Adversaries: Haganah recruits prepare for action

Report: Cliff Caswell
Pictures: Soldier Archive

THE path that would lead Dror Shalom into action against British Forces in Palestine began in an unlikely place – the dignified atmosphere of a school classroom.

Brought up in Germany after the First World War, the Jewish teenager had hoped his studies would help him better himself. And then, in 1936, he had a change of teacher.

“This man came in to class dressed in a Nazi storm trooper uniform and started reading out the register of students,” Shalom recalled. “He didn’t call my name and when I asked why, he said that Jews had no place at the school. Then he made me sit in a place he had singled out for me – I was completely humiliated.”

The 14-year-old’s appalling treatment was just the beginning of Hitler’s campaign of hate that was to culminate in the extermination of millions in Europe’s concentration camps.

But for those like Shalom, who left his family and fled to the Holy Land for a new life, it was also the start of a conflict that continues to resonate 60 years on.

For the Jewish settlers, the battle was about creating the new home of Israel, an aim that took on a new impetus after the Second World War with the arrival of thousands of immigrants fleeing the persecution of Nazi-occupied territories.

The resident Arabs, on the other hand, were angry at what they saw as a land grab. And in the middle of the face-off were the British authorities that held the mandate to govern the region, and found their soldiers under attack from all sides.

After arriving in Palestine, Shalom, who retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Army, had joined the Haganah, an illegal partisan group dedicated to the creation of a Jewish home. While the UK had also endorsed this cause in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, there was a perception among settlers that the old colonial power was becoming reluctant to meet its obligations as boat loads of refugees were turned away. For some, violence became a way of venting frustrations and making sure their kinsmen who wanted to settle in the Holy Land were able to do so.

“After the Second World War my unit was mobilised around the Jordan Valley and Galilee and our task was to blow up bridges in the area to make it impossible for British troops to move around easily,” Shalom told Soldier in an interview from his home in Jerusalem. “Elsewhere our comrades were sinking the coastguard boats that were preventing immigrants from arriving.

“While I became anti-British for that time after the war, you must remember that this was immediately after the Holocaust and understand how important it was for us to have a homeland. Our relations with the troops were not very comfortable.”

Despite disrupting the British infrastructure, Shalom said the mainstream Haganah had no intent to kill soldiers to further the cause. He recalled being furious at the bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel by the Irgun Zvai Leumi terror group, which killed nearly 100 people in 1946 and was met with outrage.

“Our commanders had told these people not to carry out this attack, but the group went ahead regardless,” he said. “So that was the end of any cooperation between us and them. What had been done was against what our movement was about.”

As Shalom fought to disrupt British efforts to stem the tide of Jewish immigration, Avraham Monzon had also volunteered to serve with the Haganah. But unlike his comrade, his family had lived in Palestine for several generations and he had watched his father Arieh serve in the ranks of the British Army’s Royal Pioneer Corps.

Monzon, who eventually saw service with the Haganah’s elite Palmach special forces unit, said he was adamantly opposed to attacks against policing soldiers – even after finding himself in custody for putting up posters promoting the partisans.

“I had started out in a youth group because our leaders wanted fit young men to help with defending our people,” the former Israeli Army warrant officer recalled. “When I was sworn in I vowed to protect the country and protect life.

“My first job was to put up these posters, which was forbidden by the authorities. There was a girl with me who was giving me the flyers and I was pasting them to the walls, but two British policeman saw what we were doing and I was quickly arrested.

“I was put in a cell, which stank and was full of criminals. It was also cold and I was very grateful when an Arab prisoner gave me a blanket. The next day the police called my father and made him sign a form saying I would behave.”

While Monzon, who was involved in several contacts with Arab insurgents in the years leading up to Israel’s creation in May 1948, admitted that many were frustrated by the British presence, he maintained that the Haganah was not a terror group.

“The question was how we were to prepare for our new country that we knew was coming. The terrorists wanted to shoot the British out, but that is not what we wanted at all,” he said. “We had, after all, been living with them for many years.”

Shalom and Monzon finally watched the British depart on May 13, 1948, ending a brutal period that had claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers and civilians.

Unlike the British Palestine veterans, however, the declaration of independence only marked the beginning of a new conflict for the two men. Mobilised as the Israeli Defence Forces, they would fight the Arab-Israeli War before embarking on a lifetime of battle with neighbouring countries.

Yet, like their British counterparts, both men have now reached their advanced years. In the twilight of their lives they are quietly optimistic that reconciliation will prevail, and
that sacrifices have not been made in vain.

“We were meant to share what God created, and I only hope now that Jews and Arabs will find a way to live together in peace, without jealousy and ill-feeling towards their fellow man,” said Monzon. “With the nature of the world as it is today everyone should work together – you should love your neighbour as yourself.”