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Secrets of World War I in the Holy Land: An American Spy in Plain View?

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Lenny Ben-David - World War I in the Holy Land was the setting for tales of espionage. The American Colony group of Millenialist Christians moved from Chicago to Jerusalem in 1881. The first child born to the Colony was John D. Whiting (1882-1951), who served intermittently as deputy American consul in the Jerusalem consulate between 1908 and 1915. As World War I spread to the Middle East, the American Colony remained meticulously neutral. Whiting served as one of the leaders of the American Red Cross medical team established to treat Turkey's wounded in Sinai. When a devastating locust plague hit Palestine in 1915, leading to mass starvation, Turkish Supreme Commander Djamal Pasha asked the American Colony photographers to document the locust swarms. The Colony's photographers also filmed Turkish military events, exercises, and facilities at the request of Ottoman commanders. Scores of these photographs may have been surreptitiously delivered to British intelligence. Pictures of water resources at the Beer Sheba army base in the desert or troop positions on the approach to Jerusalem would be enormously valuable to British General Allenby in 1917. After the liberation of Jerusalem in December 1917, Whiting served as an officer in British intelligence. The writer, Director of the Institute for U.S.-Israel Relations at the Jerusalem Center, is a photographic historian of the Middle East and the author of American Interests in the Holy Land Revealed in Early Photographs.
2024-01-18 00:00:00
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