The Reckoning by Patrick Bishop

Author:Patrick Bishop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

Counsel: What were your instructions to the police?

Morton: To use all means to prevent the escape of the suspects.

Counsel: What were they?

Morton: All means.

Counsel: Did you give permission to shoot?

Morton: No, I did not say it.

Counsel: In accordance with the Police Ordinance, is it allowed to shoot anybody to prevent his escape, or when he shows an attempt to escape?

Morton: According to the ordinance it is not permitted but this was a special case.

The President of the Court: In what way was it special?

Morton: The people were suspected.

Counsel: Is it allowed to shoot anybody who is suspected?

Morton: I wanted to prevent losses amongst the police party.

Counsel: Is it allowed for a policeman to kill anybody if he does not like him?

Morton: I am a police officer and I did my duty.12

Morton clearly believed that he had little to fear from accusations that he had exceeded that duty and the circumstances allowed him to take no chances whatsoever. In his report he states baldly that ‘on searching the flat it was observed that the door of the lavatory was locked and that the key was on the inside. I called to whoever was inside to come out and receiving no reply fired four shots through the wooden door.’ The fact that he felt no need to justify this action suggests that, indeed, ‘this was a special case’.

When asked about it much later, Alec Ternent did not try to hide his intentions when he aimed his gun at Levstein. ‘He was the first person I ever fired at in anger in my life and I meant to kill him,’ he said. ‘I meant to shoot to kill [and] it was a bad aim when it hit him in the arse.’13 Morton was careful in his report to stress that Ternent had his backing. ‘I desire to add,’ he wrote, ‘that I gave the Police personnel implicit [sic] instructions that under no circumstances should they allow anybody to escape from the house and B/C [British Constable] Ternent was carrying out these implicit instructions when he shot and wounded Yaacov Levstein.’

Morton appeared confident of the approval and backing of his superiors. That was by no means guaranteed, particularly when the action was as robust as it had been in the Dizengoff Street raid. A few months previously, in October 1941, MacMichael had ordered a thorough report on the activities of the Jewish underground and their relationship with the Jewish Agency and other major institutions of the Yishuv. The memorandum that resulted concentrated mainly on the Haganah and its new commando unit, the Palmach, and the Irgun. The Stern group is represented as a bunch of Chicago-style gangsters, devoid of any ideological impetus, who operated ‘on the plane on which guys are merely bumped off, rubbed out or put on the spot’.14 It was ‘a menace to society but … not politically important’.

The Haganah and the Palmach, and to a lesser extent the Irgun, were linked to legitimate political bodies with strong political connections, particularly in America.

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