“Never mind, it is good to die for our country.”
— Joseph Trumpeldor, Zionist warrior
Northern Galilee was a dangerous frontier in 1920. In mandates established in the wake of the First World War, France had taken control of what is now Lebanon and Syria, and Great Britain had taken authority over Palestine. The border between the two mandates was unclear. A small-scale rebellion had broken out among Shiite Syrian Arabs loyal to the recently established (and eclipsed) Hashemite King Feisal. Jewish settlers who had established villages in the area declared themselves neutral in the conflict.
Map via BBC.
The Jewish settlers were part of a Zionist movement that was growing more assertive as Ottoman rule in the region was overthrown and Britain had declared itself in favor of establishing a Jewish home in Palestine (this after also promising the Arabs an independent state). The Zionists were after more than a home — they wanted to establish a Jewish state, and they intended to displace the Arab population already living on the land. The Arabs were starting to recognize this, and their attitude toward the Jews was darkening.
On March 1, 1920, a band of Arab fighters — Shiite militia and Bedouin led by one Kamal Affendi — approached the village of Tel Hai, demanding to be allowed in to search for French soldiers. A Jewish settler fired a rifle to alert other settlers in the nearby kibbutz of Kfar Giladi. Ten men responded, led by Joseph Trumpeldore, who was already an all-time legendary badass.
A Russian Jew, he had served in the Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese War, losing an arm to shrapnel. He insisted on returning to the front lines, proclaiming that he still had another arm to give the motherland. His giant balls so impressed the Russian officer corps — rank antisemites, most of them — that they agreed to allow Trumpeldor to be commissioned as an officer.
Trumpeldor emigrated to Palestine in 1911, and fell in with the hard core of ardent Zionists, during the Great War, he served in the Jewish Legion and the Zion Mule Corps — led by another legendary Frontier Partisan, J.H. Patterson, of Maneaters of Tsavo fame. The Anglo-Irish officer was himself an ardent Zionist. Trumpeldor was wounded in the shoulder at Gallipoli. Of course, he refused to be evacuated.
By 1920, the one-armed warrior was part of the nascent Jewish defense forces who were protecting Jewish settlements.
Trumpeldor’s force was greatly outnumbered by the Arab force, and he had little choice but to let them into Tel Hai to search for French troops the Arabs were convinced, for reasons that aren’t clear, were hiding there. According to some accounts, a woman was startled to have a Bedouin tribesman enter her home; she grabbed a gun and took a shot at him. That touched off a confused gun battle between the Jewish settlers and the Arabs. Kamal Affendi managed to get the adversaries to cease firing, acknowledging that there had been a misunderstanding. However, one of the Jewish settlers did not hear the order to cease firing and when the Arabs initiated a retreat, he fired upon them, touching off another round of shooting.
In the end, eight Jews and five Arabs lay dead. Trumpeldor had been wounded in the hand and the gut — the man had shitty battlefield luck. He died telling his comrades, “never mind, it is good to die for our country.”
The Jewish settlers fled, and the Arabs burned Tel Hai. Today, there is a museum there, and a monument to Trumpeldor.
The shootout quickly became known as the “Battle of Tel Hai” and became for decades a part of the founding mythology of the state of Israel. Though the shootout was sparked by misunderstanding amid a French-Syrian Arab conflict in which the Jewish settlers were attempting to remain neutral, in the mythology it became an early example of Arab-Jewish armed struggle. After the fight, the French allowed the British to take the Northern Galilee settlements under their mandate, since the British had opened that door with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which stated that:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
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The excellent YouTube series The Great War offers a solid overview of Zionism during the Great War.
For the past several days I have been listening to the Martyr Made podcast series, Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine can often seem like a permanent feature of the global order. The wars, intifadas, refugees camps, suicide vests, UN resolutions, and peace talks have been painfully burned into our collective consciousness. But how could this have happened? Was it always this way? That’s what we’ll seek to find out in Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, a multi-part series exploring the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I cannot overstate how good this is. An hours-long deep dive providing an exceptional level of context for a profoundly complex conflict. Darryl Cooper approaches this story in a manner that Frontier Partisans can whole-heartedly endorse: He is interested in what happened, how it happened and why it happened — not in distorting history as propaganda on behalf of some contemporary political agenda (the podcast was released in 2015; Cooper has steadfastly resisted being drawn into public discussions of the current Israel/Gaza war).
Understanding the cultural milieu of Jews and Arabs and of the European imperial powers from the 1880s to 1948 is essential to grasping the motivations and traumas that shaped the Zionist project, the conflicted and contradictory British endorsement of it, and the Arab response to it. Cooper recognizes that there was a great deal of idealism and perfidy interwoven through the story — often embodied in the individuals who acted in it. First-rate work on a piece of Frontier Partisan history that manifests a massive degree of Continuity & Persistence.
David Wrolson says
After the events of 10/7-I watched the movie-“Exodus” for a look at the founding of Israel in 1948-Paul Newman and that. It gets a little long, but I recommend it.
It is from a time as George MacDonald Fraser writes about in “Night Train to Palestine” (Private McAuslan stories) when the Jews were the terrorists and a new nation was being born.
Ugly Hombre says
I had chances to talk with Tsarist troopers- who fought the Bolshevik bastards when I was a kid. Lost a big chance to learn. One man was tall silver haired and devil bearded who lived in a old hotel in Manitou Springs probably a officer. Not really that long ago. A eccentric character right out of Dr Zhivago.
What he saw and knew is gone now more than likely. He was kind of a hermit.
Russia had Jewish hate problems during the Tsar times and worse during Bolo days. imo
Even now they have National Socialist embers over there Wagner group leaders with S/S tattoos etc.
Idjots…