Shoshana🦁🌞🇸🇨🪬🇮🇷@Shoshana51728
In 1946, Jon Kimche, a British correspondent for Reuters, travelled to the Middle East to cover the events surrounding the Mandate of Palestine . Kimche had access to all the players, including Azzam Pasha, Walter Smart, Hassan al Banna, King Abdullah,Alec Kirkbride, Tewfic Suweidi, Ben-Gurion, Sir John Shaw , Glubb Pasha and many , many more.
After personally witnessing the events and reporting on them extensively between 1946 and 1949, in 1950 Kimche wrote a book entitled Seven Fallen Pillars. The book is a fascinating recount of , among other things, the war in Mandatory Palestine and the British government's collusion efforts with the Arab states to attempt to destroy the Yishuv and prevent the Jews from gaining independence.
I particularly enjoy reading books written in the 1950s about pre-state Israel and the newly formed state of Israel because they were written contemporaneously as events unfolded without the new left's fictional post -colonial narrative .
Following are just a few of many incredible events described by Kimche:
🚨"On May 15th, when Egyptian Spitfires raided Tel-Aviv, one was brought down almost undamaged with a lucky machine-gun bullet in the radiator. I interviewed the pilot a few hours later.I was alone with him, and we talked freely. He was the son of the Chief of the Cairo Cavalry Police. He had trained to fly with the R.A.F.
at Ismaliah, on the Suez Canal. Until forty-seven hours earlier he had been special assistant to the Under-Secretary for Air in Cairo.
He was Israel's first prisoner-of-war and was installed, when I saw him, in a one-room bungalow in the garden of the Tel-Aviv Regiment's H.Q., a private house provided by one of the officers. The Egyptian, who claimed to be Egypt's second best pilot and appeared to me a pleasant and intelligent young man of about twenty-three, was excited and a little frightened.
He was suspicious that his treatment- cigarettes, good food and books boded no good for him. I asked him what he thought about flying over an undefended town and dropping bombs on it without even a declaration of war. He said he could not understand the situation at all. He and his co-pilots had been briefed before they set out to invade Palestine. They had been told that there would be no opposition either on land or in the air, that the Jews had neither army nor arms, that the Jews were actually starving. It did not look like it to him from the meals he was receiving as a prisoner.
" We Egyptians have started this war for the British. The British wanted us to liquidate Zionism because it was difficult for them to do so. They have told us that we shall not meet any serious opposition, that the army will be able to reach Tel-Aviv in less than a week.
But it seems to me we have been told lies. I ask you to warn your English readers that the Egyptians will not fight if they meet strong opposition. The British will have to help us much more. We need more planes and guns. Unless the British support us, we shall lose this war. That would be a British defeat as much as ours," he concluded suddenly."
🚨"It must be admitted that in other ways than the direct supply of arms Britain did a great deal to help the Arab cause. Indeed from the moment the U.N. Assembly had voted the partition plan on November 29th, 1947, the Trinity of British policy makers moved from indirect diplomatic assistance to direci assistance of the Arabs on the spot.
On the third day after the passage of the Assembly Resolution, this help started in earnest. A crowd of Arab youths invaded the business centre of Jerusalem. They assaulted Jewish shopkeepers and smashed windows. Rather to the surprise of the mob, the police did not interfere. British police confined themselves to the evacuation of Jews from the riot area and to preventing Haganah units from taking direct action against the rioters. Thus unhindered, the Arab crowd grew rapidly in numbers and violence. Unhampered by police, it started to loot the shops and fire the buildings. Only after the damage had been done did the authorities move in. The Arab crowd was driven out of the blazing business centre, and the Jews prevented from salvaging what was left or of extinguishing the fires which still blazed. The Mandatory Authority had given its first interpretation of the " neutrality" it proposed to practise. More were
soon to follow.
After the firing of the centre of Jerusalem, the threats of war from the Arab capitals grew louder and more menacing.
The Arab Governments supported the recruiting of volunteers Who would fight with the " Palestine Liberation Army", which was being organized and trained in Syria. Again all eyes turned to Whitehall. The Arab states had undertaken to arm this force; would the British continue to supply arms to the Arab sales? The Liberation Army proposed to move into Palestine and commence its operations there; would the Mandatory Power, with its large garrison in Palestine, permit this?"
🚨"In the days that followed November 29th, 1947, the world waited and speculated. The signs began to mount with ominous insistence. On January 5th, 1948, the British concluded an extremely generous sterling agreement with Egypt, releasing for Egypt's immediate use $25 million.
On January 9th, the first organized formations of the Palestine Liberation Army, estimated at between 600 and 1,000 men, crossed into Palestine from Syria and attacked two Jewish settlements."
🚨"On January 12th the Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that Britain was supplying arms to Egypt, Iraq and Transjordan, in accordance with the terms of the Treaties of Alliance with these countries.
On January 17th, a group of thirty-five students from the Hebrew University were found massacred on the way to the Hebron Hills where they had gone to relieve the besieged settlement of Kfar Etzion.
On January 21st, Sir Alexander Cadogan told the UN.
Palestine Commission that it was "not possible
for Britain to comply with the U.N. Assembly's recommendation for the opening of a seaport in Palestine to resume Jewish immigration.
To emphasize that this was no playing with words, the British naval patrol, assisted by air reconnaissance and a spy net extending to every Mediterranean port, was turned into into a blockade of the coast of Palestine , most of which was predominantly Jewish. For twenty-four hours every day the destroyer patrol moved to and fro, visible throughout the hours of daylight to every Jew on Tel- Aviv. Ships suspected of carrying arms were trailed into territorial waters and taken to Haifa to be searched. Refugee ships were arrested and the immigrants deported to Cyprus.
While Sir Alexander was actually explaining the moral compulsion on the British Government to blockade the Palestine Jews and prevent either arms or immigrants reaching them, second large Arab force was crossing unhindered into British Palestine, and continued unhindered some thirty miles inland to the H.Q. already established at Tubas. Headed by a Syrian, Safa Bek, the force of some 700 men came in twenty trucks with Syrian number plates. They were all armed with rifles and they had five mortars and a wireless transmitter. They were in American uniforms with shoulder flashes to indicate their country of origin. The British Army Command had been warned of this impending move, but by some strange coincidence the one road by which the men could come to Tubas was unpatrolled by even one of the 50,000 British soldiers still in Palestine.
Four days later Fawzi el Kaukji, one of the leaders of the 1936 rebellion against the British, and a leading Arab propagandist in Berlin for the Nazis during the war, considered it perfectly safe to return to Palestine to take command of the Palestine Liberation Army, which was about to begin hostilities in territory controlled by 50,000 British soldiers.
On January 25th, el Kaukji arrived at Tubas. He also was fortunate. Neither he nor his armed convoy met amy British soldiers. Neutrality demanded their presence in the Jewish areas."
🚨"On March 19th, 1948, in his H.Q. in Damascus, the Officer Commanding the Arab Liberation Army, General Ismail Sarwat Pasha (who was also Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army), made a survey of his forces stationed inside Palestine. In the territory over which the British claimed solitary control, General Sarwat Pasha maintained four commands covering all Palestine, with nine subsidiary H.Q.s.
The details of this report were known at British Army Headquarters where each of the Arab commands were identified by the customary map reference."
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