KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
violence and continued to arrest Jews who tried to organize Jewish self-defense. Amid the increasing violence, there was a flight of Arab mod - erates from the Mandate, with thirty thousand upper- and middle- class citizens and their families leaving the country and creating a vacuum of moderate Arab leadership. By 1936, with nearly one- third of the population now Jewish, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Muhammad al Husseini (an ally of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Nazi military in subsequent years), incited crowds in Haifa by telling them that the goal of Jews was to expel all Arabs. He also demanded that Britain outlaw Jewish immigration and make it ille- gal for Jews to purchase land. A three-month long campaign of bus bombings and other lethal attacks on Jewish civilians followed. The Haj’s followers also destroyed thousands of acres of Jewish trees, vineyards, and crops. A proposal by the League of Nations’ Peel Commission to establish separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under British control, was opposed by both Arabs and Jews. The next year, Jews began to take proactive measures to prevent Arab attacks. Special Night Squads were organized by a British officer, Orde Wingate, to patrol the oil pipeline between Haifa and Iraq and identify terrorists. These Night Squads used the element of surprise and intimate knowledge of the countryside, as well as intelligence and reconnaissance. 2 The squads proved to be an apt training ground for Jewish soldiers and leaders, however, and Brit- ain transferred Wingate out of the country. After his removal, the Haganah set up its own proactive strike force, Fosh (also called Plugot Sadeh), commanded by Yitzchak Sadeh. Sadeh was a familiar face at Kibbutz Yagur, where Aharon and the Dror group would settle eight years later. In May 1939, another White Paper restricted Jewish immigra- tion to ten thousand a year for five years, after which the Brit - ish high commissioner would be permitted to add twenty-five thousand over the next five years. After 1944, no Jews would be
332
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online