Orde Wingate

There’s a fascinating essay on the Zionism of Orde Wingate. Who was Wingate?

Traveling through Komemiyut in Jerusalem, at the intersection of Jabotinsky and David Marcus, one will see Kikar Orde (known also as Kikar Wingate). There are Wingate Streets in Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv and Herzliya as well. In the Carmel Mountains, just south of Haifa, there is the Yemin Orde Wingate Youth Village, which serves hundreds of disadvantaged, at-risk and immigrant children from around the world. Israel’s national sports and health education institute in Netanya is fittingly named Machon Wingate, the Wingate Institute.

One might be wondering why so much was named after this man. In his book on the history of the Israeli army, Ze’ev Schiff called Wingate “the single most important influence on the military thinking of the Haganah.”[1] While a complete analysis of that influence would constitute an article of its own, Samuel M. Katz put it succinctly. “Wingate had a profound impact on the molding of Israeli military doctrine. Defense, when fighting a numerically superior enemy, meant offense, and offense meant fighting deep inside enemy territory where the opposition was most vulnerable.”[2] To this day, that concept remains the core of Israeli military strategy.

What inspired Wingate to be sympathetic to the cause of Zionism?

But what actually led to that conviction? It is not only his critics who point to his early Bible-intensive education as a primary source. Yigal Allon referred to Wingate’s “extraordinary Zionist ardour inspired by the Bible…”[11] while Shabtai Teveth cited Haganah archives as describing Wingate as “an eccentric, a genius, a man more religious than rational, given to great pathos, a firm believer in the Bible, and fired with a sense of the special mission of the Jewish people.”[12] While describing Wingate as having a genius for “grasping and using new mechanical techniques,” Lowell Thomas did not argue against the conception that Wingate was also “a Scripture-reading crusader.”[13]

However, the complexity that formed the foundation for Wingate’s remarkable genius does not readily coincide with the notion that his Zionism was simply based upon the Bible. As Luigi Rossetto wrote, “Wingate had one quality which stands out above all others and that was his ability to examine the situation objectively and to draw on that part of his experience which applied while rejecting that which did not.”[14]

Perhaps the most objective and complete assessment of Wingate at that time was made by Derek Tulloch, who broke down the oft-noted facets of Wingate’s psyche as follows:

One side effect of Wingate’s unhappy experience at Woolwich was to incline him to take sides, invariably, with the underdog. He never forgot the sensation of all men siding against him. . . . The discovery, however, of this quasi-biblical cause in his life, which opened before him just at a time when he was expecting a cause to appear – to justify his existence and fulfil his destiny – explains his decision to take up the challenge.[15]

Tulloch set forth three components that, in his opinion, led Wingate to embrace the Zionist cause. In addition to the “quasi-biblical” nature of the cause, Tulloch added Wingate’s inclination to side with the weaker party, and Wingate’s need at the time for a cause in which his destiny could be attained. While the Biblical aspect is intriguing on its own accord, the latter two components call for further examination.

There’s more on Wingate here, at what appears to be an official site. His terror fighting strategy is worth a mention:

Wingate envisioned carefully selected, small and mobile units of volunteers to fight aggressively and unconventionally. In a report (as laid out in a future, prepared report dated June 5th, 1938 and titled: “Secret Appreciation of Possibilities of Night Movements by Armed Forces of the Crown – With Object of Putting an end to Terrorism in Northern Palestine”) he spelled out formally the need for a unique military force. “There is only one way to deal with the situation, to persuade the gangs that, in their predatory raids, there is every chance of their running into a government gang which is determined to destroy them, not by exchange of shots at a distance, but by bodily assault with bayonet and bomb.”11 This new unit was to carry the war to the enemy, taking away his initiative and keeping him off-balance. And so it was, “to produce in their minds the belief government forces will move at night and can and will surprise them either in villages or across country.”12

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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3 Responses to Orde Wingate

  1. Sabba Hillel says:

    Sounds like a good strategy for Iraq an Afghanistan as well as Israel.

  2. Yannai says:

    Wingate is a legend in Israel – a British officer who was sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish people and was punished by his own government as a result – he was accused of “going native” and was transferred to Burma, where his plane mysteriously crashed. Just like what happened another British operative with Zionist tendencies: Aaron Aaronson, Sarah Aaronson’s brother. Call me a conspiracy nut, but I don’t think small scale plane crashes were ever that common or selective. He was also an extremely capable military leader and thinker, defeating a huge force of Italian troops in Ethiopia during WWII.

  3. John F. MacMichael says:

    There is an interesting and unusually balanced discussion of Orde Wingate in John Masters’ memoir “The Road Past Mandalay” (1961). Masters was an Indian Army officer who rose to command one of Wingate’s Chindit brigades in Burma, fighting behind Japanese lines. From his appraisal of Wingate in Chapter 11:

    “Wingate, above all, is a study in the by-ways of the human spirit. At what point, and why, did he decide that he would enter the Hall of Fame by the back way?–for he was mentally and morally equipped to walk in at the front door. But he decided early that whatever the rest of his class and his associates did, he would say and do the opposite. If they believed in good manners, he would cultivate rudeness. If they loved the Arabs, he would love the Jews. If they dressed well, he would receive callers while lying naked on his camp bed, scrubbing his person with a toothbrush. He declared war, then. But why?….

    Before and during the war the Wingate Problem, as we may call it, was waged over the question–is he right or wrong, in this idea, that plan? Nearly everyone who writes or speaks about him even now, sixteen years later, is concerned with same question. This has led to a fruitless and sometimes disingenuous controversy, endlessly renewed, with Wingate’s blatant follies minimised on one side, and his acts of sheer genius denigrated on the other. He himself was compelled to believe that he was always right, to fight bitterly against anyone who questioned it, to accept no friends only disciples–but we are not under the same compulsion.

    Wingate was sometimes right and sometimes wrong. It really does not matter. What does matter is that he possessed one of the most unusual personalities of recent history. He had a driving will of tremendous force. His character was a blend of mysticism, anger, love, passion, and dark hatred, of overpowering confidence and deepest depression. He could make all kinds of men believe in him, and he could make all kinds of men distrust him. Why, why, why? Here is the true theme of Wingate’s life. It is quite unnecessary, if trying to prove Napoleon’s greatness, to show that he was always right, generous, kind and humble. He wasn’t, but he was a phenomenon. So was Wingate.”

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