Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume 1 (42 page)

To prevent such a Zionist
fait accompli
, Palestinian resistance fighters under the leadership of Abdul Khader Husseini had set up defensive positions around Jerusalem (the Old plus the New), putting it, effectively, under siege. Their intention was to prevent Jewish forces—the Haganah and the Palmach—reinforcing Jerusalem in sufficient strength to enable Zionism to impose its will on the Holy City.

And that was the context in which the Arab village of Kastel had matchless strategic significance.

Kastel was on the summit of a rocky peak, about 2,500 feet high, that controlled the only approach road to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Nobody was more aware of Kastel’s strategic importance than Abdul Khader. He was much more than the outstanding Palestinian resistance leader of his time. He was the only Palestinian leader who enjoyed the admiration and affection of the Palestinian masses. He was even respected by Zionism’s military commanders.

In December 1947, following the UN’s rigged vote on the partition resolution, the news of Abdul Khader’s return to his native Palestine had inspired the Palestinian masses to believe for the first time in nearly a decade that their cause was not a lost one.

Abdul Khader had returned in secret because he had been banned from returning by the British. When news of his return was spread, by word of mouth in whispers, it had the effect of lighting a beacon of hope, bright enough to illuminate all of Arab Palestine. In the first glow of that light, hundreds and then thousands of Palestinian peasants committed themselves and their ancient rifles to fighting the Jews when called by Abdul Khader to do so. He had returned to lead the resistance organisation of his exiled cousin Haj Amin Husseini, the Mufti. The banished Haj Amin was also the head of the Arab Higher Committee, which was roughly the Arab equivalent in Palestine of the Jewish Agency.

At the time of his return Abdul Khader was still youngish—he had just turned 40; but he was a veteran of conflict with the British. His father, Haj Amin’s predecessor as Mufti, had been deposed by the British in 1920 for his opposition to the Mandate. After graduating in chemistry from the American University in Cairo in 1933, Abdul Khader had participated in his first anti-British demonstration at his aging father’s side. His courage on the battlefield was demonstrated during the Arab revolt in Palestine.

As Abu Moussa (his
nomme de guerre
), Abdul Khader was wounded twice in the head while leading his peasant fighters against the British. On the second occasion, in 1938, he was smuggled to Syria bleeding to death on a camel. If he had returned to Palestine when he recovered, he would have been shot by the British on sight. As it happened he was one of a small group sent by Haj Amin to Nazi Germany for training to improve their military skills. (Given that Britain was the enemy, there was nowhere else during the war Palestinians could receive military training).

In appearance—medium height, brown suit and a modest, neatly trimmed moustache—the Abdul Khader who returned secretly to Palestine in December 1947 was deceptive. But for the blue-and-white chequered
kaffiyeh
(traditional Arab headdress), he looked more like a shrewd but inoffensive accountant than the Arab guerrilla leader who had done most on the battlefield to prevent Britain crushing the spirit of Palestinian resistance. Such an impression was strengthened by his gentle manner. He was a man who could control his emotions in public and who, anyway, did not believe in expressing himself in the exaggerated, bombastic language favoured by so many Arab leaders.

The real key to Abdul Khader’s hold on his peasant people was his instinctive understanding of both their qualities and their shortcomings. It was this, plus his charisma, that had given him the ability to mobilise his people and to get the best out of them and their woefully limited weaponry during the revolt against the British. His task now was to get the best out of them to prevent a Zionist takeover of their homeland.

To those who welcomed him back to Palestine he said: “Diplomacy and politics have failed to achieve our goals. We have only one choice. We shall keep our honour and our country with our swords.”
¹⁵

Abdul Khader was capable of reading the Zionist military mind and, as a result of doing so, he had warned the Arab League that Kastel would be the first objective of Jewish forces when they made their push to capture and control all of Jerusalem. Abdul Khader was to die in battle believing, I think correctly, that if the Arab states (through the Arab League) had armed the Palestinians to enable them to conduct their own struggle in a serious way, Zionism would not have gotten the upper hand in Palestine.

As it happened, and because the Arab League was not willing to arm the Palestinians (we shall see why later), Zionism’s institutional militias—the Haganah and its Palmach strike force—were better armed than the Arabs of Palestine. Abdul Khader might not have been aware of the extent to which the Zionists, with increasing success, were smuggling in small arms and ammunition; but from the skirmishes (it was not yet war) it was obvious that the Haganah and the Palmach were not as short of modern weapons and ammunition as the Arabs of Palestine were.

Kastel’s residents were protected by lightly armed watchmen. In anticipation of an attack by Jewish forces, Abdul Khader had supplemented them with men of his own. They were assigned to guard the approaches to the peak.

To give the Palmach the best chance of taking Kastel with minimum casualties, the Jewish battle plan had called for two diversionary attacks to draw off Abdul Khader’s men. The diversionary attacks went according to plan. As a consequence the 180 men of the Palmach’s Har-el Brigade took Kastel without a serious fight. The attack went in at midnight in the rain. The lightly-armed Arab watchmen were no match for the well-armed Palmach. The Arab guards exchanged shots with the Palmach as they set about rounding up the villagers and then fled with them into the safety of the night. The first Arab village was in Jewish hands.

At noon the following day, under the command of Latvian-born Mordechai Gazit, 70 men of the Jerusalem Haganah arrived to relieve the Palmach. Gazit’s orders were to hold Kastel no matter what the strength of the expected Arab counter-attack when it came.

Abdul Khader was in Damascus when the Palmach made the diversionary attacks that were the prelude to its move on Kastel. He was in the Syrian capital to beg for weapons and ammunition.

Damascus then was the stage on which the leaders of rival Arab factions strutted as they schemed and plotted to determine who among them would have the biggest say in running their countries and their world.

The main man Abdul Khader had gone to see was Ismail Safwat (a name to remember). He was the 52-year-old Iraqi general who had been selected by the Arab League to prepare a plan for the co-ordinated intervention of the Arab armies in Palestine—IF the Jewish state came into being and IF then the Arabs actually went to war. (For reasons that will become clear in due course, the latter was by far the bigger of the two ifs).

Ismail Safwat was a pompous, arrogant man and a master of hyperbole. Although he was beginning to stockpile weapons and ammunition for a possible war, he refused to make a single bullet available to Abdul Khader. The Palestinian leader was furious. Before storming out he looked the Iraqi general in the eyes and said: “
The blood of Palestine and its people shall be on your head!
”
¹⁶

As it happened Abdul Khader did not return to his Jerusalem headquarters empty handed. Not quite. Syria’s President Shukri al Kuwatli presented him with a gift of 50 rifles. They were loaded into the back of Abdul Khader’s car, alongside three Bren guns he had purchased with his own money in the souks of Damascus, and he drove to Jerusalem.

The first news Abdul Khader received on his arrival in the Old City was the loss of Kastel. He ordered an immediate counter-attack. Kastel had to be won back at any cost.

The task of organising and leading the counter-attack was assigned to Kamal Irekat. In a few hours he raised a force of 400 volunteers by sending messengers from hamlet to hamlet calling for help to free Kastel. Irekat’s mobilising ability was assisted by his status. He was of an old and influential Jerusalem family. He was also an inspector in the Palestine police force.

The Arab attack to push the Haganah out of Kastel started just after sundown. At dawn the following morning Irekat’s fighters were reinforced by volunteers led by Ibrahim Abu Dayieh, an uneducated but courageous Hebron shepherd. Then, at the point when it seemed the Haganah was about to be driven out of Kastel completely, the Arabs ran out of ammunition.

While the Haganah took a much-needed breather and regrouped, Irekat sent out for fresh supplies of ammunition. In Ramallah to the north, John Glubb, the English commander of Transjordan’s Arab Legion, saw one of Irekat’s messengers running through the streets shouting: “Has anyone ammunition for sale? I pay cash.” As recounted by Collins and Lapierre in their epic work
O Jerusalem!
Glubb watched as the messenger bought 200 rounds of ammunition—some Turkish, some German, some English—then leapt into his car and set off to repeat the process in the next town.

By sunset Irekat’s men had enough ammunition to continue their assault. Shortly after midnight, when they were within grenade range of Gazit’s outnumbered and beleaguered Haganah force, Irekat was wounded. The only medic among his volunteers, a hospital employee from Bethlehem, treated the leader with the only first-aid kit they had. Then, ignoring the leader’s protests, the medic strapped Irekat onto a mule for the journey back to Jerusalem. What happened next was described by Collins and Lapierre in this most perceptive passage:

Irekat knew well the psychology of his village warriors. Products of the hierarchical structure of their villages, they tended to magnify the importance of the leader, to erect around his person a kind of cult. Guided by an able man, those villagers were capable of great acts of bravery. Without a galvanic presence to rally them, however, their organisation risked rapid disintegration... As Irekat had feared, that was exactly what happened on that night of Sunday, 4 April. Gazit and his men, bracing for the Arabs’ final assault, saw their foes start to wander off the battlefield. They were going home to their villages. By dawn the next day barely a hundred of them remained. Kastel was still firmly in Jewish hands.
¹⁷

In New Jerusalem the Haganah’s thoughtful commander there, David Shaltiel, knew that would not be the end of the fight for control of Kastel, and that the Haganah’s luck could not last. The Arabs would be back, led the next time, perhaps, by Abdul Khader Husseini himself. Shaltiel’s own forces were stretched so thinly there was no way he could make reserves available to relieve or reinforce Gazit’s men. How on earth could they withstand another Arab assault?

Shaltiel’s homeland was Germany and he had received his military training with the French Foreign Legion. Before World War II he was arrested by the Gestapo while on a secret Haganah mission to his homeland. While confined and tortured he kept his sanity by teaching himself Hebrew.

It was Shaltiel’s fears about the possible loss of Kastel that led to the Irgun and the Stern Gang getting what they needed—weapons and ammunition—for their attack on Deir Yassin.

Shaltiel’s adjutant was Yeshurun Schiff. In the pre-dawn darkness of Tuesday 6 April, he had a rendezvous with two men on Jerusalem’s King George V Avenue. One was Mordechai Ra’anan, the Irgun’s Jerusalem chief. The other was Yoshua Zeitler, the Stern Gang’s Jerusalem chief.

Schiff’s purpose—they all spoke in whispers—was to establish whether or not the two terrorist organisations would provide support to assist the Haganah in its efforts to withstand the next expected Arab attack on Kastel. The initial response of the Irgun and Stern Gang representatives was not promising. Ra’anan and Zeitler told Schiff they would put his request to their respective leadership colleagues but that in the event of the answer being “Yes”, there would be a price to pay. The Irgun and the Stern Gang would expect the Haganah to reward them with a substantial supply of weapons and grenades. Schiff said there would be no problem with the weapons. He would make the arrangements and they could collect.

That night the Irgun and the Stern Gang told Schiff they were ready to assist the Haganah; and they claimed and collected their reward. But neither the Irgun nor the Stern Gang had any intention of honouring their side of the bargain. They wanted the Haganah weapons to attack a target of their own choice—Deir Yassin.

The two terrorist organisations had calculated that a dramatic victory there would serve their cause in two related ways. It would be the start of a campaign to frighten the Arabs into fleeing from their villages. And, if the attack on Deir Yassin achieved its purpose, it would enable the Irgun and the Stern Gang to claim that they were the most dynamic forces in the struggle on the Zionist side. They wanted to be able to assert that the Return To Zion and the restoration of Israel was due principally to the commitment, zeal and sacrifice of their organisations. The political gain, they calculated, would be that the official Zionist establishment in Palestine —the Jewish Agency and the military leadership of the Haganah and the Palmach—would have to take the Irgun and the Stern Gang seriously and treat them as equals. Begin was, in fact, hoping to put down the markers that would pave for the way for his emergence as a heavyweight figure in the politics of the Zionist state.

Deir Yassin was chosen by the Irgun and the Stern Gang as the target for their first attack on an Arab village for two reasons. The first was its proximity to Jerusalem. Deir Yassin nestled on a rocky promontory west of Jerusalem and could be described as being on the outskirts of the city itself. The second and main reason was the presumption that Deir Yassin offered a soft and easy target.