What is this Gideon Force, which was used by Orde Winston who took his
Bible to battle opened to the story of Gideon - the bibles' first
mercenary of importance?
The Gideon Bible Calendar I have is linked to lot of different things -
but I am beginning to believe the people who engineered the World Trade
Center and a few other important passages in History - have followed
this "Gideon Force"...hit and run, and have surely been trained by
English and American intelligensia.
Interesting items - inasmuch as Timothy McVeigh was a hit and run
guerrilla, and left us messages in a Gideon Bible - thought I would send
the two stories for I believe we have not seen the "hidden face' and
"hidden hand' behind the World Trade Center.....
The Palmach
The elite striking force of the Haganah. Established by the Haganah's
national command on May 19, 1941, the Palmach consisted of nine assault
companies: three in the northern Galilee, two in central Galilee, two in
southern Galilee, and one in Jerusalem.
******
The Palmach launched pre-emptive strikes into Syrian and Lebanese
territory, frequently sending members fluent in Arabic in Arab dress
into Syria and Lebanon to sabotage and scout targets.
******
The Palmach grew to 12 companies. Palmach leaders included Yigal Allon,
Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Haim Bar-Lev, Uzi Narkiss and Ezer Weizman.
STORY of Orde Wingate - who tried to murder himself.....so it is
written:
Major-General Orde Wingate
Orde Wingate was born in India in 1903, and was fourth-generation
military. His father, maternal grandfather and great-grandfather all
having served in the British or Indian service. He attended Charterhouse
as a day student, and at the age of eighteen, entered the Royal military
Academy at Woolwich. His cadet career was undistinguished as he was
bored by team sports and the structured curriculum. He was commissioned
into the Royal Artillery into the Royal Artillery in 1923.
In 1929 he went on an Arabic language course sponsored by the War
Office, and followed this with a tour as Company Commander of the Sudan
Defence Force. He also gained a First-Class interpretership in Arabic.
In February 1932 he joined a Royal Geographic Society camel expedition
to find 'lost oasis' of Zerzura in the Libyan Desert. In January 1935 he
returned to England and Married Lorna Paterson. The following December
he became Adjutant to the 71st Field (Artillery) Brigade, Territorial
Army, Sheffield. He also passed the examination for the Staff College
but failed to gain admittance.
1936 saw Wingate joined British Forces in Palestine. Here he organized
Special night Squads, and was awarded the DSO and was mentioned in
despatches for his work. The Special night Squads became successful to
the point where they turned back the tide of the Arab revolt in
Palestine. On Leave in London, he submitted a paper on unconventional
operations to Basil Liddell Hart, the military theorist and defense
correspondent of The Times, who in turn passed it on to Winston
Churchill. Wingates' first meeting with Churchill followed in late 1938,
and Churchill would come to believe Wingate to be a new 'Lawrence of
Arabia'.
Wingate was appointed in Appointed military Advisor and leader of
guerrilla campaign in Ethiopia in November 1940.
The Ethiopian campaign began in January 1941 and Wingate employed the
Gideon force. The Germans did not actively pursue Special forces
operations after a few units were tried out in Europe but not expanded,
instead concentrating on their Blitzkrieg approach, but the British
effort was far larger than the German and of a fundamentally different
character. It commenced in June 1940 on a two-prong basis. One prong was
in Britain and centered around the seaborne light infantry raiding
forces called the Commandos. The other was in Egypt, where forces able
to penetrate and exploit the desert were formed. The creation of these
units drew on the promising junior officers and soldiers from the
regular armed services and generated animosity from the conventional
services.
Wingate was recalled to Egypt by Wavell, to assist in the creation of
the Middle East special operations forces. Wingates special-operations
forces were created alongside the Long Range Desert group conceived by
desert-explorer Bagnold.
The British fostered irregular forces in Sudan were used to good effect
in conjunction with the Allied conventional forces against the Italian
forces in Ethiopia. His campaign commenced in January 1941, and improved
dramatically as the north African campaign sent the Italians reeling.
Wingates' single greatest success was when he employed his Gideon Force
to baffle and disrupt the enemy garrisons blocking the road to Addis
Ababa. The Gideon force held down more enemy troops in their hunt for
the guerrillas than the British Army actually had to fight. By May 1941
the eats African campaign was largely concluded and only mopping up
remained.
Once back in Cairo, Wingate lost his acting rank of Colonel, reverting
to a Major and wrote a blistering report on the organizational
shortcomings which had hampered Gideon force. Wavell blasted him for the
tone of his report, and in mid 1941 Wingate suffered as Wavell was
reassigned to India, and he suffered bouts of malarial fever, which were
not aided by the despondency and despair he felt at the time. He went to
a private physician to avoid a convalescence in the rear areas, and
overdosed on atabrine. For some unknown reason, alone in his hotel room,
he stabbed himself in the throat with a sheath knife.
He was saved when he fell unconscious before he could finish the job
and, when help arrived, the bleeding was stopped before it was too late.
After months of recuperation, he lectured on the Ethiopian campaign and
was touted for a slot in SOE. In the Week before Singapore fell in 1942,
Wavell requested that Wingate be assigned to his command in India.
When Wingate arrived in India in March 1942, he found a command of two
different forces and two different objectives. The British trying to
secure India and the Americans trying to support the nationalist
Chinese. Wingates orders were to report to the Bush Warfare School and
take over guerrilla operations against the Japanese. He was restored to
his temporary rank of colonel. Over the next two years British and
American guerrilla cadres, under SOE, OSS and Naval Group-China auspices
would undertake operations in China.
Following the disastrous defeat of the British and Chinese forces in
Burma, Wingate carried out a detailed reconnaissance of as much country
as he could, and this information formed the basis of Wingate's theory
on how to beat the Japanese.
He now wanted control of Long Range penetration forces to attack the
enemy rear rather then smaller guerrilla forces.
With Burma's geography being applicable to this sort of operation, the
Japanese supply lines would have to run along the three major rivers and
were therefore vulnerable to ambush. Wingate persuaded Wavell of their
ability and the Long Range Penetration groups were the result. They were
given the formal title of 77 Indian Infantry Brigade, with Wingate as
their brigadier, Wingate achieving that rank in June 1942.
These 3,000 men eventually became the Chindits. See The Chindit
Expeditions for details. The Chindits were comprised of volunteers
supplemented by a battalion from each of the Burma Rifles, The Gurkhas
and the King's Liverpool regiment. Wingate spent the summer of 1942
training this force for an operation planned for the autumn. The
Chindits' role was supposed to support the Chinese and British efforts
by disrupting the Japanese lines of communication. Wingate divided his
force into separate columns, conditioned them to the jungle's
environment by a relentless program of forced marches, and practiced
radio co-ordination and receipt of the air-supplies on which each column
would depend behind enemy lines.
The Plan was postponed for a variety of reasons, but Wingate persuaded
Wavell to allow the Chindit part of the plan to proceed, he argued that
it would help by time. See The Chindit Expeditions for details of the
operations. Wingate emerged from the jungle with his men, emaciated and
bearded, to find himself and his men heroes. Churchill ordered Wingate
back to England and then took him to the Quebec Conference in August
1943. During the journey to the conference he formed plans for the
attack on Burma, a long range assault by glider and parachute to insert
a force in the Japanese rear area and establish a series of strongholds
to hold the Japanese, while Chindit mobile reserves fell upon the
attacking Japanese forces rear. The Americans were persuaded and
committed to providing the bulk of the aircraft and gliders required.
The force, eventually named First Air Commandos would be sent into
combat in early 1944.
The Americans provided C-47 transports and gliders, light liaison
aircraft, thirty P-51 Mustang and twenty B-25 Mitchells. The entire Air
Force was designated 1 Air Commando and commanded by an American,
Colonel Philip Cochran.
Wingates second Chindit Expedition was scheduled for Spring 1944 and was
one part of a three part operation, with the Chinese coming into Burma
from the North, and British XV Corps attacking into the Arakan,
commanded by Lieutenant General William Slim. British IV Corps would
advance across the Chindwin with Special Force supporting both the
Chinese and Slim by establishing air-supplied strongholds astride the
key Japanese supply lines. The offensive opened in February 1944. See
Victory in Burma.
Wingate sadly died before his Chindit forces could complete their second
expedition. He was killed in an air crash in India on March 24th 1944
when his B-25 Mitchell Bomber crashed.
Commanders and Heroes Index
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* THE LAVON AFFAIR *
Now forgotten by most of the few people who ever knew about it, was the
Lavon Affair that once rocked Israel to the very core.
After the Egyptian revolution of 1952, relations between the U.S. and
the new Gamal Abdel Nasser government steadily improved. Cultural and
economic agreements between Egypt and other Arab states and the U.S.
were being discussed, and it was sincerely hoped that the U.S. would aid
the projected Aswan Dam development program. By 1954 American Ambassador
Henry Byroade's personal friendship with Nasser seemed likely to produce
results. A U.S. aid program of $50 million had been started.
The situation was viewed in high Israeli quarters as a grave threat to
the continued flow of American dollars into Israel from public, if not
private, sources.
A direct severance of relations between Egypt and the U.S. was deemed
desirable. An Israeli espionage ring was sent to Egypt to bomb official
U.S. offices and, if necessary, attack American personnel working there
so as to destroy Egyptian-U.S. relations and eventually Arab-U.S. ties.
The creation of simulated anti-British incidents was calculated to
induce the British to maintain their Suez garrison. Several bomb
incidents involving U.S. installations in Egypt followed.
Small bombs shaped like books and secreted in book covers were brought
into the USIA libraries in both Alexandria and Cairo. Fish skin bags
filled with acid were placed on top of nitroglycerin bombs; it took
several hours for the acid to eat through the bag and ignite the bomb.
The book bombs were placed in the shelves of the library just before
closing hours.
Several hours later a blast would occur, shattering glass and shelves
and setting fire to books and furniture. Similar bombs were placed in
the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Theater and in other American owned business
buildings.24
In December two young Jewish Egyptian boys carrying identical bombs were
caught as they were about to enter U.S. installations.
Upon their confession, a sabotage gang of six other Jews was rounded up.
Five more were implicated in the plot. The conspirators, who received
sentences ranging from fifteen years to life, were the objects in the
U.S. of multifold sympathetic editorials and articles.
Nothing appeared in print at the time to refute the image that this had
been but another Nasser conspiracy to unite his country against Israel.
The cry "anti-Semitism" widely reverberated.
In 1960 an investigation in Israel called attention to the forgery of an
important document in what had been announced as a "security mishap"
that had precipitated the resignation of Pinhas Lavon as Minister of
Defense in 1955. Shimon Peres, then Deputy Minister of Defense, and
Moshe Dayan had, with the forgery, attempted to place the legal
responsibility for the unsuccessful 1954 sabotage attempt at Lavon's
door. Ben-Gurion had fought the reopening of the case, but a subsequent
rehearing revealed that Lavon had been an innocent victim of the
machinations of Peres, Dayan, and
Brigadier Abraham Givli.
Even though the army, through censorship, attempted to cover up its own
blunders, the "Lavon Affair" led to a Cabinet crisis and the resignation
of the Ben-Gurion government in 1961. As late as December 29, 1960, the
Times was still referring to the scandal only as "a disastrous adventure
in 1954." As the already abnormal ties between Israel and the U.S. grew
stronger, scant attention was paid to the disclosure in Israel of this
blatant attempt to torpedo U.S.-Arab relations.
The above is taken from "The Zionist Connection II, What Price Peace?"
by Alfred M. Lilienthal (J)
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