The Reckoning: How the Killing of One Man Changed the Fate of the Promised Land. Patrick Bishop
he recalled. ‘I worked there for three and a half years and on most days at lunchtime I would wander down to the Pool of London and look at the ships, and say to myself, I really must get into one, and go away as soon as I can because this is all too depressing.’ One day, returning home to Suffolk, his train stopped at Ipswich. ‘There was another train on the other side of the platform and I looked out of my window and saw sitting in this other train a young man with whom I was at school. I hopped out and went across and said Parker, haven’t seen you since we were at school. He told me he was off to Palestine to join the police there, so I returned to my train and thought, well, if Parker can go to Palestine, surely I can.’2 Now, four years after arriving, he was one of Giles Bey’s brightest young detectives and relishing the challenges involved in penetrating the complicated and constantly changing world of Jewish political and military activism. It was ‘an extraordinarily fascinating battle of wits’, he said long afterwards. ‘We had to get up very early in the morning if we were going to come out on top.’3
Catling’s guide through the thickets of the Jewish political demi-monde was another East Anglian. Tom Wilkin was three years older than Catling and, like him, came from an ordinary home. His family lived in the Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh where they were publicans, grocers, drapers and shoemakers.4 He seems to have served in the Suffolk constabulary before joining the Palestine Police in 1931. Early in 1933 he went with a policeman friend to a ball at the Eden cinema, a Moorish-style venue in the centre of Tel Aviv, to celebrate the light-hearted Jewish festival of Purim when people wear fancy dress and make merry. Among the revellers was a blonde, pretty young woman wearing a long flowing dress and a black mask. Wilkin nonetheless recognized her as the same girl he had tried unsuccessfully to chat to at the Tarshish café overlooking the sea a few days earlier. Wilkin was a low-ranking inspector of police who lacked the polish of the young officers from old British regiments who populated Tel Aviv’s bars and hotels. He was slightly-built, had reddish hair and wore a rather unconvincing moustache. He was understandably nervous about making another approach to this sophisticated belle but his friend assured him that fate had clearly decreed that they should meet. They danced and talked. The young woman told him that she gave English lessons. Wilkin wanted to improve his Hebrew and they agreed to meet again. Thus was born an intriguing and unlikely love story that would endure until Wilkin’s violent death eleven years later.
The woman in the mask was Shoshana Borochov. She was the daughter of Dov Ber Borochov, a Russian-born Marxist-Zionist whose ideas helped shape the attitudes of the Yishuv’s left-wing establishment. Despite the high level of fraternization between Mandate officials and the Jews of Palestine, liaisons were frowned upon. Jewish parents were uneasy with their daughters consorting with Gentiles who seemed increasingly unsympathetic to their cause. The authorities, meanwhile, were concerned that soldiers and policemen would find that their loyalties were divided in the inevitable conflict between heart and duty. Shoshana and Tom defied the taboos despite family disapproval and official discouragement. They were not the only ones. Despite mounting tension between the Jews and the British, a surprising number of romances sprang up. Dick Catling had a Jewish girlfriend for a while, a Tel Aviv rabbi’s daughter whose sister went out with another policeman.
Wilkin’s Hebrew lessons were more than a ruse to win time with Shoshana. He was a natural linguist and was soon speaking the language fluently. He was intellectually curious and had a voracious interest in Jewish history and culture. Shoshana was from the Yishuv’s elite and introduced him to her circle. From these encounters Wilkin made his own friends, including businessmen like Ilin whom he met at a reception held by the mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel Rokach, and leading figures in the Jewish Agency and the Haganah. They were impressed by his good manners and genuine willingness to see their point of view, though when Ilin once challenged him over the ‘immorality’ of the stringent British restrictions on Jewish immigration he defended the Mandate line robustly.5 Wilkin was careful not to advertise the range and quality of his contacts. ‘He was a very close man … a secretive man if you like,’ Catling remembered. ‘He worked quietly and, more often than not, alone.’6
Wilkin’s chief, Giles Bey, was equally energetic in cultivating all the players in his domain, Arab and Jew, no matter where they were placed in the political spectrum. He would meet anyone and sit talking for hours, uncensoriously exploring their opinions in an apparent spirit of impartiality. It was a technique that his brighter subordinates – notably Catling – adopted and used to great effect.
The word soon spread that Giles Bey was a policeman to be trusted. This reputation attracted some surprising approaches, none more so than a communication he received at the end of 1938 from David Raziel. Raziel was in a delicate position. The Irgun were now engaged in a continuing campaign of reprisals against Arabs. At the same time, they were the main organizers of illegal immigration to Palestine, a traffic that was swelling weekly as the circumstances of Europe’s Jews grew ever more desperate. Both activities placed a burden on the Mandate’s law and order resources and attracted the unwelcome interest of the Palestine Police in the Irgun’s operations and members.
The CID played an extremely important role in the affairs of the Mandate. Its field of activities was broad and included monitoring all aspects of political life in Palestine. Its reports were crucial in determining the views of Sir Harold MacMichael and the analyses and recommendations he sent back to the Colonial Office. The department was very well informed about the machinations of established Jewish organizations. Much of the information came from friendly sources inside the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi – the Jewish National Council, which represented all the main factions of the Yishuv. The authorities also engaged in systematic phone tapping from listening posts based at the Jerusalem headquarters and the CID’s four district headquarters. Yishuv organizations – and particularly the Haganah – were equally well informed about the workings of the Mandate. Jewish policemen and Jewish officials routinely passed on information to the Haganah’s intelligence service, the Shai. The Irgun’s equivalent section, Meshi, also had its moles. According to Yaacov Levstein, who became one of Stern’s most loyal lieutenants, ‘from its inception Meshi did not spare any efforts to infiltrating the CID and making use of its employees, who provided us with first-hand information on political affairs, lists of men about to be arrested, copies of various documents etc.’7
Raziel’s feelings towards the British were ambivalent. Unlike Avraham Stern he had not arrived at the conclusion that it was they who were the chief obstacle to a Jewish state and were therefore the Irgun’s prime enemy. Like Jabotinsky, Raziel retained the hope that, despite Britain’s anti-immigration policy and periodic appeasement of the Arabs, in the right circumstances it could still bring its weight down decisively on the side of the Jews. At the end of 1938 it seemed that the right circumstances were approaching. Another world war was looming and Britain would need all the help it could get. An offer of military cooperation might be parlayed into unequivocal support for a Jewish state. Raziel decided that the time had come to reach out to the Mandate authorities. He made his overture in a letter to Giles Bey in which he wrote that he was ‘not an enemy of Great Britain in Palestine’. Indeed, he admired British culture and believed that Britain had ‘a friendly attitude towards my people’. The Jews in Palestine were surrounded by hostile Arabs and needed the support of a European ally. The Irgun might ‘criticize the methods of the government’. But ‘we do not intend to uproot their rule’.8
Giles’s response has not survived. However, within a few months of the letter being sent the Mandate’s policy had swung onto a new course which dealt a blow to Jews who believed in Britain’s good intentions. As 1939 dawned, war with Germany seemed not merely probable but inevitable. This realization forced a reassessment of British policy in Palestine. The Arab revolt had attracted widespread support in neighbouring Iraq, Syria and Egypt. It was vital to keep them on side in the coming fight. Two divisions of British troops who might be needed elsewhere at any minute were tied up fighting the Arabs. Some settlement would have to be found before the balloon