Evelyn Barker General Sir Evelyn Hugh Barker Order of the Bath ( KCB ) , Order of the British Empire ( KBE ) , Distinguished Service Order ( DSO ) , Military Cross ( MC ) , ( 1894 – 1983 ) was a British Army general in World War II , and commander of British forces in the Palestine from 1946 to 1947 . Barker is remembered for his order , following the King David Hotel bombing , that " ( We ) will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any , by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them " . Military service in 1913 – 1946 . The son of a high - ranking officer , Major - General Sir George Barker , Evelyn Barker was commissioned into the King ' s Royal Rifle Corps ( KRRC ) , in 1913 , and sent the next year to the French theatre of World War I . He fought in France , took part in the Thessaloniki ( in Greece ) operation , and was wounded and decorated . In 1919 , still with the KRRC , Barker took part in the British military expedition against the Bolsheviks in the south of the former Russian Empire . As commander of the 2nd battalion KRRC , Barker served in Palestine during the Palestinian Arab Revolt of 1936 – 39 , returning to the UK in 1938 to take command of 10th Infantry Brigade . Shortly after the start of World War II in October 1939 , he took his brigade , one of three forming the 4th Infantry Division , to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force . After the Allies defeat on the continent , he was evacuated from Dunkirk with other troops to Britain where he assumed command of the 54th ( East Anglian ) Division . In April 1943 Barker took over the 49th ( West Riding ) Infantry Division , which he led in the Battle of Normandy and the ensuing fighting in Northern France . Barker distinguished himself during the liberation of Le Havre . During early December , 1944 Sir Richard O ' Connor was transferred to India to take command of the Eastern Army and Barker , by now a Lieutenant - General , was appointed the new commander of VIII Corps in his place . VIII Corps saw extensive action during the final push into Germany between March and May 1945 . On 15 April 1945 , elements of Barkers Corps liberated the remaining survivors of the Belsen concentration camp . After the German capitulation , Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery appointed Barker to head the Schleswig - Holstein Corps District of the British occupation zone . He was also knighted ( KBE ) immediately after the campaign . Taking command in Palestine . In the spring of 1946 , Barker was appointed the General Officer Commanding ( GOC ) of British forces in Palestine , where he had served in the days of the Arab Revolt . Palestine was now the scene of another guerrilla war , this time waged by the Zionist militants of the Haganah , Irgun and LEHI . Barker had the challenging task of ending the increasingly numerous and lethal attacks by the armed Zionist groups . He found the country at a new peak of tension between the Jewish community and the British troops , after the LEHI ’ s 25 April raid on the 6th Airborne Division car park near Tel Aviv in which several unarmed soldiers were killed execution - style . Officers reported that some units were close to mutinying and going on a revengeful rampage in the villages . Controlling the vindictive passions of his troops , as well as his own , would for the General be sometimes as difficult as controlling the security situation . Barker soon came to the conclusion that pacification of the country required harsher measures ; first of all , enforcement of the death penalty , and certain collective actions against the entire Jewish community for its perceived complicity . Like most of the military personnel stationed in Palestine , he blamed the Yishuv at large for the attacks of the militants , and the softness of the British approach to the Jews for the failure to stop them . Whereas hangings and collective punishment were broadly employed against the Palestinian Arabs during the 1936 - 39 Arab Revolt , not a single Zionist militant had ever been executed for attacking British forces ( with the exception of the two LEHI assassins of Lord Moyne who were tried and hanged in Cairo ) . Together with other high - ranking British officers , Barker repeatedly asked civil authorities to let the army “ take off the gloves ” and employ harsher methods in the pursuit of the " terrorists " . The perception of the government ’ s timidity with regard to the Jews , predominant in military circles , was expressed in the memoirs of Bernard Montgomery , Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1946 - 48 : Relationship with Katie Antonius . Soon after arriving in Palestine , Evelyn Barker became a frequenter of the Jerusalem haute societe gatherings in the mansion of Katie Antonius . The hostess was the widow of the famous Lebanese - Palestinian intellectual George Antonius , and was known for her intelligence and taste . The evening dances in the Karm al Mufti mansion , where Antonius had written his " Arab Awakening " , were attended by diplomats , artists and British officers . Evelyn Barker , by now married with a son , dallied there with his Arab hostess . Advocating the death penalty . Barker saw capital punishment as an effective discouragement against resorting to arms , and argued for a wide application of the death penalty against Zionist guerillas . That it was never applied in the preceding years , he considered among the major causes of the failure to suppress the insurgency . Barker would later express his position in this way : In his position on the death penalty , Barker was not only strongly supported by his subordinates , but directly instructed by his superiors . Chief of the Imperial General Staff , Bernard Montgomery , conveyed to Barker that capital punishment of the Jewish militants must be carried out even when British soldiers were held hostage for the sentenced terrorists . When , on 18 June 1946 , the Irgun abducted five British officers , to be held as hostages for the recently condemned to death members of the Irgun , Montgomery reacted with an urgent unplanned visit to Palestine for talks with Barker , of which he later recalled : Barker confirmed the sentences even before Montgomery ' s involvement . But the opposite decision was taken by superior authorities : on 3 July , the High Commissioner for Palestine , Alan Cunningham , commuted the death sentences to imprisonment , in order , as is generally held , to save the British hostages . The Irgun then released the captured British officers . Operation " Agatha " . Spurred to deliver , in the middle of June 1946 , Barker started planning a large - scale police operation throughout the Yishuv . Having the long - awaited order to arrest the leaders of the Jewish Agency , which was now strongly believed to be complicit in terrorism , Barker organised Operation " Agatha " in great secrecy and with high hopes of delivering a strong blow to the guerillas . The operation began in early morning of Saturday , 29 June ( it became known as “ Black Sabbath ” among the Yishuv ) , with tens of thousands of soldiers and policemen employed in a cordon - and - search action in almost every Jewish settlement . By the end of the day , over 2 , 700 Jews were detained , including some leaders of the Jewish Agency . Dozens of weapon caches were found , including one in the Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv . The order prohibiting social interaction with the Jews . Barker was in his office at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when at 12 . 37 pm , Monday , 22 July 1946 , the southern wing of the building collapsed following a large explosion , which killed more than 100 Britons , Arabs and Jews . It looked immediately apparent ( and was very soon confirmed ) that the hotel , which housed the headquarters of the Mandate administration , had been targeted by Zionist militants . Shortly after the explosion , Barker was in his office writing the order to his troops : Barker ’ s aide , Brigadier Walter Sale , gave the order the lowest secrecy status , “ Restricted ” , and the leaders of the Yishuv quickly learnt of the GOC ’ s outburst of anger . Upon making its way to the hands of Palestinian Zionists , the text was immediately multiplied and sent to Western capitals , before it could be silently revoked . The order was rescinded in two weeks , but the avalanche of criticism it produced delivered a blow to the government ’ s handling of Palestine . The public resonance of Barker ’ s reaction to the bombing soon rivalled the resonance of the bombing itself ; the order became the ' spoiler ' of the politico - diplomatic offensive which had been allowed to the British government by the King David Hotel bombing . Already with a trail of rumours about his alleged antisemitism , Barker became possibly the individual most hated by the Jews , along with Britain ’ s Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin . The publicity campaign against Barker became a part of the propaganda thrust against the British policy in Palestine . A British newspaper carried a caricature of the GOC holding Hitler ’ s " Mein Kampf " . Barker later regretted issuing this order : Speaking specifically of the Palestinian situation , the Commander - in - Chief , Miles Dempsey , later reported to the War Minister Frederick Bellenger : Operation " Shark " . With information that the Irgun ring responsible for the King David Hotel bombing was hiding in Tel Aviv , Barker organised a massive police operation in the city . His instructions to his subordinate Major - General James Cassels were short : " Jim , I want you to search Tel Aviv , every single room and attic and cellar in Tel Aviv . Is that quite clear ? " The police action in Tel Aviv , codenamed Operation " Shark " , began on 30 July and achieved several successes , including the discovery of a large weapons cache in the city ’ s main synagogue , and the arrest of the LEHI ’ s leader Yitzhak Shamir . But the most important figure of the Zionist underground , Menachem Begin of the Irgun , slipped through British hands . He hid in a secret compartment in his house while British soldiers stayed in his home for two days . General Barker later recalled : " We should have caught him , but the men did not search his house properly . This is one of the problems of search operations . You have to rely on very junior people , and , if they make a mistake , the whole operation can be damaged . " In August , Barker had his authority overruled once more , when High Commissioner Cunningham commuted the death sentences of 18 LEHI combatants and sent them to jail instead of the gallows . Meanwhile , the British government , under economic pressure of the post - war period and pro - Zionist political pressure from the USA , intensified efforts to find a political solution . Palestine became too sensitive an issue , and Barker too scandalous a figure ; the two had to be divorced . On 22 October , it was announced that the General would be promoted to a position in Britain . He continued in his duties of General Officer Commanding for several more months . On 24 January 1947 , Barker confirmed the death sentence of the Irgun fighter , Dov Gruner . Barker later said in an interview to a researcher : Understanding that the militants would seek hostages to prevent Gruner ’ s execution , as they did in the past to save other prisoners , Barker issued orders to heighten the alert amongst the British troops . On the final day of his Palestinian command , 13 February , Barker confirmed the death sentences of three Irgun members , - Mordechai Alkachi , Yahiel Dresner ( Dov Rosenbaum ) and Eliezer Kashani . With that , he left Palestine forever . Alkachi , Dresner , Kashani and Gruner were hanged in Acre prison at dawn on 16 April . Assassination plots . Evelyn Barker was a target of the Irgun and the LEHI . In Palestine , explosive devices were placed around his home and at its very door , the GOC sometimes survived due to the vigilance of his officers , other times by luck . Assassination plots followed him to Britain after his return from the Mandate in February 1947 . Among the would - be assassins was the future President of Israel , and the nephew of Chaim Weizmann , Ezer Weizman . A former Royal Air Force pilot , and now a student of aviation in London , the 23 - year old Ezer Weizman worked with an Irgun colleague tracking Barker to his house and producing a plan to use a bomb against him . Before the duo was able to plant the device into the road , however , Weizman was visited by the police . Having attracted suspicion , the future President quickly left Britain . The story of this plot remained unknown until Weizman himself revealed it in his memoir “ On Eagle ’ s Wings ” 30 years later . The retired Barker commented on this news in 1977 : The LEHI , for its part , carried out several more attempts on Barker ’ s life . In one of them , a mail envelope charged with explosive powder ( a method of killing that had been known for a while ) arrived at Barker ’ s home on 11 May 1948 , but was detected by his alert wife . Last years of military service , and retirement . After leaving Palestine in February 1947 , Evelyn Barker assumed his position of GOC Eastern Command . He maintained correspondence with his former lover Katie Antonius for some years . In 1950 , Sir Evelyn Hugh Barker retired from service , aged 56 . He had a long and seemingly comfortable retirement . For several years he was in correspondence with Basil Liddell Hart , the well known British military specialist and historian . Barker was among many individuals who gave accounts of their personal roles in Palestinian events to the researcher Nicholas Bethell , for his book “ The Palestine Triangle : the Struggle for the Holy Land , 1935 - 48 ” ( among other interviewees were Menachem Begin , Abba Eban , Alan Cunningham , Israel Galili , Katie Antonius , Ezer Weizman , as well as many publicly unknown individuals ) . Evelyn Barker died on 23 November 1983 , at the age of 89 ; he was buried in Somerset . Barker ’ s antisemitism . Barker ’ s letters to his former lover Katie Antonius contain overtly antisemitic passages . He wrote about the Jews in April 1947 : " Yes I loathe the lot - whether they be Zionists or not . Why should we be afraid of saying we hate them . Its time this damned race knew what we think of them - loathsome people " . He had a strong sentiment against the Jews by that time ; the question is only whether he developed it during his Palestinian months , or at an earlier stage of his life . If considered within the context of the widespread anti - Jewish attitudes among the British troops in Palestine of the post - war period , Barker ’ s antisemitism was probably a product of the military conflict with armed Zionists . Animosity towards the Jews had indeed pervaded the British army in Palestine , and Barker was in this respect in no way outstanding . Arguably , the foundation of this feeling was not the traditional antisemitism with its incrimination of greed and destructiveness , and not merely the fact of the armed conflict with Jewish guerillas , but the idea of treachery committed by the Jews against Britain to whom they allegedly owed everything they had in Palestine . The policy of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 , the protection from the Arabs and from the Germans in 1941 - 43 , were seen by many Britons as great favours bestowed by the Empire on the Jewish people . In the antisemitic passages of his letters to Katie Antonius , Barker makes a reference to such British sacrifices , unappreciated by the Jews : " … everything that we did for these Jews , in terms of money and human lives . "