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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Lieut. Col. John Patterson is considered “one of the founding fathers” of the IDF, says the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Member of Knesset Zvi Hauser has requested that the IDF honor Lieut. Col. John Patterson, who led the first official Jewish military force in 2,000 years, by naming a military base after him 74 years after his death.

In his letter to Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Hauser noted, “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 [Roman Empire-era Jewish Revolt leader] 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. By naming a base for him, “his memory will be honored and his legacy will be passed on to future generations of soldiers as the founding father of the Hebrew Defensive Force.”

Patterson founded the British Army’s first all-Jewish force during World War I together with Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor, a legendary Jewish fighter who eventually fell while defending the settlement of Tel Hai in 1920. The transport auxiliary unit, called the “Zion Mule Corps,” was a water and ammunition supply force.

Later in the war, hundreds of veterans joined Patterson again after he successfully petitioned his superiors to form a combat battalion called the Jewish Legion that eventually consisted of 5,000 men. The soldiers fought the Turkish forces in the Jordan Valley and in the Battle of Megiddo that was decisive in wresting Palestine away from Ottoman control.

Many of the troops remained in Palestine after the war ended and became the backbone of the underground forces that defended Jewish villages and agricultural settlements against Arab rioters, evolving into the nucleus of the IDF.

After the war, Patterson pushed together with Jabotinsky in diplomatic and political circles in Great Britain and then in the United States for the establishment of a Jewish state. He died in Los Angeles, California in 1947, the year before the State of Israel was declared.

Hauser, now chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, is no stranger to the story of the non-Jewish Zionist officer. Patterson’s grandson, Alan, had asked the Jabotinsky Institute in 2010 whether the ashes of both his grandparents could be reburied in Israel, writing, “It was my grandfather’s wish to rest … alongside his subordinates from the Hebrew Battalion, and I very much want to fulfil this dream.” The request went to Hauser, who was then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary.

In 2014, Netanyahu honored the request and spoke about his own family’s close connection to Patterson at the state ceremony in a cemetery in Avihayil, where several Battalion fighters are buried.

‘The godfather of the Israeli army’

The former British officer worked closely the Netanyahu family to promote the idea of a Jewish state, he said.

“It was a tremendous partnership. My parents spoke with admiration, appreciation and great warmth about [Patterson] and the depth of his commitment to our people, his unique character. They were so attached to him that they decided to name their eldest son, our brother, Jonathan, after John Henry Patterson and after my grandfather, Rabbi Natan Milikowski.”

Jonathan, aka Yoni, was the only fatality in the daring Israeli raid, which he led, on the Entebbe Airport in 1976 that freed Jewish hostages being held by German and Palestinian terrorists.

Netanyahu called Patterson “the godfather of the Israeli army.”

The Christian Zionist soldier was “well versed in the Bible” and “immediately recognized the great potential inherent in those Jewish warriors,” Netanyahu said. “He taught them. He himself planted in them the spirit, he said to them: You are the descendants of Joshua, you are the descendants of the Maccabees.”

“He instilled in them a change, a belief in their ability, in our ability to grasp the sword of David and defend ourselves. This is the groundbreaking change in our history. This is the godfather of the Israeli army.”

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