 Welcome to the New America Foundation. I'm Peter Bergen, who I run the International Security Program. It's really a great honor to introduce my longtime friend and the friend of New America's, Bruce Hoffman, who, as you know, is widely regarded as the leading expert on terrorism and counterterrorism in this country. He's just come out with a fabulous new book, Anonymous Soldier, The Struggle for Israel, 1917 to 1947, with the provocative thesis, does terrorism work, and the provocative answer, maybe yes, sometimes. And Bruce, amongst many other things, is a tenured professor at Georgetown. He's the director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown, which is routinely rated amongst the best in the country. In fact, David Stelman, who's sitting over here, is a graduate of that program and also works at New America. Bruce got his doctorate, New College Oxford, something I share with Bruce, since I was merely an undergraduate there. But we have a lot of nostalgia for the place. And he set up the, he was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism at St. Andrews in Scotland. He's had senior position. He ran, ran in Washington. He's had an extraordinary career. So he's going to talk to us for about 20 minutes about the big themes and stories of his book. And then we'll throw it open to a discussion. If you want me to sit and stand. Whatever you're most comfortable with. It might be easier. I might be faster if I stand, actually, because you should always be suspicious of people who don't speak from notes, because they generally, then, will speak much longer than they intend. Thank you very much, Peter, for the kind invitation to come to New America Foundation. I've known Peter for a decade and a half. Actually, we met just before the September 11th, 2001 attacks in August. And we met because no one would publish an article that Peter had written about the rising threat posed by Osama bin Laden extraordinarily. Very fortunately, he came to me because I had an academic journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. And that, in my prescience, that was the lead article of the September 2001 issue of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. So it's always been a great admirer of Peter's. And I'm delighted, really, to be here. So let me very briefly talk about a little bit about the book. Let me give you some of the context. Talk about some of the key figures in the book. Address some of the more controversial points. Do that within 20 minutes. It's 500 pages of text. So I will heavily compress that. And then we'll open it up for a question and answer. First, a little bit of the context. Beyond any doubt, I think the period of British rule of Palestine was a very melancholy and sad affair. And one has to sort of step back and say, was it destined to be so? Was the mandate preordained to fail? What undermined British rule? And I think this is a theme that runs through the book. The book begins, actually, in December 1917, where in general Edmund Allenby marches into Jerusalem, conquers Jerusalem, brings at least the southern half of Palestine under British rule. It's not for another year before he consolidates that control. And I think from the start, British rule was undermined by the conflicting promises that the British government had made to both Arabs and Jews. 1914 is part of the effort to enlist the Arabs in a revolt against Ottoman rule. You've seen the film Lawrence of Arabia, read T. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The British made promises to Sheriff Hussein of Mecca that if he would, in his tribes, would join in a struggle, Britain pledged to grant freedom to those territories previously ruled by the Ottoman Empire. And of course, there were two pincers. One pincer was Lawrence and Sheriff Hussein's forces that went up the Hejaz, conquered Acaba, swept through what's today Jordan, and then converged in Damascus. The other part of the pincer was the Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by General Sir Edmund Allenby, which in a series of stunning defeats after three previous offensives had failed, defeated the Turks at Gaza, then at Bersheva, and then took Jerusalem. Exactly a month before, actually I should say not exactly, a few weeks before, Allenby marched into Jerusalem. Britain had issued the Balfour Declaration, which was in fact a note given by the then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a president of the Zionist Federation in the United Kingdom, whereby Britain pledged to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. So you have these two conflicting promises from the outset. British rule over Palestine was consolidated, true to its word in the Balfour Declaration, Britain permitted Jewish immigration as the first new Jewish immigrants began to arrive in Palestine in 1919 and 1920. This sparked Arab unrest and rioting swept through Jerusalem. The following year in 1921, there was more widespread rioting that spread from Jerusalem to Jaffa, to Tel Aviv, to the surrounding communities. And in the aftermath of that more concentrated, escalated violence, the British decided to claw back its commitment to the Balfour Declaration and redefined its policy for Palestine on the basis of something it invented, which was that Jewish immigrants henceforth would only be permitted to migrate to Palestine based on the territory's quote unquote economic absorptive capacity. Unfortunately, I think the impression that was created was that violence pays, that terrorism rioting could be successful in prompting a change in British policy. And throughout the 1920s, you have the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hashamin al-Husseini, achieving a fusion of nationalism with religion, which result in the 1929 riots, which sweep through the entire country. And once again, caused a very profound redefinition of British policy and another clawing back of the Balfour Declaration. Zionist pressure in London actually reversed that. This is known as the infamous McDonald Black Letter, where the prime minister, Ramsay McDonald, then reverses his colonial secretary and does not exceed to the drastic restrictions on Jewish immigration. But nonetheless, the rioting was on the wall that just the right amount of violence, or perhaps more violence, could result in a signal change to British policy. And this then occurs in the final year of the 1936 to 39 Arab rebellion, which was a massive, countrywide uprising directed as much against Palestine's British rulers as it was against the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. And in May 1939, as wars looming in Europe and Britain seeks to be assured of a peaceful Palestine where it can redeploy the large number of military forces sent to suppress the Arab rebellion in the defense of the European continent and of England, the British government under Neville Chamberlain promulgates the white paper. The white paper imposes drastic restrictions on Jewish immigration. In fact, it will only permit immigration for the next five years. And thereafter, it would be made completely dependent upon Arab consent, of course, on the eve of World War II when thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Jews were attempting to escape Europe and the impending war. And Hitler, this was a huge blow. The white paper also imposed restrictions on Jewish land purchase as well, and basically signaled the reversal of the support that had been provided 22 years before for the Balfour Declaration. Small Zionist militant underground organization calling itself the Irgun Svalioumi, our national military organization, had, following the 1929 riots, split from the Haganah, which in Hebrew literally means defense. This was the self-defense militia that eventually evolved into the Israel Defense Forces. And it had broken from the Haganah to pursue what they believed would be a much more effective defense of the Jewish community in Palestine, believing that the best defense is a good offense and that they intended in 1937 actually as Arab violence and terrorism escalated, they began to use terrorism or counter-terrorism against Arab targets. In 1939, with the promulgation of the white paper, the Irgun declared a revolt against British rule as well. And in fact, in the Irgun's documents, in their public statements, they declare that something the effect the Arabs are using violence in succeeding, we will use violence as well and have the same effect. So basically, I would argue, riven through the history of the British mandate, was the perception on both sides inadvertently created that violence could influence British policy. And you see this right up until the end of the Palestine mandate in 1947, when the most senior British officials, in lamenting their inability to control the violence that is plaguing Palestine, say that this is the problem from the start, we've never had a consistent policy. And both communities have always been persuaded that violence can be applied against the British. So that's a bit of the context. Let me talk a little bit about some of the key figures in the book. First and foremost, one of the most interesting figures, I would argue, is Afrohom Stern. He's interesting because he was a poet and a scholar. In fact, the name of the book, Anonymous Soldiers, comes from a poem that Stern had written that subsequently became the theme song of the Irgun and then became the theme song, as it were, sung very gravely of the Freedom Fighters for Israel as the group that Stern led was formerly known. He was a dandy and a womanizer, a dreamer and a zealot, who in essence turned his back on a potentially brilliant career as a classicist and as a scholar to join the underground. He joined the Irgun. And then when World War II broke out and the Irgun suspended its revolt against the British and decided to fight alongside the British for the duration of the war, he refused to accept that unilateral declaration and split from the Irgun, created his own terrorist organization, harkening back to the experience of the Irish nationalists in 1916 when they argued that precisely at the time when Britain was enmeshed in or preoccupied with World War I was exactly the moment to seize control of Ireland's destiny, to stage a revolution and overthrow British rule. This was very much in Stern's thoughts. Despite his grandiose dreams and pretensions, I would argue that in the main, the group that he created that eventually evolved into was known to Jews by the Hebrew acronym Lachy, to British as the Stern gang, generally had a much more marginal impact on events than the Irgun did. The Lachy never had more than a few hundred persons whereas the Irgun had upwards of 5,000 persons. But what's interesting is in Stern's desperation to realize the same of creating a Jewish state that went beyond the boundaries of Palestine and to the surrounding territory, he was even prepared to negotiate with Fascist Italy and even with Nazi Germany. This was in a period before the Vonsi Conference in 1942 before the final solution had been embraced as Nazi principles and Stern's somewhat mad idea was to appeal to the Germans to basically expel the Jews from Europe and send them to Palestine where they would overthrow British rule and expel the British from Palestine. It was just one of his many pipe dreams that was never realized. Menachem Begin is another key figure in the book. Begin was born in 1913 in Brest, Litovsk, a backwater at the confluence of the borderlands of Poland, Lithuania and Russia. He grew up in an environment that was rife with anti-Semitism that made a huge impact on his life. His father's own defense, for instance, on one occasion of an elderly rabbi whom a Polish soldier was attempting to cut off his beard with a bayonet and his father raised his walking stick and struck the soldier, which of course immediately resulted in a pylon with other soldiers and policemen beating Begin's father mercilessly and throwing him in prison may had a profound impact on his son who then went on to join and become a follower of Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky had created what was known as the revisionist party or the new Zionist organization that was more capitalist oriented than the social labor orientation of mainstream Zionism. It advocated a very muscular form of Zionism and aggressive form of Zionism. And Begin, Gravit, heard Jabotinsky speak when he was 15, joined Beittar, which was the revisionist party's youth movement, rose through the ranks, obtained along the way a law degree from Warsaw University. But also when I think pivotally went on, among other senior administrative posts, to also be the head of propaganda for Beittar. In the 1930s, propaganda did not have its pejorative negative connotations as it does today, what we would call information operations or psychological operations. And I think this was one of the keys to understanding the strategy that Begin adopted for the year good. And I think, and as I argue in the book, is really the seminal impact he had on the future course of revolts and of terrorist campaigns. Begin arrived in Palestine in 1943 and he assumed command of the Irgun. He quickly emerged as a master strategist and propagandist. His strategy was not to defeat the British militarily. He knew that that was impossible given the handful of men at that time that comprised the Irgun and their meager arsenal. But rather what he sought was to use violence to undermine the government's prestige and its control of Palestine by striking at symbols of British rule. And I think that the Irgun's campaign was the first post-World War II, a post-modern terrorist campaign, a war of national liberation to use dramatic, spectacular acts of violence to attract international attention to a group and to its cause. And this I think was really Begin's brilliance. I mean, there would be terrorist campaigns, of course, for centuries before that. Most of them had been localized, had appealed to the indigenous population, had been directed against the foreign forces or the opposing forces in that territory. On occasion had appealed to the capital of the imperial power, but really didn't have the international impact that the Irgun's campaign had. For Begin, the audience was not only in Jerusalem or even in London, but in Paris, in Moscow, in Washington, DC, and of course in New York. And the reason that the audience was in New York is because Begin made a deliberate effort to appeal to the fledgling United Nations organization and to enlist the United Nations support for Jewish statehood. So in an era long before 24-7 news coverage in cable channels and instantaneous satellite transmissions, Begin deliberately appealed to an audience beyond the footlights and attempted to marshal international pressure on Britain. The Irgun had a number of political front organizations in the United States that were extremely successful in fundraising, in seeing resolutions passed in Congress, condemning British rule. And in many respect, this presaged the relationship between the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin throughout the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s. Let me say a few words about Winston Churchill, obviously someone who's well-known, but in the context of the book. Churchill, from the time he was first elected to parliament at the beginning of the 20th century, was always a phylo-Semite or a friend of Zionism. He was always an ardent opponent of the 1939 White Paper, despite the fact that it was his political party, the conservative party that had imposed it. And during World War II in 1943, he came up with a plan to resolve the question of Palestine's political future. He convened a special committee of the British cabinet that he packed with all of Zionists' closest supporters, mostly from the Labor Party, not from his own party. And they were charged with coming up with a solution to Palestine that would entail the partition of the country, precisely the solution that had been advocated in 1937 by a British royal commission, but then had been obviously scuttled with the 1939 White Paper. And his intention was to hold the next big three conference, not in Yalta, as it transpired in February 1945, but instead in Jerusalem. And at that conference, to enlist the support of the United States and of the Soviet Union in backing his partition plan, that would be enforced by British bayonets. There is voluminous material, both in the British archives and in the Weitzman archives in Rochovet, Israel, that attests to this. In fact, on November 2nd, 1944, Churchill had lunch with Chaim Weitzman, president of the World Zionist Organization, the future president of Israel. And Weitzman had asked him, I hear rumors that the partition plan that the cabinet committee is going to propose will not give the Jews a sufficiently large state. And Churchill hastened to assure him that was not the case. In fact, he said something in fact that you will be able to stick your thumb in a pie and pull out a plum piece. And he said, I just want to wait until after the US presidential election on November 7th to announce this so that we can be sure that President Roosevelt's support will be obtained, and then we can present the United Front to Stalin at the next Great Powers Conference. And then the following day, I'm sorry, the day before the American presidential election on November 6th, 1944, two members of the Lachey gunned down Lord Moyn in Cairo. Lord Moyn was the minister of state for the Middle East, was a person of cabinet rank. So it was as if a member of the United States cabinet or the British cabinet had been shot by gunmen. He was also a very old and close personal friend of Churchill's and a very close political ally that had stood beside Churchill at virtually every juncture of Churchill's career since the early 1920s. With the death of his old friend and political ally, Churchill basically abandoned the partition plan. I would argue that he always remained a friend of Zionism, but unfortunately this became a lost opportunity. And as we know, the Big Three Conference did not meet in Jerusalem. The Palestine issue was not raised at the conference, and we have the events that then transpired at the end of World War II. Finally, and I realize I'm getting on to 20 minutes, so let me briefly say something about Palestinian Arab, who figures prominently in the story, and then sort of wrap up with a more controversial part of the book. Hajamin al-Husseini was descended from one of the most prominent families in Palestine. He attended Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University before World War I, and even then had achieved some notoriety for organizing a Palestinian student society, opposing the Zionist immigration and land purchase in Palestine even before the First World War. He was one of the chief organizers of the 1920 riots, which I referred to earlier, in fact, a British military court sentenced into 15 years in prison. He was subsequently pardoned by the first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, who also thought that perhaps by appointing Hajamin to high office, that this would moderate his more extremist tendencies. So he was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, which is the senior religious figure. He, in fact, styled himself as the Grand Mufti. And he was also made president of the Supreme Muslim Council, the sort of preeminent Arab, Palestinian representative body. It did not moderate his extremist tendencies. As I said earlier, he was involved, as I mentioned earlier, there was riots in 1921 and 1929, that he played a particularly important role in. He was one of the instigators of the 1936 Arab Rebellion. A warrant was issued for his arrest. He fled Palestine, never to return to his home country. He floated around the Middle East, eventually ended up in Rome, and then finally in Berlin. And this unfortunately didn't make it into the book. I had, the book was actually twice as long as the published version that you see. And I have a very good editor who said, you have to cut it in half, basically. So one of the things that I'm very sorry, he didn't make it into the book, but I found in the US National Archives in Suitland, Maryland, was a list of how much senior Nazi officials and functionaries and Hitler's favorite military commanders were paid. And I was amazed to find that Hajeminal Hussaini was paid as much as a German field marshal was paid during World War II. So clearly his ties to the Nazis were quite profound. Okay, let me move on to wrap up and ask what is one of the main questions of the book and that is, does terrorism work? I've been studying terrorism one way or another for nearly 40 years since I first went to graduate school in 1976. Statesman scholars, any number of people always argue that terrorism is a failed strategy, is largely ineffective, is unsuccessful. And I've often thought, especially as I've watched over the past four decades, terrorism become an even more intractable problem in international politics. As I've seen terrorism grow, become, if anything, more violent, more bloody in meshing civilians far more than it ever did in the past. I've often asked, well, if terrorism is so ineffective, why has it persisted for at least the past two millennia and become an increasingly popular means of violent political expression in the 21st century? And I think one reason for terrorism's historical intractability is the capacity of terrorist groups to learn from one another and the ineptitude of most governments and militaries when confronted by terrorist campaigns to learn from their mistakes, at least initially, or to learn from past mistakes of other military powers. So what one sees is that those terrorist groups that survive and indeed may be successful, if only in a tactical way, absorb and apply the lessons learned from their predecessors. This was certainly true in the case of the Irgun and Alechi. Both groups studied intently the experience of the Russian anarchists and the Russian anti-monarchists, the People's Will from the late 19th century. They both, as I mentioned earlier in Stern's case, but this applied also to the Irgun, were particularly interested in the experience of the Irish nationalists from the 1910s and the 1920s. In fact, Itzhak Shamir, future prime minister of Israel, who was one of the three commanders of the Lechi after Stern was killed by British police in 1942. Actually, his nom de guerre, his underground name, was in fact Michael in honor of or in reference to Michael Collins. And here I think the Irgun had a particularly significant influence on terrorism's future trajectory. As I said, it was the first post-World War II struggle of national liberation to use spectacular dramatic acts of violence to attract attention to the group and its cause, as I described earlier, to play to an audience beyond the footnotes. This was part of Begin's strategy, which he described as erecting a glass house in Palestine with the world looking in, with the world riveted by these attention-garnering acts of violence, such as the bombing of the King David Hotel and other incidents. But also he believed that the glass house would be the shield of the Irgun and of the Jewish community in Palestine, that it would prevent Britain from resorting to many of the harsh repressive means that other states had used when confronted by wars of national liberation or by terrorist campaigns and would especially enable, and this proved to be entirely correct, that the British suppressed the Arab rebellion absolutely ruthlessly. Bombardment of towns and villages, collective punishment of communities, indirect artillery fire, really unrestrained use of firepower. And there was a very, very different set of circumstances in Palestine after World War II. It was largely because Begin and his strategy fought an urban terrorist campaign concealed within the surrounding community that also became the shield. And proved, I think, enormously effective, at least in that goal of putting pressure on the British. Now, and I'll conclude here, history as we know is rarely, if ever, monocausal. There are concatenation events that often account for dramatic turns or changes in history. And in the book, I am not by any stretch of the imagination arguing that terrorism on its own, that Begin himself as, I think, uncharitably a reviewer said of the book this past week and single-handedly defeated the British Empire. That is not the thrust of the book, and that's not what I argue. In fact, when one looks at the circumstances that led to the creation of Israel, first and foremost is the Holocaust and the final solution that, in essence, nearly succeeded in eliminating European Jewry. Certainly, there was the pressure of the Jewish displaced persons. I mean, over 100,000 persons languishing in detention camps in Europe two, three years after the cessation of hostilities. Certainly, hand in glove with that was President Truman's tremendous sympathy, even against the advice of the State Department of his Secretary of State, George Marshall. Certainly, the patient diplomacy of the mainstream Zionist community was absolutely pivotal. But at the same time, I think, what has often been excluded is the role that militant underground organizations like the Irgun and Lechie played in pressuring the British and certainly acting as an accelerant, enforcing the British to leave Palestine sooner than they would have preferred and to leave Palestine in circumstances that they didn't desire. Again, somewhat uncharitably, the reviewer didn't consult the footnotes against the conventional wisdom. One of the things I found in researching this book is almost until the bitter end, the British military wanted to hold on to Palestine for its future basing potential. This is after Britain had already granted independence to India, but nonetheless, Britain was cognizant of the fact that the 1946 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty would result in the secession of British basing rights in Egypt. Britain was still concerned about controlling the Suez Canal and being blocked from using the Suez Canalists and therefore wanted to move its bases from Egypt to Palestine and mainly to Haifa because Haifa is one of the best natural deep water ports in the world. Even Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, supported this up until, and that's the huge turning point, February 1947, where I would argue because of the pressure of the violence, particularly from the Urgun, even Bevin now is starting to think this isn't going to work and is not worth it. The other reason the British were particularly interested in Haifa is because that was the terminus of the Iraq petroleum pipeline, which flowed from Kirkuk and Mosul, and you can still see in Haifa today the huge storage facilities. So the British wanted to retain basing rights. They envisioned something much like the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which they created, having a friendly power there that would grant them those rights. I think what the Urgun did was deprive Britain of that opportunity, of disposing of Palestine in a way that would result in a unitary state and a majority Arab state. And this becomes very clear in the correspondence of the colonial secretary at the time, Arthur Creech-Jones, who specifically makes exactly these points. So let me stop there. I've gone on far too long. This is probably enough to talk about. So is the scholarly consensus now that terrorism does work? If it's allied to a sort of nationalist, anti-colonial insurgency, where a democratic power is susceptible to public opinion? Well, in the long term and perhaps strategically, and especially in the twilight of the colonial era, that I think was very much the case. I think because no country likes to say they were created in part by terrorist violence, that it is something that's viewed as pejorative, that often that is erased from the historical narrative. Also, many countries, and I would argue Israel at least, is very susceptible to acknowledging that claim for fear of inspiring and motivating others similarly to use violence. Where I think terrorism has offered figured to an extent that isn't necessarily appreciated, this is a fulminate or a catalyst for wider conflict. I mean, there's counterfactuals. Who knows whether Churchill's plan would have worked. Although when you think about it, Palestine's Arab population had been broken by the three years of rebellion, which was as much an internecine, fratricidal civil war as it was a result of a revolt against British rule or a war against Jewish settlement of Palestine. Almost all of the Palestinian Arab communities' leaders had been exiled, including Hajameen. But yet the killing of Lord Moyn led to the affirmative, and that's of course what terrorism is about. Terrorism is a strategy of provocation. It's trying to provoke some response or to create instability and chaos that at least the terrorists or their constituents believe they can benefit from. I guess Abu Musab al-Zakawi blowing up the UN building early in the Iraq war is a pretty good example of that turned out to be a kind of fulcrum moment. Right. Well, I mean, look, World War I, I think, is a classic case that really dovetails with what I'm arguing. It would be, even though I'm a terrorist of experts, I would be a fool to argue that Gabriel Princip assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg throne in Sarajevo in June 1914, single-handedly started World War I. I mean, it was the Anglo-German naval rivalry. There were Russia's ambitions in the Balkans, the decain Habsburg and Ottoman empires. I mean, there was a constellation of factors, but certainly we don't ignore the significant role, one of many significant roles that terrorism played, and that's precisely my point in the book is that terrorism did have a role in the creation of Israel. Now, there's another important point I said earlier that propaganda in the 1930s didn't have the pejorative or negative connotations that no one uses the word propaganda anymore. It's information operation. I mean, back then, terrorism was not quite the toxic term it is now. You know, the BBC, for instance, has a policy of not using the word or avoiding the word. I was stunned last month reading about the Taliban's attack on the school children, 145 or so school children are killed. The word terrorism isn't used once in the New York Times or the Washington Post or on any of the major media. It was very different in the 1930s and the 1940s. I mean, this word was used. It was used by the London Times, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post to describe incidents of violence. Malachi itself did not call themselves terrorists, but admitted that they used terrorist tactics. So we have to understand, I mean, in writing history, you can impose, I think, a temporary sensibility. You have to communicate what history was about at the time and bring that sensibility. And that's why, to me, that's a much less loaded word than many people embrace it as. And that's one reason I think people often don't credit as being at least tactically successful. You know, it's tactically successful because it does attract attention and it does create crises that governments are forced to deal with. Right, I guess what's interesting is that, I mean, I'm imperfectly expressing it, but it's one thing to have terrorism to ferment a civil war that just turns into a disaster for all concerned. It's another thing to have a campaign of terrorism that produces an outcome, which for many people was a good thing, which is the state of Israel. I mean, no one would say that the civil war that embroiled Iraq, it benefited no one. Well, I mean, I think terrorism on its own never achieves these strategic ends. It's always in tandem or in concert with other activities. I mean, Sinn Fein is the most popular political party in Northern Ireland now. Would it have gotten there without the IRA? I'm not so sure, but certainly it was also Jerry Adams' willingness to negotiate with the British. It was the decommissioning that played a factor as well. The King David Hotel, the attack, was obviously, was that the fulcrum moment where the British sort of said, hey, this may be worth, I mean, I know that the two armies, the two British army soldiers who were killed in 47. Right. But the King David Hotel attack proceeded that, right? Yes, well, the hangings of the two sergeants, these were two field intelligence sergeants that were kidnapped by the Irgun as a threat. Three Irgunists were threatened, not threatened, were sentenced to execution. And the Irgun threatened that if the British carried out the execution of their three comrades that they would lynch the two sergeants. I mean, at the time, this was of the same as the Jordanian pilot being incandled and burnt alive. I mean, it was spread across the front pages of newspapers throughout Britain to blow up these two sergeants hanging there in a eucalyptus grove. It resulted in widespread anti-Semitic rioting in virtually every major British city, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Southampton. And that, I think, became a very decisive, again, terrorism is a strategy of provocation. You see it with the beheading of James Foley provoking the United States to intervene. So the King David occurred 13 months before and that, I think, was probably a turning point, but it was still in the, I think the campaign was still gathering momentum. It was a turning point because the British military a month before had requested permission for a major military operation that targeted mostly the elected Jewish representatives in Palestine, the representatives of the Jewish agency. 2,700 persons were arrested and interned. Ironically, by striking at the moderates, the British were deluded into thinking this would somehow break the back of the militants. Part of the response was the blowing up of the King David Hotel, I want to emphasize. It was not an ordinary hostile story. Six floors of the hotel had been taken over by the British government, the government secretary. So was it, I mean, it was principally a military target, but civilians were killed? Right, it was principally a military target. British military headquarters was there in military intelligence, but it was still open to the public. 91 persons were killed, Arab, Jew, and Britain alike. Majority of the persons were civilians. And I was interested in the New York Times review over the weekend, outside the King David Hotel, apparently there's apparently a plaque saying that there was a 25 minute warning. You say that's total nonsense. Well, there was, well, like many things that was embellished over time, the warning sort of grew in length, and that's what's on the plaque. The real question is, was there a warning and was it communicated to the British officials? What's the answer? Well, there was a warning. It was communicated to the hotel switchboard. Unfortunately it was not 25 minutes ahead of time, so the building couldn't have been evacuated. That's not to say that wasn't the plan, but I think just like wars are easy to start and difficult to control, terrorist operations are difficult to plan, but very difficult to orchestrate and to implement. And the warning was never communicated to the British officials. It's an interesting question, because I remember growing up in London there were obviously attacks fairly frequently, and the IRA did call in warnings. Terrorist groups don't do that anymore, right? No, no. The IRA in fact had special code words, so the police knew that they were valid. And that was one of the problems in Palestine in 1946 is there were a whole spate of telephone threats that were constantly being funneled into British facilities, to banks, to post offices that were extremely effective in disrupting normal life, but most of them were just hoaxes. Unfortunately, that also played into it where the hotel's assistant manager thought this was another hoax and therefore on his own didn't communicate it to the British authorities. What was your research process? Because I know that you accessed a lot of archives that are recently being declassified, so how did you go about it? Well, I'm not a believer in oral histories. I think especially people's memories, even if you watch crime shows on TV, no one remembers what happened 10 minutes before. So I did conduct oral, I didn't conduct injuries, that was mostly for background and for color. This was entirely, it was researched on in the archives, both official archives and personal papers. Much like a good journalist, I had two to three sources, often from archives in multiple countries for every fact that I have. I used, made extensive use of every outlet in the British archives, cabinet papers, prime minister's papers, foreign office, war office, but the most significant were the, and this is unique, I think really, in archives throughout the world is that in recent years, Britain has made available the records of the security service of MI5, and that had a treasure trove of information. Is that 50 years later? I mean, what's the official process? Well, in Britain, it's a 30 year rule, but then individual departments can elect to close archives indefinitely. The release of the security services, largely because of the work of Professor Christopher Andrew, who was commissioned to write the official history of MI5, and part of the agreement is that certain materials that he had read could then be cleared for release in the archives. I also worked in the archives in Israel, the Haganahs, the Irguns, the Israel State Archives, the Archives of the Jewish Agency, and also in the United States, both in Suitland, Maryland, and in College Park, Maryland, and downtown. You mentioned that the Irgun had these sort of front organizations working in the States. If that was happening today, would they have been charged with material support for terrorism? Well, I mean, this was a constant thorn in the side of British relations, and in fact plays very significantly in Britain deciding, in 1947, they did to wash their hands of Palestine. I mean, Beben, this was one of the fulcrums for Beben. He said, this relations are being poisoned between the United States. There were a series of dimartias, complaints. Secretary of State George Marshall rung his hands and said, unfortunately, there's no US laws that can prevent us from having the Irguns front organization put full-page ads in the New York Times, so the New York Post soliciting money that they outwardly say are being used for arms. Interesting. Let's throw it open for questions. If you have a question, just wait for the mic and identify yourself. We'll start in the back. This gentleman here, go ahead. Oh, I'm Steve Silverberg. I'm an attorney. Thought I'd ask an easy question. What was the role of the Irgun in the Sterngang in the 48 war? The whole issue of, was there terrorism used? Were Palestinians pushed out? Did they leave the whole murky thing, Tiryas said, in one minute or more? Well, it was sufficiently controversial and perhaps unwise to tackle a subject where, firstly, is asking is terrorism successful and can terrorism be successful? And secondly, to even label the Jewish underground organization's terrorists. I mean, that's sufficiently controversial. I deliberately stopped the book in September 1947. That had nothing to do with avoiding the topics you're talking about. September 1947 is when the British actually go to the United Nations and say we've had enough of Palestine, we're handing it over to you and we're going to evacuate within six to seven months. So I don't consider that period. In fact, Benny Morris has, among others, has really, I think, examined that and much more fully. I can tell you, my wife would have left me if I had to add it another year to this book. My children would have ran away as well, so that's basically, I mean, it's really a separate book. How difficult was it to cut? I mean, how many words is this? 250,000. So you had 500,000. Well, a bit more than 400,000. So how difficult was it to cut or did you feel it was getting better with the cuts? Oh, it definitely got better with the cuts. That's, there's no doubt. And I had a tremendous editor at Kanaaf who insisted on it. It took me another year to do the cuts. I, myself, caught 125,000 words. He then said, no, I said 150 and caught another 25, and it's much better. The only thing I would say is that writing is creating and I enjoyed literally every minute of writing the book because I like writing. Cutting is killing and that was absolutely wrenching, but the Hajameen story that he was paid as much as the German Field Marshal. I mean, it's unfortunate that's not in the book, but the book hardly suffers from it. I think I had good advice to reduce it. I mean, the book was published when? Last Tuesday. Have you had any blowback on the issue of describing what are, after all, Jewish sort of insurgents as terrorists? No. In fact, the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles had, I think, a very balanced review. But of course, that's, you know, author's code word for an excellent and very effusive review. But he actually understood it, and he actually understood the interplay between, I mean, I don't even like using the terms, you know, right wing and left wing Zionism, but it's something that affects the Israeli politics. And how about in Israel? I mean, what is the sort of recognition rate that these events which involve terrorism are instrumental in their birth story? Is that something that's sort of discounted? Well, I mean, firstly, the people who are in terrorists. I mean, the labor Zionists basically were in power for the first three decades of the state of Israel and had a dominant influence on the discourse. Menachem Begin, the leader of the Ergun, was always in the opposition. I think it changed somewhat when Begin was elected prime minister in 1977. But even still, I think, as I said, terrorism, I mean, these types of terms are not terribly popular in a national narrative. And I think for that reason, even though there are plenty of streets throughout Israel that are named Lechih, Rehov Lechih, or Dakar Ergun, I mean, that, you know, named after them, generally the history is to put the emphasis on other factors rather than Begin and the Ergun. And, you know, it's caught up in contemporary Israeli politics. Even Benjamin Netanyahu's styles himself is the ideological heir to the Ergun or to Jabotinsky's version of Zionism. I'm not sure that's entirely true. I'm not sure that Begin's son, Benny Begin, would necessarily agree with that. But I think a lot of the controversy that the current prime minister of Israel generates also impacts an impassioned or objective discussion of this period as well. Mr. Jamin here. I'm Dan Pollock. I'm with the Zionist Organization of America. I'm a proud revisionist. I really enjoyed your book. I have to tell you that the cutting, I'm sure I missed whatever's in there, but it really reads hard to put down. Well, thank you. Literally hard to put down. So it really reads well. I had, it's fascinating to have a question and then a quickie, I hope I can get to it. The question is, it was almost news to me how weak the British central ambitions, how weak their resources were in 1947 compared to their objectives around the world. You did a great job of covering that. Was there really a way for England to do that alternative strategy under any conditions, even if the terrorism had not occurred, weren't the financial, your book almost implies, even though you detail, especially the sergeant's deaths, that the weakness of the British Empire was such that they almost didn't have a go path to keep hardly any troops on an ongoing basis. And then the detail is, during the Arab Revolt, you talk about the flag of the Arab Revolt being raised over the old city. What was that flag? I didn't see any reference to what the flag was like. So that's the detail that I don't know how to find that information. Oh, God. If I'm not mistaken, it was a black flag. It was a black flag, a little kind of like flag. It was a black flag of revolt. It was not the Palestinian authority or the PLO scholars. No, I'm pretty sure it was a black flag with a Quranic verse on it. I don't know if I'm imagining that, but I think probably, I can't remember even where I took that from. It could have been Porath's book or, but if you give me your email, I'll try to find out. Yeah, I'll try to find out. I think I may have it. Well, I mean, look, one of the main problems is that there were still British soldiers in uniform serving in Palestine in 1947 who had been drafted before January 1st, 1944. So right there, you can see the unpopularity of remaining in Palestine. Britain was weak and financially deficient. I mean, firstly, because the winter of 1947 had been a terrible winter, and British economy came to a standstill. I mean, the stuff in Washington that drives us to a standstill, I mean, you read about that winter, it was extremely harsh. And also, Britain had secured a very large loan from the United States at the end of World War II, and unfortunately, the balance of payments deficit meant that it eroded considerably Britain's buying power very quickly and much more suddenly than had been anticipated. So all that played into it. I also have to say, too, is that as in all imperial ventures, as we know from Jay Hobson's study of imperialism, it was an economic foundation to imperialism. And part of that was having very small colonial police forces everywhere. So the British always tried to do these things on the cheap, and because they had an inadequate police force, both in numbers and in quality, I mean, that was also one of the reasons that Palestine, successively, was very quickly submerged in violence and the military had to be called out. But the point is, I mean, this is the interesting thing. I mean, Britain stayed in Malaya for 14 years, 12 years, sorry, from 1948 to 1960. Even with the Mao Mao rebellion in Kenya, it stayed there in four years. In Cyprus, it stayed there for six years. It very reluctantly left Aden in 1963. So Britain was intent wherever it could because this was part of its stature, especially at the end of World War II, but it was being elbowed aside as a superpower but still had pretensions as being a great power and also wanted to constantly demonstrate, especially to its American allies, that the British military, though smaller, could punch above its weight. So there was this intention, despite its economic decline, to try to hold on everywhere. This, I think, is where it becomes very important, where the Urgun Act is this enormous accelerant and really deprived the British, tied down their troops, made it very costly and expensive. I mean, as all terrorist groups do, waging a war of attrition, and that, again, this push Britain, as Creech Jones argues in the book, push Britain at the end to this decision that was precipitous on their part. I mean, they did actually one thing too. When they had gone to the United Nations, when they first discussed this in the cabinet in February 1947, they said, we'll refer it to the UN, but if we're not happy with what they decide, we'll hold on to Palestine. By September 1947, they handed the whole thing and they said, we want no part of it. That, I think, is significant and you have to understand. You know, that's the thing about the book, as you know. The first six chapters, 1917 to 1939, the next six, basically, about World War II. The final 10 document in detail those last three years to show the impact that terrorism or that violence had. You know, two of the most intractable problems in the world are birthed by the British, which is the Israel-Palestinian problem and the Pakistan-India problem over Kashmir. I mean, to what extent, with the British responsible, because it does seem, from what you're saying, from what I know of the history, that they kind of washed their, literally really sort of just said, they sort of threw up their hands and said, we're just out of here. Well, that was very much Prime Minister Clement Atley's attitude that, look, we declared our intentions in India, we left. I mean, unfortunately, there's been this bloodshed, but we're done with it. That was somewhat the hope in Palestine and then the expectation that the Arabs would be successful in that. Britain then could have the kinds of treaty negotiations that they wanted, but it was this idea that we'll leave it to them to fight it out. At one point, I mean, being a bit unfair, they're condensing a lot of history, but when the Labor Party came to power in 1945 under Atley and Bevin, there was this very concerted effort to enlist the United States to resolve the Palestine problem, even to get the United States to commit troops to a lasting political solution. There was the Anglo-American Committee, but the United States saw that this problem was intractable and wanted no part of it and Britain was really left. I mean, when they realized they couldn't get the cooperation and support of the United States in Palestine, that also, of course, had a huge impact on British decision to remain in Palestine. Was Netanyahu's father part of any of this? Yes, I mean, he was a revisionist Zionist. I'd been active in Zionist politics. He doesn't figure in the book at all. He didn't come across my screen. That's right, of course, Mr. Jabotinsky's personal secretary when Jabotinsky came to the United States. That's absolutely, because Jabotinsky died in the United States in 1940 in upstate New York. He was his personal secretary. Gentleman over here in the back. Thank you, Matthew Hogan, no special affiliation, to bring my tribe into it a little bit. That's the Irish tribe. My tribe is the Irish. And I believe the Palestine police had a large constituent membership that came from the Black in Tans and the other anti, those used against the Irish in the 1920s period. Then it was used against the Arabs and so on and so forth. Second question, sort of not quite related, though, is that I believe a lot of the British, people like Catling and others in Gurney, ended up in Malaya, and Catling ended up being a friend of General Kenyatta, and they actually took their knowledge from that experience and used it in the future decolonization things. Sorry for two questions. You know your history. You don't have to read the book, but you're absolutely right. I also read a paper on there. You're seeing that as well, it's just all right. The Black in Tans, which were the infamous auxiliary police of paramilitary organization that was enlisted to suppress the Irish rebellion. In mass, were brought to Palestine and formed the backbone of the Palestine police force. In fact, there's an expression in England, maybe you knew it growing up, duffing someone up, which means sort of boxing them around the ears that's derived from someone named Douglas Duff, who was a member of the Black in Tans and then was a Palestine policeman who wrote both a novel and also a memoir of his time there. In his memoir, he describes the waterboarding of Arab rebels during Arab terrorists during the Arab rebellion and states how that was the kind of messy work that they left to Arab police officers and they stood behind the screen and questioned the hapless victim. And then you're absolutely right. Palestine police force, the last inspector general was William Nicole Gray, becomes the inspector general in Malaya. Many of the Palestine police officers, including Catling, the chief secretary was Sir Henry Gurney, becomes the high commissioner. Not surprisingly, the first four years of the Malaya emergency are complete debacle. They use many of the same tactics. They don't learn from the same mistakes. They basically apply things from the Arab rebellion that were applied to the Jewish revolt that then are applied in Malaya. That's only when General Harold Briggs and then General Sir Gerald Templar take over and have a very different approach that the British finally in the early 1950s become successful. And of course, Gurney is tragically killed by terrorists in Malaya. And Templar's approach, I mean, it's not as sort of touchy-feely as some have described it, right? Wasn't there a lot of sort of forced kind of moving of the Chinese population and... Right, well then that's part of, I think, this revisiting of a lot of colonial history that has resulted in documents that have become available only in recent years. I think what was significant about Templar is he understood that you needed a stick. You had to break the back of an insurgency of a terrorist campaign, and this he ably did. But he also, on the other hand, understood that you had to have lots of carrots to prevent this constant cycle of recruitment and regeneration that sustains a terrorist uprising. Are there any lessons from history about how to deal with ISIS? I know that's a very big, difficult question. Well, the first one, I think, in this context is that you've got to deprive them of the ore of success that is certainly attracting upwards of a thousand volunteers. One reads of foreign fighters, a week to them. You have to counter what they see as their tremendous success in redrawing the map of the Middle East and achieving what only one other entity has been able to do, and that was Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War, that no other country has been able really to forcibly redraw the boundaries of the Middle East since the end of World War I. So I think, firstly, it's like Templar. It is a military solution, but it has to be accompanied by the types of measures that are non-kinetic that counter their narrative and that prevent the regeneration and this ability to recruit and sustain and move them. If you killed Baghdadi, would it make a difference? I think historically, decapitation strategies are very rarely being successful. But in this case, because of his particular claim, being the caliph and all that? You know, I think killing Baghdadi, my fear is that, I'm not saying with that, he shouldn't be killed, he was assassinated. It would be a service to mankind, but I wonder, given the deep and profound personal enmity that exists between himself and Aiman al-Zawahiri, whether the elimination of Baghdadi might bring to fruition our worst fears, which would be some reunification of both groups, which I think is not entirely inconceivable. Good, very good point. Well, look, Stern was killed, and it did not stop Lechie. I mean, the group continued after him. Zakari was killed, and AQI got bigger, right? Hi, I'm Alastipic. I am a CTSPV alumni, and I just wanted to bring you back to your point about Aragon as the first post-modern terrorist group. Do you, did you feel that they chose the strategy of spectacular international attacks deliberately and over a domestic audience for a particular reason, and what did you find in your research that indicated this to you? Well, I think this is one of the things that's always fascinated me in studying terrorism, insurgency, guerrilla warfare, is that the best leaders often have no formal military training or very limited military training. I mean, big, and for a brief period, served in the Polish army in exile, where he was a corporal. But I would argue because of his experience in what we would now more politely call information operations, is he very much understood the connection between violence and publicity and the use of violence as a lever to apply pressure that he understood you couldn't achieve an actual military defeat of the British, but that you could marshal the force of international opinion, that you could focus attention on Palestine, but also through these dramatic and daring acts of violence, a trit and weaken the British morale of the will to remain in Palestine, and cause, again, an acceleration of a process in the Jews' favors. So I think it was really his experience as a propagandist at where he saw this fusion that, look, terrorism is described as violence as communication. I mean, we accept that as an axiom in the study of it. And Bagan, I think, more than many other leaders understood that from the start and understood how to take advantage of modern news media. But you've got to get this souffle pretty much at exactly the right, there's a word you mean like bin Laden completely blew it, right? I mean, it was the most widely viewed event in human history. It produced exactly the opposite outcome of what he intended, right? So I mean, so you have to calibrate your violence, which is what the IRA did. If you look at the, you know, they killed 3,000 people over the course of, you know, 30 plus years, right? Which bin Laden killed 3,000 people in the course of one morning. So I mean, to get, I mean, I'm just saying, I'm just picking up on the question. It's like, you have to, it has to be very skillful. You can't overdo it, right? Well, and I think that's why the bombing of the King David is such a tragedy, because I don't think it was the Irvine's intention to kill all those people. I mean, I write in the book, I don't think it absolves them of responsibility. How many people did they kill, do you think? No, not the 91 there, but I mean, overall. I think this wasn't a war of numbers, fewer than probably during this entire period. Fewer than 300 people lost their lives in total. I think only about 147 British soldiers and policemen. So this was very much, I mean, that's the point. You know, I call it terrorism, but it's a very different variant of terrorism that exists today. There wasn't this fetish of attacking civilian targets or there was very much in-vagan strategy, the very deliberate, discriminant application of force, at least against the British, clearly. And that's, I think, why, as I said, the King David remains so tragic because it was it inverted. David? Hi, David Sturman here at New America. To what extent were there external operations, external of mandatory Palestine, and even sort of the broader Middle East? And to the extent they existed, were they directed from within Palestine or inspired? And then, did they have a separate sort of effect, either good or bad on the group's cause from internal attacks? Well, it's a great question, David. Expect nothing less than a graduate of the security studies program, so thank you. I mean, this is the interesting thing. In fact, one of the chapter titles in the book is called Beating the Dog in His Own Kennel, and this is what British intelligence had learned from an informant in the Irgun that was part of the strategy in 1946 was to even accelerate things and increase the tempo of violence even more by taking the struggle outside of Palestine. And of course, in October 1946, the Irgun blew up the British Embassy in Rome as part of this campaign. It had plans to stage attacks in the United Kingdom. They were aborted largely because of the intervention of British intelligence. As Christopher Andrew points out, actually in his book in Defense of the Realm, the official history of MI5, that the same sort of paranoia and fear that Britain has now of jihadi terrorism coming, being imported or coming back to Britain because of foreign fighters, was the same sense of paranoia that's very evident in the Security Service archives of Jewish terrorists infiltrating Britain and carrying out attacks. In fact, there's a bit in the book where Ezra Weitzman, a future defense and foreign minister of Israel, was a member of the Irgun, was a student at London School of Economics, but was also tasked with the mission of carrying out the assassination of a British general. British intelligence got wind of it because he was from a very prominent family even though he spelt his name differently with a nephew of Chaim Weitzman. British detective knocks on his door and suggests that he returned to Palestine and he took caps and goes to Palestine and the plot is broken. The Stern gang did succeed in bombing the colonial office on one occasion. So there were plans and the British were extremely concerned about them to escalate the violence and to bring it in a more sustained campaign outside of Palestine. Most of the attacks were blunted by British intelligence. British intelligence basically were... They were not so good in Palestine but they were very good though in threats to the United Kingdom. And so basically they blunted this campaign and then events happened that the British decided to surrender the mandate but both the Irgun and Lechie were poised to have a much more sustained campaign and as I said there were isolated outbursts of violence that just weren't able to sustain and continue. John, in the back. Michael Novy, just an interested reader. It's beyond the scope of the book but I'm wondering whether your archival research cast any light on the Altulana incident. On the what? Altulana incident. It is, I mean, what is outside the book but I think it's the Altulana incident for those who don't know was a ship that was carrying Irgun arms to Palestine David Ben-Gurion had said that at this stage all the Israeli, all the Jewish underground forces had to fight as one, that he would not permit private armies. He said that this shipment of arms could be received but had to be deposited into Haganah arsenals and shared. Menachem Begin refused to go along with it. The ship was actually shelled while offshore in Tel Aviv, Itzhak Rabin, future Prime Minister of Israel commanded the Haganah unit that intercepted it. The ship was sunk. I think what its significance was and it plays into something else with the Lechih. I mean, firstly, is that after that, Begin basically joined the struggle. I mean, he participated in the War of Independence, subordinated the Irgun to what became the Israel Defense Forces and to Jewish command. He joined the government. He was always in opposition. Lechih, on the other hand, refused to subordinate itself. And in fact, in September, 1948, assassinated the chief UN mediator to Palestine, a Swedish nobleman named Fok Bernadette, exactly. And it's interesting what Israel's, the new state of Israel's response was to that. The Sterngang was immediately, Lechih was immediately outlawed. 248 members of the group were immediately arrested by the new Israeli police. They were thrown into jail and definitely charges weren't brought against them. In fact, the British Defense Emergency Regulations that had first been used against the Arabs during the Arab Rebellion and then against the Jews in the 1940s were invoked by Israel to be used against what they saw as a dissident Jewish terrorist organization. And it sucked Shamir himself, fled Palestine and didn't return until 1956, eight years later. And when he returned, someone who had formerly served as an underground commander and not surprisingly joined the Mossad. This is one of the highest ratios of participants, questions from the audience that we've ever had. Yeah, everybody's. Mateo Fein and New America Foundation. You mentioned, well, let me go back to Peter Bergen's first question on what made terrorism effective in this case. If you had to reach a generalizable conclusion as to what the conditions are under which terrorism will achieve its objectives, what would they be? And related to that, you mentioned that the British failed to learn, but what is it that they failed to learn exactly? Well, I think terrorism is almost always successful tactically because terrorism is a strategy of the powerless or the would be powerful that is using the fear and anxiety created by their acts the shock and an abhorrence of them as a form of leverage and to attract attention to themselves and their causes to thrust their cause on the world's agenda. And countless times you see how terrorists are successful. Also governments repeatedly say that they would negotiate with terrorists that terrorism is an ineffective strategy yet repeatedly governments throughout the world not least even the Israeli government have negotiated with terrorists and have made concessions. So I think that's on the tactical level. I think on a strategic level and it can work as it's a strategy of provocation as a strategy to spark a broader conflagration as a strategy to create instability and chaos that the terrorists hope will if not benefit themselves but benefit the broader cause or buy them time or give them the leverage to harness their resources eventually to seize power. I'm thinking of his block in this context where it was very effective as a means for them to enable them to build up their power as they changed and mixed and matched various tactics from dramatic attention riveting suicide bombings to then the kidnapping of lone individuals. So as the strategy of provocation also to provoke a response from an enemy that the terrorists believe will further their own goals and I think those are where terrorism can be successful. And we see a terrorism has been responsible for these contributing to this spark that satellite the world in World War I certainly was prominent in the buildup of the 1956 Suez campaign and certainly the 1967 Six Day War. In terms of what the British failed to learn, I think this has been one of my frustrations for years as I said as a terrorism analyst is that those terrorist groups that are successful at least those that are survived and often go on to survive for a couple of decades or even more are those that are learning organizations and that do learn. Case in point was the Irgun and Lackey learning from the Irish exemplar, other groups in turn learning from Begin. Although I have no evidence that General George Grievous, the leader of the Greek Cypriot nationalist movements in the 1950s consciously studied the Irgun. Grievous' book on guerrilla warfare looks an awful lot like the Monach and Begin's book, The Revolt, so there is this learning. Where I think the British failed and failed to learn and I would argue that other conventional militaries have. Firstly, the importance of intelligence. British military in 1946 had only five fluent Hebrew speakers in British military intelligence. The Palestine police force only had three. So obviously their ability to translate, capture documents was fairly minimal, much less their ability to effectively interrogate captured members of the Irgun and Lackey. Because of this inadequacy of intelligence, most British military operations, as I show in the book, were very large massive coordinate search operations that alienated the local population that disrupted daily life and commerce. Because, as I said earlier, there was an inadequate police force. The Jewish community in Palestine was preyed upon by both the Irgun and the Lackey, who kidnapped individuals who extorted money, robbed banks. The British were largely ineffectual at protecting them from the terrorist organizations. There was, I think, a real lack of understanding of the cultural dynamics in Palestine at the time. And I think, in the bottom line, is that we talk now often in terms of US military involvement overseas as having a clear objective or an exit strategy. I mean, there were neither of those. You have successive British commanders constantly saying that we're asked to do something, do anything, without any clear political guidance. And that, I think, also undermined their rule. And finally, the information operations dimension. I mean, much like we see terrorist organizations today, making immensely effective use of the social media where governments are caught flat-footed, they're just understanding, for instance, internet communications, and now they're presented with this avalanche of Twitter, WhatsApp, and so on. The British were, they constantly talked about using information operations, but they never got around to it. And they never got their story across the order. But just to follow up on Maddie's question, so, I mean, we should make a distinction between acts that provoke, that don't really produce the outcome. Because, I mean, doing something just making a mess is easy. But the, you know, has both a reasoning is an awful lot of using terrorism that actually achieved their political goals, and the Argoon, the RRA, maybe the Algerians, the Algerians against the French. But these are more exceptions than the rule, right? Absolutely. I mean, they're big exceptions, but the rule is mostly it doesn't work. Right. Well, it's the absolutes. I mean, terrorism is not always a failed strategy. I mean, there are cases where, sometimes those cases are mattered enormously, but the midwifing or the creation of nations. Sometimes they've compelled governments to do things that have played into the terrorist hands that have escalated a conflict, or altered a conflict and turned it into an occupation rather than a liberation. And you're the editor of the Columbia University, you've, what's the name of the book? The series on terrorism in a regular warfare. Yeah, so the one, you know, nonviolence also has actually been spectacularly successful occasionally. Right. The Eric Kachanowith and Maria Stepneck's book that's in our series, exactly. It's, you know, it... So, if you were the hypothetical leader trying to, you know, running the, you wanted to create the state of Bruce Hoffman in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia, would you advocate a terrorism as a tactic or nonviolence as a tactic to your troops, or your followers? It depends on my level of patience at the time. I mean, terrorism is as much about catharsis and striking a blow that the defenseless or the powerless is it is about achieving fundamental change. I mean, the point is that I make in the book is terrorism effective or not, but terrorists believe it's effective and that's why it's... And then it also gets into a cycle of revenge and release our prisoners and has takes on its own logic. But one of the keys to terrorism which also figures in Palestine is the more pervasive and the more ubiquitous the British security forces seemed in Palestine counter-intuitively the more powerful the Irgun became. And that was also very much part of the strategy and that's why if you can calibrate that violence that you can provoke the government, 100,000 British soldiers and police in Palestine is a 20 to one ratio between British soldiers and police and members of the Irgun. I mean, that's an astronomical force balance. There was one British soldier for every adult male Jew in Palestine. But that was part of the Irgun's success is that the disruption to daily life, the pervasiveness of what became a security state made the Irgun much more powerful than it was in reality. And that's I think why people use terrorism. If you as a terrorist can have better intelligence than your opponents to ensure your survival. Because don't forget, Bagan was never captured or never impressed. Stern, as I said, was cornered and shot to death. Bagan was never captured. Did the British find torture or waterboarding useful? During the Arab rebellion, they believed it was useful. They did use it during the Jewish struggle. And in fact, before there was Guantanamo, there was Eritrea and Kenya, where Britain, a certain category of members of Irgun and Leahy that were not, they believe they could not be tried in court, basically were hooded, manacled, shackled to the floor of Lancaster bombers, flown to Eritrea and then subsequently they were moved to Kenya, imprisoned indefinitely without charge. Finally, it was the Irgun's above ground support organization in the United States that eventually was successful in pressuring the International Committee of the Red Cross to win the acquiescence of the British colonial office to visit the camp in Eritrea. And when they visited the camp, they said that basically superficially, people weren't being mistreated. They weren't being physically tortured. But indefinite detention is a very bad. No, that was exactly the key. That the indefinite detention, being completely cut off with any contact from their families, their families not really knowing where they work because these were secret detention camps. And in the high altitude, they found that these prisoners were developing anxiety disorders and high blood pressure, hypertension. And from that hypertension were developing heart arrhythmia and they were very concerned about that. People in their 20s had diseases that then individuals in their 50s and 60s had and condemned the British for it. History may not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes, is right? Sometimes, yeah. So. My question follows up this question here. You mentioned the importance of a terrorist organization if it's gonna succeed to be a learning organization. My question is the British military. Were there people within the military, let's say senior leaders who said, wait a minute, our approach here in Palestine isn't working. We gotta try something different. Were there those kind of questions? Were they just shut down to what extent was the British military an effective learning organization? No, that's an excellent question. Of course, our friend John Nagel has written a book that compares Britain and Malay and America to Vietnam and argues this. I'm not so sure that that's the case. It's certainly not in the 1940s. Almost every British officer sought to apply the same heavy hand or repressive tactics that had been used during the Arab rebellion where they hadn't realized the fundamental difference between the Arab rebellion and the Jewish rebellion. Arab rebellion was rural. Basically was supported by almost the entire population was fought in the countryside where the full might could be brought off indiscriminately. The Palestinian Arabs were not as adept at information operations as the Jews were and therefore were not able to enlist international support to prevent waterboarding or bombing of civilians. There's a wide boulevard in Jaffa that was created because in 1936 there was so much sniping when British in Jaffa port of supplies being offloaded and being brought into the interior of Palestine. The British Royal Air Force basically bombed a corridor. They gave people 36 hours to leave their apartments and they bombed. They basically reduced to rubble, this wide swap. So none of that could really be used but that was constantly this strategy of coercion is what British officers had advocated. Now this is discussed at length in the book but very briefly it was the High Commissioner, General Sir Alan Cunningham who had been a military man and then the Inspector General of Police, Nicole Gray who had been a Royal Marine Commando and was familiar with the regular warfare who decided we had to do something different that using large sail troop sweeps of basically conventional forces that had acquitted themselves very well in the war against the Italians and against Germany but really were at a loss in an urban environment where minimal force was enormously important where not causing civilian casualties was essential and they created a special police unit that was led by one of Britain's most decorated wartime heroes, a major named Roy Farron. And it quickly went awry. I mean that was the one significant incident of torture where they were so, again none of them spoke Hebrew so even though their mission was to trawl through the Jewish communities and gather intelligence that then could be used by the conventional forces since they didn't speak Hebrew they had no way of gaining that intelligence. Their idea was to look for very young members of the Urgun of Lechie teenagers basically who were deliberately recruited because if they were caught they couldn't be sentenced to death by the end of the period in Palestine the British emergency regulations had a very wide birth to impose the death penalty on individuals but the 17 year old couldn't be sentenced to death and they seized a 16 year old in Jerusalem named Alexander Rubavitz and this was one of the things that's documented in the book and that's from the British archives and archives in Israel where they basically took him down the Jericho Road outside of the city and tortured him to death to get information and then murdered him and disposed of the body. Even back then without cable news this became, this was revealed that the British government's attempts to suppress it it was just when especially United Nations committee was arriving in Palestine that the scandal erupted and of course further tarnished the British name and also ended the experiment with using perhaps new and novel means to counter terrorism because it had blown up so disastrously in the face of the authorities. Farron was never, I mean he was tried, was acquitted that whole story is in the book he eventually went on to be the solicitor general of the province of Alberta in Canada and yeah, read the book there's also another story of his commanding officer too. This is gonna be the final question Prime Bauer. What would you hope that modern day Israel would have learned, would learn from its own birth or from its own actions since its birth relative to the continuing Palestinian struggle specifically in mass? Well, one thing mainly that I took from the book is just the political polarization that exists in Israel today and that of course is very much in the news at this moment as the Prime Minister is here. I mean it has very deep and profound roots that go back long before the establishment of the state and that to me is unfortunate that there have been so few opportunities for a modus who then are understanding in that this debate has become so polarized and caricatured as almost right wing and left wing which I think is completely inaccurate. To an extent I think too that someone like maybe the most, I don't exactly say this explicitly in the book but this may be the most controversial thing I'll say that someone like Vladimir Jabotinsky I think is a generally negative view of him as being some sort of prototypical fascist which I don't think is at all accurate. I think that he was in fact a very clear eyed visionary. He was the one who argued that these attempts to co-op the Palestinian Arabs, to bribe them or buy them off by raising the economic capacity of Palestine by contributing to a growing and thriving economy that is everybody benefited and profited that violence would end. He said, this is not true, it's disrespectful. In fact these are people who see us seizing their land and this is why he published the famous article in the 1920s that there had to be an iron wall. I mean we don't like to hear that type of thing but he at least understood that you could never co-op someone's nationalism. So he was more clear eyed I think than he's given credit today. And as I said he and Beggin in particular I think are vilified. I'm not gonna beg him himself. As I said I certainly don't let him off the hook in the book for the King David Hotel. I think he really did want to avoid civilian casualties but the fact that people tragically died there doesn't exculpate him or dear good. But nonetheless I mean as a statesman he was a visionary. I mean the Camp David Accords. I mean this was the prospects of peace for the first time. Began to burn bright between Israel and its neighbors and began to crystallize further with the Oslo Accords but of course now have really have been knocked asunder. So I suppose I don't know if there's any lessons but I think it's a clear eyed view of history. I mean like all historians I've tried to be objective. I've tried to put this in the context of the times. I think and I'll end here. This was one of the unexpected parts of the process of writing this book. I found it enormously depressing because everything we see today between the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, all the debates, all the dissension, the clashes between extreme nationalism, the clashes between zealous invocation of religious justification or divine commandment. I mean all this was played out before during the period of the British Mandate and even I'll end on this point, even before there was Osama bin Laden, there was Isaldim al-Qasem who was very much a bin Laden-esque type of figure. In his 50s he left the comfort of his life in Haifa to wage revolution, to conduct revolt. He lived in caves in the Galilee. Much like bin Laden, I think we would certainly consider him a solifist. He wore traditional clothing from the time of the prophet, grew his beards long, intensive study of the Quran as a political document as well as a religious tome that justified violence. He openly used the word jihad. So he was very much a bin Laden-esque figure. I mean unlike bin Laden, he was tracked down by the authorities within two months of starting his revolt and killed. It didn't take the 11 years that Peter documents in Mad Hunt. And what's so interesting and is also so depressing is that it was his followers that at every major juncture in the 1930s where the fulminates, again, this strategy of provocation, just when the British were gaining the upper hand to the Abrabellion, it was the followers of Qasem that spun the conflict onto an entirely different level, polarized or eliminated any prospects of any kind of stability or resolution. And of course Qasem himself is enshrined in Hamas's 1988 charter. And of course the name of the missiles that Hamas fires into Israel, the fighter into Israel this past summer that provoked a war called Qasem Rockets as well. On that slightly bleak note. Thank you very much, Bruce. That was a brilliant talk. Thank you. And Bruce is, he's in a bit of a rush because he's got to go and do another book event, but he's going to be happy to sign books and goodbye books and thank you. Thanks very much, Peter. Yes. Absolutely.