READING: Rose, ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ : Voices From Palestine 1945-1948

Norman Rose
‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ : Voices From Palestine 1945-1948
2009

Below is my own uncharacteristically self-indulgent exploration of the historical background to today’s lethal Israeli attacks on another Gaza aid flotilla, combining what we’ve learned today with the history of Israel as told by Norman Rose, with a bit of my own family history thrown in. It does go on a bit but it's worth sticking with it, if only to see the glaring parallels between the birth of Israel and today’s attempts to maintain its stranglehold on the region.

IT has often been remarked by my friends and colleagues that my bookshelf resembles a reading list from a dire Middle East studies course. Most react with horror when I tell them that I read these books for leisure as much as education. It’s difficult to pinpoint where my fascination with the Middle East began but perhaps, like Robert Fisk, it lies in a need to understand and atone for the sins of the father.

In his opus The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest Of The Middle East [which I have shamefully yet to finish], Fisk recounts how his father Bill Fisk was duped, along with millions of other young men, into believing that the war he was fighting in 1914-18 was: “The Great War For Civilisation”. Nearly a century later, Robert Fisk is still reporting on “The Clash of Civilisations” between Christianity, Judaism and Islam in the Middle East, an area carved up in the spoils of what Fisk calls “my father’s war”.

My own atonement isn’t for the sins of my father, but for my grandfather Pte Richard McLaughlin, a sentryman in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers who fought in the last days of the British mandate in Palestine. Palestine 1945-1948 was “my grandfather’s war” [although it must be noted that this war was no more my grandfather’s than World War I was Bill Fisk’s. Both were conscripts.]

My grandfather died when I was very young, but when I was old enough to ask the ubiquitous question, “What did grandad do in the war?”, I recall being disappointed to hear that he was too young to fight in World War II but had completed his National Service in a mysterious land called Palestine.

He didn’t talk about it much, according to my father, save for a short, enigmatic, recollection of “dodging stones thrown from both sides of the road – with Arabs on the one side and Jews on the other”.

“Why would anyone fight in a war where neither side wanted you to be there?” I recall my child’s mind struggling to comprehend.

As I write, an adult still working to understand this “Clash of Civilisations” from my own little corner of the world, a diplomatic row is unfolding over Israel’s attack on an aid flotilla attempting to break their blockade on Gaza, an attack which left at least nine dead and dozens more injured. While reporting on fears for the wellbeing of Edinburgh-based Gaza aid worker Theresa McDermott today, I was struck by the parallels between this unfolding drama and the book I had already begun preparing for review on my blog’s ongoing list of personal reading.

For this reason, I have cast aside my usual thrifty editing to record my thoughts more deeply.

Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ is the first book I’ve read that’s come close to clarifying my childish confusion about “my grandfather’s war.
The clearest statement I have yet found which comes close to articulating my childhood quandary can be found in chapter two of Rose’s relatively accessible history, from the first military and later civilian Governor of Jerusalem Ronald Storrs [the man T.E. Lawrence described in Seven Pillars as “the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East”].

“I am not wholly for either, but for both,” said Storrs in 1920. “Two hours of Arab grievances drive me to Synagogue, while after an intensive course of Zionist propaganda I am prepared to embrace Islam.”

Listening to the conflicting reports of today’s attack on the Gaza flotilla I find myself in the same position as Storrs. Today’s protestors were undoubtedly sailing in international waters, attempting to run a blockade which is legally questionable at best, while carrying aid to an area which resembles the Nazi ghettos that Israel’s founders used as moral justification for a Jewish homeland. This moral justification was articulated by sympathetic Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton: “There was a strong case for [a Jewish national home] before the war. There is an irresistible case now, after the unspeakable atrocities of [the Nazis].”

After listening to Israel’s defence today that their forces opened fire only after they were “clubbed, beaten and stabbed” [supported by television footage which seems to show supposedly “peaceful” protestors attacking Israel’s boarding party], and state their belief that the flotilla was, at least partly, organised by groups with “ties to Global Jihad, Al-Qaeda and Hamas” [something I have no evidence for but I don’t find entirely implausible that some Jihadi sympathisers were aboard] and I find myself back in the middle.

However, what Storrs was yet to witness was Israel’s disproportionate response to any provocation.

When British authorities carried out arms-raids on Jewish settlements during Operation Agatha in 1946, and the Zionists responded by blowing up British command HQ at the King David Hotel. When Egypt instigated a blockade on Israel in 1967 similar to the blockade that Israel now imposes on Gaza [with, it must be noted, the help of modern-day Egypt’s policing of Rafah], Israel launched a pre-emptive strike which annexed most of the region in six days. When Israel-friendly Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel was assassinated in 1982, the Israeli Defence Force [under orders from defence minister and future president Ariel Sharon] orchestrated a brutal massacre of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. When Lebanese militants again enraged Israel in 2006 by killing a dozen soldiers, Israel responded with a devastating bombing raid killing at least 1,500 people.

Once again we see the disproportionate response in action. When protestors attacked with sticks, stones and knives they were dropped by automatic weapons.

Further parallel’s between today’s events and those recounted by Rose in 1945-48 can be found in one of the most decisive events in turning public opinion against Britain’s continuing mandate in Palestine, the bid to prevent the SS Exodus boat breaking a British blockade imposed to prevent uncontrolled post-war immigration into Palestine.

According to Rose, American journalist Izzy Stone “accused the British of murder and piracy on the high seas , pointing out that the Exodus had been attacked in international waters” [a charge levelled at Israel today] and includes an account by Captain Stanley Brian de Courcy-Ireland, commander of British blockade flagship Ajax, which is absolutely dripping with contemporary resonances:

“The [British] boarding parties soon learned what they were up against. Those that got over were assaulted from all angles...I was forced to draw my revolver and fired eleven warning shots. One of the last shots, however, I used to stop a lad of 17 or 18 from collecting my scalp with a meat axe. He got it in the stomach.”

Israel has already faced a wave of global condemnation for the deaths on the flotilla today, but the repercussions for this are yet to be seen. Britain may have been Israel’s midwife but its international influence is now too small for Israel to bother taking notice. It remains to be seen how USA, the nation that nurtured Israel through its troublesome adolescence first by turning a blind eye to illegal arms smuggling during the mandate and then becoming its chief arms supplier, responds in the long term.

The US remains in thrall to the Jewish lobby and one of the most entertaining episodes that shows this lobby at work in the last days of the mandate recounted in Rose involved future mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek, Mafia boss Frank Costello’s New York nightclub the Copacabana and “Zionist sympathiser” Frank Sinatra taking centre stage in illegal arms smuggling, using tactics not too dissimilar to those allegedly used by Palestinian supporters in Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran today.

“Kollek recorded liaisons with spies, mobsters, movie moguls, statesmen bankers, professors, industrialists and newspapermen. The Hagana [the principle Jewish military organisation in mandated Palestine] arms mission profited greatly from the vast amounts of army surplus supplies left over from the war [including] rifles, machine guns, engine parts and aircraft...

“To finance their vast operation Kollek relied on donations from wealthy Jewish backers as well as from the Jewish agency...

“Transferring money – or bribes – to Kollek’s shady contacts was always a problem...It was common knowledge that Frank Sinatra was sympathetic to the Zionist cause. Only the previous autumn he had sung at a rally at the Hollywood Bowl attended by 20,000 Zionist supporters. The solution was logical. Kollek: “I walked out of the front door of the building with a satchel and the Feds followed me. Out of the back door went Sinatra, carrying a paper bag filled with cash.”

“Perhaps for the only time in his career, Sinatra had played an unscripted role, that of ‘bagman’ for the Haganah.”