Ben Dunkelman

Template:Short description Template:Infobox person Benjamin "Ben" Dunkelman DSO (June 26, 1913 – June 11, 1997) was a Canadian Jewish officer who served in the Canadian Army in World War II and the Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In Israel, he was called Benjamin Ben-David.

Biography

Early life

Benjamin Dunkelman was the son of Ashkenazi immigrants from the town of Makov (modern Maków Mazowiecki, Poland) in the Russian Empire. His father was David Dunkelman, the founder of the Canadian men's retailers, Tip Top Tailors<ref>Hammond, Karen; Old Times: Leaders and Legends; Winter/Spring 2007; p. 32</ref> and his mother Rose was a committed Zionist.<ref name=bio>biographical entry in {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dunkelman and his siblings grew up on an estate, Sunnybrook Farm (now the site of Sunnybrook Medical Centre), northeast of Toronto built by his wealthy father.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dunkelman later recalled about growing on Sunnybrooke Farm that "it was a dreamland, a children’s paradise".<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref>

He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto, where he was noted for his active social life and for excelling at football.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Besides his love of sports, Dunkelman enjoyed sailing Lake Ontario in his yacht.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1931, financial losses caused by the Great Depression forced David Dunkelman to sell off Sunnybrook Farm.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

At the age of 18, Dunkelman went off to work on a kibbutz in Palestine, at that time a League of Nations Mandate administered by Great Britain.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dunkelman was inspired by his Zionist mother to go to the Palestine Mandate.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At the kibbutz, he worked as a shomer, an armed watchman, whose duty it was to protect the kibbutz from raiders.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dunkelman recalled: "I went off a flabby, pampered boy; I returned as a tough young man who had seen the world."<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> He loved the Holy Land, and only reluctantly returned to Toronto<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> in 1932 to assist his father, but went again to Palestine in the late 1935 to develop new settlements.<ref name=bio/>

Military career

He was back in Toronto in 1939 when the Second World War broke out. He attempted to join the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), but antisemitism in the RCN at the time precluded a naval career.<ref name=auto>Dunkelman, Ben (1984). Dual Allegiance: An autobiography, Goodread Biography. Template:ISBN</ref> Instead Dunkelman enlisted as a private with The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada; as the war progressed he rose from private to major. Dunkelman enlisted with the Second Battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles in 1940.<ref name="Toronto">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dunkelman later gave his reason for enlisting as an "active" (willing to fight overseas) member as "I am a Canadian, proud of Canada’s heritage and proud -- if need be -- to fight for it."<ref name="Toronto">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He was in the second wave to land on Juno Beach, the beach assigned to Canada in the Normandy landings on D-Day, 6 June 1944.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> During his service with the regiment, he earned numerous commendations.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He also fought in the difficult campaigns in northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, including bloody battles of Caen, the Falaise pocket, and the Battle of the Scheldt to open up the critical port of Antwerp. During the Normandy campaign in June-August 1944 and then during the Battle of the Scheldt, the Canadian Army took heavy losses. At the same time, the policy of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King of only sending "active" members who had volunteered to fight overseas ensured there was a shortage of replacements. Under Mackenzie King's policy, men were conscripted for the military, but only for the defense of Canada, leading to a situation where two divisions stood waiting on the coast of British Columbia and another division on the coast of Nova Scotia. At the time of the Battle of the Scheldt, Dunkelman wrote in disgust: "We knew why leaves were so scarce. Thanks to Prime Minister Mackenzie King's handling of the Conscription issue at home".<ref>Granatstein, Jack & Morton, Desmond Canada and the Two World Wars, Toronto: KeyPorter, 2003 page 308</ref>    

In 1945, he was awarded a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his service in the Hochwald campaign in northwest Germany during the drive to the river Rhine.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In March 1945, Dunkelman played a key role in taking the steep Balberger Wald ridge in the dark forests of the Hochwald.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref>

After the war, he was offered command of the Queen's Own Rifles but declined owing to business interests at home.<ref name=auto/> Dunkelman returned to Canada, but again decided to travel to war, this time to fight for Israel in the spring of 1948. On 14 May 1948, the Palestine Mandate came to an end and the State of Israel was proclaimed. Israel was immediately invaded by the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. He arrived there at a time when the Israeli army was short of officers with combat experience. Initially, he took command of a mortar unit in the Mahal, the legion of Jewish and Christian foreign volunteers fighting for Israel.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Dunkelman's skill with mortars brought him to the attention of the Israeli High Command, and he was instrumental in the breaking of the siege of Jerusalem, which had been besieged by the Jordanians almost since the beginning of the war.<ref name=auto/> Shortly afterwards, he became the commander of the 7th Brigade, the country's best-known armored brigade.<ref name=bio/> Dunkelman and the 7th Brigade were initially sent to Galilee to halt the advance of the Syrians.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> Under his command, the 7th Brigade stopped the Syrian advance and recaptured much of upper western Galilee.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref>

In his autobiography, Dual Allegiance,<ref name=auto/> Dunkelman tells the story of how, between July 8 and 18, 1948 during Operation Dekel, he led the 7th Brigade and its supporting units as it moved to capture the town of Nazareth. Nazareth surrendered after little more than token resistance.

Shortly after the capture of Nazareth, Dunkelman received orders<ref>According to Ben-Gurion's War Diary, Vol. II, these orders came from Moshe Zalitzky (Carmel), quoted in Gelber, Yoav (2006), Palestine 1948, Sussex Academic, Brighton, Template:ISBN, p. 166.</ref> from General Chaim Laskov to expel the Palestinian civilian population from the town, which he refused to carry out. Israeli journalist and translator Peretz Kidron, with whom Dunkelman collaborated in writing Dual Allegiance, reproduced his record of Dunkelman's account of the capture of Nazareth in a book chapter entitled "Truth Whereby Nations Live":

"[less than a day later] Haim Laskov [came] to me with astounding orders: Nazareth's civilian population was to be evacuated! I was shocked and horrified. I told him I would do nothing of the sort—in view of our promises to safeguard the city's people, such a move would be both superfluous and harmful. I reminded him that scarcely a day earlier, he and I, as representatives of the Israeli army, had signed the surrender document in which we solemnly pledged to do nothing to harm the city or its population. When Haim saw that I refused to obey the order, he left."<ref>Kidron, Peretz (1988). Truth Whereby Nations Live. In Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens (Eds.). Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question Verso. Template:ISBN, p. 87.</ref>

Twelve hours after Dunkelman refused to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth, Laskov appointed another officer as military governor.<ref name="morris">Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Template:ISBN, pp. 419–20.</ref>

"Two days after the second truce came into effect, the Seventh Brigade was ordered to withdraw from Nazareth. Avraham Yaffe, who had commanded the 13th battalion in the assault on the city, now reported to me with orders from Moshe Carmel to take over from me as its military governor. I complied with the order, but only after Avraham had given me his word of honour that he would do nothing to harm or displace the Arab population. [....] I felt sure that [the order to withdraw from Nazareth] had been given because of my defiance of the evacuation order."<ref>Kidron, Peretz (1988). Truth Whereby Nations Live. In Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens (Eds.). Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question Verso. Template:ISBN, pp. 86, 87.</ref>

Dunkelman's defiance of the evacuation order forced Laskov to attempt to obtain sanction from a higher level. However, David Ben-Gurion finally vetoed the order;<ref name="morris"/> the Arab inhabitants in Nazareth were never forced to evacuate. Dunkelman's argument that expelling the mostly Christian Palestinians of Nazareth would damage relations with the overwhelming Christian nations of the West seemed to have changed Ben-Gurion's mind.<ref>Haiduc-Dale, Noah Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine: Communalism and Nationalism, 1917-1948, Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 2013 p.186</ref> During the war, Dunkelman met and married Yael Lifshitz.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Lifshitz was a corporal in the Israeli Army who served under Dunkelman.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref>

In spite of this incident, the Seventh Brigade was otherwise known as one of the crueler combat forces of the period.<ref name=jstor /> Israeli historian Ilan Pappé writes: "In many of the Palestinian oral histories that have now come to the fore, few brigade names appear. However, Brigade Seven is mentioned again and again, together with such adjectives as 'terrorist' and 'barbarous.'"<ref name= jstor>Template:Cite journal </ref><ref>Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006). Page. 158</ref> In his memoirs, Dunkelman later admitted to having allowed his troops to loot Palestinian property.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His unit was also implicated in numerous massacres of Palestinian civilians during Operation Hiram, including the Safsaf massacre and the Sa'sa' massacre.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Civilian career

After the war Dunkelman was offered, but refused, a commission in the peacetime Israeli Army; the Dunkelmans returned instead to Toronto where he went into the family business, which he expanded, then sold to Dylex Limited in 1967. In recognition of Dunkelman's World War II service, the Parliament of Canada voted to give Yael Dunkelman Canadian citizenship, instead of forcing her to apply for Canadian citizenship, which her husband called a "splendid gesture".<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> The Dunkelmans had six children.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref>

He later became a developer. Among his developments were the Cloverdale Mall and the Constellation Hotel, later renamed the Regal Constellation Hotel.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dunkelman was one of the founders of the Island Yacht Club, which he founded in 1951 after the Royal Canadian Yacht Club refused to accept him on account of his being Jewish.<ref name="Levine">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dunkelman lived in retirement in Toronto until his death.

In 1967, he almost died of a heart attack, which led him to retire from the family's business of running the Tip Top Tailors company.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> After his heart attack, he decided to focus on his real passion, collecting art.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> He and his wife also ran the Dunkelman Gallery in Toronto, as well as several restaurants.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> The Dunkelman Gallery, which he founded in 1967, became "well-known as a showcase for Canadian and international artists".<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref> In September 1969, the Dunkelman Gallery hosted the personal archaeological collection of the Israeli Defense Minister, General Moshe Dayan, which mostly consisted of art from ancient Canaan and Phoenicia.<ref name="Hauch">Template:Cite news</ref>

There is a bridge on the Lebanese border called Gesher Ben in Dunkelman's honor. His story is told in the film Ben Dunkelman: The Reluctant Warrior.