The Crime of Nationalism. Matthew Kraig Kelly

the country to murderers.”⁵¹ On 19 June, the new colonial secretary, William Ormsby-Gore, relayed to Weizmann the high commissioner’s opinion that Jewish newspapers’ unrelenting calls for “ruthless repressive measures against the Arabs” had considerably “exacerbate[d] Arab feeling.”⁵² Indeed, two days prior, Filastin ran an article stating, “The Mandate authorities would clearly not have used these violent means were it not for the provocations of the Jews and the Jewish press.”⁵³

      As Ian Black documents, a great deal of the Arab-related content of the Zionist press in Palestine originated from the political department of the Jewish Agency.⁵⁴ This was true in particular of the Palestine Post.⁵⁵ The Post claimed from the first that the strike was the work of thugs. Its 27 April edition, for example, contained headlines such as “Strike forced on Arabs” and “Business as usual in spite of hooligans.” In a 29 April article titled “Deal with the instigator,” the paper declared that “the inspiration for the strike is undisguised intimidation,” and prayed that the British would not “lose themselves in admiration of what can easily be mistaken for a perfect organization, with its roots in some deep-seated grievance.” On 20 May, the Post opined that arrest figures (800 Arabs, fifty Jews) during the recent “wave of crime” furnished “a simple index to the part of the population which supplies the aggressor and the criminal.”⁵⁶ When the AHC publicly pled for nonviolent resistance to the British, the Post editorialized that the committee was either dissembling, or had “never exercised any real influence over [its] people” in the first place.⁵⁷

      This analysis contained a tension that was also present in the Jewish Agency arguments to Wauchope. These were resolute regarding the criminal nature of Arab political agitation in Palestine. When elaborating this claim, Zionists’ rhetorical weapon of first choice was to lay responsibility for all violence in the country at the doorstep of the national leadership, whose national credentials they simultaneously belittled. The evidence for this inference was lacking, however, as disclosed in Jewish Agency members’ private remarks (such as Ben Gurion’s and Shertok’s above) and in the Post’s desultory acknowledgement that the Arab leadership had, perhaps, sincerely advocated peaceful methods. But if they had, insisted the paper, that only exposed their “leadership” for the sham it was. Thus, to put it colloquially, the Arab leaders got it coming and going. They were either fomenting all violence or powerless to control it. Either way, what kind of leaders were these?

      Of course, this choice was false. For the Arab leaders were neither responsible for all violence in the country nor empowered to prevent it. And the charge regarding their impuissance was, in any case, an afterthought in Zionist discussions. The primary indictment remained that the AHC had coerced Arab participation in the strike through thuggery and was likewise behind the attacks on British police and soldiers. As with the Times’ coverage of encounters between Arab and British forces, the Post cast the Arab militants as mere outlaws, turning out headlines such as “Running fights with Arab bandits” and “Soldiers fight bandits.”⁵⁸ Bandits and hooligans, not “some deep-seated grievance,” were the real drivers of the strike. The Post’s 4 June edition heralded the government’s “long-delayed recognition” of the strike’s “essential illegality.”⁵⁹

      BRITISH INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS

      OF THE REBELS

      While the Jewish Agency and the Jewish press relentlessly reiterated the top-down (that is, AHC-directed) crime theme, British intelligence attempted to come to grips with some of the subtleties on the ground. Two were particularly significant. First, as noted above, Arabs mostly struck at British forces and infrastructure in May, although they also attacked Jews (sometimes fatally) and their property. The increase in “crime” therefore had a peculiarly military quality. Second, crime did not, in fact, increase dramatically from May to June. The number of murders was equal from one month to the next (twenty-one in each case), and attempted murders were comparable (moving from fifty-four to sixty). Cases of manslaughter, theft, and “other offences against the person” actually declined in June, while assaults and woundings increased from thirteen to seventeen and highway robberies from four to five.⁶⁰

      The RAF weekly intelligence summary of 17 June continued to refer to armed Arab groups engaged in sabotage and attacks on British forces as “gangs” and “marauders,” but it also took notice of their organizational sophistication. Recounting an attack on a British railway patrol outside Dayr al-Shaykh, in the Jerusalem subdistrict, the report observed, “. . . the fire of the gang was organised and controlled—it was not mere indiscriminate sniping.”⁶¹ The following week’s intelligence summary likewise remarked on “the improved organisation” of the “marauders” attacking British forces. It concluded, “The two main objectives of the Arabs now appear to be intensive sabotage of railway lines and formation of armed gangs to combat the military in the open.”⁶²

      Peirse’s report also commented on the more impressive rebel formations that appeared on the scene in June, particularly in what would come to be known as the “triangle of terror”—Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarm. He wrote:

      Armed bands which a fortnight previously consisted of fifteen to twenty men were now encountered in large parties of fifty to seventy. The bands were not out for loot. They were fighting what they believed to be a patriotic war in defence of their country against injustice and the threat of Jewish domination.⁶³

      Such passing acknowledgements of the magnanimous (if misguided) motivation of what were otherwise referred to as “bandits” are rare in the record, and mark the boundary of mainstream British discourse on the revolt at the time.

      CONCLUSION

      By late June, then, the British and the Zionists were in firm agreement on the criminal nature of the burgeoning armed revolt—if not firm enough, from the Zionist perspective. With regard to the strike, London took a more nuanced view. On the one hand, as the high commissioner made clear verbally and via legal fiat, the strike was illegal and an open affront to the authority of the British government in Palestine. Those advocating it were therefore subject to prosecution and incarceration on grounds of sedition. On the other hand, while the British allowed that some of the strike’s success turned on the work of criminally-minded young toughs operating at the behest of local strike committees, they were nevertheless certain that it had broad popular support. So much so that the Arab leadership would have discredited itself in opposing it. But as we shall see, this more moderate—and accurate—evaluation of the strike sat uneasily with London’s pretense that it faced something other than a nationalist uprising in Palestine. And given that this pretense was indispensable to the legitimacy of the mandate, forfeiting it was impossible. Rather, the notion of a popular strike and insurgency would have to go.

THREE

       “The Policy Is the Criminal”

      WAR ON THE DISCURSIVE FRONTIER,

      JULY–AUGUST 1936

      THE TREND LINES OF THE REVOLT and the strike evident in June deepened in July. Increasingly robust and well-organized Arab military formations took the field, and the strike endured in defiance of its regularly forecast demise.¹ The government responded to these developments with air power, propaganda, and military reinforcements. In the course of the month, British planes assaulted the rebels assiduously, firing 8,000 rounds and dropping 205 bombs. Mandate authorities also circulated over 350,000 pro-government leaflets to nearly a thousand villages.² Mustafa Kabha relates that such leaflets tended to feature a mix of “veiled threats and promises.” One read:

      In times of distress and drought . . . the government exempted you from paying taxes and lent you a helping hand in the form of subsidies. But now the government is spending its money arresting lawbreakers and maintaining order . . . Who loses as a result of violations of the law? The losers are you and your village.³

      In addition to the bullets, bombs, and handbills, two more British battalions arrived in Palestine,