Talk:Notrim

Confusing: 1930s? WWII? Till 1948? Who is what?

"The British authorities maintained, financed and armed the Notrim until the end of the Mandate, even though they knew that although the force was nominally answerable to the Palestine Police Force it was in fact controlled by the Haganah."

Apparently 1939 was an important year, when the British, having defeated the Arab revolt, withdrew most of their support to the Notrim after the White paper was issued and enforced. How exactly that played out is not clear - fewer numbers? Legal status, weapons, financial support withdrawn? Actively dismantled?

What was the official connection, if any (other than some/many/most of the same people joining both) between the 1930s Notrim and the WWII "Buffs"? Why do the "Buffs" get so much space in the "Notrim" article? What is the connection, if any?

Are all the Jewish troops dealt with in the WWII section part of the "Buffs"? What was the official nomenclature of the Jewish units which can even be mentioned in this context (police, not army)? I have placed the term "Buffs" in the heading, as the text suggests that this would be a good common name, but is it accurate?

"After World War II, the Notrim became the core of the Israeli Military Police."

Meaning what, that "Notrim" as such were kept until 1948, i.e.: Jewish Settlement Police, ghafirs/Supernumerary Police, and Jewish army guides/scouts? All three, or just some? What about various WWII "Buffs" or whatever they ended up being called? A bit vague, as 1939 till 1948 = a full decade, in which it's not even clear what happened to the three units known together as "notrim". Not any Palestinian Jew in British uniform was a "noter". Arminden (talk) 02:43, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

What is the TOPIC here?

One big mess. The middle and final sections mix police-type units (this is our topic) with military forces: home guard, commandos (Palmach), behind-the-front guerrilla, and everything in between. They may be interconnected, but this needs to be clarified: who is who? What is what? If some of the same people (see Moshe Dayan) started off as guides for British units, then became notrim, then Night Squad members, Palmach, and finally IDF, this doesn't mean that those units were all the same amorphous porridge, or that everybody did pass through all. This is supposed to be an encyclopedic article about the "Notrim", not a collection of factlets on Jewish involvement in policing and military activities of all kinds in cooperation with the Mandate and Imperial authorities from 1936 to 48. Arminden (talk) 02:58, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Arminden: You are not the first to be confused. Read Matthew Hughes' description from Britain’s Pacification of Palestine (pp. 276–277): "There were Jewish additional police, supernumeraries, ghaffirs, notrim, temporary additional constables, special constables, private police officers, an auxiliary port police force, temporary additional police, a special frontier protection unit, Jewish settlement police, Jewish supernumerary police (divided into four A–D categories), special auxiliary police, railway protection police, night watchmen, special policemen, an IPC TAPline protection force, Army special night and Q units, and Wingate’s British–Jewish Special Night Squads. Some of these forces included Arab ‘loyalist’ recruits, but few and in fewer numbers. These labels were sometimes synonymous descriptors for the same force of men, but the plethora of names is telling: proof that the British could not find one phrase for all the auxiliary collaborating forces and of the officially supported (more or less) irregular para-military units with intimate knowledge of local human and physical terrain and which was a large force augmentation for the pacification of Palestine after 1936." Zero^talk 09:49, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Zero0000: thanks, that clarifies the situation quite a bit. Can you fit it in? It would benefit the article a lot. I know very little about the topic, but can't we differentiate at least between regular Jewish WWII troops sent to Lebanon, North Africa and Italy, and police forces kept in Palestine? I know Dayan lost his eye in Lebanon, so clearly, there were some overlaps, but he was a Wingate- and Sadeh-trained Palmach man, which was a relatively small elite corps. Also, the authorities' radical change in attitude apparently had a huge impact on the auxiliaries' numbers and status, so 1936-39 up to the White Paper was a very different ball game from the WWII years, and in '46-'48, when tensions between Yishuv and the British took centre stage, probably too. Also, who used the term notrim? Just the Jews? Because Hughes mentions it in the list next to ghaffirs. If it was an unofficial Hebrew term for all, the lead should read "collective Hebrew name for all auxiliary Jewish forces set up by the British authorities in Pal. betw. ..." (1936-48?). Now the definition says '36-'39, but the article has most of its material on WWII and goes on till '48. The discrepance between official British and more pragmatic local Hebrew terms ("all our Haganah guys in British uniform") might be the key. Arminden (talk) 11:47, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Arminden: It is quite confusing. One thing to know is that "Ghaffir" was an official title, in contrast to "noter" which (I think) was unofficial. There are regulations in the Palestine Gazette starting in 1921 for the position of Ghaffir. The first reference is to a person with police powers within a village or a cluster of villages, Arab as well as Jewish villages. I'm wondering if the "Settlement Police" were a general phenomenon and not just a Jewish phenomenon (the literature is one-sided as you know). Later there is mention of other types of Ghaffir such as railway Ghaffir and forest Ghaffir. Meanwhile, in the Police Ordinance of 1926 there are separate regulations for Village Ghaffirs and Supernumerary Constables, so they weren't the same thing. If notrim were a different type of thing established in the 1930s, they weren't officially synonymous with ghaffirs or supernumerary constables, though I read that the names used customarily were fluid. Zero^talk 12:27, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Zero0000: I found the article about the origin of the term very useful: Egyptian villages set up groups of 6-12 guards to keep thieves and bandits away. Kitchener, as police commissioner in 1891, tied them up into a new national police, giving them military training, weapons, and I think a salary - but they had to take orders from officers too, not just work for the community. It went on at least until 1905. The Brits adopted the idea a few decades later in Palestine, but started doing so only during the revolt. From all I'm seeing, they worked with the Jewish Agency (Haganah) against revolting Arabs, and in seldom cases hired "loyal" Arabs. So it's about concrete facts: until the Lehi and Irgun and later the Haganah picked up a fight with the authorities, the Brits fought the Arabs from '36 onwards, and the Jews were a convenient ally. It looks like common sense, not bias. Additionally, the sympathies were quite split among the Brits: people like Kitchener and Lawrence were very much drawn towards the Arabs, Oliphant and Wingate were fundamentalist Christian Zionists (Lawrence could accommodate both types of sympathy). I know for a fact from a number of historical episodes that there were quite a few Arab policemen, but I don't know if those weren't regular police. I guess they were. For sure, "noter" was the Jewish term, and fine distinctions are something for the bureaucrats, normal people cut to the chase: Jews in British uniform = notrim, that's that. But it gets complicated later on, with the creation of military-, not police-type units. So not just the guys who could do the job of a gendarm if it must be, but commandos. Like the Special Night Squads (1938), who also wore the funny kalpak hats, but there's where the commonalities ended. In 1944 came the Jewish Brigade, with some other unsuccessful attempts in between. Arminden (talk) 14:11, 15 April 2021 (UTC)