haganah fighters after a June 1938 attack on a village on the border between Mandatory Palestine and Lebanon, “I think you are all totally ignorant in your Ramat Yochanan [the training base for the Haganah since you do not even know the elementary use of bayonets when attacking dirty Arabs: how can you put your left foot in front?”
But the brutal tactics proved effective in quelling the uprising, and Wingate was awarded the DSO in 1938. In September 1938, after a rebel mine killed the Jewish leader of Ein Harod settlement, Chaim Sturman, Wingate let out a “cry, more a scream than an order” and carried out a reprisal operation on the Arab quarter of Beisan, near the explosion. He ordered “the killing of every Arab discovered in the vicinity of the raid.”
“Everybody into the cars!” … . We grabbed our rifles and within a few seconds were all in the cars. Without any plan of action or preparation, with Wingate at our head, we entered the Arab part of Beit Shean, which swarmed with gang members, and began to beat and trample anyone in our path. Wingate himself went out of control, entering stores and destroying whatever was in them. An hour later we returned to Ein Harod.
Working with the British freed the Zionists from censure by the British Colonial Administration. Beatings, looting, murder. “The SNS pushed British counter insurgency to an unrestrained extreme, making any chance of normal relations with Palestinians impossible” and Orde is still proudly celebrated to this day as the grandfather of modern guerilla warfare.
Yitzhak Sadeh, future commander of Haganah terrorist group, Palmach, was in the SNS, as was Moshe Dyan (who later became Israel’s Defense Minister), and Yigal Allon (who later became Prime Minister of Israel for a few weeks).
“The mercurial Wingate was a fanatical supporter of the Jewish State and he filled the SNS’ with Jewish soldiers training for a future war of survival against the local Palestinians, which would come in 1948. This, alongside the lack of a formal chain of command, meant that the brutality by the SNS quickly spiraled out of control, upsetting senior officers mindful of the negative impact of atrocity stories.
British SNS brutality prompted Jewish soldiers, taught them how to deal with insurgency, and insurgents, and set within a colonial legal framework of collective punishment and punitive action that normalized draconian action.
Wingate’s contacts included Chaim Weizmann, and the heads of all the settlements. They all knew Wingate.” “Wingate’s Palestine papers prove he was exchanging masses of secret documents with the Jews.”
Wingate was so deeply associated with political causes in Palestine that his superiors considered him compromised as an intelligence officer in the country. He was promoting his own agenda rather than that of the army or the government. In May 1939, he was transferred to Britain. Wingate became a hero of the Yishuv (the Jewish Community), and was loved by leaders such as Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan, who trained under him and said that Wingate had “taught us everything we know.”
Wingate himself became problematic enough that he was kicked out of Palestine.
During WW2 the Nazis adapted SNS tactics which they called, Night and Fog. The Israelis use the same tactics today in almost nightly raids against Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called Orde “one of the most brilliant and courageous figures of the Second World War […] a man of genius who might well have become also a man of destiny.” However, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery harshly said in 1966 that he thought the major general was “mentally unbalanced and that the best thing he ever did was to get killed in a plane crash in 1944.”
~ Original post…
* * *
From: General Orde Wingate: Brilliant Eccentric
“…He was married in 1935, and soon after, was posted to the British Mandate in Palestine (today’s Israel). There, he was decidedly pro-Jewish in a majority Arab country and in an army where many of the officers did not like the natives, either Arab or Jew. Many believe that his conservative religious upbringing caused him to believe in the creation of a state of Israel.
Almost from the start, Wingate pushed the boundaries of his duties, and some say he exceeded them, helping militant Jewish groups with money, arms and intelligence. Wingate, with the reluctant support of General Archibald Wavell, aided militant Jewish groups in attacks against Arab militants during the Arab uprisings of the late 1930s.
Finally, however, Wingate made a public speech in which he called for the establishment of a Jewish state, which caused his dismissal. However, the speech and his leadership gained him the everlasting gratitude of the future Israelis, especially the famed general Moshe Dayan. Today, a square in Jerusalem, a national forest, a youth village and many streets in Israel are named after him…”
