Agents of Empire: Anglo-Zionist Intelligence Operations 1915-1919 Brigadier Walter Gribbon, Aaron Aaronsohn and the Nili Ring

This is the story of a unique partnership, forged by war and matured in friendship. Brigadier W.H. Gribbon CMG, CBE of The King's Own Royal Regiment, after junior staff service in the early stages of the Mesopotamian Campaign of World War I, was posted to the War Office to serve as a major under Major General George MacDonagh, the Director of Military Intelligence. Aaron Aaronsohn was a Jew, a distinguished agronomist working in the Turkish Palestinian Administration and a zionist. He became convinced that a future for his people depended on British support. Aaronsohn and his family offered their services as intelligence agents to the British in Cairo, only to be rebuffed. Aaron then made his way from Damascus to London where, in October 1916, he met Walter Gribbon. With the support of committed zionists such as Mark Sykes and Wyndham Deedes, Gribbon and Aaronsohn set in train an intelligence operation which enabled General Allenby to totally destroy the Turkish Army in the Levant, give Britain its "moment" in the Middle East and lay the foundations for a zionist state. Drawing on Gribbon's private papers and Aaronsohn's diaries, this book reveals the extent of British political and strategic support for such a state. Anthony Verrier is the author of "International Peacekeeping" and "Through the Looking Glass: British foreign Policy in the Age of Illusion".