What does a seasoned politician with experience in the civilian arena do when he is appointed defense minister? Judging by the actions of the most senior politician during the period immediately preceding independence, David Ben-Gurion, one should take a break, reduce other activities to a minimum and devote oneself to studying security issues. Ben-Gurion devoted nearly six weeks to a "personal seminar" in order to prepare for his new role.

Spring, 1947. The Jewish revolt against British rule has reached a peak, with terror actions by the underground movements, illegal immigrant ships clashing with the British army, thousands of people imprisoned in detention camps in Cyprus, a military regime of over two weeks' duration imposed on Tel Aviv and environs as well as the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The first indications that the British government has tired of its rule over Palestine have appeared. On February 18, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin announced that the "Palestinian problem" was being turned over to the United Nations.

Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Yishuv [pre-state Jewish community in Palestine] and chairman of the Jewish Agency executive, had just recently requested - and received - responsibility for the defense portfolio from the Zionist Congress. He returned home after a long stint abroad and began, as was his wont, to work energetically. Soon, however, he was forced to scale back his activities due to problems with one of his legs, for which he was subsequently hospitalized. After his discharge, in late March, he decided to conduct a "systematic investigation" - as Prof. Meir Avizohar called it - of the Yishuv's ability to withstand the military onslaught it could expect if the British decided to leave.

	Advertisement

From March 26 to May 6, and then again in late May and early June, Ben-Gurion met with dozens of Haganah commanders (mainly at his home at 17 Keren Kayemet Street in Tel Aviv, now Ben- Gurion Boulevard). He filled up several exercise books with information about commanders, training procedures, weapons, ammunition dumps and weapons production, and procurement options. He also went into the field on several occasions. His conclusions, as presented to the Haganah leaders in early June, caused tremors whose aftershocks continued for some time.

In a first diary entry, from March 26, Ben-Gurion listed what he considered the most important topics: "structure, organization, training, education, planning, instruction, equipment, storage, industry, procurement, budget, intelligence service, youth, relations (apparently with the other underground movements)."

A second entry from the same day includes the structure, deployment, central commanders and budget of the Haganah. We learn from it that the nascent army's organizational budget for the year was 770,000 Palestinian pounds (roughly $3 million), about 43 percent of which went to weapons production and 17 percent to maintaining the Palmach units. As he acquired more information during the weeks of his seminar, Ben- Gurion did not hide his concern at the unpreparedness of the Yishuv and the Haganah.

Incorrigible pessimist

Most of his partners in dialogue viewed Ben-Gurion as a worrier and an incorrigible pessimist. As early as his speech to a closed session of the political committee of the 22nd Zionist Congress, in Basel in December 1946, he had warned: "An attack by the Arabs of Palestine does not threaten the Jewish Yishuv. But there is a danger that the neighboring Arab countries will send their armies to attack the Yishuv and destroy it. We must make immediate preparations, to the best of our technical and economic abilities."

Among those invited to meet him, in order to report about what was available and what was needed in terms of equipment, preparedness and plans for protecting the Yishuv, were all those who had a finger in the security pie at that time. They included: Ze'ev Feinstein (Shefer), head of the national command of the Haganah; members of the command Yosef Yaakobson and Issachar Sitkov (who represented the right) and Yisrael Galili (who represented the left); Yitzhak Sadeh, the acting chief of staff; Yigal Allon (Paicovitch), the commander of the Palmach; senior Haganah officers in the general staff, the cities and the districts; Baruch Rabinov, the treasurer; Yohanan Ratner and Moshe Sneh, who had been head of the national command in the past; Yosef Avidar (Rokhel); Moshe Carmel (Zelitsky); Eliezer Shoshani, treasurer of the Palmach; Asher Peled, in charge of armament in the organization, and others.

The younger generation was also represented, and included such middle-level commanders as Yitzhak Rabin, Danny Mass and Zvi Zamir, from the Palmach; and Haim Laskov, Dan Epstein (Even) and Fritz Eisenstatter (Eshet), who had served as officers in the British army. Another invitee, who happened also to be a regular member of the household, was Ben-Gurion's son Amos, who also had been an officer.

Contrary to custom, Ben-Gurion displayed restraint. He asked questions, did not interrupt and did not contradict the words of those he was talking to. He wrote down everything they said. Sometimes he would employ the method of asking an identical question: He would repeat the same question to several people and more than once expressed surprise at the similarity of their responses, perhaps indicating that the respondents had coordinated their answers. Haim Laskov said about this: "In one of the discussions, when Ben-Gurion asked how many guns the Haganah needed, and the statistic I gave him was exactly the same as those he had received from other persons who had been released from the [British] army, he shouted out: 'You spoke with someone!'" Laskov reported that he was insulted and turned to leave the room. But Ben-Gurion stopped him and asked: "How is it possible that you all answer the same thing?" Laskov explained to him that all the officers that had served in the British army knew the tables for arming the units by heart and it was not surprising that they all recited the same material. "Only then did Ben-Gurion calm down," he said.

There were those who could not understand what he was getting at. His remarks about tanks, cannons and war planes were beyond the ken of most of those being questioned. Some thought that the subject of security, which was new to him, had confused him. According to some reports, there were people, including the most senior, who left the meeting with him and told those still waiting in the corridor of his house that "the old man has gone mad." Ben-Gurion met these people individually or in small groups. He questioned them about training, instructing officers, and sources of weapons and financing. In private conversations, he sometimes wanted information about the standard of certain commanders and about their suitability to their positions.

'Is the Haganah necessary?'

The following is part of a conversation between Ben-Gurion and Moshe Carmel, later a general in the Israel Defense Forces, a member of the Knesset and a minister, who at that time served as commander of the Haganah's Northern District.

Ben-Gurion opened with a fairly provocative question: Why is the organization [Haganah] necessary at all, and will it succeed? Carmel responded: The organization has to accompany the Zionist enterprise, to defend it and to fight for it.

B.G.: Is it capable of doing this?

Carmel: The human material is good, even excellent. It must just be increased.

B.G.: Will we be able to withstand the Arabs if they send their army against us [such as the Legion]?

Carmel: We will withstand them. There is no fear. There is not one Arab soldier who can compare with our soldiers, neither in training nor in spirit.

B.G.: What are the defects?

Carmel: It [the Haganah] does not have a feeling of ownership. There is no assistance, advice, criticism or supervision from the center. There is not one supervising eye.

Carmel expressed his opinion about the senior command. In his view, Moshe Sneh was a good national command head. But the chief of staff who worked alongside him, Yaakov Dori (Dostrovsky), later the first IDF chief of staff, turned out to be too conservative, too glued to the doctrines of the British army and "did not consider our improvisations good." As for Yitzhak Sadeh, the acting chief of staff, "he is not an organizational type but a man of action."

Carmel had practical suggestions: to refresh the general command by bringing in "young forces," as he called them. He proposed Yigal Allon, Nahum Sarig, Uri Yaffe and Shlomo Shamir. This was because the "planning department is not okay and the same is true of training." His candidate for the next commander of the Haganah: Yisrael Galili.

During the talks and clarifications, Ben-Gurion's interlocutors felt that he was asking a great deal about integrating the officers who had been released from the British army into the Haganah's command. He became increasingly aware that there was a deep rift between them and the officers who remained in the country and led the organization at a national or regional level during the years of World War II and after. Those who were particularly sharp caught on already then that he had a preference for those who had served in the British army, the "soldiers" as he defined them, rather than the veterans of the Haganah and the youngsters of the Palmach. The "soldiers" who had combat experience in the British army - one of the central armies of World War II - were preferable in his eyes over the Haganah commanders who had trained in Palestine in the underground.

In a conversation with this writer in 1966, Ben-Gurion did not hide his opinion that a guerilla spirit had taken hold of the Haganah during the period of the struggle against the British, and "Imagine, one of the senior officers told me: 'The squad must not have a mortar; it would make things difficult when it has to hide in the mountains or the orchards.' They compared themselves to the partisans in Russia and did not notice that we were about to be engaged in a war against regular armies."

'Can we withstand an invasion?'

In 1969, in his book "Medinat Yisrael Hamehudeshet" (The Restored State of Israel), Ben-Gurion wrote candidly: "The conception and the practices of most commanders of the Haganah were of regional defense. Hardly anyone thought of military engagement." At the beginning of May 1947, Ben-Gurion began collecting data about the Arab armies whose intervention alongside the Arabs of Israel he feared. Five pages of his diary are devoted to the Egyptian army. His main fear was of the Egyptian air force which had 177 planes including eight combat squadrons. Another four pages are devoted to describing the Trans-Jordanian, Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi armies.

After two days, he again started to deal with the Haganah. He asked Prof. Yohanan Ratner of the Technion, who had headed the first national command of the organization, at the end of the 1930s: "What do you think? Can we withstand [an invasion of the Arab armies]?" Ratner, Ben-Gurion, says, answered in the affirmative but immediately added, "But with heavy losses." The conversation continued:

B.G.: What should we emphasize? - a large quantity of privates, or training senior personnel?

Ratner: Senior personnel, on condition that the general public [the Haganah members] get a minimum of training.

B.G.: Who could be a candidate for chief of staff?

Ratner: Yigael Sukenik (Yadin) or Shlomo Rabinovitch (Shamir).

After this meeting, on May 6, 1947, there was a break in the study period and Ben-Gurion turned his attention to diplomatic affairs. He took a short trip to the U.S. in order to participate in a special session of the UN about Palestine. Toward the end of May, he returned home and again devoted intensive efforts to the subject.

On May 27, Ben-Gurion drew up his first summary, a rather pessimistic one. He wrote in his diary: "There is not sufficient training even in the brigade (Palmach). There is a shortage of commanders, and those we have are not adequate [in standard]. There is no attempt at action, the planning is defective, the structure of the budget is not directed at the target. The most serious fault is that the experience and human military material [those demobilized from the British army] have not been utilized. The equipment has not been adapted. For many years, a central idea has been missing: What is the duty [of the Haganah organization]?"

Later in his dairy, Ben-Gurion made a note of the processes critical to changing the situation. He requested two plans for re-organizing the Haganah. The first was drawn up for him by Ze'ev Feinstein, the acting head of national command and Yohanan Ratner; the other one was developed by two officers who had served in the British army, Haim Laskov and Fritz Eisenstatter. The plans differed from each other and Ben-Gurion, as expected, tended to accept that of the "soldiers." In his diary, he noted that it "is acceptable in its basic outlines."

In the following days, after learning the facts, he began to employ the carrot-and-stick system. First he would praise and glorify, then criticize and attack. At a meeting of the Mapai Party secretariat on May 29, he declared: "It has become clear to me that we had very important achievements: I do not know whether any nation other than ours could have had such achievements. But if you think we have the power to defend the Yishuv, you are deceiving yourself. We have a public that is devoted to the Haganah and that is prepared to give up its life to defend Zionism, but we do not have a talented public that is trained and equipped for that."

Ten days later, Ben-Gurion appeared before another forum - the security committee. He once again found a way to praise the Haganah and pointed out: "I found important conquests as compared with previous years. I saw that there have been great achievements in the sphere of physical exercise and strengthening the body, especially in the Palmach. There are important conquests in the maritime sphere. The commando is fit to act. There are also important achievements with equipment." He then went on to enumerate a long list of defects. The senior commanders get the training only of platoon commanders and the platoon commanders are not trained at all; there is no senior command, and secrets are not kept; sometimes there is duplication in the command ranks and there is a shortage of equipment.

'Thousands could fall'

Even though most of the Haganah leaders whom he questioned were optimistic about the Yishuv's chances of withstanding an attack, Ben-Gurion was not of that mind. "I was not convinced by the optimistic answers," he wrote. In his opinion, the Yishuv stood a chance of withstanding an attack, but the price would be high and "heaven forbid, thousands could fall." On June 18, almost three months after the seminar began, Ben-Gurion published his final conclusions in the form of a long memorandum to the Haganah command. He outlined a three-fold structure for the organization: an excellent attack force for special purposes; a driving force in the form of a regular army; and a territorial defense force. The most urgent goal: training commanders up through the battalion level; establishing a high school for commanders to prepare battalion commanders and staff officers [up until that point, the Haganah's platoon commanders course was the highest level of training].

He also proposed far-reaching changes in the structure of the general staff, and made personnel changes. The incumbent chief officers, Feinstein and Sadeh, were replaced; Yaakov Dori, who had been chief of staff until 1945, was put back in command, and Yisrael Galili was chosen to serve as the new national command head. From then on, Ben-Gurion stated, the most senior command would consist of three people: himself, Galili and Dori.

During the coming months, Ben-Gurion devoted a great deal of his energies to advancing the status of the officers who had served in the British army. This was met by opposition on the part of "the Haganah party" and these struggles continued into the War of Independence.

In retrospect, it should be asked whether Ben-Gurion succeeded in recreating the Haganah. There is no unequivocal answer. Those close to him note that he was the first to recognize the concrete and immediate danger posed by the Arab armies and that he worked toward preparing the Haganah and turning it into an army, while the heads of the organization merely foresaw a repeat of the "events" (the bloody riots of the Arabs) and wanted to leave the existing structure while making the necessary changes.

On the other hand, those who expressed opposition to him and the adoption of the doctrine for rebuilding the Haganah, say that the results of the War of Independence prove that the approach of the Haganah party - an approach supported by most of the senior commanders - was correct, and that it was the regulars who did not always prove themselves in this war and in the early years of the Israel Defense Forces.

However, there is one point about which there is no argument: Ben-Gurion shook up the Haganah, outlined its mode of operation, opened new horizons to it and pointed to the main emphases in anticipation of a possible confrontation with the Arab armies. Only one year after holding his seminar - in which Ben-Gurion summarized for himself the organization's faults and the ways of correcting them - he set up the IDF on the basis of the Haganah.

Thus it was that the "seminar" of the spring of 1947 gave birth to the IDF. There is no doubt that Ben- Gurion had imagined a different army, more military perhaps, but the constant friction between the two schools of thought prevalent in the Haganah gave the new army its special character, and Ben-Gurion gave that his approval while striving constantly to put into operation his own plans and ideas, those he had thought up and formulated during the days of his seminar.

Information about Ben-Gurion's "seminar" is taken mostly from his detailed diaries. Those he spoke to at the time rarely kept a written record of those conversations, and some published their versions only after a number of years, mainly in the form of oral histories.

The author is a writer and a researcher of the Land of Israel.