Maj. Gen. Orde Charles Wingate Maj. Gen. Orde Charles Wingate was a brave British officer, gifted soldier, and an extraordinary friend of the Jewish people and the Zionist cause. Although not a Jew, he was sent to Palestine in military intelligence. Wingate shaped the fighting tradition of the Haganah and the Israel Defense Forces. He basically founded the Haganah as an army instilling the traditions of commando warfare, night fighting, covert operations, and the practice that officers lead from the front. In 1936 Wingate was assigned to the British Mandate of Palestine to a staff office position and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival, he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty toward the literal fulfillment of prophecy and he immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders. He believed that Britain had a providential role to play in this process. Wingate learned Hebrew. Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities, which became known as the Arab Revolt. Wingate became politically involved with a number of Zionist leaders, eventually becoming an ardent supporter of Zionism, despite the fact that he was not Jewish. He formulated the idea of raising small assault units of British-led Jewish commandos, heavily armed with grenades and light infantry small arms, to combat the Arab uprising, and took his idea personally to Archibald Wavell, who was then a commander of British forces in Palestine. After Wavell gave his permission, Wingate convinced the Zionist Jewish Agency and the leadership of Haganah, the Jewish armed group. In June 1938 the new British commander, General Haining, gave his permission to create the Special Night Squads, armed groups formed of British and Haganah volunteers. This is the first instance of the British recognizing Haganah’s legitimacy as a Jewish defense force. The Jewish Agency helped pay salaries and other costs of the Haganah personnel. Wingate trained, commanded and accompanied them in their patrols. The units frequently ambushed Arab saboteurs who attacked oil pipelines of the Iraq Petroleum Company, raiding border villages the attackers had used as bases. In these raids, Wingate’s men sometimes imposed severe collective punishments on the village inhabitants that were criticized by Zionist leaders as well as Wingate’s British superiors. But the tactics proved effective in quelling the uprising, and Wingate was awarded the DSO in 1938. However, his deepening direct political involvement with the Zionist cause and an incident where he spoke publicly in favor of formation of a Jewish state during his leave in Britain, caused his superiors in Palestine to remove him from command. He was so deeply associated with political causes in Palestine that his superiors considered him compromised as an intelligence officer in the country. He was promoting his own agenda rather than that of the army or the government. In May 1939, he was transferred back to Britain. Wingate became a hero of the Yishuv (the Jewish Community), and was loved by leaders such as Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan who had trained under him, and who claimed that Wingate had “taught us everything we know.” He dreamed, says Oren, “of one day commanding the first Jewish army in two thousand years and of leasing the fight to establish an independent Jewish state.” Wingate’s political attitudes toward Zionism were heavily influenced by his Plymouth Brethren religious views and belief in certain eschatological doctrines. Wingate died in a plane crash in 1944 while flying over India to Burma. He and nine other crash victims were charred beyond recognition. Due to the nature of lack of ability to identify remains at the time, all 10 crash victims, two of which were American pilots, were buried in Arlington Cemetary in 1950.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 23:43:45 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015