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Abstract
This article explores lingering recollections of a marginalised sphere of participation by Jewish and Arab citizens of Mandatory Palestine in the Allied war effort. During the war, Palestine became a major staging ground for Allied troops in the Middle East. Some 15,000 Jewish and 35,000 Arab workers worked in administrative, construction, catering, and maintenances roles within the newly built army bases. The story of civilian labour in RAF Ein Shemer reveals previously neglected normative and non-normative patterns of inter-communal relations between British soldiers and Jewish and Arab workers on the social, economic, ideological, and romantic levels within the context of a colonial-era military installation.
Acknowledgements
This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the AHRC-funded workshop ‘Marginalised Histories of the Second World War’ held at Kings College London in April 2018. The author benefitted from the comments of the editors and anonymous readers. He would like to thank the staff of the Hagana Archives (Tel Aviv) and of the municipal archives of Pardes-Hanna Karkur, Ein Shemer, Binyamina, Zichron Ya‘akov and Ma‘anit for their assistance. Furthermore, he wishes to express his gratitude for the interviewees and their families, and for Mr Ibrahem Mawasi of Baqa al-Gharbiyya for his help in coordinating the interviews. The author is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for the award of an Azrieli Fellowship (2018–2021).
Notes
1 O. Shapira, Influences and Interractions [sic] between the British Army Camps, Colonies and Settlements in Samaria During WWII (MA diss., University of Haifa, 2004); B. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 20.
2 RAF Ein Shemer, a Royal Air Force station, was part of a larger conglomerate of British Armed Forces installations in the vicinity of the Ein Shemer – Pardes Hanna Jewish settlement block. While this article refers to the RAF station in particular, the station also served as home for Allied/British army personnel, collectively referred to as British soldiers/Army camp personnel in contemporary sources. The article follows that established use, since Hebrew and Arabic sources (and to some extent also British records cited in the article) consistently referred to it as a camp, and it is part and parcel of the wider socio-economic history of civilian employment in the service of British Army installations in Palestine, that is in no way unique to RAF Ein Shemer and/or RAF stations in particular.
3 The author has been unable to find comparable scholarship on civilian work in British army camps during the Second World War in other provinces of the empire.
4 N.R. Sirhan, Folk Stories and Personal Narratives in Palestinian Spoken Arabic: A Cultural and Linguistic Study (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); R.A. Davis, Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).
5 W.L. Lang and L.K. Mercier, ‘Getting It Down Right: Oral History's Reliability in Local History Research’, Oral History Review, 12 (1984), 81–99.
6 E. Drever, Using Semi-Structured Interviews in Small-Scale Research: A Teacher's Guide (Edinburgh: Scottish Council for Research in Education, 1995); R. Longhurst, ‘Semi-structured interviews and focus groups’, Key Methods in Geography, 3 (2003), 143–56.
7 For theoretical discussions of this issue: A.M. Hoffman, ‘Reliability and validity in oral history’, Communication Quarterly, 22:1 (1974), 23–7; T. Lummis, ‘Structure and Validity in Oral Evidence’, International Journal of Oral History, 2:2 (1981), 109–20; A.M. Hoffman and H.S. Hoffman, ‘Reliability and validity in oral history: The case for memory’, in Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience, ed. by Jaclyn Jeffrey et al. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 107–35.
8 L. Abrams, Oral History Theory (Routledge, 2016), 18–32 and 54–77; P. Thompson and J. Bornat, Voice of the Past: Oral History, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1–70.
9 The relevant body of scholarship is vast. Important works include A.P. Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns (London: Constable, 1931); A.P.C. Bruce, The Last Crusade: The Palestine Campaign in the First World War (London: John Murray, 2002); S. Tamari and I.S. Turjman, Year of the Locust: A Soldier's Diary and the Erasure of Palestine's Ottoman Past (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011); Y. Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, 1914–1918 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). The Society for the Heritage of World War One in Israel publishes additional scholarship in its annual collection of papers.
10 J.J. Gitlin, ‘Call and Response: The Efficacy of British Wartime Propaganda in Palestine and Bahrain during the Second World War’ (MA diss., University of Maryland, 2018).
11 J.T. Baumel, ‘“In everlasting memory”: Individual and communal Holocaust commemoration in Israel’, Israel Affairs, 1:3 (1995), 146–170; M. Brog, ‘Victims and victors: Holocaust and military commemoration in Israel collective memory’, Israel Studies, 8:3 (2003), 65–99.
12 Y. Gelber, Toldot ha-Hitnadvut ha-Yehudit (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Igud ha-Hayalim ha-Meshuhrarim be-Israel, 1979–1984) 4 vols.; S. Dagan, Ha-Brigada ha-Yehudit, ha-Gdud ha-Shlishi (Tel Aviv: Igud ha-Hayalim ha-Meshuhrarim be-Israel, 1996); H. Blum, The Brigade: An Epic Story of Vengeance, Salvation, and WWII (New York NY: Harper Collins, 2002); M. Beckman, Jewish Brigade: An Army with Two Masters 1944–45 (Stroud: History Press, 2011); S.M. Roca, The Jewish Brigade Group and the Jewish Units in the British Army in World War II (Italy: Soldiershop Publishing, 2013).
13 For example, see Sefer ha-Hagana, the official history of armed militia of the Yishuv. The book is based on early collections of oral testimonies preserved at the Hagana Historical Archives (hereafter HHA).
14 A.R. al-Mudawwar, Qaryat Tirat Haifa: Min silsilat al-qura al-filistiniya al-mudammara, 19 (Bir Zeit: Markaz Dirasat wa-Tawthiq al-Mujtama‘ al-Filistini, 1997), 77–80.
15 M. Aql, Al-Mufassal fi Ta’rikh Wadi ‘Ara wa-‘Ar’ara: Min Bidayat Thawrat 1936 ila Nihayat Harb 1948 (Jerusalem: no publication details, 1999), 132.
16 K.‘A. Abu Shawish, ‘Qaryat Barqa al-Muhajjara: Dirasa Ta’rikhiyya Ijtima‘iyya Siyasiyya,’ in the proceedings of the strategic conference Filastin Tuhaddith Akhbaraha (Nablus: al-Najjah University, 2016), 12; N.M. Ko‘, Al-Ta’rikh al-Shafawi li-Khirbet Beit Lid, Silsilat al-Ta’rikh al-Shafawi (Missing place of publication: Missing Publisher, 2010), 25–26; M. H. Al-Najjar, Al-Nas wal-Turath fi Isdud (Missing place of publication: Jam‘iyat al-Thaqafa wal-Fikr al-Hurr, 2013), 44 etc. On the historical merit of the literary genre of village books: S. Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) and Davis, 2011.
17 ‘A. Tayeh, Qamar fi Beit Daras (Missing place of publication: Ittihad al-Kuttab al-Filastiniyyin and UNDP, 2001), 87–91.
18 A. Derman, ‘The Impact of British Camps Deployment on Jewish Settlements in Israel’, Horizons in Geography, 11–12 (1984), 99.
19 Shapira, 2–18.
20 S. Mark, ‘Imperial or Local Case? The Physical Presence of the British Army in Palestine between 1918–1948’ (PhD diss., University of Haifa, 2018), 306–9.
21 Morris, 20.
22 A. Kadish, ‘Workers in Army Camps and Palestinian Society Before the 1948 War’, in 1948 and After: The Jerusalem School on War, the Military and Society, ed. by Alon Kadish, (Moshav Ben-Shemen: Modan, 2015), 17–47.
23 Royal Air Force Operations Record Book and Appendices, R.A.F Station Ein Shemer, ORB Jan 1944–Feb 1948 (hereafter RAF Record Book), AIR 28/249, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter TNA).
24 A. Lake, Flying Units of the RAF (Shrewsbury, 1999); Shapira.
25 RAF Record Book, 5 March 1945.
26 For the Jewish version of the evacuation of RAF Ein Shemer and its take-over by Israel Defense Forces personnel in May 1948, see the testimony of Itshaq Shemi, ‘The Notrut as an interim step towards the Israel Defense Forces (exploits in Samaria, 1948)’, Hagana Archives (thereafter: ATA), 186.25, undated (1950s).
27 Civilian contractors, monthly statistics, file S9\1125, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA); Interview with Farid Mustafa al-Dik, 2 February 2018 (hereafter int. al-Dik); Interview with Dudik Shalit, Pardes Hanna, 7 May 2019 (hereafter int. Shalit).
28 Interview with Moshe Dayagi, Kefar Neter, 21 March 2017; Shapira, 6.
29 ‘Comments by “Barak” on Baqa al-Gharbiyya’s Village Report, as Obtained from a Man Familiar with the Village’, 105/227, HHA.
30 Group Captain G.M. Lindeman, Commanding Officer, ‘How Clean is Your Chalet?’, 14 December 1944, AIR 28/250, TNA.
31 Tayeh, 87–88; A.H. Jude, Isdood: Castle of the Palestinian South (Dalton, GA: Amazone Press [sic], 2012), 96–97 [in Arabic]; interview with Harb Abu Seif, al-Ramla, 19 January 2019 (b. 1936 at Hamame); interview with Zaki Abu Marase, Lydda, 1 May 2019 (b. 1945 at al-Majdal, Gaza Sub-district).
32 ‘Pass’ is an English term which was absorbed into the local colloquial Arabic.
33 Shapira, 100. The letter is dated 18 September 1940 and refers to an adjacent army camp.
34 Interview with Saleh Qi‘dan Bayud, 19 March 2018 (hereafter int. Qi‘dan).
35 ‘Revision of Establishment – No. 78 (G.R.) O.T.U.’, Secret, 22 January 1944, 5–6, AIR 28/250, TNA. B. Moore, ‘Enforced Diaspora: The Fate of Italian Prisoners of War during the Second World War’, War in History, 22:2 (2015), 174–90; B. Moore, ‘Turning liabilities into assets: British government policy towards German and Italian prisoners of war during the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 32:1 (1997), 117–36.
36 RAF Record Book, 30 November 1944.
37 P. Wien, ‘Coming to terms with the past: German academia and historical relations between the Arab lands and Nazi Germany’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42:2 (2010), 311–21; W. Helmreich, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (London: Routledge, 2016).
38 Ba-Kemp, 8/klali/155 and, 168, HHA.
39 RAF Record Book, 22 May 1945.
40 Z. Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkley CA: University of California Press, 1996), 292–9.
41 ‘Bad Losers’, Palestine Post, 19 August 1945. Interestingly enough, the incident is absent from the RAF Record Book for 18 August 1945.
42 Similar contests took place between Jewish and Arab workers en route to the camps near Sarafand (alRamla Sub-district); Kadish, 30, 49.
43 Int. al-Dik, 18 February 2018; interview with Mahmud Hasan Khalaf, Baqa al-Gharbiyya, 5 May 2018 (hereafter int. Khalaf); interview with Muhammad Rajab Ghanaim, Baqa al-Gharbiyya, 1 March 2018 (hereafter int. Ghanaim); interview with Rafiq Yasin, Bir al-Sikka, 21 March 2019 (b. 1929 near Deir al-Ghusun).
44 For example, in 1944, Arabs were given only two-day’s leave, on Saturday and Sunday, instead of the 4–day–long ‘Eid al-Adhha; RAF Record Book, 18 September 1944, 25 November 1944 and 29 March 1945.
45 Interviews with Shalit, al-Dik, Ghanaim, Qi‘dan, al-Daqqa and more.
46 RAF Record Book, 8 May 1944.
47 C.M. Craven, ‘Juvenile Delinquency in the Colonies’, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 4 (1934), 179–85; S. Simoni, ‘A Dangerous Legacy: Welfare in British Palestine, 1930–1939’, Jewish History, 13:2 (1999), 81–109.
48 Int. al-Dik, 8 February 2018.
49 Eshnav (newspaper), 6 November 1942, 5.
50 Filastin (newspaper), 28 July 1938, 1 and 8; J. Qi‘dan at al., Sanabil min al-Ta’rikh wal-Turath: Baqa al-Gharbiyya (Baqa al-Gharbiyya: Al-Qassemi Academy, 2011), 55–63.
51 According to a detailed list complied with the aid of the interviewees and contemporary news reports only five (10 percent) of homeowners worked in the camps, due to their old age, but a quarter of their children did so; another five (10 percent) served in civilian jobs such as police and railroads employees, which aided the Allied war effort.
52 Int. Qi‘dan, 19 March 2018; interview with Hafizha Sadeq Ghanaim, 20 June 2019.
53 Security Report for April 1945, 2–3, AIR 28/250, TNA.
54 Ibid.
55 Int. Ghanaim, Baqa al-Gharbiyya, 1 March 2018. The dismissal of relatives stems perhaps from suspicion that they had conspired with the thieves. This practice is evident in another group of camps near Ras al-‘Ain (interview with Kafr Qassem resident, b. 1936, 15 July 2017).
56 Security Report for April 1945, 2, AIR 28/250, TNA; Palestine Post, 13 November 1945, Palestine Post, 20 December 1945.
57 Arab interlocutors often referred informally to Senegalese drivers with the derogatory term ‘slaves’, (Arabic ‘abid), reflecting prevailing prejudices against African slaves in the Ottoman Empire. The qualifier ‘abid’ is used to this day to refer to a class of freed slaves of low social status residing in Baqa al-Gharbiyya and neighbouring villages: E.M. Troutt Powell, Tell This in My Memory: Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 1–6.
58 Gov to Bina (B), ‘other Ranks ORB’, 3 February 1946, 8/klali/19, HHA.
59 Testimony of Yeruham Greenfeld, 20 November 1958, 139.35, HHA.
60 Int. Ghanaim, 1 March 2018.
61 Interview with Muhammad ‘Amrur, al-Tira, 23 March 2015 (b. 1939 in Khirbet al-‘Amarir); interviews with Binyamina residents Carmela (b. 1928) and Gideon ha-Cohen (b. 1925) and Amitsur Cohen, 18 February 2019.
62 Interview with Mordechai Naor, Tel Aviv, 29 February 2018 (hereafter int. Naor).
63 Int. al-Dik, 8 February 2018.
64 Int. Ghanaim, 13 February 2018; int. al-Dik, 8 February 2018.
65 Interview with Hafizha Sadeq Ghanaim, 20 June 2019; interview with Elisha Shamri, Ein Shemer, 1 March 2018 (hereafter int. Shamri) and work cards held by Kibbutz Ein Shemer’s Archive.
66 M.E. Spiro, Gender and Culture: Kibbutz Women Revisited (London: Routledge, 2017), 3–61.
67 The incident appears in the RAF Record Book on 28 September 1944; but the pilot was male.
68 M.M. Haj-Yahia, ‘Wife abuse and battering in the sociocultural context of Arab society’, Family Process, 39:2 (2000), 237–55; V.M. Moghadam, ‘Patriarchy in transition: Women and the changing family in the Middle East’, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 35:2 (2004), 137–62.
69 <https://makomshamur.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/%D7%91%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%A7%D7%A4%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%9B%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%A8-colony-of-love> [accessed 1 May 1 2018]; Int. Shalit, 5 May 2019; RAF Record Book, 6 May 1944.
70 Int. al-Dik, 8 February 2018. One case involved the non-normative romantic engagement between British soldiers and two daughters of the Jallad family near the Beit Lid army camp (no. 12). The affair ended with the murder of the daughters by their relatives: R. Mamat and A. Blair, Miniqrot Tsurim: Sipuro ha-Mufla shel Ya‘akov Barazani (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1979), 211 and local testimonies.
71 Int. Ghanaim, 1 March 2018.
72 Security Report for April 1945, 3, AIR 28/250, TNA.
73 RAF Record Book, 5 March 1945 (Subsequent comment by RAF Station commander); Civilian Labour statistics for 1 April 1944, file S9/1125, CZA.
74 Int. Ghanaim, 1 March 2018.
75 Ibid.; Int. Hafizha, 16 June 2019.
76 RAF Record Book, 5 March 1945.
77 Int. Shamri; Compare with Lockman, 296–297.
78 Int. Shalit, 7 May 2019.
79 Int. al-Dik, 8 February 2018; Interview with Amitsur Cohen, Binyamina, 19 August 2018.
80 RAF Record Book, 14 December 1944.
81 Civilian Labour statistics for 1 June 1944, file S9/1125, CZA.
82 Int. Naor.
83 Testimony of Avraham Broshi, 23 March 1972, 195.96, HHA.
84 I. Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish state: Israel's control of a national minority (Austin, TX.: University of Texas Press, 1982); H.C. Kelman, ‘The interdependence of Israeli and Palestinian national identities: The role of the other in existential conflicts’, Journal of Social Issues, 55:3 (1999), 581–600.
85 A. Shmueli, I. Shnell and A. Soffer, The Little Triangle: Transformation of a region (Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 1985), 9, 29.
86 H. Cohen, Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948–1967 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 123–58.
87 Pre-interview coordination talks with residents of Baqa al-Gharbiyya, Qaffin, Meisar and Zeimer, January 2018 – April 2019.
88 See for example Yaacov Lozowick, Israel’s Chief Archivist at the Israel State Archives, about the problems of archival disclosure (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives, 2018): <http://www.archives.gov.il/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/state_archivist_report_2018.pdf> (Hebrew).
89 The case of Gershom Gurnberg and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel vs. the Director of the IDF and Defense Establishment Archives, heard before the Israeli Supreme Court, 2467/05. A representative example of the work published by ‘Authorised Researchers’, is Y. Gelber, Roots of the Lily: Intelligence in the Yishuv, 1918–1947 (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Press, 1992).
90 Qi‘dan et al, 2014, 194.
91 Int. Ghanaim, 13 February 2018.
92 M. Oppenheimer, All Work, No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (Walcha, NSW: Ohio Productions, 2002).
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Roy Marom
Roy Marom is a PhD student and Azrieli Graduate Fellow in the Department of Israel Studies at the University of Haifa. His research deals with the Jewish and Palestinian communities living in Palestine’s coastal plain during the Late Ottoman and British Mandate periods.
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