Netanyahu said Patterson could be called “the godfather of the Israeli Army.”

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Perhaps because they have so many enemies, the Jews remember their friends. To be sure, in some cases it may take a little time to give those friends their due. Such appears to be the case with Lieut.-Col. John Henry Patterson (1867-1947), who commanded the Jewish Legion in World War I.

This week, Knesset Member Tzvi Hauser, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, wrote to Defense Minister Benny Gantz urging him to name an IDF base after Patterson.

We can’t imagine a more fitting tribute.

Hauser wrote without exaggeration: “Patterson was one of the founding fathers of the Hebrew Defense Force in Israel, and the first commander of a Jewish, organized and official military force since the days of Bar Kochba.

“Patterson was an enthusiastic Zionist until his last day and a man who worked for the establishment of Israel and a force that would ensure its security,” he added.

It was only in 2014 that Patterson’s remains were brought to Israel from California, honoring a request in his will. He is now buried at Avihayil near Netanya, a moshav founded by many of his soldiers. Prime Minister Netanyahu attended that ceremony and related how his elder brother, Jonathan, a famous soldier in his own right, was named after Patterson.

Netanyahu said Patterson could be called “the godfather of the Israeli Army.”

We won’t quibble about whether Patterson deserves that title. It may better go to Vladimir “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky, whose efforts led to the founding of The Jewish Legion and who later founded the Haganah.

Exaggerating Patterson’s place isn’t necessary for he richly deserves to live on in Jewish memory. Patterson first led the Zion Mule Corps., made up of Palestinian Jews exiled by the Turks to Egypt. Jabotinsky, with whom Patterson developed a lifelong friendship (he would later help Jabotinsky in other Zionist efforts) wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of a Mule Corps., basically a transport division. Not only did a Mule Corps. sound undignified, but it was to fight on an unspecified Turkish front – Jabotinsky wanted only to fight in Palestine.

Instead of joining the Mule Corps., Jabotinsky headed from Egypt to England to lobby for what would eventually become the Jewish Legion. But Patterson, like another of Jabotinsky’s allies, Joseph Trumpeldor, who had fought in the Russian Army, saw the value of the Mule Corps. “To get the Turks out of Palestine we’ve got to smash the Turk,” Trumpeldor said to Jabotinsky. “On which front you begin smashing is a question of tactics. Any front leads to Zion.”

Jabotinsky would later admit he was wrong about the muleteers and would credit their exploits in Gallipoli, which won universal admiration within the British army, with helping to pave the way for the eventual establishment of the Jewish Legion (though to use the word “pave” to describe the enormous obstacles that Jabotinsky overcame in the Legion’s creation is a misnomer).

Those muleteers would form the nucleus from which the Legion sprung.

It was fortuitous that Patterson should have been on the spot when a British officer was needed to lead the Mule Corps. As Patterson writes in his book “With the Zionists in Gallipoli,” “It was still more strange that I should have arrived in Egypt just at the psychological moment when General Sir John Maxwell, the Commander-in-Chief, was looking out for a suitable officer to raise and command a Jewish unit.”

A more perfect commander for such a unit could not have been found. Patterson was sympathetic to Jews and knowledgeable about Jewish history, something the general couldn’t have known. To Patterson, the coincidence was astonishing:

“When, as a boy, I eagerly devoured the records of the glorious deeds of Jewish military captains such as Joshua, Joab, Gideon and Judas Maccabaeus, I little dreamt that one day I, myself, would, in a small way, be a captain of a host of the Children of Israel!”

From commanding the Zion Mule Corps., Patterson went on to become commander of the Jewish Legion. Having fallen sick, he was forced to leave Gallipoli and the Mule Corps. He returned to England to recuperate. There, he played a critical role in helping Jabotinsky obtain entrée to key British political and military figures, which made the Legion a reality. Patterson was the natural choice to lead it.

The Legion, which fought on the Palestine front as Jabotinsky envisioned, was officially known as the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. A 39th and 40th Battalion would be added later.

Patterson paid for his sympathies, which likely cost him a promotion to general. British military attitudes toward the Jews at the time could hardly be called friendly – broadly anti-Semitic is more like it. The treatment by the British army of the Jewish Legionnaires after hostilities ended in Palestine bears that out.

Given the soup in which he swam, Patterson’s persistent friendliness to the Jews is all the more remarkable. He belongs to a select company. It’s a struggle to name more than a handful of British Zionists from that period: Lord Balfour, Orde Wingate, Josiah Wedgwood, Richard Meinertzhagen.

Patterson was very nearly sui generis, making it all the more important that he be enshrined in the Jewish nation’s history.

David Isaac is managing editor of World Israel News.

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Britain’s ambassador to Israel praised Ze’ev Jabotinsky as an important leader whom history has pushed aside.

By Margot Dudkevitch, World Israel News

Marking the 100th anniversary of the British Army’s Jewish Legion, UK Ambassador to Israel David Quarrey paid a visit to the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv, where he met with officials and was presented with the writings of Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-19400, founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement and a co-founder of the British Jewish Legion. He was also presented with a picture of the Jewish battalions marching through the streets of London.

“If you enter a bookstore in London, you can find a book about [David] Ben-Gurion, but not about Jabotinsky,” lamented Quarrey. “He [Jabotinsky] is a leader whose consciousness was pushed aside, and this is unfortunate, as he was an important leader.”

Officials at the Institute praised the visit and recommended that a yearly event be held to commemorate the departure of the Royal Fusiliers Brigade from London. CEO of the Jabotinsky Institute, Gideon Mitchnik, commented: “This is an important visit by the Ambassador of Britain, which for Ze’ev Jabotinsky was a source of hope, friendship, partnership, disappointment and even hostility.”

Ambassador Quarrey signed the guest book thanking the Institute for the exciting visit “which has many touches of rich and complex history between the United Kingdom and Israel. I learned a lot.”

Jabotinsky, who was honored as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE)  was an author, poet, orator and soldier. He founded the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa and later co-founded the Jewish Legion of the British Army during World War I with Joseph Trumpeldor. The unit, comprised mainly of Russian Jews who were exiled from Palestine by the Ottoman Empire, first consisted  of the Zion Mule Corps, but in 1917 the British government agreed to establish three Jewish battalions initiating the Jewish Legion.

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A memorial honoring an Irish military commander who led Jewish soldiers into battle in Belfast was defaced.

A memorial in Belfast for an Irish World War I military commander who led the Jewish Legion has been defaced and is being investigated by the Police Service of Northern Ireland as a hate crime.

The UK’s Independent reported Sunday that the words “scum” and “Nazis” were daubed on a mural honoring Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson, who commanded the volunteer battalions of the Jewish Legion as they fought against the Ottoman Empire during World War One.

The memorial mentions his connection to Israel and the IDF.

“Whilst his men fought with distinction, Lt. Col. Patterson had to defend them from the anti-Semitism of his superiors, even threatening to resign his commission,” Stephen Silverman, director of investigations and enforcement at the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA), told the Independent.

“This cowardly attack on a memorial to one of Northern Ireland’s heroes must be punished with the full force of the law,” he demanded.

The incident took place amid increasing concerns about a rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

Patterson, a Christian born in Ireland, commanded five battalions of the British Army which were nicknamed the “Jewish Legion.” They served at Gallipoli and then in the campaign to liberate the Land of Israel from Turkish rule.

Commander of the First Jewish Force in 2,000 Years

Patterson was a passionate advocate of the establishment of the State of Israel and Zionism.

His body was reinterred, along with his wife’s, in Israel in 2014, near the corpses of those with whom he had served, in accordance with his dying wish.

Patterson was “one of the founders of the Jewish Legion, the first Jewish military force since the Bar Kochba Revolt and the basis upon which the IDF was established,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in 2014. “My parents always spoke warmly of Lt.-Col. Patterson, who worked alongside my father in the 1940s in the US to promote the Zionist idea.”

“As Prime Minister of Israel, I deem it to be a privilege to realize Lt.-Col. Patterson’s wish to rest in the Land of Israel alongside the soldiers of the Jewish Legion whom he commanded,” Netanyahu said. “His return to Israel does historic justice to the man about whom [Zionist Revisionist leader] Zeev Jabotinsky wrote: ‘Never in Jewish history has there been in our midst a Christian friend of his understanding and devotion.'”

By: World Israel News Staff

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