Geoffrey J. Morton
All five people were members of Lehi, a militant Zionist group which attempted to form an anti-British alliance with Nazi Germany and staged an insurgency against British rule in Palestine during World War II, with the aim of creating a Jewish state.
Geoffrey Jackson Morton grew up in South London, following grammar school he began work in a dairy firm where his father was managing director, but after becoming a special constable during the General Strike of 1926 he decided on a career in law enforcement.
Despite lacking the military background which recruiters preferred, Morton succeeded in joining the Palestine Police in 1930, but after passing through the army-style basic training he was assigned to a transport unit.
Frustrated at the lack of opportunity for police work he left the force in 1932, rejoining six months later on hearing about changes made by Inspector General Roy Spicer.
Jenin was the hotbed of rural Palestinian resistance to British rule, along with Nablus and Tulkarm, and Bernard Montgomery praised Morton for discharging his duties effectively while showing a particular talent for rooting out arms caches, sometimes by an imaginative use of ruses which belied his rather solemn demeanor.
[1] The leader of the right wing Zionists, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, was ambivalent about reprisals on Arabs but, in response to terrorist attacks on Jews, the Irgun launched a wave of retaliatory actions.
[2] As the Arab revolt wound down, Avraham Stern's faction diverged from the Irgun (which ceased operations during the war so as not to give any aid or comfort to Nazi Germany which it regarded as the greatest enemy of the Jewish people) and led his group Lehi on a campaign against Britain's rule.
Stern leant heavily on examples from Jewish history such as the Zealots and Bar Kokhba, maintaining that heroism in the face of overwhelming odds would bring success.
In one incident, he narrowly escaped death when his automatic pistol jammed during a gunfight with an Arab wanted for multiple murders, though he managed to shoot dead his opponent.
The austerely charismatic Stern, a poet and teacher who was referred to as "the light" by his followers, became ever more ruthless in his methods and mercilessly targeted Jewish members of the Palestine Police, regarding them as 'hirelings'.
Inspector E. Turton, in his first day of a job in Tel Aviv and holder of the King's Police Medal for Gallantry for saving a trainload of Jewish people from an Arab mob, had his legs amputated before dying a week later.
Stern's men had also placed a third IED under the walkway to the building's entrance which was intended to target the senior officers arriving on the scene after Morton and Wilkin were killed.
[1][6][7][8] The bombing deaths of his colleagues demonstrated the Stern gang's thorough knowledge of police procedures, ingenuity in coming up with novel ploys, and mastery of improvised explosive devices.
The knowledge that CID men were the prime target of explosives expert zealots had a profound effect on Morton's subsequent behavior when arresting Lehi fighters.
As a member of the Palestine police he had received pistol training which emphasized instinctive aiming and the danger of quick-reacting suspects; after the Yael Street bomb those who disregarded a warning to stay still during raids were not given the benefit of the doubt but instantly shot.
When the suspects did just that, he opened fire killing Jacques and Amper; Svorai received flesh wounds and Yoske was shot in the buttocks by a detective outside while attempting to escape through the lavatory window.
[1][15][16] According to Lehi member Tova Svorai, Stern was sitting on the sofa manacled while two detectives leveled their guns at his head when Morton arrived and ordered the building cleared.
