Norman Bentwich

Norman Bentwich was the oldest son of British Zionist Herbert Bentwich. He attended St Paul's School in London and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was said to be the "favorite pupil" of John Westlake.[2] [3]

Bentwich was a delegate at the annual Zionist Congresses from 1907 to 1912.[4] He paid his first visit to Palestine in 1908.[4]

He was commissioned in the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps on 1 January 1916. He was awarded the Military Cross and, in 1919, received the OBE.[5]

1931 Colonial Office memorandum regarding Norman Bentwich

During the British military administration of Palestine, Bentwich served as Senior Judicial Officer, which continued in the civil administration after 1920 as Legal Secretary.[2] The title was soon changed to Attorney-General, a post he held until 1931.[2]

Bentwich played a major role in the development of Palestinian law.[6][7] According to Likhovski, he "concentrated his efforts on providing Palestine with a set of modern commercial laws that he believed would facilitate economic development and thus attract more Jewish immigration."[7] Bentwich's perceived Zionist bias made him increasingly unpopular with Palestinian Arabs, who conducted demonstrations and other protests against his presence in the administration.[2] Some British officials, including the Colonial Office and the Chief Justice of Palestine Michael McDonnell, saw him as a liability and agitated for his dismissal.[2][7] In 1929 he was barred from representing the government at the Shaw Commission into the August riots.[2] In late 1930 he went on leave to England, where he unsuccessfully sought to gain support for his continued role in Palestine.[2] He was offered senior judicial positions in Mauritius and Cyprus, but turned them down.[8] In August 1931 his appointment as Attorney-General was terminated by the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, who cited "the peculiar racial and political conditions of Palestine, and the difficulties with which the Administration has in consequence to bear."[2][8]

In November 1929, Bentwich was shot in the thigh by a 17-year-old Arab employee of the Palestine Police.[9] His assailant was sentenced to 15 years hard labour, despite Bentwich personally advocating for him.[2][9][10]

From 1932 to 1951 Bentwich occupied the Chair of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[11] His first lecture, on "Jerusalem, City of Peace", was disrupted by Jewish students who considered him too conciliatory towards the Arabs.[12] Several of the ringleaders, one of them Avraham Stern, were suspended.[12] Bentwich was a disciple of Zionist thinker Ahad Ha'am,[13] and wrote a book, Ahad Ha'am and His Philosophy, in 1927. He was one of the Jewish members of Palestine Administration who in 1929 joined Brit Shalom, a society founded to find rapprochement between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.[14]

He was later President of the Jewish Historical Society of England.

In his book, Mandate Memories, he stated that "the Balfour Declaration was not an impetuous or sentimental act of the British government, as has been sometimes represented, or a calculated measure of political warfare. It was a deliberate decision of British policy and idealist politics, weighed and reweighed, and adopted only after full consultation with the United States and with other Allied Nations."[15]

During the Second World War, Bentwich was commissioned into the Royal Air Force and on 24 February 1942 was promoted to Flight Lieutenant. On 16 December 1942, as Pilot Officer N. De M. Bentwich OBE MC (RAF/115215), he was cashiered by sentence of a General Court Martial, but this was not reported in the London Gazette until 23 February 1943.[16] The unusual circumstances of this are explained in Bentwich’s book Wanderer in War, 1939-45 (1946). By misfortune, he had dropped an important secret document in the street, and his superiors decided to make an example of him as a warning to others.[17] However, he was then able to join the Ministry of Information, working for Sir Wyndham Deedes, Regional Officer for Greater London. This work took him to the large East End bomb shelters, where steps were taken to transform them into community centres. He also travelled to Ethiopia, on a legal assignment for the Emperor.[18]

Bentwich lived the last twenty years of his life in London, where his wife, Helen Bentwich, had a political career as a member of London County Council.[19] Among his other roles, he served as President of the North Western Reform Synagogue in Alyth Gardens, Temple Fortune, from 1958 until his death.