Israel at 75: how inept British intelligence failed to contain Jewish independence groups
A dispute over Britain’s restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine began in 1939, but was set aside during the struggle to defeat Hitler.
- A dispute over Britain’s restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine began in 1939, but was set aside during the struggle to defeat Hitler.
- In a white paper that year, the British government declared the “Jewish National Home”, as promised in its 1917 Balfour Declaration, as a settled policy.
- GCHQ relied on a small cell, including future historian Bernard Lewis and another British Jew, Samuel Stalbow, to handle intelligence.
- They never leaked Britain’s top secret intelligence, unlike – as we shall see – the British government itself.
British missteps
- So the British army planned to arrest the leadership of the Jewish Agency (the main representative body of the Yishuv, led by Ben-Gurion).
- Often described by British authorities as an imperium in imperio, or a “state within a state”, the Jewish Agency’s relationship with armed groups was more complicated than the British had realised.
- Operation Agatha forced the Jewish Agency and the Zionist movement to consider next steps: what did they want from this struggle?
King David Hotel bombing
- Then, in what GCHQ historian John Ferris called an act which “finalised the Anglo-Zionist divorce”, on July 22 Irgun terrorists bombed the British headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing more than 90 people, including GCHQ and other intelligence personnel.
- Britain’s poor security at its headquarters was thus compounded by the absence of those meant to interpret warning intelligence.
- After these intelligence leaks, the Jewish Agency and Haganah updated and professionalised their cryptography, meaning Britain lost access to vital intelligence.
- The British government also tried to bring Jews and Arabs back to negotiations, but failed to get official Jewish Agency participation.
End of the Mandate
- The leaders of this new Jewish state had learned from Britain’s intelligence mistakes, as well as its own.
- More significantly, by late 1947, Haganah began to attack the encyrption used by surrounding Arab states and their armies, especially the volunteer Arab Liberation Army.