Summary
British officer sent to Haifa in autumn 1937 whom Kanafani presents as entrusted with forming the nuclei of striking forces for the Zionist armed force, and whom Israeli soldiers, he says, regard as the real founder of the Israeli army.
Details
-
Kanafani argues Wingate’s efforts were not the consequence of personal temperament or idealistic devotion: he had been entrusted with a specific task, the formation of the nuclei of striking forces for a Zionist armed force already in existence for at least six months (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.30 / printed p.59).
-
He made the pipeline problems his special task, which led to a series of operations involving terrorism and killing, and taught his pupils at Ain Daur, among whom was Moshe Dayan, to become experts in such operations (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.30 / printed p.59).
-
Kanafani states that, in addition to his qualifications as an experienced imperialist officer, Wingate was equipped with an unlimited racialist hatred for the Arabs, and that biographies by those who knew him show he enjoyed killing or torturing Arab peasants, or humiliating them (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.30 / printed p.59).
-
In Pappe (who prints him Orde Charles Wingate, without a hyphen in Orde Charles), Wingate, born in India to a military family, assigned to Palestine in 1936 from an Arabophile career in the Sudan, quickly became enchanted by the Zionist dream and taught the settlers’ troops more effective combat tactics and retaliation methods; he made the Zionist leaders realise Jewish statehood had to be associated with militarism, first to protect the enclaves but also because armed aggression deterred Palestinian resistance, from which “the road to contemplating the enforced transfer of the entire indigenous population would prove to be very short indeed” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.39-40).
-
Under his influence the Haganah became the military arm of the Jewish Agency; Wingate attached Hagana troops to British forces during the Arab revolt so they could learn what a ‘punitive mission’ to an Arab village ought to entail (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.40).
Related pages
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Haganah, Zionism, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine